Belle (23 page)

  
4
  Archibald Duncan,
The British Trident, or Register of Naval Actions
(4 vols, 1805), 2, p.158.

  
5
 
London Chronicle
, 5 January 1762.

  
6
  R. Beatson,
Naval and Military Memoirs of Great Britain
(6 vols, 1790), 2, p.550.

  
7
  What are the alternatives? That Lindsay arranged for Maria and the baby to be looked after in Port Royal, near the headquarters of the West Indian station, but then returned for them when he was ordered home? Or that he sent Maria to England on another ship? But he would not have entrusted her to a merchantman for fear of her being re-enslaved, nor to another ship of the line, given the irregularity of his having got her pregnant.

  
8
 
Regulations and Instructions relating to His Majesty’s Service at Sea
(1734 edn), p.31.

  
9
  See http://www.marinersmuseum.org/sites/micro/women/goingtosea/navy.htm, which is also the source for the quotation about the
Prince
in port.

10
  See my
The Real Jane Austen
(2013), p.100.

11
 
Persuasion
(1818), 1, p.70.

12
  Quoted, http://www.marinersmuseum.org/sites/micro/women/goingtosea/navy.htm.

13
  See further, Suzanne J. Stark,
Female Tars: Women Aboard Ship in the Age of Sail
(1996), though this is mostly about women cross-dressed as serving sailors.

Chapter 3: The Slave

  
1
  Marcus Rediker,
The Slave Ship: A Human History
(2007) is the best account of the Atlantic slave trade.

  
2
  See Samuel Robinson,
A Sailor Boy’s Experience Aboard a Slave Ship
(1867), pp.29–32.

  
3
  John Newton kept a journal of his experiences as a slave trader. See
The Works of the Rev John Newton
(6 vols, 1808). Slave surgeon James Arnold gave evidence about the voyage to Parliament in 1788: ‘It was Mr. Arnold’s business to examine them before they were purchased for the vessel. If a man was ruptured, or a woman had a fallen breast, they never bought them. If they did not exceed four feet, they were refused.’ See ‘The Abolition Project’, http://abolition.e2bn.org/slavery-44.html.

  
4
  Thomas Aubrey,
The Sea-Surgeon, or the Guinea Man’s Vade Mecum
(1729), pp.118–20.

  
5
  See Donald R. Hopkins,
The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History
(2002), p.216.

  
6
 
The History of Mary Prince
, ed. Sarah Salih (2004). Prince’s 1831
History
is not straightforward. Her story is mediated by an amanuensis called Susanna Strickland, with an editorial supplement by Thomas Pringle and several appendices. Strickland excised parts of Mary’s story that she deemed unsuitable, such as Mary’s sexual relationship with a white captain. Editor Sarah Salih describes it as a ‘collection of texts’, but many parts appear to capture Mary’s ‘exact expressions and peculiar phraseology’, in particular the amazingly impassioned final pages, which include native words and phrases.

  
7
 
The History of Mary Prince
, p.21.

  
8
  Ibid., pp.11–12.

  
9
  Rediker, p.51.

10
  Robert Walsh, ‘Notices of Brazil in 1828 and 1829’ (1831), reprinted as ‘Aboard a Slave Ship, 1829’,
EyeWitness to History
, http://www.eyewitnesstohistory .com/slaveship.htm.

11
 
The Posthumous Works of the Late Rev John Newton
(1809), p.239.

12
  Ottobah Cugoano,
Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species
(1787), p.10.

13
  John Newton’s Journal, 24 June 1754.

14
  Olaudah Equinao,
Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African
(1789, 9th edn 1794), p.134.

15
 
The Guinea Voyage
(1807 edn), p.31.

16
  Ibid., p.37.

17
 
Works of the Rev John Newton
, 5, pp.532–3.

18
  Ibid., p.533.

19
  Thomas Clarkson,
History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade
(2 vols, 1808), 2, p.43.

20
  ‘It is unaccountable, but certainly true, that the moment a Guinea Captain comes in sight of this shore, the demon cruelty seems to fix his residence within him’, James Stanfield,
Observations on a Guinea Voyage
(1788), pp.15–18.

21
  Alexander Falconbridge,
Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa
(1788), p.52.

22
  William Butterworth,
Three Years Adventures of a Minor in England, Africa, the West Indies, South Carolina and Georgia
(1831), p.80.

23
  Rediker, p.203.

24
  Ibid., p.215.

25
  See Elizabeth Abbott,
Sugar: A Bittersweet History
(2010), p.128.

26
  Trevor Burnard,
Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World
(2004), p.175. I am much indebted to this excellent study.

27
  Ibid., p.178.

28
  Ibid., p.180.

29
  Maria Nugent,
Lady Nugent’s Journal of her Residence in Jamaica from 1801 to 1805
(1834), p.87.

Chapter 4: The White Stuff

  
1
  Elizabeth Abbott,
Sugar: A Bittersweet History
(2011), pp.56–60.

  
2
  Duncan Forbes,
Some Considerations on the Present State of Scotland
(1744), quoted, Richard B. Sheridan,
Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies 1623–1775
(1974), p.28.

