Madness of judging 17th-century figures by our modern standards
by Ann Widdecombe, Daily Express:
In the 17th century traitors were hanged, drawn and quartered, a revolting death involving being disembowelled while still alive. In the same century people were burned at the stake. Charles II, that most relaxed of monarchs, dug up Oliver Cromwell’s corpse and displayed its head for all to see.
Lesser criminals were confined in cramped spaces full of rats while capital punishment was applicable to a whole range of felonies.
Even in the next century conditions in prison ships were appalling with men crammed into tiny spaces dying of disease and malnutrition.
Free men on merchant or naval ships also lived in cramped conditions on meagre rations, while on shore people went ragged and hungry.
Sorry to be so graphic but I am merely setting the scene for the times in which merchant Edward Colston lived. He used his fortune for the benefit of the people of Bristol.
Two centuries before slavery was abolished by Parliament, Colston was a slave trader and would have thought no moral wrong in it.
He was a man of his time and should be judged by his time. Yet his name is now to be expunged from the Bristol Concert Hall because some politically correct busybodies feel that otherwise the venue would be associated with slavery.
George Washington and 11 other US presidents owned slaves. Should their names also be wiped from history?
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