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, relating to the right of a slave on English soil not to be forcibly removed from the country and sent to Jamaica for sale.
The action was commenced on behalf James Somerset, an enslaved African who had been purchased by Charles Stewart while he was in North America, at the time a British crown colony. On his return to England, Stewart brought Somerset with him. After continuing for some time in servitude in England, Somerset escaped. He was recaptured a few weeks later, and was imprisoned on a ship bound for the British colony of Jamaica, where he was to be sold on to a plantation owner. Friends of Somerset made an application in 1771 to the Court of King's Bench for a writ of habeas corpus, requiring the ship's captain to produce Somerset, and asking the court to determine whether his imprisonment was lawful.
Typically for the period, the actual text of the judgment was not published, other than being read out during the hearing, and has not survived; it is only known through third-party reports. According to one reported version of the case, Lord Mansfield decided that:
Lord Mansfield found that to the extent that the laws of England and Wales had ever permitted slavery, those laws were superseded by later law or were otherwise defunct. This absence of a current English statute ("positive law") under which the court might remand someone as a slave proved decisive, as Mansfield refused to accept any other basis for the court to order something that he considered repugnant. The case was closely followed throughout the Empire, particularly in the thirteen American colonies, although the ruling had no direct or immediate effect outside Britain. Scholars have disagreed over precisely what legal precedent the Somerset case set.
Facts James Somerset, an enslaved African, was purchased by Charles Stewart (or Steuart), a customs officer when he was in Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay, a British crown colony in North America.He was Receiver-General for the Eastern Middle District of British North America; born in the Orkney Islands in 1725, he had emigrated to Virginia in 1741. His name is spelt in various ways, as was then common.
Stewart brought Somerset with him when he returned to England in 1769, but in October 1771 Somerset escaped. After he was recaptured in November, Stewart had him imprisoned on the ship Ann and Mary (under Captain John Knowles), bound for the British colony of Jamaica. He directed that Somerset be sold to a plantation for labour. Somerset's three godparents from his baptism as a Christian in England—John Marlow, Thomas Walkin and Elizabeth Cade—made an application on 3 December before the Court of King's Bench for a writ of habeas corpus. Captain Knowles on 9 December produced Somerset before the Court of King's Bench, which had to determine whether his imprisonment was lawful.
The Chief Justice of the King's Bench, Lord Mansfield, ordered a hearing for 21 January; in the meantime he set the prisoner free on recognisance. Somerset's counsel's request to prepare arguments was granted, and so it was not until 7 February 1772 that the case was heard. In the meantime, the case had attracted a great deal of attention in the press and members of the public donated money to support the lawyers for both sides of the argument.
Granville Sharp, an abolitionist layman who continually sought test cases against the legal justifications for slavery, was Somerset's real backer. When the case was heard, five advocates appeared for Somerset, speaking at three hearings between February and May. These lawyers included Francis Hargrave, a young lawyer who made his reputation with this, his first case;Wise, Steven M. (2005), p. 11. James Mansfield;Wise, Steven M. (2005), p. 40. Serjeant-at-law William Davy;Wise, Steven M. (2005), p. 116. Serjeant-at-law John Glynn;Wise, Steven M. (2005), p. 40. John Alleyne;Wise, Steven M. (2005), p. 153. and the noted Irish lawyer and orator John Philpot Curran,Blumenthal, Sidney (2016). A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809–1849. New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 341. whose lines in defence of Somerset were often quoted by American abolitionists, such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe in Uncle Tom's Cabin, chapter 37.
Somerset's advocates argued that while colonial laws might permit slavery, neither the common law of England nor any statutory law made by Parliament recognised the existence of slavery, and that slavery in England was therefore unlawful.Trade in serfs had been condemned by the Council of London in 1102. They also argued that English contract law did not allow for any person to enslave himself, nor could any contract be binding without the person's consent. The arguments focused on legal details rather than any humanitarian principles. When the two lawyers for Charles Stewart put their case, they argued that property was paramount and that it would be dangerous to free all the black people in England (who, according to Lord Mansfield's later judgment in the case, numbered 14,000 or 15,000).Watson, Alan (2006), p. 226.Judgment in Somerset v Stewart, p. 507.
Legal basis, and judgment
The case was commenced by a writ of habeas corpus, a writ that had been described by William Blackstone as "great and efficacious ... in all manner of illegal confinement". Such a writ requires the defendant to produce their prisoner before the court, and to show cause why the imprisonment is lawful.
