Old Virginia and her neighbours

SOCIETY IN THE OLD DOMINION. 249that, while the convict ships may not have broughtmany Eugene Arams, they certainly brought menmore likely to find employment in teaching than inmanual labour. Jonathan Boucher, rector at Annapolisin 1768, declares that " not a ship arriveswith either redemptioners or convicts, in whichschoolmasters are not as regularly advertised forsale as weavers, tailors, or any other trade ; withlittle other difference that I can hear of, exceptperhaps that the former do not usually fetch sogood a price as the latter." ^Sometimes, as we have seen in the case of AugustineWashington and his son Lawrence, theyoung Virginians were sent to school in VirginiansEngland. Oftener, perhaps, the educa- ^^o^o^'^tionbegun at the country school or with privatetutors was " finished " (as the phrase goes) at oneof the English universities. Oxford seems to havebeen the favourite Alma Mater, doubtless for thesame reason that caused Cambridge to be chieflyrepresented among the founders of New England ;Oxford was ultra-royalist in sentiment, while Cambridgewas deeply tinged with Puritanism.Thisdifference would readily establish habits and associationsamong the early Virginians which wouldbe followed.^1 The worthy pastor even goes so far as to exclaim, with agroan, that two thirds of the schoolmasters in Maryland wereconvicts working out a term of penal servitude !Boucher's HiirteenSermons, p. 182. But in such declamatory statements it isnever safe to depend upon numhers and figures. In the presentcase we may conclude that the numher of such schoolmasters wasnoticeable ; we are not justified in going further.^ From the excellent papers by W. G. Stanard, on " Virginians