Instances now thicken. A ship, sailing from Charlestown, in 1678, was taken by a corsair, and carried into Algiers, whence its passengers and crew never returned. They probably died in slavery. Among these was Daniel Mason, a graduate of Harvard University, and the earliest of that name on the Catalogue; also, James Ellson, the mate. The latter, in a testamentary letter to his wife, dated at Algiers, June 30, 1679, desires her to redeem out of captivity two of his companions.[92] At the same period, William Harris, a person of consequence in the Colony, an associate of Roger Williams in the first planting of Providence, and now in the sixty-eighth year of his age, sailing from Boston for England on public business, was also taken by a corsair and carried into Algiers. On the 23d February, 1679, this veteran,--older than the slaveholder Cato, when he learned Greek,--together with all the crew, was sold into slavery. The fate of his companions is unknown; but Mr. Harris, after bearing his doom more than a year, was redeemed at the cost of twelve hundred dollars, called by him "the price of a good farm." The feelings of the Colony, touched by these disasters, are concisely expressed in a private letter dated at Boston, November 10, 1680, where it is said: "The Turks have so taken our New England ships, richly loaden, homeward bound, that it is very dangerous to goe. Many of our neighbors are now in captivity in Argeer. The Lord find out some way for their redemption!"[93] This prayer may be repeated still. [92] Middlesex Probate Files, MS. [93] William Gilbert to Arthur Bridge, MS. In 1693 the subject found its way before the Governor and Council of Massachusetts, on a petition from the relations of two inhabitants "some time since taken by a Sallee man-of-war, and now under Turkish captivity and slavery," for permission "to ask and receive the charity and public contribution of well-disposed persons for redeeming them out of their miserable suffering and slavery." The petition was granted on the condition, "The money so collected to be employed for the end aforesaid, unless the said persons happen to die before, make their escape, or be in any other way redeemed; then the money so gathered to be improved for the redemption of some others of this Province, that are or may be in like circumstances, as the Governor and Council shall direct."[94] Thus was the government of Massachusetts moved at that early day to emancipation. [94] Council Records, fol. 323. See Jackson _v._ Phillips, 14 Allen's Rep. 559.