Granville Sharp was ready for battle. He wanted to compel Lord Mansfield to stop dithering and make a definitive judgement on the great question. He was lucky in the timing.

The very day that Mansfield finally finished with the Lewis case, in which he refused to sentence Stapylton, a petition for Habeas Corpus arrived in court. It was on behalf of an African slave called James Somerset who had been brought to England by his master, Charles Stewart. Somerset had run away, but had been recaptured by Stewart and sold to John Knowles, the captain of the slave ship Ann and Mary, which was ready to sail for the West Indies. He could immediately have ruled that Somerset was a piece of property and not a person, and was therefore not entitled to a writ of Habeas Corpus. But he did not.1 Instead, he signed the order for Captain Knowles to produce Somerset at Chambers. Perhaps, exasperated by the unsatisfactory outcome of R v Stapylton, he was ready to resolve the issue once and for all.

A woman called Elizabeth Cade now became a key player in the case. She had been a witness to Somerset’s capture, and it was she who had secured the writ of Habeas Corpus. She knew Somerset, and had offered to be his godmother at his baptism in February of that year. Her behaviour throughout was heroic. She paid for Somerset’s bail, and he called on Granville Sharp and persuaded him to become involved. It was the case Sharp had been waiting for. This time he was determined to force Mansfield’s hand.

Initially, Mansfield once again attempted to duck the main issue by seeking to persuade Elizabeth Cade to buy Somerset’s freedom. She refused, on the grounds that to do so would ‘be an acknowledgement that the plaintiff had a right to assault and imprison a poor innocent man in this Kingdom and she would never be guilty of setting so bad an example’.2 He also tried to persuade Charles Stewart, Somerset’s former owner, to set him free. It seems that both sides wanted the case to be heard, and the law to be made clear. Stewart upped the stakes by serving a ‘return to the writ’, claiming that by running away Somerset had robbed him and Captain Knowles.

Sharp was livid. He retained senior counsel for Somerset at his own personal expense, at a cost of six guineas. The principal was William Davy, an advocate so brilliant that he had gained the status of serjeant-at-law* only ten years after being called to the Bar. He was renowned for his quirky humour and quick repartee, and numerous stories about him circulated around the legal profession. Once, when Lord Mansfield interrupted him in argument, saying, ‘If this be law I must burn all my books, I see,’ Davy had instantly replied, ‘Your lordship had better read them first.’ On another occasion, when Mansfield proposed to sit on Good Friday, Davy is said to have reminded him that he would be the first judge to do so since Pontius Pilate.3 A young barrister called Francis Hargrave offered his services for free, as did four further lawyers, including one James Mansfield (no relation). It was a formidable team.

Public opinion in support of slaves was growing. The case dominated the news in the first half of 1772, with the press reporting on the speeches made in court and publishing letters and articles on the issue of slavery. Granville Sharp, believing (rightly) that his presence in court only served to rile Lord Mansfield, stayed away, but worked at a furious pace behind the scenes. He published an appendix to his Representation of the Injustice and Dangerous Tendency of Tolerating Slavery which drew on the cases he had brought previously, and implicitly criticised Lord Mansfield. In a bold move, he sent Somerset in person to deliver a copy to Mansfield.4 One wonders what the young Dido Belle would have made of it, if she had found and read it.

In the tract Sharp wrote: ‘if the present Negroes are once permitted to be retained as Slaves in England, their posterity … the mixed people or Mulattoes, produced by the unavoidable intercourse with their white neighbours, will be also subject to the like bondage with their unhappy parents’.5 Was this extraordinary passage deliberately aimed at Mansfield, written in the knowledge that he was bringing up the mulatto Dido as his adopted daughter?

On the other side of the fence, the West Indian planters rallied around Stewart, determined that this should be a test case which would confirm that ‘negro slaves’ were chattel goods, and that Somerset was a slave according to the laws of both Africa and Virginia (they liked to invoke the precedents of their fellow slave-owners on the American mainland).