After hearing oral arguments, Lord Mansfield proposed that Stewart could avoid the potentially far-reaching effects on slave-owners' profits if he were to allow Somerset to go free and not to insist on the court issuing a final judgment. Otherwise, Mansfield said that he would give judgment, and "let justice be done whatever the consequence":
Stewart opted to continue with the case, and Mansfield retired to make his decision, reserving judgment for more than a month. He gave his judgment on 22 June 1772 (this version, with modern paragraphing, is transcribed from a letter to the General Evening Post, reporting on the trial).Letter to the London General Evening Post of 21–23 June 1772, headed by the following. "To the Editor of the general evening post. SIR, The following is as correctly my Lord M——d's Speech on the Negro Cause, as my memory, assisted by some notes, could make it: it begins after the stating of the return. Your's, & c. A CONSTANT READER." The letter is somewhat at variance with other sources reporting on the words of the Mansfield Decision (including the citation in the previous section of this article). Such inconsistencies may be related to the enthusiasm which abolitionists propagated the decision, and the spin which they sought to put on it in relation to their campaign. See "Slavery in England and the Law", History Cooperative. .
Significance After the decision Somerset was freed and his supporters, who included black and white Londoners, celebrated. While argument by counsel may have been based primarily on legal technicalities, Lord Mansfield appeared to believe that a great moral question had been posed and he deliberately avoided answering that question in full, because of its profound political and economic consequences. In a later case (R v Inhabitants of Thames Ditton (1785)), he commented about the Somerset case: "The determinations go no further than that the master cannot by force compel him to go out of the kingdom."R v Inhabitants of Thames Ditton (1785) 99 ER 891.
There were reactions from prominent individuals in Britain over the decision; Sharp rhetorically asked "why is it that the poor sooty African meets with so different a measure of justice in England and America, as to be adjudged free in the one, and in the other held in the most abject Slavery?"Somerset: Lord Mansfield and the Legitimacy of Slavery in the Anglo-American World, p. 116. The hymnwriter William Cowper wrote in a poem that "we have no slaves at home - then why abroad?" Benjamin Franklin, who was visiting England at the time, was less impressed with the celebrations of British abolitionists over the case, criticising their celebrations,
Mansfield is often misquoted as declaring that "this air is too pure for a slave to breathe in" but no such words appear in the judgment. Rather, these words are part of the peroration of William Davy, Serjeant-at-Law for Somerset, who previously had cited a report of a 1569 case, in the reign of Elizabeth I, in which "one Cartwright brought a slave from Russia and would scourge him; for which he was questioned; and it was resolved, that England was too pure an air for a slave to breathe in"; it is not clear that this was said in the Cartwright case either. Some legal historians think it was a misquote of an excerpt from Lord Chief Justice John Holt's judgment in Smith v Gould, in which he is reported to have said: "as soon as a negro comes to England he is free; one may be a villein in England but not a slave".Smith v Gould (1702) 2 Salk 666.
Precedent Legal academics have argued for years over what legal precedent was set in the case. Differences in reports of the judgment make it hard to determine how far Lord Mansfield went in acknowledging the principles behind his deliberately narrow ruling. The passage of the judgment in the standard collections of law reports does not appear to refer to the removal of slaves by force from the country, whereas the same passage in the informal report by letter to the Evening Post, quoted above, does.fullest version in Howell's State Trials vol. 20, pp. 1–82; full decision and summary of arguments in English Reports vol. 98, pp. 499–510.
In 1785, Lord Mansfield expressed the view in R v Inhabitants of Thames Ditton that his ruling in the Somerset case decided only that a slave could not be forcibly removed from England against his will. In the Thames Ditton case, a black woman named Charlotte Howe had been brought to England as a slave by one Captain Howe. After Captain Howe died, Charlotte sought poor relief from the Parish of Thames Ditton. Mansfield stated that the Somersett case had determined only that a master could not force a slave to leave England, much as in earlier times a master could not forcibly remove his villein. He ruled that Charlotte was not entitled to relief under Poor Laws because relief was dependent on having been "hired" and this did not relate to slaves. In the official report of the case, Lord Mansfield is recorded as interrupting counsel to state "The determinations go no further than that the master cannot by force compel him to go out of the kingdom."
The official report of Thames Ditton case supports the account of his judgment given in The Times letter and it is the strongest argument for a limited scope to the decision. Mansfield's judgment in the Somerset case does not say explicitly that slaves became free when they entered England—it is silent as to what their status in England was. In the Thames Ditton case, Lord Mansfield appeared to compare a slave's status to that of "villein in gross"—an ancient feudal status of servitude that had not been abolished from English law but which had died out. He had not done so in the Somerset case despite the invitation of Stewart's counsel.