Then Would It Have Grieved Any
Hard Heart To See These Infidels So Violently Entreating The
Christians, Not Having Any
Respect of their manhood, which they had
tasted of, nor yet respecting their own state, how they might have met
With such a booty as might have given them the overthrow; but no
remorse hereof, or anything else doth bridle their fierce and tyrannous
dealing, but the Christians must needs to the galleys, to serve in new
offices; and they were no sooner in them, but their garments were
pulled over their ears, and torn from their backs, and they set to the
oars.
I will make no mention of their miseries, being now under their
enemies' raging stripes. I think there is no man will judge their fare
good, or their bodies unloaden of stripes, and not pestered with too
much heat, and also with too much cold; but I will go to my purpose,
which is to show the end of those being in mere misery, which
continually do call on God with a steadfast hope that He will deliver
them, and with a sure faith that He can do it.
Nigh to the city of Alexandria, being a haven town, and under the
dominion of the Turks, there is a road, being made very fencible with
strong walls, whereinto the Turks do customably bring their galleys on
shore every year, in the winter season, and there do trim them, and lay
them up against the spring-time; in which road there is a prison,
wherein the captives and such prisoners as serve in the galleys are put
for all that time, until the seas be calm and passable for the galleys,
every prisoner being most grievously laden with irons on their legs, to
their great pain, and sore disabling of them to any labour; into which
prison were these Christians put and fast warded all the winter season.
But ere it was long, the master and the owner, by means of friends,
were redeemed, the rest abiding still in the misery, while that they
were all, through reason of their ill-usage and worse fare, miserably
starved, saving one John Fox, who (as some men can abide harder and
more misery than other some can, so can some likewise make more shift,
and work more duties to help their state and living, than other some
can do) being somewhat skilful in the craft of a barber, by reason
thereof made great shift in helping his fare now and then with a good
meal. Insomuch, till at the last God sent him favour in the sight of
the keeper of the prison, so that he had leave to go in and out to the
road at his pleasure, paying a certain stipend unto the keeper, and
wearing a lock about his leg, which liberty likewise five more had upon
like sufferance, who, by reason of their long imprisonment, not being
feared or suspected to start aside, or that they would work the Turks
any mischief, had liberty to go in and out at the said road, in such
manner as this John Fox did, with irons on their legs, and to return
again at night.
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