Mansfield initially postponed the hearing. The arguments dragged on for months. Finally, in May, the Gazetter and New Daily Advertiser announced that ‘Last Saturday came on in the King’s Bench, before Lord Mansfield, and the rest of the Judges of the Court, the much talked cause of Somersett, the black, against Stewart, Esq, his master.’

Davy pulled no punches in making it clear what the case was really all about. He recalled the case of the Russian slave in Queen Elizabeth I’s time, when ‘it was resolved that England was too pure an air for Slaves to breathe in’. He added mischievously, ‘I hope, my Lord, the Air does not blow worse since.’

James Mansfield put on a theatrical performance, adopting the persona of Somerset: ‘It is true. I was a slave, kept as a slave in Africa. I was first put in chains on board a British ship and carried from Africa to America … I am now in a country where laws of liberty are known and regarded and can you tell me a reason why I am not to be protected by those laws, but to be carried away again to be sold?’6

But the man who stole the show was the baby-faced young barrister Francis Hargrave, who achieved overnight fame after delivering a forceful, brilliant presentation. He asked the question ‘not whether slavery is lawful in the colonies … but whether in England? Not whether it ever has existed in England, but whether it be not now abolished?’7 Beating the patriotic drum, he argued that allowing foreign laws (whether Virginian, Turkish, Polish or Russian) to govern English laws was untenable: ‘it is contrary to the genius of the English law to allow any enforcement of agreements or contracts by any other compulsion than that of our courts of justice’.8

The issue, once again, was the conflicting rulings on slavery between Holt’s 1706 judgement, which was unequivocably anti-slavery, and the 1729 ‘Joint Opinion’ of Yorke and Talbot, which was generally felt to have greater weight. Lord Mansfield threw a small hand grenade into the proceedings when he made his first public statement on the Joint Opinion: ‘the case alluded to was upon a petition in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, after dinner, therefore, might not … be taken with much accuracy’. Here he was effectively agreeing with Sharp, who had argued that the Joint Opinion was an ‘opinion’, not a considered judgement made in court. This was hugely significant.

The retaliation from the merchants was to emphasise the financial losses that would ensue if more than 14,000 British slaves were set free. Stewart’s lawyers argued that freeing slaves would have catastrophic effects, as slaves would try to escape to England. If one side was to invoke patriotic traditions of English liberty and claims about not heeding foreign laws, the other would tap into British prejudice about the nation being overrun by blacks.

At last it was left to the four judges to reach their conclusions. Usually they would come to a quick and unanimous decision, but not this time. ‘The matter will require some deliberation,’ said Lord Mansfield. Capel Lofft, the reporter of decisions, wrote that Mansfield said that ‘the prime, nay the only question properly before us, is whether the colony slave-laws be binding here, or if there be established usage or positive law in this country’. Once again, Mansfield was ruminating anxiously on the consequences of his ruling: if it went wholly in favour of Somerset, and as a result every slave in Britain was freed, he judged the loss to the proprietors as being more than £70,000.9 He mused about how the law would stand in respect to such financial settlements as would follow.

The press urged Mansfield to come to a decision, no matter ‘how disagreeable the consequences’. ‘Should judgement be given in favour of the master, it would be establishing by law a species of slavery, hitherto unknown in England, and abhorrent to the free constitution of this country,’ said the London Evening Post. On the other hand, if the case ‘be determined in favour of the Negro … it might be very detrimental to our plantations abroad and our sugar trade’.10 Other newspapers goaded Mansfield for his procrastination, describing him as a ‘timid soul’. In an open letter, an anonymous writer called him a ‘Mean-spirited; pitiable old Man! callous to every generous sentiment – dead to every feeling but the base passions of Avarice, fear or lust’.11

‘A lover of humanity’, meanwhile, published a letter to the Post making an emotional plea to Mansfield’s humanity (and vanity): ‘Are not all born equal by the laws of nature? … why then should a shade in complexion, which is the accident of climate, alter [nature] to establish a rule? Is it consistent with either the laws of Christianity, civilization, or even common humanity, to encourage … the purchase of human beings in an open market like oxen?’ The writer challenged this ‘important’ judge to ‘speak freedom to millions in despite of a few narrow political inconveniences’.12

And what of the sugar planters and slave merchants who had always believed Mansfield to be sympathetic to their concerns? Whispers abounded on the plantations and in the polite drawing rooms of London that the decision would be affected by the judge’s relationship with his black niece, Dido Belle.

