’Fifteen sheep, old and young L3, 15_s._
    An old gun 2
    An old Negroe man 10 0
                                   --------
                                   L13 7_s._’”
                                   —­COFFIN, p. 188.

[316] Slavery in Mass., pp. 64, 65.

[317] Drake, 583, note.

[318] Here is a sample of the sales of those days:  “In 1716, Rice Edwards, of Newbury, shipwright, sells to Edmund Greenleaf ’my whole personal estate with all my goods and chattels as also one negro man, one cow, three pigs with timber, plank, and boards.”—­COFFIN, p. 337.

[319] New-England Weekly Journal, No. 267, May 1, 1732.

[320] A child one year and a half old—­a nursing child sold from the bosom of its mother!—­and for life!—­COFFIN, p. 337.

[321] Slavery in Mass., p. 96.  Note.

[322] Eight years after this, on the 22d of June, 1735, Mr. Plant records in his diary:  “I wrote Mr. Salmon of Barbadoes to send me a Negro.” (Coffin, p. 338.) It doesn’t appear that the reverend gentleman was opposed to slavery!

[323] Note quoted by Dr. Moore, p. 58.

[324] Hildreth, vol. i. p. 44.

[325] “For they tell the Negroes, that they must believe in Christ, and receive the Christian faith, and that they must receive the sacrament, and be baptized, and so they do; but still they keep them slaves for all this.”—­MACY’S Hist. of Nantucket, pp. 280, 281.

[326] Ancient Charters and Laws of Mass., p. 117.

[327] Mr. Palfrey relies upon a single reference in Winthrop for the historical trustworthiness of his statement that a Negro slave could be a member of the church.  He thinks, however, that this “presents a curious question,” and wisely reasons as follows:  “As a church-member, he was eligible to the political franchise, and, if he should be actually invested with it, he would have a part in making laws to govern his master,—­laws with which his master, if a non-communicant, would have had no concern except to obey them.  But it is improbable that the Court would have made a slave—­while a slave—­a member of the Company, though he were a communicant.—­PALFREY, vol. ii. p. 30.  Note.

[328] Butts vs.  Penny, 2 Lev., p. 201; 3 Kib., p. 785.

[329] Hildreth, vol. ii. p. 426.

[330] Ancient Charters and Laws of Mass., p. 748.

[331] Palfrey, vol. ii. p. 30.  Note.

[332] Hist.  Mag., vol. v., 2d Series, by Dr. G.H.  Moore.

[333] Slavery in Mass., p. 57, note.

[334] I use the term freeman, because the colony being under the English crown, there were no citizens.  All were British subjects.

[335] Ancient Charters and Laws of Mass., p. 746.

[336] Ibid., p. 386.