Crossword-Solution: DEYS 4 letters, 79 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 8

Thousands of deys, of beys, of pachas, of rajahs, of nabobs, have shown themselves as great masters of statecraft as the members of the Committee of Public Safety.

Tyrwhitt quotes two statutes of Edward III, in which “deys” are included among the servants employed in agricultural pursuits; the name seems to have originally meant a servant who gave his labour by the day, but afterwards to have been appropriated exclusively to one who superintended or worked in a dairy.

During the naval wars which had lasted with short intervals for half a century, the fleets of England, France, Spain, and Holland had been so much occupied in fighting each other that they had been unable to bestow much attention on the doings of these petty rulers, who were known collectively as the Barbary States, individually as the Deys of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli.

The ruffianly Deys made little attempt to conceal the piratical nature of their proceedings, and became a perfect scourge not only to the mariners of all nations in the Mediterranean, but also to the unfortunate inhabitants of its shores.

Among these Barbary Powers the Deys of Algiers had long been the most powerful and the most truculent.