Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/518

 510 ENGLISH GALLEYS IN THE October 1551 that there are no more suggestions for the use of criminals as galley-slaves until the later years of Queen Elizabeth's reign. In 1577 Harrison declares that adulterers and loose women should be sold as slaves by the parties they have injured or condemned to the galleys,! and in 1582 there appears a draft order to the justices in Eyre : Trusty and well beloved, we greet you well. Forasmuch as we have occasion for service in our galleys to have certain numbers of men to remain and row in the said galleys, the labour whereof is very great and painful and therefore in many other countries appointed for a great penalty ; we have thought meet at this present to require you, that at such gaol dehveries as shall at these next assizes be made before you, you will use such con- sideration that such as you shall think for the quality of their crimes and offences neither meet to be put to death nor yet to full Uberty may be reprieved and committed to the gaol, with charge to the Sheriff or keeper of the gaol to stay them until we or our Privy Coimcil may be certified thereof and by the advice of the Admiral the same may be sent for to be committed as prisoners to our galleys; And amongst these -sorts we do not mean to have any stayed that have committed wilful murder, burglaries, sacrilege or divers and manifest robberies, thinking it very meet that no reprieve be had for the sparing of such from execution.^ It cannot be said with any certainty whether this was ever acted upon, but twenty years later the privy council sent out an order to all the justices of assize in very similar terms, adding : and that their frendes do give 3 h. by the yeare towards their maintenance in the gallyes if they bee able, or otherwise that the country bee moved to contribute so much bycause by this means they shalbee freed from such unprofitable members that would do more mischiefe to the contry then so much mony would make good. . . that if they shall not do such things in the gallyes as shalbee required at their hands that then they shalbee sent to the prisons backe, to bee proceeded with according to the judgment given upon them before.' Already in 1600 the privy council had ordered the mayor of Chester to threaten deserters from the troops in Ireland or on the way to Ireland that, whereas the ringleaders might be executed, the others would not escape because ' there is almoste in readynes an other sorte of punishment for them by putting them into gallyes, where they shall not be able to runne awaye any more * ' Harrison, The Description of Etigland (ed. Fumivall), i. 226. register, but from the notes of one given in Add. MSS. 11402. The extract shows, in the first place, that sending to the galleys was almost looked on as a favour, and secondly that there was no very brutal system of enforcing discipline there — no ' obey or be flogged to death '. sort of punishment is almost in readiness probably refers to the new galleys that were being built at the time ; see above.
 * State Papers, Dom., Eliz., clvii. 38, quoted by Sir J. Corbett, i. 383-5.
 * Acts of the Prn-yCoMWCt^xxxii. 489, 19 June 1602. This is not from a privy council
 * Acts of the Privy Council, xxx. 245-6, 13 April 1600. The statement that another