Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/519

 1920 SIXTEENTH CENTURY 511 while three or four years earlier the proclamation of 1545 had been made general for the whole country by 39 & 40 Eliz., cap. iv, which imposed transportation or lifelong imprisonment in the galleys as the punishment for incorrigible rogues and vagabonds.^ It may have been of such criminals as these, whom a maternal government had spared from capital punishment to linger out a living death in the galleys, or it may have been of negro slaves, whom the sixteenth century considered a beneficent providence had created in order to spare the white man toil, that Hawkyns was thinking when he drew up an estimate for the Bonavolia allowing her 150 slaves, who naturally drew no wages, and a ' gayler ' at 13s. 4:d. a month to be responsible for them. As the suggestion came from Hawkyns one is inclined to think that they were to be negroes, especially as he adds ' ther ys no dyett spoken of for the slaves for that we are not yett in the experyence of jrt '.^ All the evidence given above merely goes to prove that the government was quite prepared to use criminals as galley-slaves ; is there anything to show that they ever actually carried their benevolent intention into effect ? One would naturally expect the evidence on this matter to be rather scanty, but the fact that only two instances have been discovered throughout the sixty years during which galleys were attached to the English navy, inclines one to the opinion that such commitments must have been rare ; this view is strengthened when it is remembered that, outside the years 1543-51, the galleys were only very inter- mittently employed on active service, and the lodging and guard- ing of the criminals during their long spells of inactivity would have been an intolerable nuisance. The two instances come, curiously enough, one from the beginning of the period and the other from the very end. On 1 July 1548 there is A warrante to Mr. Fulmerston, Garder of the Kinges Bench, to deUver George London, Thomas Allen and one Tomlin, beinge condempned to dye, to Sir Richard Brooke, captayne of the Galley, and he to accompte for them whensoever they shalbe caled for.^ On 26 August 1593 a letter was sent to Sir John Hawkyns in which the lords of the council say We send you herewith one Walter Pepper and George Ellis, two verie lewd and loose fellowes that heretofore being censured in the Star Chamber for counterfeiting som of our handes to certein warrantes, to the abuse of sondrie her Majesty's good subjectes, ar now of late again aprehended and found culpable in like offence. We have therfore thought meet they sholdbe comited to the gallies, there to remain to be imploied in service stitutional Documents, p. 102. » State Papers, Dom., Eliz., ccxxix. 77 (1589 ?). council letter book).
 * 39 & 40 Eliz., cap. iv, sect. 11, printed by Sir G. Prothero, Statutes and Con-
 * Acts of the Privy Council, ii. 656 (really from Starkey's transcript of a privy