[Footnote 78: Davis's Extracts relating to Plymouth, p. 3.]
[Footnote 79: Winthrop's Journal, vol. ii. p. 11.]
[Footnote 80: MS. Records of First Church in Roxbury, Massachusetts.]
Instances now thicken. A ship, sailing from Charlestown, in 1678, was taken by a corsair, and carried into Algiers, whence its passengers and crew never returned. They probably died in slavery. Among these was Dr. Daniel Mason, a graduate of Harvard College, and the earliest of that name on the list; also James Ellson, the mate. The latter, in a testamentary letter addressed to his wife, and dated at Algiers, June 30, 1679, desired her to redeem out of captivity two of his companions.[81] At the same period William Harris, a person of consequence in the colony, one of the associates of Roger Williams in the first planting of Providence, and now in the sixty-eighth year of his age, sailing from Boston for England on public business, was also taken by a corsair, and carried into Algiers. On the 23d February, 1679, this veteran,--older than the slaveholder Cato when he learned Greek,--together with all the crew, was sold into slavery. The fate of his companions is unknown; but Mr. Harris, after remaining in this condition more than a year, obtained his freedom at the cost of $1200, called by him "the price of a good farm." The feelings of the people of the colony, touched by these disasters, are concisely expressed in a private letter dated at Boston, New England, November 10, 1680, where it is said, "The Turks have so taken our New England ships richly loaden homeward bound, that it is very dangerous to goe. Many of our neighbors are now in captivity in Argeer. The Lord find out some way for their redemption."[82]
[Footnote 81: Middlesex [Massachusetts] Probate Files in MS.]
[Footnote 82: William Gilbert to Arthur Bridge, MS.]
Still later, as we enter the next century, we meet a curious notice of the captivity of a Bostonian. Under date of Tuesday, January 11, 1714, Chief Justice Samuel Sewell, in his journal, after describing a dinner with Mr. Gee, and mentioning the guests, among whom were the famous divines, Increase and Cotton Mather, adds, "It seems it was in remembrance of his landing this day at Boston, after his Algerine captivity. Had a good treat. Dr. Cotton Mather, in returning thanks, very well comprised many weighty things very pertinently."[83] Among the many weighty things very pertinently comprised by this eminent preacher, in returning thanks, it is hoped, was a condemnation of slavery. Surely he could not then have shrunk from giving utterance to that faith which preaches deliverance to the captive.