The coasts of England were now protected; but her subjects at sea continued the prey of Algerine corsairs, who, according to the historian Carte, now "carried their English captives to France, _drove them in chains overland to Marseille, to ship them thence with greater safety for slaves to Algiers_."[44] The increasing troubles which distracted the reign of Charles the First, and finally brought his head to the block, could not divert attention from the sorrows of Englishmen, victims to Mahometan slave-drivers. At the height of the struggle between King and Parliament, an earnest voice was raised in behalf of these fellow-Christians in bonds. Edmund Waller, who was orator as well as poet, speaking in Parliament in 1641, said, "By the many petitions which we receive from the wives of those miserable captives at Algiers (being between four or five thousand of our countrymen) it does too evidently appear that to make us slaves at home is not the way to keep us from being made slaves abroad."[45] [44] History of England, Book XXII. Vol. IV. p. 231. [45] Works, p. 270. Publications pleading their cause are yet extant, bearing date 1637, 1640, 1642, and 1647.[46] The overthrow of an oppression so justly odious formed a worthy object for the imperial energies of Cromwell; and in 1655, when, amidst the amazement of Europe, the English sovereignty settled upon his Atlantean shoulders, he directed into the Mediterranean a navy of thirty ships, under the command of Admiral Blake. This was the most powerful English force which had sailed into that sea since the Crusades.[47] Its success was complete. "General Blak," said one of the foreign agents of Government, "has ratifyed the articles of peace at Argier, and included therein Scotch, Irish, Jarnsey and Garnsey-men, and all others the Protector's subjects. He has lykewys redeemed from thence al such as wer captives ther. _Several Duch captives swam aboard the fleet, and so escape theyr captivity._"[48] Tunis, as well as Algiers, was humbled; all British captives were set at liberty; and the Protector, in his remarkable speech at the opening of Parliament, announced peace with the "profane" nations in that region.[49] To my mind no single circumstance gives higher impression of that vigilance with which the Protector guarded his subjects than this effort, to which may be applied the "smooth" line of Waller,-- "telling dreadful news To all that piracy and rapine use."[50]