stoicism he so much affected; and the morning after he was condemned,
he confessed the justness of it to two clergymen (who had a licence
from the judge to attend him), by declaring that he murdered Clark.
Being asked by one of them what his motive was for doing that
abominable action, he told them, ‘he suspected Clark of having an
unlawful commerce with his wife; that he was persuaded at the time,
when he committed the murder, he did right, but, since, he had thought
it wrong.’
‘After this, pray,’ said Aram, ‘what became of Clark’s body, if
Houseman went home (as he said upon my trial) immediately on seeing him
fall?’
One of the clergymen replied, ‘I’ll tell you what became of it. You
and Houseman dragged it into the cave, stripped and buried it there;
brought away his clothes, and burnt them at your own house.’
To which he assented. He was asked whether Houseman did not earnestly
press him to murder his wife, for fear she should discover the business
they had been about. He hastily replied,
‘He did, and pressed me several times to do it.’
Aram’s wife lived some years after his execution; indeed, she did not
die until 1774. She lived in a small house near Low Bridge, within
sight of her husband’s gibbet; and here she sold pies, sausages, &c.
It is said that she used to search under the gibbet for any of her
husband’s bones that might have fallen, and then bury them.
Aram, by his wife, had six children, who survived their
childhood--three sons and three daughters. All these children, save
one, Sally, took after their mother; but Sally resembled her father,
both physically and mentally. She was well read in the classics, and
Aram would sometimes put his scholars to the blush, by having Sally in
their class. Her father was very fond of her, and she was living with
him at Lynn when he was arrested, and she clung to him when in prison
at York. On his death, she went to London, and, after a time, she
married, and, with her husband, kept a public-house on the Surrey side
of Westminster Bridge.
Houseman went back to Knaresborough, where he abode until his death.
He was naturally mobbed, and never dared stir out in the day time, but
sometimes slunk out at night. Despised and detested by all, his life
must have been a burden to him, and his punishment in this world far
heavier than Aram was called upon to bear.
REDEMPTIONERS.
Slavery, properly so called, appears to have been from the earliest
ages, and in almost every country, the condition of a large portion
of the human race; the weakest had ever to serve the strong--whether
the slave was a captive in battle, or an impecunious debtor unable to
satisfy the claims of his creditor, save with his body. Climate made
no difference. Slavery existed in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and in our
own ‘right little, tight little island,’ our early annals show that
a large proportion of the Anglo-Saxon population was in a state of
slavery. These unfortunate bondsmen, who were called theows, thrœls,
and esnes,[26] were bought and sold with land, and were classed in the
inventory of their lord’s wealth, with his sheep, swine, and oxen, and
were bequeathed by will, precisely as we now dispose of our money, or
furniture.
The condition of the Anglo-Saxon slaves was very degraded indeed;
their master might put them in bonds, might whip them, nay, might even
brand them, like cattle, with his own distinguishing mark, a state of
things which existed until Alfred the Great enacted some laws, whereby
the time of the servitude of these unhappy people was limited to six
years, and the institution of slavery received such a blow, that it
speedily became a thing of the past. They were no longer slaves, but
redemptioners, _i.e._, they had the hope of redemption from servitude,
and the law gave them the power to enforce their freedom.
We have only to turn to the pages of holy writ to find slavery
flourishing in rank luxuriance in the time of the patriarchs, and
before the birth of Moses. Euphemistically described in Scripture
history as servants, they were mostly unconditional and perpetual
slaves. They were strangers, either taken prisoners in war or purchased
from the neighbouring nations; but the Jews also had a class of
servants who only were in compulsory bondage for a limited time, and
they were men of their own nation.
These were men who, by reason of their poverty, were obliged to
give their bodies in exchange for the wherewithal to support them,
or they were insolvent debtors, and thus sought to liquidate their
indebtedness, or men who had committed a theft, and had not the means
of making the double, or fourfold, restitution that the law required.
Their thraldom was not perpetual, they might be redeemed, and, if not
redeemed, they became free on the completion of their seventh year of
servitude.
Exodus, chap. 21, vv. 2-6. ‘If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years
shall he serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If
he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he were married,
then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a
wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her
children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself. And
if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my
children: I will not go out free: then his master shall bring him unto
the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door-post;
and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall
serve for ever.’
