2.1.1 Magistrates

Magistrates have been part of the legal system since the middle ages. They were traditionally men from the landed gentry: upper-class landowners. Inevitably, they were almost all white. One exception was Nathaniel Wells, a magistrate in Wales at the start of the nineteenth century. The son of a wealthy plantation owner and an enslaved black woman, he inherited his father’s wealth. He bought an estate in Chepstow and become part of Monmouthshire’s landed gentry (The National Archives, no date).