The power of the Barbary States was now at its height. Their corsairs became the scourge of Christendom, while their much dreaded system of slavery assumed a front of new terror. Their ravages were not confined to the Mediterranean. They entered the ocean, and penetrated even to the Straits of Dover and St. George's Channel. From the chalky cliffs of England, and from the remote western coasts of Ireland, unsuspecting inhabitants were swept into cruel captivity.[37] The English government was aroused against these atrocities. In 1620, a fleet of eighteen ships, under the command of Sir Robert Mansel, Vice-Admiral, was despatched to punish Algiers. It returned without being able, in the language of the times, to "destroy those hellish pirates," though it obtained the liberation of "some forty poore captives, which they pretended was all they had in the towne." Purchas records, that the English fleet was indebted for information to "a Christian captive, which did swimme from the towne to the ships."[38] Not in this respect only does this expedition recall that of Charles the Fifth, which received important assistance from rebel slaves; we observe also a similar inconsistency in the government which directed it. It was in the year 1620,--dear to all the descendants of the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock as an epoch of freedom,--while an English fleet was seeking the emancipation of Englishmen held in bondage by Algiers, that African slaves were first introduced into the English colonies of North America,[39] thus beginning that dreadful system whose long catalogue of humiliation and woes is not yet complete. [37] Guizot, Histoire de la Révolution d'Angleterre, Liv. II. Tom. I. p. 78. Strafford's Letters and Dispatches, Vol. I. p. 68. Sir George Radcliffe, the friend and biographer of the Earl, boasts that the latter "secured the seas from piracies, so as only one ship was lost at his first coming [as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland], and no more all his time; whereas every year before, not only several ships and goods were lost by robbery at sea, but also Turkish men-of-war usually landed and _took prey of men to be made slaves_."--Ibid., Vol. II. p. 434. [38] Purchas's Pilgrims, Vol. II. pp. 881-886. Southey, Naval History of England, Vol. V. pp. 60-63. There was a publication specially relating to this expedition, entitled "Algiers Voyage, in a Journall, or briefe Reportary of all Occurrents hapning in the Fleet of Ships sent out by the Kinge his most excellent Majestie, as well against the Pirates of Algiers as others," London, 1621, 4to. [39] Bancroft, History of the United States, Vol. I. p. 189.