r in the wars with the Indians.

These indentured servants were just as trying as the Indians and the
negroes, and in particular showed a lawless disregard for their masters'
property, an indifference to the authority of the weal-public, and a
lazy disinclination to work; one writer describes them as "tender
fingered in cold weather." The Mt. Wollaston lot that followed Morton to
Merry Mount were but the forerunners of hundreds of others. The
Bradstreets' servant, John, may be taken as a type of many refractory
bound servants. He was brought to trial in 1661, for "stealing several
things as pigges, capons, mault, bacon, butter, eggs, etc., and breaking
open a seller door several times." John, when pulled up for trial,
affirmed that he had really a very small appetite, but the food
furnished by that colonial blue-stocking, Anne Bradstreet, was not fit
to eat, the bread being black and heavy and sour, and he only took an
occasional surreptitious bite to keep himself from starvation. But it
was proved that he had feasted not only himself, but comrades, and that
a neighbor, who had a "great fat Turkey against his daughter's marriage"
hung up in a locked room, was relieved of it by the hungry and agile
John, who got some of his fellows to let him down the chimney to steal
the turkey and good store of beer, with which they all caroused; and he
was fitly punished.

The laws were strict enough at first as to the behavior of servants, and
occasionally a topping young maid felt their force. In Hartford, "Susan
Coles for her rebellious cariedge towards her mistris is to be sent to
the house of correction and be kept to hard labour and course dyet, to
be brought forth the next Lecture Day to be publicquely corrected and so
to be corrected weekly until Order be given to the contrary."

In York, Me., in 1645, "Alexander Maxwell for his grosse offence in his
exorbitant and abusive carriages towards his master Mr. George Leader
shall be publicly brought forth to the Whipping Post, where he shall be
fastened till 30 lashes be given him upon his bare skin." Maxwell was
ordered to satisfy his master for the money paid for his board in
prison, and, if he further misbehaved, Mr. Leader could sell him to
Virginia.

In later days New England housewives must have longed for the good old
times of the whipping-post and coarse diet and hard work for disorderly
and insubordinate redemptioners. Hear what gentle Mary Dudley endured
with one of h