“The Ultimate decline of villeinage in England did not mean that al Englishmen were at last free, for in the seventeenth century they were still familiar with other types of bondage. Debtors, rogues, vagabonds, and paupers were legally deprived of their freedom and endured the indignity of the lash. Economic necessity reduced other poor men to the same condition when they indentured themselves for a term of years.”
-The Peculiar Institution, page 16, Kenneth M. Stampp.
Mister Stampp neglects to mention that children could be bound over by parents, or that there was a thriving trade in kidnapped children parallel to this. He also fails to mention the earlier lengthy terms of 14-31 year, and that even after the American Revolution, three-year terms of indenture could be suspend indefinitely by unscrupulous masters.
