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Somerset v Stewart (1772) 98 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 in 1772, relating to the right of an enslaved person on English soil not to be forcibly removed from the country and sent to Jamaica for sale.
[citation needed] In the Somerset case of 1772, Lord Mansfield ruled that, as slavery was not recognised by English law, James Somerset, a slave who had been brought to England and then escaped, could not be forcibly sent to Jamaica for sale, and was set free. In Scotland, colliery (coal mine) slaves were still in use until 1799, when an act ...
1787 Wedgwood anti-slavery medallion designed by Josiah Wedgwood for the British anti-slavery campaign. Abolitionism in the United Kingdom was the movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to end the practice of slavery, whether formal or informal, in the United Kingdom, the British Empire and the world, including ending the Atlantic slave trade.
The British abolitionist movement began in the late 18th century, and the 1772 Somersett case established that slavery did not exist in English law. In 1807, the slave trade was made illegal throughout the British Empire, though existing slaves in British colonies were not liberated until the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833.
Despite this, it was popularly taken to confirm that slavery was outlawed in England and Wales. [3] Somerset himself appears to have adopted this broader interpretation, and wrote to at least one enslaved person encouraging them to desert their master. [4] Nothing is known of Somerset after 1772. [2]
The book is a narrative history of the late 18th- and early 19th-century anti-slavery movement in the British Empire. [4] The story centers around a group of British abolitionist campaigners and traces their campaign from its beginnings with Somerset v Stewart in 1772 until full emancipation for all British slaves was legally granted in 1838 ...
Many of these cases referred to the highly significant English case of Somerset v Stewart (1772). The ruling in the Somerset case held that slavery was inhumane and illegal on British soil. Lord Mansfield's opinion in the case was widely read and commented on in the colonies. Slavery, Lord Mansfield ruled, had no basis in "natural law" and ...
22 June – Somersett's Case: Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice delivers the decision that slavery is not supported by the common law of England. [4] 13 July – navigator James Cook sets out from Plymouth on HMS Resolution for a second Pacific voyage. [4] [5]