Selected quad for the lemma: master_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
master_n	john_n	king_n	lord_n	5,015	5	3.8583	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A74697	Englands slavery, or Barbados merchandize; represented in a petition to the high court of Parliament, by Marcellus Rivers and Oxenbridge Foyle gentlemen, on behalf of themselves and three-score and ten more free-born Englishmen sold (uncondemned) into slavery: together with letters written to some honourable members of Parliament.	Rivers, Marcellus.	1659 (1659)	Wing R1553; Thomason E1833_3; ESTC R209821	8,563	23

of the smart due to themselves and which they may expect if they will not learn their books better And if our Torment will but make this Princely Assembly look about them and in us as in a looking-Glasse to behold the face of their own Condition they will certainly find that 't is but hodie mihi cras Tibi can promise themselves no longer freedome from our Condition then they continue members of the Peoples Representative For the House being once dissolv'd they are exposed to a possibility I may not say a probability of the like violence Parliament-protection onely makes the difference Else my Lord for ought I know I ought to be as free from being the goods and chattels of Martin Noel and Henry Hatsel for Thomas Aldern that had the thirds of us hath already I hear given an account of his unrighteousnesse to a greater Tribunall as any man though he might have been once a member of Parliament For I never made any contract with them nor do I know whether there be such persons or whether the Master of the ship used their names sictitiously as Lawyers do formally Iohn Anokes and Iohn Astiles My Lord I do not go about to conceal that I was sometime an unworthy Officer in the late Kings Army But this I affirm I was never in any military Action since we were disbanded upon Articles at Truro in Cornewall in the end of the year 1644. Indeed I have had my share in the suffering part since upon jealous suggestions and false surmises After that disbanding I have also had the benefit and protection of an Act of Oblivion from the Parliament and further being upon unjust pretences indicted as a Traitor at Exon in the West in 1655 I was there by the grand Jury of the County of Devon pronounced Innocent by their Ignoramus and so declared in form of Law And if neither the Artiticles of a Victorious Army nor the Act of Oblivion of an English Parliament nor the formality of a Tryal by a Iury and the Declaration of Law make us Innocent and preserve us ftom being sold for Slaves whence shall we expect freedom My Lord your spatious soul can certainly never undertake a more charitable Office then to endeavour the Redemption of the Innocent Slaves at Barbados and the prevention of the further slavery of England Our case is but your Touchstone by which you may discover whether English be Slaves or Freemen which I humbly beg you Lordship to be zealous in I can only pray for your Lordships good success heartily subscribe my self to be as far as without my pretended Owners consent I can promise My Lord Your Lordshipps humble and faithfull Servant A Copie of a second Letter written to another worthy Member of Parliament Sir HAving had former Experience of your goodnesse and having been eased by your hand upon my Letter when I was heretofore under some oppression though of nothing so high a nature as now being with some scores more of free-born English men sold into slavery That gives me the confidence you the trouble of this second Letter though you cannot now as then singly help me yet in conjunction with others of your great Assembly all inclin'd for the freedome of the people I hope you will further mine and all the others liberties who are now Slaves at Barbados and Petitioners at your Bar For if this man-stealing trade hold good that all they that were at the Salisbury Rising shall be sold to the Indies for Slaves because they were there And all those too that were not at the Salisbury Rising shall be also sould thither because they were not there which is the case of a great number of the Petitioners who never either saw Salisbury or heard of that Rising nor knew why they were committed to Prison yet found themselves indicted for treason and being thereupon quitted by the Iury of life death which is the case of Augustine Greenwood and Nicholas Broadgate two of the Petitioners to my knowledge whatever more of that petitioning number were so quitted which I do not remember are notwithstanding that acquitment inslaved If this be allowed an easie understanding will quickly find what must necessarily become of all the formerly free People of England And these Merchants of men shelter themselves and hope to continue hidden from the punishment of their Iniquities and to continue and encrease Englands slavery by an unheard of wile which unlesse this brave Assembly of Parliament doe wisely look into and vigorously stand to their own and the Peoples preservation They themselves may chance to be cheated of lives liberties and estates And the Maior Aldermen and Citizens of London by this law or rather lawfulness will in time not be spared by these West Indian spirits though they begin with Countrey Gentlemen and others as a more private and silent thing These subtile Sophisters do not seem to be so impudent as publickly to establish Iniquity by a Law for that the free People would perceive and at least murmure at though they might not be able to help But these use the way of a more sly violence and pick up free People travelling upon their occasions and take others out of their houses upon pretences of publick Iustice and so do piously shelter their own private and profitable malice of the former number I believe the greatest part if not all of the Petitioners were amongst whom is not any one condemned person but that 's no matter they were as proper men as those taken in Arms at South-moulton and some of them of better trades and so would prove more profitable Commodities and yield more Sugar then those Gentlemen that could not work so lustily But I 'le instance but in one taken out of his house though I could name more there was one Master Diamond a Devonshire Gentleman as proper as ancient being at his sale threescore and sixteen years of age he was taken up at Tiverton where he dwelt and the greatest offence that they accused him guilty of for ought I could ever hear was that when Sir Ioseph Waggstaffe and the party came through that town and the poor old Gentleman wondering to see so unexpectedly so many gallant men travelling together askt who they were and 't was answered Cavaliers Marry said he as they pretend they are very brave Gentlemen were I as young as I have been I would goe along with them whither he said so or no God knows I know not but that was all they had to alledge against him which they never went about to prove though he were kept prisoner a whole year most of the time in the inner prison of the common Goal amongst the felons and murderers from which the high Goal of Exon is never free and the rest of the time in a Room in straw amongst three or fourscore Prisoners more and he was so far from being indicted that he was never I am confident so much as examined

