unmeasured terms against his father.

In 1727 Lord Altham died in such poverty that it is recorded that he
was buried at the public expense. After his death, his brother Richard
seized all his papers and usurped the title. The real heir then seems
to have been stirred out of his slavish life, and declaimed loudly
against this usurpation of his rights, but his complaints were
unavailing, and, although they provoked a certain clamour, did little
to restore him to his honours. However, they reached his uncle, who
resolved to put him out of the way. The first attempt to seize him
proved a failure, although personally superintended by the uncle
himself; but young Annesley was so frightened by it that he concealed
himself from public observation, and thus gave grounds for a
rumour--which was industriously circulated--that he was dead.
Notwithstanding his caution, however, he was seized in March 1727, and
conveyed on board a ship bound for Newcastle in America, and on his
arrival there was sold as a slave to a planter named Drummond.

The story of his American adventures was originally published in the
_Gentleman's Magazine_, and has since been rehearsed by modern
writers. It seems that Drummond, who was a tyrannical fellow, set his
new slave to fell timber, and finding his strength unequal to the
work, punished him severely. The unaccustomed toil and the brutality
of his master told upon his health, and he began to sink under his
misfortunes, when he found a comforter in an old female slave who had
herself been kidnapped, and who, being a person of some education, not
only endeavoured to console him, but also to instruct him. She
sometimes wrote short pieces of instructive history on bits of paper,
and these she left with him in the field. In order to read them he
often neglected his work, and, as a consequence, incurred Drummond's