  
3
  See Kim Wilson,
Tea with Jane Austen
(2011), p.17.

  
4
  Austen,
Emma
(1815), vol. 3, ch.2.

  
5
  Average sugar consumption in Britain rose from four pounds per head in 1700 to eighteen pounds in 1800, thirty-six pounds by 1850 and over one hundred pounds by the twentieth century. See Clive Ponting,
World History: A New Perspective
(2000), p.698, and Matthew Parker,
The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire and War
(2012).

  
6
  Abbott, p.53.

  
7
  Ponting, p.510.

  
8
  The decrease in slave population averaged about 3 per cent per year in Jamaica and 4 per cent per year in the smaller islands.

  
9
  O. Senior,
Mirror, Mirror: Identity, Race and Protest in Jamaica
(2003), p.207. See also E. K. Brathwaite,
The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770–1820
(1971).

10
  Abbott, p.87.

11
  Relatively little ‘white’ sugar was imported to England, though Barbados had good sources of clay, and this produced more ‘white’ sugar. See Chuck Meide,
The Sugar Factory in the Colonial West Indies: An Archaeological and Historical Comparative Analysis
(2003).

12
  Quoted in Abbott, p.89.

13
  See
Mary Prince
, p.15.

14
  Ibid., p.37.

15
  The best accounts of Thistlewood can be found in Burnard’s
Mastery, Tyranny and Desire
and Parker’s
The Sugar Barons
.

16
  See Burnard, pp.166–7.

17
  See my
The Real Jane Austen
, p.220.

18
  Quoted in Abbott, p.124.

19
  Quoted in ibid., p.72.

20
  See David Richardson, ‘The Slave Trade, Sugar, and British Economic Growth, 1748–1776’,
Journal of Interdisciplinary History
, 17 (Spring 1987), 739–69.

Chapter 5: ‘Silver-Tongued Murray’

  
1
  See the superb Norman S. Poser,
Lord Mansfield: Justice in the Age of Reason
(2013), p.15.

  
2
  Edmund Heward,
Lord Mansfield: A Biography of William Murray 1st Earl of Mansfield, 1705–1793, Lord Chief Justice for 32 Years
(1979), p.12.

  
3
  Boswell,
Life of Johnson
(1791), entry for spring 1772.

  
4
  His brother James wrote in 1763: ‘I hear my brother has been made Lord Chancellor of England, but as I have not had a letter from home for thirty years, I know not if it be true or not.’ Quoted, James Oldham, ‘Murray, William, first Earl of Mansfield’,
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(2004).

  
5
  Poser, p.26.

  
6
  Ibid., p.24.

  
7
  They attended different colleges, Pitt being a freshman when Murray was in his final year. Murray entered and won the competition in 1727, just before he came down from Oxford.

  
8
  Locke,
Of Government
, Bk 1, Chap. 1, opening sentence. See further, Stephen Usherwood, ‘The Black Must be Discharged: The Abolitionists’ Debt to Lord Mansfield’,
History Today
31.3 (1981).

  
9
  Poser, p.28.

10
  Frequently cited, e.g. by William Hazlitt,
The Eloquence of the British Senate
(1810 edn), 2, p.29, though I have not traced the original context in Pope.

11
  Quoted in Poser, p.54.

12
  Heward, p.24.

13
  Quoted in Poser, p.64.

14
  See ibid., pp.147–8.

15
 
Private Papers of James Boswell
, 9 (1963), p.48.

16
  Quoted in Poser, p.171.

17
 
An Account of the Life of that Celebrated Actress Mrs Susannah Maria Cibber … Also the two Remarkable and Romantic Trials between Theophilus Cibber and William Sloper
(1887 edn), p.46.

18
  Lord John Campbell, ‘The Life of Lord Mansfield’, in his
The Lives of the Chief Justices of England
(1849 edn), 2, p.343.

19
  Quoted, Maynard Mack,
Alexander Pope: A Life
(1985), p.688.

20
  Heward, p.38.

21
  Poser, p.35.

22
  Ibid., p.163.

23
 
The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam
(1778), ‘II. The Villa of Earl Mansfield, at Kenwood’.

24
  Poser, p.165.

25
  Coleridge to Henry Crabb Robinson, Highgate, June 1817.

26
  The painting is traditionally dated ‘c.1780’.

27
  ‘Kenwood’s Picturesque Landscape’, http://www.englishheritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/kenwood-house/garden/landscape/.

28
 
Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam
, II.

29
  James Oldham,
The Mansfield Manuscripts and the Growth of English Law in the Eighteenth Century
(2 vols, 1992), 1, p.25.

Chapter 6: The Adopted Daughters