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Slavery in Britain and Ireland dated from before Roman occupation. Chattel slavery virtually disappeared after the Norman Conquest. It was finally abolished by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (which made some exceptions for other parts of the British Empire). The prohibition on slavery and servitude is now codified under Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, incorporated into UK law by the Human Rights Act 1998.
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From before Roman times, the practice of slavery was normal in Britannia. Slaves were routinely exported.[1][2] Slavery continued as an accepted part of society under the Roman Empire and after; Anglo-Saxons continued the slave system, sometimes in league with Norse traders often selling slaves to the Irish.[3] In the early fifth century the Romano-Briton Saint Patrick was captured by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Ireland. St. Brigit, a patron saint of Ireland, was herself the daughter of Brocca, a Christian Pict and slave in Ireland who had been baptised by Saint Patrick. Early Irish law makes numerous reference to slaves and semi-free sencléithe. A female slave (cumal) was often used as a currency unit, e.g. in expressing the honour price of people of certain classes.[4] From the ninth to the twelfth century Dublin in particular became a major slave trading center which lead to an increase in slavery.[5] In 870A.D. Vikings besieged and captured the stronghold of Alt Clut (the capital of the Kingdom of Strathclyde) and took most of the sites inhabitants; most likely by Olarf the White, and Invarr the Boneless to the Dublin slave markets in 871A.D.[5] While the Welsh queen Maredudd of North wales paid a ransom for 2,000 Welsh slaves[5] which demonstrate the large-scale slave raiding upon the British Isles. Vikings however would trade with the Gaelic, Pictish, Brythonic and Saxon kingdoms while continuing to raid the British Isles for slaves.[5]
Some of the earliest accounts of the Anglo-Saxon English comes from the account of the fair-haired boys from York seen in Rome by Pope Gregory the Great. In the seventh century the English slave Balthild rose to be queen of the Frankish king Clovis II. Anglo-Saxon opinion turned against the sale of English abroad: a law of Ine of Wessex stated that anyone selling his own countryman, whether bond or free, across the sea, was to pay his own wergild in penalty, even when the man so sold was guilty of crime.[6] Nevertheless, legal penalties and economic pressures that led to default in payments maintained the supply of slaves, and in the 11th century there was still a slave trade operating out of Bristol, as a passage in the Vita Wulfstani makes clear.[7] Under ecclesiastical pressure, however, as the feudal order congealed in England during the 12th century, villeinage took the place of outright slavery.
According to the Domesday Book census in 1086, over 10% of England's population were slaves.[8][9] In 1102 the Council of London (1102) convened by Anselm issued a decree: "Let no one hereafter presume to engage in that nefarious trade in which hitherto in England men were usually sold like brute animals."[10] However, the Council had no legislative powers, and no act of law was valid unless signed by the monarch. As the feudal order congealed during the 12th century, the reduced status of the villein rendered outright slavery largely obsolete; the last form of this enforced servitude had disappeared in Britain by the beginning of the 17th century, though the laws on villeinage remained on the books for centuries.
Transportation to the colonies as an indentured servant served as punishment for both major and petty crimes in England and Ireland from the 17th century until well into the 19th century. A sentence could be for life or a specific period. The penal system required the convicts to work, on government projects such as road construction, building works and mining, or be assigned to free individuals as unpaid labour. Women were expected to work as domestic servants and farm labourers. Similar to slaves, indentured servants could be bought and sold, could not marry without the permission of their owner, were subject to physical punishment, and saw their obligation to labor enforced by the courts.
A convict who had served part of his time might apply for a "ticket of leave" permitting some prescribed freedoms. This enabled some convicts to resume a more normal life, to marry and raise a family, and a few to develop the colonies while removing them from the society. Exile was an essential component and thought to be a major deterrent to crime. Transportation was also seen as a humane and productive alternative to execution, which would most likely have been the sentence for many if transportation had not been introduced.
