e as marble. It had been realized that in
these wholesale hangings there was taking place a reckless waste of
valuable material. Slaves were urgently required in the plantations,
and a healthy, vigorous man could be reckoned worth at least from ten
to fifteen pounds. Then, there were at court many gentlemen who had some
claim or other upon His Majesty's bounty. Here was a cheap and ready way
to discharge these claims. From amongst the convicted rebels a certain
number might be set aside to be bestowed upon those gentlemen, so that
they might dispose of them to their own profit.
My Lord Sunderland's letter gives precise details of the royal
munificence in human flesh. A thousand prisoners were to be distributed
among some eight courtiers and others, whilst a postscriptum to his
lordship's letter asked for a further hundred to be held at the disposal
of the Queen. These prisoners were to be transported at once to His
Majesty's southern plantations, and to be kept there for the space of
ten years before being restored to liberty, the parties to whom they
were assigned entering into security to see that transportation was
immediately effected.
We know from Lord Jeffreys's secretary how the Chief Justice inveighed
that night in drunken frenzy against this misplaced clemency to which
His Majesty had been persuaded. We know how he attempted by letter to
induce the King to reconsider his decision. But James adhered to it. It
was--apart from the indirect profit he derived from it--a clemency
full worthy of him. He knew that to spare lives in this fashion was to
convert them into living deaths. Many must succumb in torment to the
horrors of West Indian slavery, and so be the envy of their surviving
companions.
Thus it happened that Peter Blood, and with him Jeremy Pitt and Andrew
Baynes, instead of being hanged, drawn, and quartered as their sentences
directed, were conveyed to Bristol and there shipped with some fifty
others aboard the Jamaica Merchant. From close confinement under
hatches, ill-nourishment and foul water, a sickness broke out amongst
them, of which eleven died. Amongst these was the unfortunate yeoman
from Oglethorpe's Farm, brutally torn from his quiet homestead amid
the fragrant cider orchards for no other sin but that he had practised
mercy.
The mortality might have been higher than it was but for Peter Blood.
At first the master of the Jamaica Merchant had answered with oaths and
threats the doctor'
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