The African Methodist Episcopal Church was founded in 1816 in Philadelphia by a group of free blacks led by Reverend Richard Allen. Reverend Allen was a former slave who worked in a Delaware plantation. He converted to Christianity in 1777 and was able to purchase his freedom in the same year. Three years after the end of the American Revolutionary War, Allen left Delaware and traveled to Philadelphia, a known haven for free blacks and slaves who fled from their masters. These events are recorded on the Bible Timeline Chart with World History during this time period.
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Allen became a preacher in Philadelphia and worked odd jobs to support himself. He attended St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church but was soon disenchanted with the discrimination he and fellow blacks experienced inside the church. The blacks were segregated from the whites and were told to sit in the gallery instead. Allen and his companions were also harassed inside the church and were told by one of the trustees to get up from kneeling while in prayer. Allen, Absalom Jones, William Wilcher, William Gray, and their supporters finally left St. George’s and formed a support group they called Free African Society. The Society aided free blacks, as well as fugitive slaves who sought refuge in Philadelphia.
Reverend Richard Allen is credited with helping to found the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
During the early 1790s, Allen’s support group wanted to turn it into an official church. They debated whether to affiliate with the Episcopal Church (since many of them belonged to the denomination) or with the Methodists. The Episcopal faction eventually won, and the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas was formally established in 1794. However, Allen also wanted to infuse Methodism, so the church was eventually renamed African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME).
In 1799, Bishop Francis Asbury of the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) ordained Allen as a minister. The members of the AME multiplied over the years, and churches were eventually established in Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey. During its early years, the AME was under the supervision of white leaders of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Allen and the members of the AME bucked at the discrimination they experienced under the leadership of the MEC, so they tried to sue for independence in 1807. Their efforts were unsuccessful, so they tried again in 1815. They were successful this time. In 1816, the AME became the first independent African institution in the United States.
References:
Picture by: Daniel A. Payne – Richard Allen, from the frontispiece of History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1891), Public Domain, Link
Allen, Richard. The Life Experience and Gospel Labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen: To Which is Annexed the Rise and Progress of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America: Containing a Narrative of the Yellow Fever in the Year of Our Lord, 1793: With an Address to the People of Color in the United States. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1880.
Earle, Jonathan. The Routledge Atlas of African American History. New York: Routledge, 2016.
Payne, Daniel Alexander. History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Edited by C. S. Smith. Vol. 1. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1968.
In 1798, French troops entered Rome and imprisoned Pope Pius VI. His imprisonment effectively abolished Pius’s temporal power which the popes preceding him had held since the 8th century. This event is recorded on the Bible Timeline Online with World History during that time.
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France had three distinct social classes under the Ancien Régime. High-ranking members of the Roman Catholic clergy occupied the First Estate, while the Second Estate was composed of members of the nobility. The Third Estate was occupied by 80 percent of France’s population. This included the bourgeoisie (middle class), peasants, city laborers, artisans, and low-ranking clergy.
The First and Second Estates had rights and privileges not enjoyed by the Third Estate. The bourgeoisie, being considerably well-off, resented the privileges enjoyed by the first two Estates and clamored for equality. The peasants had long bore the brunt of supporting the First and Second Estates. To the Church, the peasants owed tithes and various levies (such as grain and other farm products). To the State, on the other hand, the peasants owed the taille (head tax) and other similar burdensome taxes.
The inequity under the Ancien Régime, high food prices during the late 1780s, government debts, and King Louis XVI’s inability to require the nobility to pay their share of taxes became the kindling for the explosion of the French Revolution. In mid-1789, France’s Third Estate successfully staged the French Revolution and reduced the power of the monarchy. On August 26, 1789, the National Assembly finally approved the Declaration of Rights of Man which served as the foundation of a “liberal and egalitarian” France.
Once the elation of the Revolution died down, the French leaders had to confront nagging issues that a simple change in the form of government could not address. One of the first issues the government had to confront was the existence of France’s debts and how the government could pay them off. The First Estate inadvertently provided the government an easy way to solve France’s financial problems.
After the passage of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, France’s leaders grappled with the existence of the First Estate and its role in an “egalitarian” nation. The philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment, with their scathing criticisms, slowly chipped away at the power and prestige of the Roman Catholic Church. The lavish lifestyle many members of the First Estate indulged in also made them an easy target for hostility.