Here, then, we have a redemptioner, one whose servitude was not a
hopeless one, and we find this limited bondage again referred to in
Leviticus, chap. 25, vv. 39, 40, 41.
‘And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold
unto thee, thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond servant: but as
an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall
serve thee unto the year of jubilee. And then shall he depart from
thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own
family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return.’
Here in England we are accustomed to look upon the slave from one point
of view only, as an unhappy being of a different race and colour to
ourselves, few of us knowing that there has been a time (and that not
so very long ago) when members of our own nation, so utterly forlorn
and miserable from the rude buffetings Fortune had given them in their
way through the world, have been glad to sell their bodies for a time,
to enable them to commence afresh the struggle for existence, in
another land, and, perchance, under more favourable circumstances.
In ‘his Majesty’s plantations’ of Virginia, Maryland, and New England,
and in the West Indies, these unfortunates were first called servants,
and as such are officially described; but in America in later times
they received the appellation of redemptioners, a name by which they
were certainly called in the middle of this century, for in Dorsey’s
‘Laws of Maryland,’ published in 1840, we find an Act[27] (cap. 226)
was passed in 1817 to alleviate the condition of these poor people.
The preamble sets forth, ‘Whereas it has been found that German and
Swiss emigrants, who for the discharge of the debt contracted for their
passage to this country are often obliged to subject themselves to
temporary servitude, are frequently exposed to cruel and oppressive
impositions by the masters of the vessels in which they arrive, and
likewise by those to whom they become servants,’ &c.
It is impossible to fix any date when this iniquitous traffic
first began. It arose, probably, from the want of labourers in the
plantations of our colonies in their early days, and the employment
of unscrupulous agents on this side to supply their needs in this
respect. A man in pecuniary difficulties in the seventeenth and
eighteen centuries was indeed in woeful plight: a gaol was his certain
destination, and there he might rot his life away, cut off from all
hope of release, unless death came mercifully to his relief. All
knew of the horrors of a debtor’s prison, and, to escape them, an
able-bodied man had recourse to the dreadful expedient of selling
himself into bondage, for a term of years, in one of the plantations,
either in America or the West Indies, or he would believe the specious
tales of the ‘kidnappers,’ as they were called, who would promise
anything, a free passage, and a glorious life of ease and prosperity in
a new land.
Thoroughly broken down, wretched, and miserable, his thoughts would
naturally turn towards a new country, wherein he might rehabilitate
himself, and, in an evil hour, he would apply to some (as we should
term it) emigration agent, who would even kindly advance him a trifle
for an outfit. The voyage out would be an unhappy experience, as
the emigrants would be huddled together, with scant food, and, on
his arrival at his destination, he would early discover the further
miseries in store for him; for, immediately on landing, or even before
he left the ship, his body would be seized as security for passage
money, which had, in all probability, been promised him free, and for
money lent for his outfit; and, having no means of paying either,
utterly friendless, and in a strange country, he would be sold to
slavery for a term of years to some planter who would pay the debt for
him.
Having obtained his flesh and blood at such a cheap rate, his owner
would not part with him lightly, and it was an easy thing to arrange
matters so that he was always kept in debt for clothes and tobacco,
&c., in order that he never should free himself. It was a far cry to
England, and with no one to help him, or to draw public attention to
his case, the poor wretch had to linger until death mercifully released
him from his bondage; his condition being truly deplorable, as he would
be under the same regulations as the convicts, and one may be very sure
that _their_ lot was not enviable in those harsh and merciless times.
It was not for many years, until the beginning of this century, that
the American laws took a beneficial turn in favour of these unhappy
people; and it was then too late, for the institution of redemptioners
died a speedy death, owing to the influx of free emigration.
One of the earliest notices of these unfortunates is in a collection
of Old Black letter ballads, in the British Museum, where there is one
entitled, ‘The Trappan’d Maiden, or the Distressed Damsel,’ (c. 22, e.
2)/186 in which are depicted some of the sorrows which were undergone
by these unwilling emigrants, at that time. The date, as nearly as can
be assigned to it, is about 1670.
