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NOTES TO THE ENGLISH SLAVE. 9?
have a hawk, which was also the mark of gentility on the finger
of a nobleman.
" A master has the same right to his slaves as to his cattle."
Leges Wall'icte.
** If a freeman or ceorl killed a stag in a royal forest, he was
degraded to a slave j and if a slave killed one, he was put to
death." Constituiiones Canutii, apud Spelman Glos.
(7) The lord of Lydford, Devon s high potent Earl. . p. 8.
Lydford, Lydefbrd, or Hlidaford, Lidefort, and Lyghatford,
now a miserable village, was once a place of much importance.
Julius Caesar is said by Bruce to have made a visit to it shortly
after his invasion of this island, but without any authority. In
the days of Edward the Confessor it was the king's demesne,
or terra regis, and the manor extended, as it still does, over
the whole forest of Dartmoor. Ethelred II. had a mint at
Lydford, the coins of which are known by the letters LVD.
LVDA. LVDAN. Two of these coins were in Dr. Hunter's
cabinet. In the 19th of Ethelred II. the Danes came to Lydford,
after destroying Tavistock Abbey. The foundations of
the walls and gates of the town were remaining in the time of
Risdon. The ancient keep of the castle, forty feet high, on an
artificial mound, is all that is left of its former grandeur. The
custody of the castle and Dartmoor chase, was always given to
a man of high dignity.
( 8 )
And in the market sold to some new lord ;
Or, by men~stealers borne beyond the seas,
Pine in far-distant lands. . .
p. 9.
Slaves were incapable of any office of power, trust, or honour.
They had no authority over their own wives and chil-
dren.
"An absolute power of life and death was executed by these
lords 5 and when they married their daughters, a train of use-
ful slaves, chained on to the waggons to prevent their escape,
was sent as a nuptial present into a distant country." Gibbon.
" The portreeve of Lewes in Sussex, was to have four-pence
for every man sold in his borough." Scriptores Saxon. Gale
edit.
" Slaves still continued to form one of the most valuable
articles of exportation from England in this period." Men,
women, and children were carried out of this island, and, like
cattle, exposed to sale in all the markets of Europe.
H