Somerset Case — Slavery and English Law
Lord Mansfield ruled in June 1772 that James Somerset could not be forcibly removed from England and sold in Jamaica, and the judgment was read across the Atlantic as abolishing slavery in England. Somerset had been bought in Virginia by a Boston customs officer, Charles Stewart, and brought to England in 1769. He escaped in 1771, was recaptured, and was put in irons aboard a ship bound for the Caribbean. Three godparents from his baptism applied for a writ of habeas corpus, and Granville Sharp — a civil servant who had spent years on such cases and was looking for one that would settle the question — took it up. The argument for Somerset was that slavery was so odious that it could only be supported by positive law, and that English law contained no statute creating it. Mansfield tried repeatedly to get the parties to settle rather than decide it, and warned that the consequence might be to free some 14,000 people in England. His judgment was narrower than its reputation. He held that no master had ever been allowed to take a slave abroad by force for sale, and that this could not be done in England — which addressed removal rather than the status itself. The reading it received was much broader. Black communities in London celebrated; Scottish courts went further in 1778; and American colonists in the south noted what English judges might do next, which is a strand of the argument for independence. The trade continued until 1807.
- Year: 1772 CE
- Category: Political
