Scipio Africanus

Scipio Africanus (c. 1702 – 21 December 1720) was a former slave born to unknown parents from West Africa. He was named after Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (236/235–183 BC), the famous Roman general who defeated the Carthaginian military leader Hannibal. Life Very little is known of Africanus' life. He was a former slave (since as the courts were to hold in Somersett's Case (1772), slavery did not exist in Great Britain under English common law) in the household of Charles William Howard, 7th Earl of Suffolk, who lived in the "Great House" in Henbury, Bristol. It is not clear how he came to the household; historians believe that he may have been born into the household as the son of an enslaved West African woman, and named by Howard. One biographer has suggested that Africanus' name implies that Howard intended to free him for loyal service because the Roman historian Polybius wrote about how the Roman general Africanus freed people he had enslaved who promised to work hard. Africanus died in the Great House aged eighteen. Grave