Taken Not Given: The End of Slavery in Britain
Keywords:
enslaved people, Wedderburn, Somerset, Stewart, plantationAbstract
Between the mid-seventeenth and the late-eighteenth centuries thousands of enslaved people were brought to the British Isles. Many were enslaved, and they were publicly bought and sold, marked by brands, collars and manacles, and some were sent from Britain into plantation slavery. Slavery did not, hoverer, flourish in Britain. By the time of Somerset v Stewart (1772) and Knight v Wedderburn (1778) the large majority of people of color in Britain were free, many of them self-liberated. Despite the best efforts of enslavers to maintain their property rights in people, the enslaved regularly escaped. Newspaper “runaway advertisements” were invented in London during the second half of the seventeenth century, and between the 1650s and 1770s they reveal the development of the freedom seeker in the public sphere. The Somerset and Knight decisions did little to change slavery in the British Isles but rather confirmed a change that was all but complete. The most significant impact of the decisions was in the colonies, where planters interpreted the courts’ actions as evidence of a growing imperial threat to the institution of slavery
References
1
The Middlesex Journal: Or, Chronicle of Liberty (London), June 23, 1772.
2
Corporation of London, “Dinner to Celebrate the Bicentenary of the Prohibition of Slavery in Great Britain,” July 14, 1972, D3549/13/6/10, Lloyd-Baker Family of Hardwicke Court Collection, Gloucestershire Archives.
3
Between 1741 and 1760 26,233 enslaved Africans disembarked in the Chesapeake colonies. See Slave Voyages: Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyages/GKfBVbu7 [accessed February 19, 2024]. For information about Stewart and his purchase of Somerset, and Somerset’s early life in Virginia, see Mark S. Weiner, “New Biographical Evidence on Somerset’s Case,” Slavery and Abolition, 23 (2002): 121-36.
4
Christenings in February 1771, in Christenings 1771-1780, St Andrew, Holborn, London Metropolitan Archives; London, England; London Church of England Parish Registers; Reference Number: P82/And/A/001/Ms06667/012; “Obituary of Remarkable Persons; with Biographical Anecdotes,” Gentleman’s Magazine (May 1798), 443; Somerset v Stewart [R. v Knowles, ex parte Somerset] 1 Lofft 1. For Somerset’s baptism, escape, capture, and delivery to Knowles see Weiner, “New Biographical Evidence”; James Oldham, “New Light on Mansfield and Slavery,” Journal of British Studies, 27 (1988): 45–68; John W. Cairns, “After Somerset: The Scottish Experience,” Journal of Legal History, 33 (2012): 291-312.
5
“Memorial for Joseph Knight late servant to Sir John Wedderburn of Ballandean Baronet,” and “Sir John Wedderburn, Deposition before the Sheriff of Perth, November 15, 1774,” in Joseph Knight v Sir John Wedderburn, 1774-1778, National Records of Scotland, CS235/2/2; Phoenix, Captain John Knight, Voyage 17601, Slave Voyages: Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyages/E5o14hvs [accessed February 20, 2024]. See also “Memorial for John Wedderburn against Joseph Knight, a Negro, 1775,” Knight v Wedderburn, NRS, CS235/2/2. For more on Knight’s and Wedderburn’s histories see Cairns, “After Somerset,” and “Joseph Knight” (2009), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition, https://doi-org.ezproxy2.lib.gla.ac.uk/10.1093/ref:odnb/93749 [accessed February 20, 2024]; and Stephen Mullen, “Joseph Knight,” Oxford African American Studies Center, https://doi.org/10.1093/acref/9780195301731.013.74283 [accessed February 20, 2024].
6
Decision by Sheriff of Perth (1774), in Knight v Wedderburn, NRS, CS235/2/2.
7
E.A. Wrigley et al., English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580-1837 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 614–615; Jane Whittle, The Development of Agrarian Capitalism: Land and Labour in Norfolk, 1440–1580 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 298, 279, 275–276, 287, 290, 296. For more on rural labour in this period see Ann Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in early modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos, Adolescence and Youth in Early Modern England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity on Colonizing English America, 1580-1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Simon P. Newman, A New World of Labor: The Development of Plantation Slavery in the British Atlantic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 17-33.
8
These figures exclude Westminster, meaning the population of greater London was significantly larger. See Vanessa Harding, “The Population of London, 1550-1700: a review of the published evidence,” The London Journal: A Review of Metropolitan Society Past and Present, 15 (1990): 112.