The new Revolutionary government believed that the Roman Catholic Church had no place in this new society unless the First Estate be brought to heel. On the practical side, however, the new leaders believed that the wealth of Church could be seized and sold off to pay for country’s debt. In 1790, the National Assembly addressed the issue by creating the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. The Constitution sought to reorganize the Church by reducing the number of dioceses and bishops. Church properties were confiscated by the state, while the collection of tithes was abolished. The government then assumed the responsibility of paying the clergymen, maintaining churches, and providing relief for the poor.
The clerics who toed the line and took the oath of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy were absorbed into the reorganized church. Those who refused to take the oath were persecuted and were sometimes driven from France. Years later, the French Republic (in an act of rejection of the Catholic Church) would get rid of the Gregorian calendar and replace it with its own Revolutionary Calendar. Outraged, Pope Pius VI promptly protested to the National Assembly when news of the reorganization reached him in Rome. He then anathematized the French government and clerics who took the oath. This was just the beginning of the end of Pope Pius VI’s temporal power.
The Rise of Napoleon, the French Directory, and the End of Pope Pius VI’s Temporal Power
Pope Pius VI was imprisoned by French troops in 1798.
In 1792, France declared war on Austria and Prussia, plunging the country into conflict with most of its neighbors for the next twenty years. After declaring France a Republic, the country’s new rulers voted for the dissolution of the monarchy. They then executed King Louis XVI, his family, and many members of the nobility. So began the Reign of Terror which gripped the country between the summer of 1793 and 1794. Spain, Portugal, Britain, Sardinia, and Naples soon joined the First Coalition against a hawkish France.
It was during this time that Napoleon Bonaparte, a young and brilliant Corsican officer in the French army, would rise and lead the country into victory after victory. First hailed as a hero during the battle with the Spanish and British troops at Toulon in 1793, he steadily rose through the ranks and became a brigadier general by the end of 1793. He temporarily fell out of favor, but was restored in 1795 by Paul Barras after his successful defense of the National Convention. He was promoted to Commander of the Interior and became the commander of the French army in Italy.
In 1796, Napoleon led his army into Turin after defeating the army of Piedmont. King Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia (also Duke of Savoy) was forced to sue for peace. He was later compelled to cede Savoy and Nice to France. The French army under Napoleon managed to defeat the Italian troops (including the pope’s own troops) to occupy Milan, Ancona, and Loreto. The invaders were besieging the duchy of Mantua when the Pope Pius VI, as well as the dukes of Modena and Parma, sued for peace. Napoleon soon brought the papal territory of Bologna and Ferrara into French domination. By 1797, Napoleon had subdued Mantua. Members of the First Coalition soon sued for peace, and on the 17th of October 1797, the representatives of France and the First Coalition signed the Treaty of Campo Formio.
The peace of Campo Formio, however, did not last long. The Directory was eager to get rid of the pope and transform the Papal States into a republic, but its members first needed a compelling reason to do so. A pretext presented itself when a riot broke out in Rome in December 1797, killing brigadier-general Leonard Duphot in the process.
General Louis Berthier and his troops were tasked by the Directory to invade Rome on February 10, 1798, and declare the creation of a new Roman Republic. He announced the deposition of Pope Pius VI and demanded that the pope renounce his temporal power. When the pope refused, General Berthier took him prisoner and escorted him from the Vatican to Siena. He was later taken to Certosa, but the French army relocated him to Valence in Drôme when a war in Tuscany became imminent. He died in Valence on August 29, 1799.
Bauer, Susan Wise. The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.
Breunig, Charles. The Age of Revolution and Reaction: 1789-1850. New York: Norton, 1977.
Sellers, Ian. The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church. Edited by J. D. Douglas and Earle E. Cairns. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996.
Walsh, John. The New Cambridge Modern History, Vol. 9: War and Peace in an Age of Upheaval, 1793-1830. Edited by C.W. Crawley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965.
The papal temporal power refers to the pope’s secular and political authority over the Papal States, as well as other kings and countries. This authority was first granted by the Frankish King Pippin to Pope Stephen II during the 8th century. Although many monarchs challenged papal authority over the years, none succeeded in ending the pope’s temporal powers except the French in 1798. This event is recorded on the Bible Timeline Poster with World History during that time.
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The Lateran Palace was one of the first estates owned by the pope after Emperor Constantine allegedly gave it to the Church in the early 4th century. (This later became the basis of the forged document entitled “Donation of Constantine” that would appear during the 8th century.) Over the years, the pope’s real properties steadily grew after the noble families of Rome donated lands to the Church. These estates formed the Patrimonium Petri (Patrimony of Peter), and it was not long before the pope became one of the richest landowners in Italy. Despite the fall of the Western Roman Empire in AD 476, the papacy flourished and the Patrimonium Petri continued to expand. Medieval Period popes, however, did not hold temporal power and continued to acknowledge the Byzantine emperors as their overlord.
