Richard Frethorne

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Richard Frethorne (sometimes spelled Freethorne) was a seventeenth century New World indentured servant associated with Jamestown Settlement, though he lived (by his own account) about ten miles away. Between March 20 and April 3, 1623, he wrote a letter to his parents, which still survives and is one of the earliest documents describing conditions in the colony. The letter reports a difficult life:

But I have nothing at all no, not a shirt to my back but two rags (2), nor clothes but one poor suit, nor but one pair of shoes, but one pair of stockings, but one cap, [and] but two bands [collars]. My cloak is stolen by one of my fellows, and to his dying hour [he] would not tell me what he did with it; but some of my fellows saw him have butter and beef out of a ship, which my cloak, I doubt [not], paid for.

Frethorne's letter has been cited as evidence that the reports in England that the colonies in Virginia were being run as a model of justice and equity were incorrect.^[1]