When Lord Mansfield entered Westminster Hall at eleven o’clock on the morning of Monday, 22 June 1772 the chamber was crowded, and not just with the great and the good of London: there was a group of dignified black faces waiting tensely to hear the judgement. Mansfield knew exactly what was at stake. Despite his concerns about the consequences of his ruling, Mansfield was aware that a clear statement of the law was essential. Neither emotion nor economics could influence him: ‘Compassion will not, on the one hand, nor inconvenience on the other, be to decide; but the law … Fiat justitia, ruat coelum’ (Let justice be done, though the heavens fall).

And then? Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly what he said. There are several versions of Mansfield’s final judgement, some of which have their own spin, such as Granville Sharp’s triumphant account.13 The Morning Chronicle reported the next morning that his speech was as ‘guarded, cautious, and concise, as it could possibly be drawn up’.14 But there is no evidence that there ever was a written or prepared speech. No text has ever come to light. There are, indeed, at least seven versions of this historic ruling, all based on memory of what Mansfield said in court.

Several accounts record that he used the word ‘odious’ to describe the state of slavery: ‘it’s so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law’, or ‘[Slavery] is so odious that it must be construed strictly.’15 Perhaps the most reliable version is that of court reporter Capel Lofft:

The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only positive [written] law … it is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England, and therefore the black must be discharged.16

Later critics have argued that the ruling was partial and limited, but there is no doubt that in the courtroom at that moment the victor was James Somerset. Mansfield had done the unthinkable. Somerset was a free man.

Whatever the precise wording, there is no question that this was one of the most significant rulings in English legal history. Granville Sharp and his followers were ecstatic, and certainly viewed it as a victory. But Benjamin Franklin, who was in court that day, was scathing about ‘the hypocrisy of this country, which encourages such a detestable commerce by laws for promoting the Guinea trade; while it piqued itself on its virtue, love of liberty, and the equity of its courts, in setting free a single negro’.17

The newspapers recorded a poignant aftermath. In the pregnant silence that followed Mansfield’s words, the ‘Negroes in Court … bowed with profound respect to the judges and shaking each other by the hand, congratulated themselves upon their recovery of the rights of human nature and their happy lot that permitted them to breathe the free air of England’.18

The wider black community was triumphant, and a ball was held for two hundred at a public house to celebrate the victor. A toast was made to Lord Mansfield.

Meanwhile, the sugar planters were furious. One Jamaican planter predicted that hordes of slaves would immediately make their way to England, copulate with lower-class women, and ‘mongrelise’ the English so that they would eventually look dark-skinned like the Portuguese.19

The press reported that Mansfield had outlawed slavery in England. The Morning Chronicle spoke of how slaves could now ‘breathe the free air of England’. This would become an essential part of the rhetoric of the abolition movement. William Cowper, in his widely read 1785 poem The Task, invoked the image:

We have no slaves at home – then why abroad?

And they themselves, once ferried o’er the wave

That parts us, are emancipate and loosed.

Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs

Receive our air, that moment they are free,

They touch our country and their shackles fall.

