Society, Politics & Law
Abolitionism must come from below: A critique of British Anti-Slavery Abolition
...human bondage in Britain – had fallen out of usage in the early 1500s if not before, chattel slavery was against both natural and English common law. The Somerset ruling was largely interpreted as meaning that chattel slavery was illegal in Britain, and while this was not actually the case, it did result in reinforcing popular mythologies of British freedom / English...