The balance of power in Italy finally shifted in AD 756. In the early 700s, the issue of iconoclasm formed a rift between the Byzantine rulers and the popes. Meanwhile, Aistulf, the king of Lombardy, captured the Byzantine territory of Ravenna. His army was poised to capture the neighboring papal lands when Pope Stephen II appealed to Byzantine Emperor for help. Emperor Constantine V, however, was unable to help the pope, so Stephen II had no choice but to ask another ally, the Frankish King Pippin, for help.
After defeating Aistulf, Pippin granted Ravenna to the Pope. The land grant was the birth of the Papal States and the beginning of the Pope’s temporal power. Stephen justified it further by presenting a forged document called the “Donation of Constantine” to Pippin. The Frankish king probably knew it was a forgery, but was content to look the other way as long as he had the pope’s support.
Napoleon and the End of the Temporal Power of the Pope
Napoleon Bonaparte was responsible for ending the pope’s temporal power.
It was a Frankish king who granted Stephen II and the popes who came after him the temporal power. Strangely enough, it was the French themselves who came galloping into Italy more than a thousand years later to take the same power away from Pope Pius VI.
When Pope Pius VI was elected in 1775, old ideas and regimes were beginning to crumble on both sides of the Atlantic. Efforts to undermine his secular authority had already started in Germany, Austria, and Tuscany. The greatest threat to his temporal power would come from beyond the Alps.
The French Revolution that broke out in 1789 upended the dominance of the First Estate (the Roman Catholic Clergy) and the Second Estate (the nobility). France’s powerful Catholic clergy was finally brought to heel by the new government with the passage of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1790. With the Constitution, the Roman Catholic Church was now under the control of the French government and not of the pope. Pope Pius VI was outraged when he heard of the passage of the Constitution. He immediately issued a condemnation (anathematization) of France’s new rulers and the clerics who submitted to the Constitution. His outrage and condemnation, however, were impotent in a country that was on the verge of total anarchy.
Napoleon Bonaparte, the man who would eventually end the pope’s temporal power, emerged during the bloody months of the Reign of Terror (1793-1794) and the War of the First Coalition (1792-1797). In 1796, Napoleon and his troops crossed the Alps, defeated Savoy’s troops, and occupied Turin. This defeat forced the king of Piedmont-Sardinia to cede Savoy and Nice to France. Pius was forced to give up the papal territories of Ferrara, Romagna, and Bologna in 1796. Peace was finally achieved between the Coalition (which included the Papal State) and France in Campo Formio in 1797.
However, Napoleon and the Directory in Paris were not content to leave the Papal States alone. They used the riot in Rome and the ensuing death of the French General Duphot as a reason to invade the Papal States. With the approval of the Directory, General Louis Berthier and his troops entered Rome in February 1798, and soon announced the creation of the Roman Republic. Pope Pius VI was taken as prisoner by the French troops, thereby ending his temporal power. He was imprisoned in northern Italy before he was taken to southern France in 1799 where he was kept under house arrest. He died six weeks after his arrival at Valence on August 29, 1799. He was succeeded by the more conciliatory Pius VII in 1800.
Bauer, Susan Wise. The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.
Breunig, Charles. The Age of Revolution and Reaction: 1789-1850. New York: Norton, 1977.
Sellers, Ian. The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church. Edited by J. D. Douglas and Earle E. Cairns. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996.
Walsh, John. The New Cambridge Modern History, Vol. 9: War and Peace in an Age of Upheaval, 1793-1830. Edited by C.W. Crawley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965.
By the late 18th century, the clamor to abolish the slave trade increased in Western Europe and in the northern colonies of America. Denmark was the first to answer the call to end the importation of slaves from Africa to its colonies in the West Indies. But in spite of fierce resistance from slaveholders at home, the North American abolitionist movement led by the Quakers was quick to gather steam. The abolitionist movement finally bore fruit between 1811 and 1848 when several Western European nations officially put an end to slavery through legislation.
By 1811, Spain had outlawed the slave trade and slavery itself. However, it was not until 1886 that Cuba, one of Spain’s overseas colonies, followed suit. In what would become the United States, slavery would become a contentious and bitter issue that would eventually lead an entire nation to a civil war in 1861. Amidst these developments was the controversial Amistad Revolt (1839-1842). This mutiny captivated the American public when it was tried in American courts between 1840 and 1841. Apart from its political, societal, and legal repercussions at home, the Amistad also sent ripples across the Atlantic when Spain decided to intervene with the case. These events are recorded on the Biblical Timeline Poster with World History during that time.
