The two most popular transatlantic anti-heroes of the period were both beggars and convicts. Bampfylde-Moore Carew and Ambrose Gwinett's narratives are therefore now classified as criminal biographies. They are, however, untypical of the genre. For one thing, these protagonists were not criminals; they were caught in the coils of the judiciary by happenstance. Gwinett is a poor attorney's clerk traveling on foot to visit his sister when he is charged with a murder he did not commit and sentenced to be hanged, while Carew, though technically breaking the law by wandering about England begging, is never caught in, or charged with, this or any other crime. The first time he is transported to Maryland as a convict, it is on the whim of a judge who has a grudge against him; the second time, he is kidnapped by a captain working for a Bristol merchant while strolling on the sea shore. As we will see, both stories had literary antecedents and used literary techniques that ordinary criminal biographies lacked; and in their different ways, both used their anti-heroes to put in question the fundamental condition of the Lockean social contract: the idea that, in society, a person's life and liberty were safeguarded by government and law. The third story, The Algerine Captive, is most frequently read now as a “bipartite” novel which contrasts North America with North Africa; and its American hero is construed, like its author Royall Tyler, as a “representative of the elite,” who was “a foolish malcontent,” a victim of “miseducation,” or the prey of unjustifiable “illusions,” for not being better pleased with America.