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Islay
Africans were not the only victims of slavery.
From before Roman times, slavery was normal in Britannia, with slaves being routinely exported.[5][6] Slavery continued as an accepted part of society under the Roman Empire and after; Anglo-Saxons continued the slave system, sometimes in league with Norse traders often selling slaves to the Irish.[7] In the early 5th century the Romano-Briton Saint Patrick was captured by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Ireland. St. Brigit, a patron saint of Ireland, was herself the daughter of Brocca, a Christian Brythonic Pict and slave in Ireland who had been baptised by Saint Patrick. Early Irish law makes numerous reference to slaves and semi-free sencléithe. A female slave (cumal) was often used as a unit of value, e.g. in expressing the honour price of people of certain classes.[8] From the 9th to the 12th century Dublin in particular was a major slave trading center which led to an increase in slavery.[9] In 870, Vikings besieged and captured the stronghold of Alt Clut (the capital of the Kingdom of Strathclyde) and in 871 took most of the site's inhabitants, most likely by Olaf the White and Ivar the Boneless, to the Dublin slave markets.[9] Maredudd ab Owain (d. 999) paid a large ransom for 2,000 Welsh slaves,[9] which demonstrates the large-scale slave raiding upon the British Isles. Vikings traded with the Gaelic, Pictish, Brythonic and Saxon kingdoms in between raiding them for slaves.[9]
The legacy of Viking raids can be seen in the DNA of the Icelandic people. Recent evidence suggests that approximately 60% of the Icelandic maternal gene pool is derived from Scotland and Ireland, which is much higher than other Scandinavian countries, although comparable to the Faroe Islands.[10]
Some of the earliest accounts of the Anglo-Saxon English comes from the account of the fair-haired boys from York seen in Rome by Pope Gregory the Great. In the 7th century the English slave Balthild rose to be queen of the Frankish king Clovis II. Anglo-Saxon opinion turned against the sale of English abroad: a law of Ine of Wessex stated that anyone selling his own countryman, whether bond or free, across the sea, was to pay his own weregild in penalty, even when the man so sold was guilty of crime.[11] Nevertheless, legal penalties and economic pressures that led to default in payments maintained the supply of slaves, and in the 11th century there was still a slave trade operating out of Bristol, as a passage in the Vita Wulfstani makes clear.[12]
Norman England
According to the Domesday Book census, over 10% of England's population in 1086 were slaves.[13][14] In 1102, the Church Council of London convened by Anselm issued a decree: "Let no one hereafter presume to engage in that nefarious trade in which hitherto in England men were usually sold like brute animals."[15] However, the Council had no legislative powers, and no act of law was valid unless signed by the monarch.
The influence of the new Norman aristocracy led to the decline of slavery in England. Contemporary writers noted that the Scottish and Welsh took captives as slaves during raids, a practice which was no longer common in England by the 12th century. However, by the start of the 13th century references to people being taken as slave stopped. While there was no legislation against slavery in Ireland and Wales,[16] William the Conqueror introduced a law preventing the sale of slaves overseas.[17] Historian John Gillingham opined that by about 1200 slavery in the British Isles was non-existent.[16]