The transportation of British citizens overseas can be traced back to the English Vagabonds act of 1597. During the reign of Henry VIII, it has been estimated that approximately 72,000 people were put to death for a variety of crimes.[11] An alternate practice, borrowed from the Spanish, was to commute the death sentence and allow the use of convicts as a labour force for the colonies. One of the first references to a person being transported comes in 1607 when ‘'an apprentice dyer was sent to Virginia' from Bridewell for running away with his master's goods.’’.[12] The act was little used despite attempts by James I who, with limited success, tried to encourage its adoption by passing a series of Privy Council Orders in 1615, 1619 and 1620.[13]
Transportation was seldom used as a criminal sentence until the Piracy Act 1717, (An Act for the further preventing Robbery, Burglary, and other Felonies, and for the more effectual Transportation of Felons, and unlawful Exporters of Wool; and for declaring the Law upon some Points relating to Pirates.) established a seven-year penal transportation as a possible punishment for those convicted of lesser felonies, or as a possible sentence that capital punishment might be commuted to by royal pardon. Transportation of criminals to North America was undertaken from 1718-1776. When the American revolution made it unfeasible to carry out transportation to the thirteen colonies, those sentenced to it were typically punished with imprisonment or hard labour instead. From 1787-1868, criminals convicted and sentenced under the act were transported to the colonies in Australia.
Following the Irish uprising in 1641 and subsequent Cromwellian invasion, the English Parliament passed the Act for the Settlement of Ireland in 1652 which classified the Irish population into one of several categories according to their degree of involvement in the uprising and subsequent war. Those who had participated in the uprising or assisted the rebels in any way were sentenced to be hanged and to have their property confiscated. Other categories of the Irish population were sentenced to banishment with whole or partial confiscation of their estates. Whilst the majority of the resettlement took place within Ireland to the province of Connaught, Dr William Petty, Physician-General to Cromwell's Army, estimated that as many as 100,000 Irish men, women and children were transported to the colonies in the West Indies and in North America as indentured servants.[14] During the early colonial period, The Scots and the English, along with other western European nations, dealt with their "Gypsy problem" by transporting them as slaves in large numbers to North America and the Caribbean. Cromwell shipped Romanichal Gypsies as slaves to the southern plantations and there is documentation of Gypsies being owned by former black slaves in Jamaica.[15]
Long before the Highland Clearances, some chiefs, such as Ewan Cameron of Lochiel, sold some of his clan into indenture in North America. His goal was to alleviate over-population and lack of food resources in his glens.
Numerous Highland Jacobite supporters, captured in the aftermath of Culloden and rigorous Government sweeps of the Highlands, were imprisoned on ships on the Thames River. Some were sentenced to transportation to the Carolinas as indentured servants.[16]
From the 17th century to the 19th century, workhouses took in people whose poverty left them no other alternative. They were employed under forced labor conditions. Workhouses took in abandoned babies, usually presumed to be illegitimate. When they grew old enough, they were used as child labour. Charles Dickens represented such issues in his fiction. A life example was Henry Morton Stanley. This was a time when many children worked; if families were poor, everyone worked. Only in 1833 and 1844 were the first general protective laws against child labour, the Factory Acts, passed in Britain.[17]
On 20 June 1631, in an event known as the Sack of Baltimore, the village of Baltimore in County Cork, Ireland was attacked by Algerian pirates from the North African Barbary Coast. The pirates killed two villagers and captured almost the whole population of over 100 people, who were put in irons and taken to a life of slavery in North Africa.
Villagers along the south coast of England petitioned the king to protect them from abduction by Barbary pirates. Item 20 of The Grand Remonstrance,[18] a list of grievances against Charles I and presented to him in 1641, contains the following complaint about Barbary pirates of the Ottoman Empire abducting English people into slavery:
The first Englishman recorded to have taken slaves from Africa was John Lok, a London trader who, in 1555, brought to England five slaves from Guinea. A second London trader taking slaves at that time was William Towerson.
Admiral Sir John Hawkins of Plymouth, a notable Elizabethan seafarer, is widely acknowledged to be "the Pioneer of the English Slave Trade". In 1554–1555, Hawkins formed a slave trading syndicate of wealthy merchants. He sailed with three ships for the Caribbean via Sierra Leone, hijacked a Portuguese slave ship and sold the 300 slaves from it in Santo Domingo. During a second voyage in 1564, his crew captured 400 Africans and sold them at Rio de la Hacha in present-day Colombia, making a 60% profit for his financiers. A third voyage involved both buying slaves directly in Africa and capturing a Portuguese ship with its cargo; upon reaching the Caribbean, Hawkins sold all the slaves. On his return, he published a book entitled An Alliance to Raid for Slaves. Though Britain was a leader in the Atlantic slave trade, almost all of the slaves concerned were transported from Africa to the Americas and never saw the British Isles. Of those who did arrive in Britain, most worked as household servants.[19]
By the 18th century, the slave trade became a major economic mainstay for such cities as Bristol and Liverpool, engaged in the so-called "Triangular trade". The ships set out from England, loaded with trade goods which were exchanged on the West African shores for slaves captured by local rulers from deeper inland; the slaves were transported through the infamous "middle passage" across the Atlantic, and were sold at considerable profit for labour in plantations. The ships were loaded with export crops and commodities, the products of slave labour, such as sugar and rum, and returned to England to sell the items.