The Girl was cunningly trapan’d,
Sent to Virginny from England;
Where she doth Hardship undergo,
There is no cure, it must be so;
But if she lives to cross the main,
She vows she’ll ne’er go there again.
Give ear unto a Maid
That lately was betray’d,
And sent into Virginny, O:
In brief I shall declare,
What I have suffered there,
When that I was weary, O.
When that first I came
To this Land of Fame,
Which is called Virginny, O:
The Axe and the Hoe
Have wrought my overthrow,
When that I was weary, O.
Five years served I
Under Master Guy,
In the land of Virginny, O:
Which made me for to know
Sorrow, Grief, and Woe,
When that I was weary, O.
When my Dame says, Go,
Then must I do so,
In the land of Virginny, O:
When she sits at meat
Then I have none to eat,
When that I was weary, O.
The cloathes that I brought in,
They are worn very thin,
In the land of Virginny, O:
Which makes me for to say
Alas! and well-a-day,
When that I was weary, O.
Instead of Beds of Ease,
To lye down when I please,
In the land of Virginny, O:
Upon a bed of straw,
I lay down full of woe,
When that I was weary, O.
Then the Spider, she
Daily waits on me,
In the land of Virginny, O:
Round about my bed
She spins her tender web,
When that I was weary, O.
So soon as it is day,
To work I must away,
In the land of Virginny, O:
Then my Dame she knocks
With her tinder-box,
When that I was weary, O.
I have played my part
Both at Plow and Cart,
In the land of Virginny, O;
Billats from the Wood,
Upon my back they load,
When that I was weary, O.
Instead of drinking Beer,
I drink the waters clear,
In the land of Virginny, O;
Which makes me pale and wan,
Do all that e’er I can,
When that I was weary, O.
If my Dame says, Go,
I dare not say no,
In the land of Virginny, O;
The water from the spring
Upon my head I bring,
When that I was weary, O.
When the Mill doth stand,
I’m ready at command,
In the land of Virginny, O;
The Morter for to make,
Which made my heart to ake,
When that I was weary, O.
When the child doth cry,
I must sing, By-a-by,
In the land of Virginny, O;
No rest that I can have
Whilst I am here a slave,
When that I was weary, O.
A thousand Woes beside,
That I do here abide,
In the land of Virginny, O;
In misery I spend
My time that hath no end,
When that I was weary, O.
Then let Maids beware,
All by my ill-fare,
In the land of Virginny, O:
Be sure thou stay at home,
For if you do here come,
You will all be weary, O.
But if it be my chance,
Homeward to advance,
From the land of Virginny, O:
If that I once more
Land on English shore,
I’ll no more be weary, O.
Some of these complaints would seem to us to be rather of the ‘crumpled
rose-leaf’ order, but probably there was enough humanity left in their
owners to treat their female ‘servants’ more tenderly than the male,
whose sorrows were genuine enough.
Ned Ward, in his ‘London Spy,’ 1703, gives a most graphic account of
the sort of men who enticed these human chattels to the plantations. He
was pursuing his perambulations about the City, exercising those sharp
eyes of his, which saw everything, and was in the neighbourhood of the
Custom-house, when he turned down a place called Pig Hill (so called,
he says, from its resembling the steep descent down which the Devil
drove his Hogs to a Bad Market).
‘As we walked up the Hill, as Lazily as an Artillery Captain before
his Company upon a Lord Mayor’s Day, or a Paul’s Labourer up a Ladder,
with a Hod of Mortar, we peeped in at a Gateway, where we saw two or
three Blades, well drest, but with Hawkes’ Countenances, attended with
half-a-dozen Ragamuffingly Fellows, showing Poverty in their Rags and
Despair in their Faces, mixt with a parcel of young, wild striplings,
like runaway ‘Prentices. I could not forbear enquiring of my Friend
about the ill-favoured multitude, patched up of such awkward Figures,
that it would have puzzled a Moor-Fields Artist,[28] well-read in
physiognomy, to have discovered their Dispositions by their Looks.
