For settlers, MacGregor deliberately targeted his fellow Scots, assuming that they would be more likely to trust him, as a Scotsman himself. Their emigration served to reassure potential investors in the Poyaisian bonds and land certificates firstly that the country was real, and secondly that it was being developed and would provide monetary returns. In Sinclair's assessment, this aspect of the scheme "turn what would have been an inspired hoax into a cruel and deadly one". Tamar Frankel posits in her analysis that, at least to some degree, MacGregor "probably believed his own story" and genuinely hoped to forge these people into a Poyaisian society. MacGregor told his would-be colonists that he wished to see Poyais populated with Scots as they possessed the necessary hardiness and character to develop the new country. Alluding to the rivalry with England and the Darien episode—which, he stressed, had involved a direct ancestor of his—MacGregor suggested that in Poyais they might right this historic wrong and salvage Scottish pride. Skilled tradesmen and artisans were promised free passage to Poyais, supplies, and lucrative government contracts. Hundreds, mostly Scots, signed up to emigrate—enough to fill seven ships. They included a City of London banker named Mauger (who was to head the Bank of Poyais), doctors, civil servants, young men whose families had bought them commissions in the Poyaisian Army and Navy, and an Edinburgh cobbler who accepted the post of Official Shoemaker to the Princess of Poyais.