In the early periods of modern Europe, slavery was a general custom, which yielded only gradually to the humane influences of Christianity. It prevailed in all the countries of which we have any record. Fair-haired Saxon slaves from distant England arrested the attention of Pope Gregory in the markets of Rome, and were by him hailed as _angels_. A law of so virtuous a king as Alfred ranks slaves with horses and oxen; and the chronicles of William of Malmesbury show that, in our mother country, there was once a cruel slave trade in whites. As we listen to this story, we shall be grateful again to that civilization which renders such outrages more and more impossible. "Directly opposite," he says,[17] "to the Irish coast, there is a seaport called Bristol, the inhabitants of which frequently sent into Ireland to sell those people whom they had bought up throughout England. They exposed to sale maidens in a state of pregnancy, with whom they made a sort of mock _marriage_. There you might see with grief, fastened together by ropes, whole rows of wretched beings of both sexes, of elegant forms, and in the very bloom of youth,--a sight sufficient to excite pity even in barbarians,--daily offered for sale to the first purchaser. Accursed deed! infamous disgrace! that men, acting in a manner which brutal instinct alone would have forbidden, should sell into slavery their relations, nay, even their own offspring." From still another chronicler[18] we learn that, when Ireland, in 1172, was afflicted with public calamities, the people, but _chiefly the clergy, (præcipue clericorum,)_ began to reproach themselves, as well they might, believing that these evils were brought upon their country because, _contrary to the right of Christian freedom_, they had bought as slaves the English boys brought to them by the merchants; wherefore, it is said, the English slaves were allowed to depart in freedom. [Footnote 17: Book ii. chap. 20, Life of St. Wolston.] [Footnote 18: Chronica Hiberniæ, or the Annals of Phil. Flatesbury in the Cottonian Library, Domitian A. xviii. 10; quoted in Stephens on West India Slavery, vol. i. p. 6] [Illustration] As late as the thirteenth century, the custom prevailed on the continent of Europe to treat all captives, taken in war, as slaves. To this, poetry, as well as history, bears its testimony. Old Michael Drayton, in his story of the Battle of Agincourt, says of the French,-- For knots of cord to every town they send, The captived English that they caught to bind; _For to perpetual slavery they intend Those that alive they on the field should find._ And Othello, in recounting his perils, exposes this custom, when he speaks Of being taken by the insolent foe, _And sold to slavery_; of my redemption thence.