‘“That House,” says my Friend, “which they there are entering is
an Office where Servants for the Plantations bind themselves to be
miserable as long as they live, without a special Providence prevents
it. Those fine Fellows, who look like Footmen upon a Holy day, crept
into cast suits of their Masters, that want Gentility in their
Deportments answerable to their Apparel, are Kidnappers, who walk the
‘Change and other parts of the Town, in order to seduce People who
want services and young Fools crost in Love, and under an uneasiness
of mind, to go beyond the seas, getting so much a head of Masters
of Ships and Merchants who go over, for every Wretch they trepan
into this Misery. These young Rakes and Tatterdemallions you see so
lovingly hearded are drawn by their fair promises to sell themselves
into Slavery, and the Kidnappers are the Rogues that run away with the
Money.”’
And again, when he goes on ‘Change, he further attacks these villains.
‘“Now,” says my Friend, “we are got amongst the Plantation Traders.
This may be call’d Kidnapper’s Walk; for a great many of these
Jamaicans and Barbadians, with their Kitchen-stuff Countenances, are
looking as sharp for servants as a Gang of Pick-pockets for Booty....
Within that Entry is an Office of Intelligence, pretending to help
Servants to Places, and Masters to Servants. They have a knack of
Bubbling silly wenches out of their Money; who loiter hereabouts upon
the expectancy, till they are pick’d up by the Plantation Kidnappers,
and spirited away into a state of misery.”’
And yet once more Ward, in his ‘Trip to America,’ says,
‘We had on board an Irishman going over as Servant, who, I suppose, was
Kidnapped. I asked him whose Servant he was, “By my Fait,” said he, “I
cannot tell. I was upon ’Change, looking for a good Master, and a brave
Gentleman came to me, and asked me who I was, and I told him I was myn
own self; and he gave me some good Wine and good Ale, and brought me on
Board, and I have not seen him since.”’
Then, as since, the emigration from Great Britain was mostly fed by the
poorer classes of Ireland; and, in the latter part of William III.‘s
reign, such was the numbers that were sent over to the plantations as
‘servants,’ or in other words, slaves, that it was found necessary to
enact special laws, in Maryland, to check the excessive importation,
it being considered a source of danger to the State, as tending to
introduce Popery. Accordingly, several acts were passed, placing a
duty of twenty shillings per head on each Irish person landed; which,
proving insufficient for the purpose, was further increased to forty
shillings a few years afterwards.
In 1743, there was a _cause célèbre_, in which James Annesley, Esq.,
appeared as the plaintiff, and claimed the earldom of Anglesey from his
uncle Richard, who, he maintained (and he got a verdict in his favour),
had caused him to be kidnapped when a lad of thirteen years of age, and
sent to America, there to be sold as a slave. That this was absolutely
the fact, no one who has read the evidence can possibly doubt, and
the hardships endured by the ‘servants’ at that time are plaintively
alluded to in a little book, called, ‘The Adventure of an Unfortunate
Young Nobleman,’ published 1743. ‘Here the Captain repeating his former
Assurances, he was sold to a rich Planter in Newcastle County called
Drummond, who immediately took him home, and entered him in the Number
of his Slaves.
‘A new World now opened to him, and, being set to the felling of
Timber, a Work no way proportioned to his Strength, he did it so
awkwardly, that he was severely corrected. Drummond was a hard,
inexorable Master, who, like too many of the Planters, consider their
Slaves, or Servants, as a different Species, and use them accordingly.
Our American Planters are not famous for Humanity, being often Persons
of no Education, and, having been formerly Slaves themselves, they
revenge the ill-usage they received on those who fall into their Hands.
The Condition of European Servants in that Climate is very wretched;
their Work is hard, and for the most part abroad, exposed to an
unwholesome Air, their Diet coarse, being either Poul or bread made of
Indian Corn, or Homine or Mush, which is Meal made of the same kind,
moistened with the Fat of Bacon, and their Drink Water sweetened with a
little Ginger and Molasses.’
Although, as before stated, Mr. Annesley won his case with regard
to his legitimacy and property, for some reason or other he never
contested the title with his usurping uncle, who continued to be
recognized as Earl of Anglesey until his death.
