The case of James Somerset brought into public view the inherent contradiction between the two core values of British life in the eighteenth century: liberty and property. Somerset had been captured in Africa as a boy and sold to a merchant with whom he subsequently travelled in America and Europe. Aged about thirty he left his master’s London house and refused to return. Upon being recaptured by slave hunters he was confined in irons and taken on board a ship bound for Jamaica, to be sold once more. Abolitionist friends publicized his situation and applied for a writ of Habeas Corpus. The case was immediately seen as a test of the legality of slavery in England.
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