Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/73

Rh King Athelstan's laws prohibits their being carried out of the kingdom unless they were to be given as presents. Another part of the export trade, which was probably carried on to a much greater extent, was the trade in slaves. The mission of Augustine, which effected the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, was, it may be recollected, the memorable result of the attention of Augustine's patron, Gregory, having been attracted by the appearance of a group of young Angles exposed for sale as slaves in the market-place of Rome. Afterwards several laws and ecclesiastical canons were passed prohibiting the sale of Christian slaves to Jews or Pagans. Finally it was enacted that no Christians, and no persons who had not committed some crime, should be sold out of the country. But William of Malmesbury, who wrote nearly a century after the Conquest, affirms that the practice of selling even their nearest relations had not been altogether abandoned by the people of Northumberland in his own memory. And in the contemporary biography of Wulfstan, who was Bishop of Worcester at the time of the Conquest, the following curious account is given:—"There is a sea-port town called Bristol, opposite to Ireland, into which its inhabitants make frequent voyages on account of trade. Wulfstan cured the people of this town of a most odious and inveterate custom, which they derived from their ancestors, of buying men and women in all parts of England, and exporting them to Ireland for the sake of gain. The young women they commonly got with child, and carried them to market in their pregnancy, that they might bring a better price. You might have seen with sorrow long ranks of young persons of both sexes, and of the greatest beauty, tied together with ropes, and daily exposed to sale; nor were these men ashamed, O horrid wickedness! to give up their nearest relations, nay, their own children, to slavery. Wulfstan, knowing the obstinacy of these people, sometimes stayed two months among them, preaching every Lord's Day, by which, in process of time, he made so great an impression upon their minds that they abandoned that wicked