ENGLANDS SLAVERY OR BARBADOS MERCHANDIZE Represented In a Petition to the High and Honourable Court of Parliament by Marcellus Rivers and Oxenbridge Foyle Gentlemen on the behalf of themselves and threescore and ten more Free-born English-men sold uncondemned into slavery Together with Letters written to some Honourable Members of Parliament Exodus 26.1 21.16 And God spake all these words saying He that stealeth a man and selleth him Or if he be found in his hand He shall surely be put to death LONDON Printed in the Eleventh year of Englands Liberty 1659. To the Honourable the Knights Citizens and Burgesses assembled in Parliament the Representative of the Free-born People of England The humble Petition of Marcellus Rivers and Oxenbridge Foyle Gentlemen aswell on behalf of themselves as of threescore and ten more Free-born People of this Nation now in slavery Humbly sheweth THat your distressed Petitioners and the others became prisoners at Exceter and Ilchester in the West upon pretence of the Salisbury Rising in the end of the year 1654. although many of them never saw Salisbury or bore arms in their lives and your Petitioners and divers of the others were pickt up as they travelled upon their lawfull occasions Afterwards upon an Indictment preferred against your Petitioner Rivers Ignoramus was found your Petitioner Foyle never being indicted and all the rest were either quitted by the Jury of life and death or never so much as tryed or examined yet your Petitioners and the others were all kept prisoners by the space of one whole year and then on a sudden without the least preparation snatcht out of their prisons the greatest number by the command and pleasure of the then high Sheriff Copleston and others in power in the County of Devon and driven through the streets of the City of Exon which is witnesse to this truth by a guard of horse and foot none being suffered to take leave of them and so hurried to Plymouth aboard the ship Iohn of London Captain Iohn Cole Master where after they had lain on ship-board fourteen dayes the Captain hoised sail and at the end of five weeks and four dayes more anchored at the Isle Barbados in the West Indies being in sailing four thousand and five hundred miles distant from their native countrey wives children parents friends and all that is near and dear unto them the captive Petitioners and the others being all the way kept lockt under decks and guards amongst horses that their souls through heat and steam under the Tropick fainted in them and never till they came to the Island knew whether they were going Being sadly arrived there on the 7. of May 1656. the Master of the ship sold your miserable Petitioners the others the generality of them to most in humane and barbarous persons for 1550. pound weight of Sugar apiece more or lesse according to their working faculties as the goods and chattels of Martin Noel and Major Thomas Alderne of London and Captain Henry Hatsell of Plymouth neither sparing the aged of threescore and sixteen years old nor Divines nor Officers nor Gentlemen nor any age or condition of men but rendred all alike in this most insupportable Captivity they now generally grinding at the Mills attending the Fornaces or digging in this scorching Island having nothing to feed on notwithstanding their hard labour but Potatoe Roots nor to drink but water with such roots masht in it besides the bread and tears of their own afflictions being bought and sold still from one Planter to another or attached as horses and beasts for the debts of their masters being whipt at their whipping-posts as Rogues for their masters pleasure and sleep in styes worse then hogs in England and many other wayes made miserable beyond expression or Christian imagination Humbly your Petitioners do remonstrate on behalf of themselves and the others their most deplorable and as to English-men unparallel'd condition and earnestly beg since they are not under any pretended conviction of Law that this high and honourable Court will be pleased to examine this arbitrary power and to question by what warrant so great a breach is made upon the free People of England they having never seen the faces of those their pretended owners Merchants that deal in slaves and souls of men nor ever hearing of their names before Master Cole made Affidavit in the office of Barbados that he sold them as their goods But whence they derived their authority for the sale and slavery of your poor Petitioners and the rest they are wholly ignorant to this very day That this high Court will be further pleased to interest their power for the redemption and reparation of your distressed Petitioners and the rest or if the names of your Petitioners and number of the rest be so inconsiderable as not to be worthy Relief or your tender compassion yet at least that this Court will be pleased on behalf of themselves and all the Free-born people of England by whose suffrages they sit in Parliament any of whose cases it may be next whenever a like force shall be laid on them to take course to curb the unlimited power under which the Petitioners and the others suffer that neither you nor any of their Brethren upon these miserable tearms may come into this place of torment a thing not known amongst the cruell Turks to sell and enslave these of their own Countrey and Religion much lesse the Innocent These things being granted as they hope their grieved souls shall pray c. Marcellus Rivers Oxenbridge Foyle The Copie of a Letter written to a Noble Person in Parliament My most noble Lord I Beseech your Lordships pardon for this rude approach of a Slave One of those many mentioned in the Slaves Petition to the Parliament thrown together out of this sometime free and noble Nation of England and obscurely buried alive in the disconsolate vault the Protestants Purgatory Barbados whence I am escaped I cannot say free but rather as one brought over in a Coffin out of which I may not peep untill the protection of this Parliament unlock it and say Arise Freeman and walk In the mean time I account my self equally miserable with my fellow sufferers left behind who do all unanimously by me cry unto your Lordship and to all the members of your great Assembly the Assertors of Englands Freedome in the words of the Souls under the Altar Quousque Domine quousque They are now become Prisoners indeed and Slaves of hope looking upon this great body made up of so many generous souls to be the Angel of their Deliverance and humbly beg your Lordship vigorously to prosecute the Restitution of poor Englands freedome They look upon themselves as least concerned in this great businesse though sufficiently miserable being but a poor handfull compared to Englands multitude the Lot is cast upon them to be whipt as 't is said other youths are in the presence of young Princes That they may be sensible