9
Over a ten-year period twelve servants remained with Pepys for two or more years, while these 26 were in service for much shorter terms. See Pepys, Diary, 20 August 1663, <https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1663/08/20/> [accessed 19 August 2025]. See The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Vol. 10, Companion, ed. Robert Latham (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 196; Peter Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London, 1660-1730 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 221-2.
10
“Robert Bateman, having run away,” Mercurius Politicus (London) June 17, 1658; “One Digary Cann, A tall young man,” Mercurius Publicus Comprising the Sum of Forraign Intelligence (London), September 27, 1660; “A Foot-Boy… by name Thomas Banning,” Mercurius Publicus Comprising the Sum of Forraign Intelligence (London), July 18, 1661; “A Servant Maid,” London Gazette (London), November 2, 1682; “Whereas Francis Prosser, Servant to Mrs. Cardonnel,” Weekly Journal or Saturday’s Post (London), April 27, 1723; “WHEREAS Michael Fleming, a Livery Servant,” Public Advertiser (London), January 7, 1755.
11
These numbers are drawn from the database Runaway Slaves in Britain (University of Glasgow, 2018), https://www.runaways.gla.ac.uk/database/table/ These have been supplemented by additional advertisements not yet uploaded to the database, discovered by the author, Audrey Dewjee, Nelson Mundell, and most especially Tony Berrett. These are the numbers of known freedom seekers whose escapes prompted the publication of newspaper advertisements, but since many escapes generated numerous notices the total number of advertisements was significantly higher.
12
“WENT away… a Negro Servant,” Daily Journal (London), April 12, 1735; “RUN away last night… Waterford… Julius Caesar,” Daily Advertiser (London), September 7, 1745; “RAN away… a NEGRO MAN, named Peter,” Gazetteer and London Daily Advertiser (London), December 24, 1760; “RUN away… a Negro Man named Harry,” St. James’s Chronicle or the British Evening Post (London), December 6, 1764; “A BLACK SERVANT, or SLAVE… by the name of PHILIP WATSON,” Newcastle Courant (Newcastle), January 7, 1769.
13
See Phillip Emanuel, “‘[A]s Fast as Ships Return he Will Send Every one a Boy’: Enslaved Children as Gifts in the British Atlantic”, Slavery & Abolition, 44 (2023), 334-49.
14
Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African. Written By Himself (London: for the author, 1789), I, 89-98.
15
“A Guinea Negro Boy,” London Gazette (London), June 9, 1690; “LEFT his Master, a black Boy, named King,” Daily Advertiser (London), July 20, 1758, as well as “ABSENTED from his Master’s Service,” The Public Advertiser (London), February 16, 1762 and “ABSENTED from his Master’s Service,” London Chronicle (London), April 10, 1762; “RAN away Yesterday Morning… a Negro Slave,” Daily Advertiser (London), February 13, 1756. For more on these categories of freedom seekers see Simon P. Newman, Freedom Seekers: Escaping From Slavery in Restoration London (London: University of London Press, 2022), 71-192, and “Freedom-Seeking Slaves in England and Scotland, 1700-1780,” English Historical Review, 134 (2019), 1136-68.
16
Catherine Molineux, Faces of Perfect Ebony: Encountering Atlantic Slavery in Imperial Britain (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012) 31.
17
These 256 people appeared in 245 newspaper advertisements published between 1695 and 1788. These are drawn from the advertisements available on the Runaway Slaves in Britain website at https://www.runaways.gla.ac.uk/for_sale/Runaway%20Slaves%20in%2018th%20C%20Britain%20-%20For%20Sale.pdf [accessed February 17, 2023], and other advertisements located by the project team, and by Tony Berrett.
18
“To be disposed of, A Beautiful young Negro Boy,” The Daily Advertiser (London), July 25, 1752; “A Pretty black Boy,” Daily Advertiser (London), November 22, 1744; “To be SOLD, TWO fine Negro Boys,” Public Advertiser (London), June 9, 1756. For details of the voyage of the Molly see Voyage 90596 in Slave Voyages: Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/database [accessed February 17, 2023].
19
“A Negro Girl of six years of Age,” The Post Man, and the Historical Account (London), June 29, 1699.
20
“To be Sold by Auction, by Mr. SMYTH,” Public Advertiser (London), March 7, 1759; “To be RAFFLED for… A Fine Gold Coast Negro Boy,” Daily Advertiser (London), February 26, 1734.
