Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/580

4S6 TRAHSPOETATION IdSl and 1,500 of them "were granted to the Gruiney merchants, and sent to wotk in the gold-mines there." *' All the foot, and others who were taken in the town [of Worcester], except some few offioers and persons of quality, were driven like cattle, with a guard, to London, and there treated with great rigour ; and many perished for want of food, and being enclosed in little rooms till they were Slavery In sold to the plantations for slaves, they died of all diseasea" — ^tetioM. Clarendon, History, book xiii. " It is pretended, of the Scots there were slain about 2,000, and 7,000 or 8,000 taken prisoners, who, being sent to London, were sold for slaves to the plantations of the American isles." — Rapin, History of England. Heaths Chronicle, p. 301, ed. 1676, describes the prisoners as "driven like a herd of swiae through Westminster to Toihill Fields, and there sold to several merchants, and sent into the Barbadoes." The prisoners, according to anotiier authority cited in Notes and Queries, Nov. 30, 1850, p. 448, were "sold away slaves, at half-a-crown a dozen, for foreign plantations, among savages." And Echard, History of England, vol. ii, p. 727, says that Cromwell " marched off triumphantly to London, driving 4,000 or 5,000 prisoners like she^ before him, making presents of them, as occasion offered, as of 80 many slaves, and selling the rest for that purpose into the English plantations abroad." Law of By the jtts gentium of that time, all prisoners taken in war were slaves, and could be transported beyond the seas and sold abroad. TRANSPORTATION TO AMERICA. " The prisoners condemned to transportation were a saleable com- modity. Such was the demand for labour in America, that convicts Bale of and labourers were regularly purchased and shipped to the colonies, oonvicti. ^iiere they were sold as indented servants. The courtiers round 1686 James II exulted in the rich harvest which Monmouth's rebellion promised, and begged of the monarch frequent gifts of their con- demned countrymen. Judge Jeffides heard of the scramble, and indignantly addressed the King : — ' I beseech your Majesty that I may inform you that each prisoner will be worth XIO, if not ifarket £15^ apiece ; and, sir, if your Majesty orders these as you have already designed, persons that have not suffered in the service will run away with the booty.' At length the spoils were dis- tributed. The convicts were in part persons of family and educa- tion, accustomed to ease and elegance. 'Take all care,' wrote the monarch, under the countersign of Sunderland, to the Govern- ment in Virginia, ' that they continue to serve ior ten years at Digitized by Google