The coasts of England were now protected; but her subjects at sea continued the prey of Algerine corsairs, who, according to the historian Carte,[38] now "carried their English captives to France, _drove them in chains overland to Marseilles, to ship them thence with greater safety for slaves to Algiers_." The increasing troubles, which distracted and finally cut short the reign of Charles the First, could not divert attention from the sorrows of Englishmen, victims to Mohammedan slave drivers. At the height of the struggles between the King and Parliament, an earnest voice was raised in behalf of these fellow-Christians in bonds.[39] Waller, who was orator as well as poet, exclaimed in Parliament, "By the many petitions which we receive from the wives of those miserable captives at Algiers, (being between four and 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." Publications pleading their cause, bearing date in 1640, 1642, and 1647, are yet extant.[40] 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 had already 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.[41] Its success was complete. "General Blake," 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 Dutch captives swam aboard the fleet, and so escape theyr captivity._"[42] 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 in the next year, announced peace with the "profane" nations in that region.[43] [Footnote 38: Carte's History of England, vol. iv. book xxii. p. 231.] [Footnote 39: Waller's Works, p. 271.] [Footnote 40: Compassion towards Captives, urged in Three Sermons, on Heb. xiii. 3, by Charles Fitz-Geoffrey, 1642. Libertas; or Relief to the English Captives in Algiers, by Henry Robinson, London, 1647. Letters relating to the Redemption of the Captive in Algiers, at Tunis, by Edward Cason Laud, 1647. A Relation of Seven Years' Slavery under the Turks of Algiers, suffered by an English Captive Merchant, with a Description of the Sufferings of the Miserable Captives under that Mercilest Tyranny, by Francis Knight, London, 1640. The last publication is preserved in the Collection of Voyages and Travels by Osborne, vol. ii. pp. 465-489.]