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Britain had outlawed the slave trade in its colonies in 1807, and this was soon followed by the Abolition of Slavery Act in 1833. Despite the British ban, the illicit slave trade remained lucrative thanks to the steady demand in some colonies in the West Indies. At the center of this illegal activity was the Lomboko slave fortress in Sierra Leone, a facility owned by the wealthy Spanish slave trader Pedro Blanco.
Many of the men, women, and children kidnapped and sold to Blanco belonged to the Mende people. Others belonged to different tribes such as the Bembe and Kono. Some people were kidnapped because they failed to repay their debts on time. Others meanwhile were prisoners of war or were captured from slave raids. A few were accused of adultery and were punished by some disgruntled husbands by capturing and selling them into slavery.
A doctor checked the health and viability of each slave upon their arrival at the Lomboko. They spent some weeks in Blanco’s slave fortress before they were loaded into the Tecora, a Portuguese slave ship. After separating them from the women and children, the men were shackled together inside the cramped holds to prevent them from rebelling or from committing suicide by throwing themselves overboard. During the voyage, they were given meager rations of food. They had to relieve themselves where they were shackled together so that the poorly ventilated hold quickly stank and soon became a petri dish for diseases. The Tecora’s crew disposed of dead captives by throwing them into the ocean. Sick or dying captives were also thrown into watery graves because of the crew’s fears that they would infect the rest of the “cargo.”
The Tecora finally docked in the port of Havana in June 1839. The slave traders cautiously auctioned the slaves in Havana for fear of British naval officers who patrolled the area. Among those who arrived in Havana for the slave auctions were the Spanish merchants and slaves owners Pedro Montes and Jose Ruiz. After purchasing 49 men, one boy, and three girls, the Spaniards chartered the vessel La Amistad (Spanish for “friendship”) and sailed for Camaguey, Cuba. Ramon Ferrer owned and captained the ship, and was assisted by two crew members. Also on board were the ship’s cook Celestino and the cabin boy Antonio.
The Amistad Mutiny
The Amistad was the site of the 1839 Mende slave rebellion.
La Amistad left Havana for Camaguey on June 28, 1839. Unlike in the Tecora, Montes and Ruiz did not shackle the slaves during the day. They were allowed to roam the ship if they wanted during daylight but were once again shackled at night. During the voyage, Sengbe (Cinque) Pieh (one of the Mende captives) tried to find out what Montes and Ruiz intended to do to him and the other captives. He asked the cook Celestino who insinuated that the Africans would be chopped up, cooked, and eaten by the crew. The cook’s joke was not only in bad taste but also ill-timed. He would eventually pay for his morbid sense of humor with his life.
Sengbe saw for himself the atrocities committed by white men during the Middle Passage, so he readily believed Celestino. He wasted no time in planning a rebellion with the help of fellow captives Grabeau and Burnah. On the eve of July 1, 1839, Sengbe was able to pick the locks of the shackles with a nail and free himself and the other slaves. Once freed, they found cane machetes stashed in the hold. Each man took a machete and headed to the deck where their first victim, Captain Ramon Ferrer, was sleeping.
Ferrer woke up and managed to warn Montes and Ruiz of the mutiny. The Africans, however, easily overpowered him and strangled him to death. Montes was wounded during the fight, while the two seamen immediately abandoned the ship. The depth of the slaves’ anger was reserved for Celestino who they hacked to death. Only the cabin boy Antonio was spared from the slaves’ wrath.
With the ship now under their control, Sengbe and the other Africans decided to sail for home. Since none of them knew how to steer the vessel toward Sierra Leone, they forced Montes and Ruiz to steer for them. The two agreed but craftily directed the ship in a meandering course toward the coast of North America in hopes that a United States ship would eventually find and help them. The Amistad sometimes came across merchant ships, but the Africans concealed the mutiny by hiding Montes and Ruiz below deck. With the slave owners’ money, they were able to buy food and water from passing ships when their stocks ran dangerously low.
The sailors of the vessels the Amistad came across were mystified by the appearance of the all-African crew and the ship’s derelict condition. Soon, wild rumors of a pirate ship commandeered by Africans spread to the American East Coast and fired up the locals’ imagination. Some people claimed it was a pirate ship loaded with gold, while others believed that it was the ghostly ship of the Flying Dutchman.