Defoe, writing in 1738 in his ‘History of Colonel Jack,’ makes his
hero to be kidnapped by the master of a vessel at Leith, and carried
to Virginia, where he was consigned to a merchant, and disposed of
as he saw fit--in fact, treated with the same _nonchalance_ us an
ordinary bale of goods would be. He was sold to a planter for five
years, and had three hard things to endure, viz., hard work, hard
fare, and hard lodging. He describes the arrival of a ship from
London with several ‘servants,’ and amongst the rest were seventeen
transported felons, some burnt in the hand, and some not, eight of whom
his master purchased for the time specified in the warrant for their
transportation, so that the unfortunate men were in no better position
than, and were under the same severe laws as, the convict. Their ranks
were recruited by many gentlemen concerned in the Rebellion, and taken
prisoners at Preston, who were spared from execution and sold into
slavery at the plantations, a condition which must often have made them
dissatisfied with the clemency extended to them. In many cases, with
kind masters, their lot was not so hard, and when their time of bondage
was expired they had encouragement given them to plant for themselves,
a certain number of acres being allotted to them by the State; and, if
they could get the necessary credit for clothes, tools, &c., they were
in time enabled to put by money, and, in some rare instances, became
men of renown in the colony.
The usage these poor people endured on their passage to the plantations
was frequently abominable, and a writer in 1796 describes the arrival,
at Baltimore, of a vessel containing three hundred Irish ‘passengers’
who had been nearly starved by the captain, the ship’s water being sold
by him at so much a pint, and this treatment, combined with other
cruelties too shocking to relate, caused a contagious disorder to break
out on board, which carried off great numbers, whilst most of these
unhappy folk who were spared at that time, subsequently died whilst
performing quarantine in the Delaware.
The redemptioners mainly sailed from the northern ports of Ireland,
Belfast or Londonderry, though this country by no means enjoyed the
unenviable monopoly of this traffic: Holland and Germany sending
their wretched quota of white slaves. The particular class of vessels
employed in this iniquitous trade were known by the name of ‘White
Guineamen,’ and belonged to the ‘free and enlightened’ citizens of the
sea-ports in America, who had their kidnappers stationed at certain
parts of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and also in Holland, to provide
them with human cargoes. Seduced by the glowing descriptions of a
trans-Atlantic paradise, with bright and alluring visions of American
happiness and liberty, the miserable, the idle, and the unwary among
the lower classes of Europe were entrapped into the voyage, the offer
of gratuitous conveyance being an additional bait, which was eagerly
accepted; but we have seen how, on their arrival at the promised land,
they were speedily disillusioned. The difficulty of hiring tolerable
servants was so great, that many persons were obliged to deal with
their fellow-creatures in this way, who would otherwise have utterly
abhorred the thought of being slave-dealers.
Some of the laws for their regulation in the colonies are curious. For
instance, in Virginia, after they had served their time, they were
obliged to have a certificate from their master to say that they had
done so, and if any person should entertain any hired servant running
away without such a certificate, he had to pay the master of such
servant thirty pounds weight of tobacco for every day and night he
should so harbour him.
Pursuit after runaway servants was made at the public expense, and, if
caught, they had to serve for the time of their absence, and the charge
disbursed. In case the master refused to pay the charge, the servant
was sold, or hired out, until by their services they had reimbursed
the amount expended in capturing them, after which they were returned
to their master to serve out their time. Whoever apprehended them was
to have as reward two hundred pounds weight of tobacco, if the capture
took place about ten miles from the master’s house, or one hundred
pounds weight if above five miles, and under ten. This reward was to be
paid by the public, and the servant had to serve some one four months
for every two hundred pounds weight of tobacco paid for him.
‘Every Master that hath a Servant that hath run away twice, shall keep
his Hair close cut, and not so doing, shall be fined one hundred pounds
weight of Tobacco for every time the said Fugitive shall, after the
second time, be taken up.’
If they ran away in company with any negro, then they had to serve the
master of that negro as long as the negro was at large. If any servant
laid violent hands on his master, mistress, or overseer, and was
convicted of the same in any court, he had to serve one year longer at
the expiration of his term.
‘A Woman-servant got with Child by her Master, shall, after her time of
indenture or custom is expired, be, by the Church-wardens of the Parish
where she lived, sold for two Years, and the Tobacco employed for the
use of the Parish.’