That’s noble, and bespeaks a nation proud

And jealous of the blessing.20

Though Lord Mansfield did not actually use the phrase ‘breathe the free air’ in his judgement, it was generally felt that the principle had been adhered to. The great abolitionist Thomas Clarkson would later write:

The great and glorious result of the trial was, that as soon as ever any slave set his foot upon English territory, he became free … the names of the counsellors Davy, Glynn, Hargrave, Mansfield, and Alleyne, ought always to be remembered with gratitude by the friends of this great cause.21

The Somerset ruling was truly the beginning of the end of a terrible era. Just a month before the case came to court, a black woman, named Bell or Belinda, had been deported from Scotland to Antigua to be sold as a slave as punishment for murdering her baby. She would be the last person to be legally sold back to slavery from the British Isles, though stories abounded (and made their way to Granville Sharp) of slaves still being sold in England many years after the Somerset case.

But the tide of public opinion had changed. A great moral question had been resolved. On English soil, no man was a slave. Mansfield, whether he liked it or not, was perceived as the man who had made slavery illegal in England. It was the first step towards emancipation.

Was Mansfield’s ruling affected by his relationship with Dido Belle? She was only a child at the time, though a much-loved child. In his darkest moments he may have contemplated the genuine possibility that she could be abducted in London and sold into West Indian slavery. The owners and merchants, who were furious with him, certainly gossiped that his ruling was affected by his love for Dido. When the impending judgement was being discussed, the owner of one estate in Jamaica remarked that Mansfield would rule against them: ‘No doubt [Somerset] will be set free, for Lord Mansfield keeps a Black in his house which governs him and the whole family.’22

This gossip about Dido and the Mansfield family’s affection for her is of great significance. The anonymous Jamaican planter and his kind feared – and history would prove their fears well-grounded – that this was the beginning of the end. After confirmation that there could be no such thing as slavery in England, the next step would be the abolition of the slave trade, and ultimately of slavery itself. They could see the argument about freedom on English soil and in English air being extended to English ships, and even British colonial territories.

The muttering in London about Mansfield’s decision being swayed by his relationship with Dido makes his ruling all the more extraordinary, given how determined he always was to separate the personal from the professional, and to refuse to allow his own prejudices and connections to influence his legal judgements. He had shown this when prosecuting the leaders of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, a ‘painful task’ in the light of his family connections, but one that he had performed without favouritism or leniency, doing his duty ‘with firmness and moderation’.23 Equally, he had experienced the anguish of a slur on his reputation in the business of the alleged toast to the Old Pretender. There would have been many advantages for him in siding with the planters. Nobody could then have said that he was under the influence of little Dido. Mansfield dined with British merchants in his London home (which may be how the Jamaican planter got to hear about Dido’s presence in his household), and we have seen that he included them in his courtroom to advise in many commercial cases, and that he was regarded as being hugely favourable to their economic interests. Yet he did not flinch from coming to the judgement that the gossip-mongers said he would. In doing so he was perceived to have chosen the cause of his own black niece over that of the merchants and planters who had made the nation rich.

Little wonder that, some years later, Mansfield endeavoured to minimise the impact of his ruling: ‘Nothing more was determined, than that there was no right in the master forcibly to take the slave and carry him abroad.’24 He remained deeply concerned about the public misinterpretation of his ruling. But by then it was too late. Both sides, the slaves and the planters, thought he had made slavery in England illegal.

A Bristol merchant, John Riddel, wrote to Charles Stewart telling him that he had lost one of his slaves as a result of the ruling: ‘he had rec[eive]d a letter from his uncle Sommerset acquainting him that Lord Mansfield had given them their freedom & he was determined to leave me as soon as I had returned from London which he did without even speaking to me’.25

Granville Sharp had stayed away from the Somerset trial for fear of antagonising Mansfield. He wrote in his diary that Somerset came to tell him the great news that ‘judgment was today given in his favour’. Sharp noted: ‘Thus ended G. Sharp’s long contest with Lord Mansfield, on the 22nd June, 1772.’ This was not to be.

* An ancient rank of distinction within the legal profession – though it had been declining in importance since the introduction of the even more prestigious status of Queen’s Counsel in the reign of Elizabeth I – which provided the exclusive right to argue before the Court of Common Pleas.