ENGLISH SLAVE TRADE.
A great article of exportation among the Anglo-Saxons was Slaves, in which kind of traffic, the Northumbrians in particular, were very famous, amongst whom this trade continued, according to William of Malmesbury, for some time after the conquest. The people of Bristol were also very much employed in the Slave Trade, which they pursued with such eagerness, that they frequently spared not their nearest relations; but at length they were prevailed upon by the preaching and exhortation of Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester, who possessed that See at the time of the Conquest, to quit such a barbarous and inhuman traffic.
In the history of the Saxon period there is frequent mention of living money, in contradistinction to coins of gold, silver, &c. This living money consisted of slaves and cattle of all sorts, which according to the value fixed upon them by law, were equally current with gold or silver in the payment of debts.
In Domesday Book it is said that in the Borough of Lewes, four-pence was to be paid to the Portreeve for every man sold within that borough.
The Monks were forbid by an ancient Canon to manumit their slaves, and this unhappy race of men seems to have been longer perpetuated on the estates of the Monasteries than elsewhere, for in the survey of Glastonbury Abbey taken after the dissolution, there is mention of “271 bondmen, whose bodies and goods were at the King’s Highness’s pleasure.”