ANECDOTES OF FEUDAL TIMES IN ENGLAND. 163 



long ago to have any vouchers, though the people indeed all receive 

 it for truth." 



From another story, which he relates, Defoe infers that execu- 

 tions were so frequent here, that " it was not thought a sight worth 

 the people's running to see." 



Ancient Slave-Trade. Spelman, in a brief notice of Magna 

 Charta, styles it that sacred diploma which confirms the liberties 

 of England recovered by a most destructive war, and at a vast ex- 

 pense of blood. From this eulogium one would almost suppose, 

 that Sir Henry had never carefully perused the charter, which, it 

 has been observed, " conferred freedom on those only who were free 

 before," and which classes in the same clause Englishmen not only 

 with the oxen and swine, but with the inanimate herbage of their 

 owner's estates, considering them like those things a species of property 

 too valuable to be wasted or destroyed. By this charter, the guardian 

 of a heir is prohibited from taking from his land more than the 

 reasonable issues without destruction and waste of men and things.* 

 The men alluded to in this chapter were of that class upon a manor 

 whom feudal lawyers define to be villani glebce adscriptiti, serfs or 

 natives, wretches born on the soil, who passed along with the estate 

 from one owner to another, without the power of voluntarily remov- 

 ing themselves. Their condition and duties were those of other 

 slaves ; they were occupied in low and dirty work ; they could 

 neither marry nor give their children in marriage, without the 

 approbation of their owner, for which they paid a fine called the 

 marchet ; nor could they, without the same permission, educate their 

 sons for the church ; because, on becoming monks, the lord would 

 lose all his right and title in his slaves. 



Froissart says there is a usage in England, and also in several 

 countries, that the nobles have great franchises over their men, and 

 hold them in servage. Not only did they subject their bondmen to 

 services of the most degrading nature, but they obliged them, as 

 appears from a passage quoted by Harrington, from Struvius, to 

 perform disgusting and indecent actions in public. t 



These miserable creatures, constituting no small portion of the 

 population, were often transferred at the will of the owner ; some- 

 times in a fit of piety, in pure and perpetual alms, to a religious 

 house, and sometimes they were bartered and sold like the Africans. J 

 The clergy as well as the gentry were slave-dealers, in the modern 

 acceptation of the term. From the couchir-book of the abbey of 

 Whalley, Dr. Whitaker has transcribed a deed of the sale of a slave 

 and his family, which is apparently without date, but which is pro- 

 bably anterior to the year 1309, as the abbot by whom it was exe- 

 cuted died in that year. This instrument may be translated in the 

 following terms : 



* Sine destructione et vasto hominum et rerum. cap. IV. 

 f Obs. on Anc. Statutes, p. 306. 

 } Harl. MS. 3764, fol. 1. 



