forthcoming--a privilege abandoned by the renegades--so that the
principal object of every European embassy in those days was the
redemption of captives. Now and then escapes would be accomplished,
but such strict watch was kept when foreign merchantmen were in
port, or when foreign ambassadors came and went, that few attempts
succeeded, though many were made.

Sympathies are stirred by pictures of the martyrdom of Englishmen and
Irishmen, Franciscan missionaries to the Moors; and side by side with
them the foreign mercenaries in the native service, Englishmen among
them, who would fight in any cause for pay and plunder, even though
their masters held their countrymen in thrall. And thrall it was, as
that of Israel in Egypt, when our sailors were chained to galley seats
beneath the lash of a Moor, or when they toiled beneath a broiling
sun erecting the grim palace walls of concrete which still stand as
witnesses of those fell days. Bought and sold in the market like
cattle, Europeans were more despised than Negroes, who at least
acknowledged Mohammed as their prophet, and accepted their lot without
attempt to escape.

Dark days were those for the honour of Europe, when the Moors inspired
terror from the Balearics to the Scilly Isles, and when their rovers
swept the seas with such effect that all the powers of Christendom
were fain to pay them tribute. Large sums of money, too, collected
at church doors and by the sale of indulgences, were conveyed by the
hands of intrepid friars, noble men who risked all to relieve those
slaves who had maintained their faith, having scorned to accept a
measure of freedom as the reward of apostasy. Thousands of English
and other European slaves were liberated through the assistance of
friendly letters from Royal hands, as when the proud Queen Bess