James Somerset ( – after 1772) was an African man and the plaintiff in a pivotal court case that confirmed that slavery was illegal in

England and Wales England and Wales () is one of the Law of the United Kingdom#Legal jurisdictions, three legal jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. It covers the constituent countries England and Wales and was formed by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. Th ...

Biography

Somerset was born in West Africa around 1741. He was captured when he was about 8 years old and sold to European slave traders. On 10 March 1749 he was transported by British slave ship to the American

Colony of Virginia The Colony of Virginia was a British Empire, British colonial settlement in North America from 1606 to 1776. The first effort to create an English settlement in the area was chartered in 1584 and established in 1585; the resulting Roanoke Colo ...

, where Scottish merchant Charles Stewart bought Somerset on 1 August 1749. In 1764, Somerset was taken to Boston, where Stewart had been appointed Receiver General of Customs. In November 1769, Stewart moved to England, taking Somerset along to serve him in his residence in London. In London, Somerset was baptised on 10 February 1771 at the Church of St Andrew, Holborn, with Thomas Walkin, Elizabeth Cade and John Marlow acting as his godparents. Perhaps because baptism was often associated with

manumission Manumission, or enfranchisement, is the act of freeing slaves by their owners. Different approaches to manumission were developed, each specific to the time and place of a particular society. Historian Verene Shepherd states that the most wi ...

, Somerset refused to continue serving Stewart, and left on 1 October of that year. Somerset lived in freedom for two months before he was kidnapped in November 1771 and forced aboard the ''Ann and Mary'', captained by John Knowles, to be transported to Jamaica and sold. His godparents, abolitionists, filed a ''

Habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a legal procedure invoking the jurisdiction of a court to review the unlawful detention or imprisonment of an individual, and request the individual's custodian (usually a prison official) to ...

'' case with the courts and enlisted

Granville Sharp Granville Sharp (10 November 1735 – 6 July 1813) was an English scholar, philanthropist and one of the first campaigners for the Abolitionism in the United Kingdom, abolition of the slave trade in Britain. Born in Durham, England, Durham, he ...

to aid Somerset. The case, ''

Somerset v Stewart ''Somerset v Stewart'' (177298 ER 499(also known as ''Sommersett v Steuart'', Somersett's case, and the Mansfield Judgment) is a judgment of the English Court of King's Bench (England), Court of King's Bench in 1772, relating to the right of an ...

'', saw powerful interests arguing on both sides, as it challenged the legal basis of slavery in

. On 22 June 1772, the judge,

Lord Mansfield William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, (2 March 1705 – 20 March 1793), was a British judge, politician, lawyer, and peer best known for his reforms to English law. Born in Scone Palace, Perthshire, to a family of Peerage of Scotland, Scott ...

, found in favour of Somerset. Mansfield had meant for the ruling to be narrowly construed around the legality of forcible deportation, only conceding by a 1679 statute that slaves are ''servants'', and not '' chattels''. Despite this, it was popularly taken to confirm that slavery was outlawed in England and Wales. Somerset himself appears to have adopted this broader interpretation, and wrote to at least one enslaved person encouraging them to desert their master. Nothing is known of Somerset after 1772.

Biography

See also

References

Further reading