About this item

This is a heroic attempt to bring together from English sources a complete list of emigrants to the New World from 1607 to 1660. No doubt records of passengers leaving for America were kept in this period, but while no systematic record has survived, the remaining records are substantial. Some were collected and published by John Camden Hotten over 100 years ago, and they were the passenger lists he found in the British State Papers. Since then a great many sources have been found and the time has been long overdue for these facts to be assembled in one comprehensive book. Hence the publication of this work by the English scholar Peter Wilson Coldham, the leading authority on early English emigration records. His book is a reworking of the Chancery records and records of the Exchequer, the 1624 and 1625 censuses of Virginia, the records of licenses and examination of persons wishing to "pass beyond the seas.