TRAFFIC IN SLAVES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 254, 23 September 1933, Page 10

TRAFFIC IN SLAVES.

More than a. thousand years ago, says a writer in the London Times, the conscience of the Anglo-Saxon Church was aroused on account of the traffic in slaves. There were slave markets in Bristol and in Chester, but the Bishops and clergy were loud and incessa.nt in their denunciation of the trade, and they laboured in every way to soften the condition of the slaves. From Augustine to Stigand protests were made against (what we mav now safely call) this iniquitous traffic. Bertwald, Archbishop of Canterbury, sent 300 shillings to the Bishop of Sherborne for the redemption of a captive girl, beseeching him to get the Abbot of Glastonbury to accept this sum, the Abbot having kept the- girl a.s one of his maidservants. The Archbishop desired that she should “pass the rest

of her life, not in the sadness of servitude. but in the jov of freedom.” The generous action of Bishop Wilfrid ill setting free the 2-30 slaves belonging to the estate given to him by the King of the South Saxons will he remembered by readers of history. Possibly there may be ancient records in Bristol or Chester which may throw light upon such early efforts.