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Appendices
attained dimensions so notorious that even the distant
pope had to take a hand in denouncing it. Thus the
lesson of the feast of St. Wulstan tells us that he was
able, shortly before the conquest, to "bring the citizens
of Bristol to a better mind, who in spite of king and
pope, had persisted in the nefarious practise of selling
their own children into slavery."
The truth is that Wulstan did not cure them and the
traffic continued long after his death. Anselm, the Pied-
montese archbishop of Canterbury, and successor to his
countryman, Lanfranc,
1
likewise worked in vain to cure
the evil, tho doubtless they all helped to abate it.
One obstacle to the extinction of the traffic was that
the taxes on it brought money into the royal exchequer.
With respect to its supposed cessation William of
Malmesbury says: 2
"The credit for this transaction I do
not know whether to attribute to Lanfranc or to Wulstan,
who would scarcely have induced the king, reluctant
from the profit it produced him, to this measure, had not
Lanfranc commended it, and Wulstan, powerful through
the sanctity of his character, commended it by episcopal
authority." 8
According to the tract on Ui Maine, the patrimony
in Connaught of the Ua Ceallaigh, or O'Kelly family,
preserved in the Book of Leacan, 4
the king of Ui Maine
was entitled to ten steeds, ten foreigners (slaves), ten
standards, and ten mantles (mantals) to be paid by the
i The lesson is taken from the Coleman and Malmesbury life, reproduced
in Anglia Sacra II. 241-270.
2De Gestis Regum, Lib. III.
3 The same author elsewhere informs us that the kings of Ireland
bestowed many favors on Wulstan, probably because of his efforts against the
slave trade and its accompanying evils, for the Irish princes on other
occasions gave evidence of their feeling that the traffic was dishonoring to
those who bought and owned slaves apart from the degradation to the
unfortunates themselves. (Anglia Sacra II, 249.)
< See Tribes and Customs of Hy-Many, pp. 92, 93.
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