Editing Granville Sharp (section)

=== ''[[Somerset v Stewart]]'' ===
(Also called [[Somersett's case]].) On 13 January 1772, Sharp was visited and asked for help by James Somerset, an indigenous person of Africa who had been brought to America to be sold in the Colony of Virginia. He was then taken to England with his master Charles Stewart in 1769, where he was able to run away in October 1771. After evading slave hunters employed by Stewart for 56 days, Somerset had been caught and put in the slave ship Ann and Mary, to be taken to Jamaica and sold.<ref name=":0" /> This was the perfect case for Sharp because, unlike the previous cases, this was a question of lawful slavery rather than of ownership. Three Londoners had applied to [[Lord Mansfield]] for a writ of [[habeas corpus]], which had been granted, with Somerset having to appear at a hearing on 24 January 1772. Members of the public responded to Somerset's plight by sending money to pay for his lawyers (who in the event all gave their services ''[[pro bono publico]]''), while Stewart's costs were met by the West Indian planters and merchants.

Having studied English law for several years by this point, Sharp called on his now-formidable knowledge of the law regarding individual liberty and briefed Somerset's lawyers.<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|date=1980|first=Charles R. |last=Ritcheson|title=Robert E. Toohey. ''Liberty and Empire: British Radical Solutions to the American Problem, 1774–1776''. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. 1978. Pp. xiv, 210. $13.00|journal=The American Historical Review|doi=10.1086/ahr/85.1.122-a|issn=1937-5239|pages=122–123|volume=85 |issue=1}}</ref> Mansfield's deliberate procrastination stretched [[Somerset's Case]] over six hearings from January to May, and he finally delivered his judgment on 22 June 1772. It was a clear victory for Somerset, Sharp and the lawyers who acted for Somerset. Mansfield acknowledged that English law did not allow slavery, and only a new Act of Parliament ("[[positive law]]") could bring it into legality.  However, the verdict in the case is often misunderstood to mean the end of slavery in England. It was no such thing: it dealt only with the question of the forcible sending of someone overseas into bondage; a slave becomes free the moment they set foot on English territory. It was one of the most significant achievements in the campaign to abolish slavery throughout the world, more for its effect than for its actual legal weight.<ref name=Sheppard/>