With decline in mortality and rise in population, Virginia gained an increasing amount of blacks and Indians which resulted in a raise of lower-class whites. The numbers of poor freeman grew immensely and Virginia became the scruff and scum of England. The Indians and Africans started becoming slaves on the large plantations, which had a result of the poverty population to fall off, and freedmen to disappear. However a class of homeless men continued to cheat the tax collectors and cause the colony to be distressed. These men would start petitions against the authorities. So Accomack joined together with Lancaster and Gloucester in 1699 to request “that a law may be made to punish homeless drifters to asses the Wages of Common Labourers.” In 1723, an act was passed that modeled after the Elizabeth poor law. The act was renewed and enlarged from time to time, and it empowered county courts to convey the drifters to the parish they came from and to bind them out as servants on wages by the year.…show more content… Later on Jonathon Forward began a career carrying convicts to Virginia and Maryland. Virginia tried to pass an act that requires both the importer and the purchaser to give bonds for the good behavior of the immigrants and to register their names and the crimes for which they were transported for to the county court. The gap between the very rich and the not-so-rich had widened, with more rich people and fewer not-so-rich people. During the first half of the eighteenth century big planters were building mansions in Tidewater,Virginia and accumulating vast numbers if slaves. The moderately successful small farmers were also gaining a larger place in a rich area of the colony. The small planters did continue to make up the great majority of the free