John Locke, the philosophical champion of the Glorious Revolution argued against slavery (Ch.IV) and asserted that "every man has property in his own person" (§27, Ch.V). By the 18th century African slaves began to be brought into London and Edinburgh as personal servants. In a number of judicial decisions between slave merchants, it was tacitly accepted that slavery of Africans was legal. In Butts v. Peny (1677) 2 Lev 201, 3 Keb 785, an action was brought to recover possession of 100 slaves. The court held that slavery was legal in England in relation to infidels and that an action for trover would lie.[20]
An English court case of 1569 involving Cartwright who had bought a slave from Russia ruled that English law could not recognise slavery. This ruling was overshadowed by later developments particularly in the navigation acts, but was upheld by the Lord Chief Justice in 1701 when he ruled that a slave became free as soon as he arrived in England. [21]
But agitation saw a series of judgments repulse the tide of slavery. In Smith v. Gould (1705–07) 2 Salk 666, Holt CJ stated that by
"the common law no man can have a property in another."
But in 1729 the then-Attorney General and Solicitor General of England signed the Yorke–Talbot slavery opinion expressing their view (and, by implication, that of the Government) that slavery of Africans was lawful in England. At this time slaves were openly bought and sold on commodities markets at London and Liverpool. Slavery was also accepted in England's many colonies.
Lord Henley LC said in Shanley v. Harvey (1763) 2 Eden 126, 127 that as
"soon as a man sets foot on English ground he is free."
But it was not until R v. Knowles, ex parte Somersett (1772) 20 State Tr 1 the law was settled. A man called James Somersett was the slave of a Boston customs officer. They came to England, and Somersett escaped. Captain Knowles captured him and took him on his boat, Jamaica bound. Three abolitionists, saying they were his "godparents", applied for a writ of habeas corpus. One of Somerset's lawyers, Francis Hargrave, stated "In 1569, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a lawsuit was brought against a man for beating another man he had bought as a slave overseas. The record states, 'That in the 11th [year] of Elizabeth [1569], 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'." He argued that the court had ruled in Cartwright's case that English Common Law made no provision for slavery, and without a basis for its legality, slavery would otherwise be unlawful as false imprisonment and/or assault.[22] In his judgment of 22 June 1772, Lord Chief Justice William Murray, Lord Mansfield, of the Court of King's Bench, started by talking about the capture and forcible detention of Somersett. He finished with:
"So high an act of dominion must be recognized by the law of the country where it is used. The power of a master over his slave has been exceedingly different, in different countries. The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory. It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from the decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged."[23]
Several different reports of Mansfield's decision appeared. Most disagree as to what was said. The decision was only given orally; no formal written record of it was issued by the court. Abolitionists widely circulated the view that it was declared that the condition of slavery did not exist under English law, although Mansfield later said that all that he decided was that a slave could not be forcibly removed from England against his will.[24]
The Church of England was implicated in slavery. Slaves were owned by the Anglican Church's Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPGFP), which had sugar plantations in the West Indies. When slaves were emancipated by Act of the British Parliament in 1834, the British government paid compensation to slave owners. Among those they paid were the Bishop of Exeter and three business colleagues, who received compensation for 665 slaves.[25]
William Wilberforce’s Slave Trade Act 1807 abolished the slave trade in the British Empire. It was not until the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 that the institution finally was abolished.
Historians and economists have debated the economic effects of slavery for Great Britain and the North American colonies. Many analysts suggest that it allowed the formation of capital that financed the Industrial Revolution, although the evidence is inconclusive. Slave labour was integral to early settlement of the colonies, which had too few people. Also, slave labour produced the major consumer goods that were the basis of world trade during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: coffee, cotton, rum, sugar, and tobacco. Slavery was far more important to the profitability of plantations and the economy in the American South; and the slave trade and associated businesses were important to New York and New England both.[26]
In 2006, the then British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, expressed his deep sorrow over the slave trade, which he described as "profoundly shameful".[27] Some campaigners still demand reparations from the former slave trading nations.[28]