Sengbe, Grabeau, and Burnah decided to drop anchor in Long Island and buy food there by the end of August 1839. The men stood out like a sore thumb, and they were soon spotted by Captain Henry Green and his men. Green realized that this must be the mysterious ship that he heard about in the news, so he immediately made moves to ingratiate himself with Sengbe and his companions so he could eventually claim for himself the Amistad, its cargo, and the Africans. Despite not knowing each other’s language, both sides agreed through gestures to meet again on the following day.
As agreed, both parties appeared on the beach and met again the next day. Captain Green’s dream of salvaging the Amistad was dashed when the revenue cutter USS Washington appeared and interrupted them. Lieutenant Thomas R. Gedney of the USS Washington ordered his crew to seize the Amistad and subdue its crew.
To the American crew’s surprise, they found the ship full of Africans and quickly realized that they were the mutineers. Gedney also saw an opportunity to claim the Amistad and acquire the Africans as his own slaves. He then had Sengbe seized and isolated in the USS Washington to prevent him from launching another mutiny. Gedney did not want to stay in New York as slavery had been outlawed in the State, so he had it towed to New London, Connecticut where slavery was still legal. He then submitted his claims to the Amistad and its cargo for hearing to Judge Andrew T. Judson of Connecticut.
Preparing for a Legal Battle
The Africans (the four children included) were jailed in New Haven while the judge examined Amistad’s papers. He also listened to the testimonies of Ruiz and Montes, as well as those given by the cabin boy Antonio. All three identified Sengbe, Burnah, and Grabeau as the leaders of the mutiny. The judge did not bother to interview the Africans because not one of them knew how to speak English or Spanish. In addition, no one living in Connecticut at that time knew the Mende language. Sengbe and his companions were charged with piracy and murder after the judge heard the Spaniards’ testimonies. Their trial was set on September 19, 1839.
News of the plight of the Amistad mutineers soon reached prominent Connecticut abolitionists. The Quaker abolitionist and New London grocer Dwight P. Janes were the first to take up their cause and form the Amistad Committee. He was joined by fellow abolitionists Lewis and Arthur Tappan, Reverend Simeon Jocelyn, and Reverend Joshua Leavitt.
These men took it upon themselves to raise funds for the mutineers’ legal fees. The Committee managed to convince Attorney Roger Sherman Baldwin to represent the Africans in the long legal battle. They also wrote to the press about the plight of the mutineers and spread the news about their situation. Their efforts became so successful (perhaps too successful) as thousands of well-meaning visitors and gawkers flocked to New Haven prison where the Africans were kept.
The AmistadCase and its Political Implications
For the US President Martin Van Buren, the arrival of the Amistad could not have come at the worst time. He was up for reelection in 1840 and his campaign was in full swing. The Amistad case was both a domestic and international issue, so he sought a decision that would satisfy the American voters (both abolitionists and staunch slaveholders) and prevent a diplomatic row with Spain. He found neither.
Van Buren’s top advisers (who also happened to be Southern slaveholders) wanted him to return the Amistad, its cargo, as well as Sengbe and his friends, to Cuba to pacify Spain. There they would eventually be tried and hanged if found guilty. The Spanish foreign minister also reminded the president of the two treaties America signed with Spain in 1795 and 1819 in regards to aiding ships in distress. Spain only wanted the Amistad issue silenced because of some thorny and embarrassing facts about its legality. Spain had abolished the slave trade in 1811, so its citizens had no business transporting enslaved people across the Atlantic. Its law enforcement too had been so weak that it was unable to impose the ban in Cuba. Spain also wanted the Amistad matter resolved quietly and quickly because it had signed an anti-slavery treaty with Britain in 1833. If the Amistad issue Britain, Spain surmised that British government would consider this a violation of the treaty and would immediately intervene in Cuba.
Van Buren, on the other hand, was torn between the abolitionists (mostly concentrated in the North) and the staunch slaveholders (who mostly lived in the South) at home. The abolitionists believed that the Africans had gained their freedom by launching a mutiny and should be allowed to go back to Sierra Leone. The slaveholders, meanwhile, wanted to return the Africans to Ruiz and Montes. They insisted that the Africans should go back to Cuba and be hanged there for murdering the ship captain and the cook. They readily believed the Spaniards’ story that Sengbe and his friends were born in Cuba and they had been slaves there for many years. This in spite of the fact that none of the Africans understood Spanish, and none of them answered to their alleged Spanish names read out to them during the trial.
The Amistad Trial
The Amistad trial for murder and piracy began on September 19, 1839, in Hartford, Connecticut. The case was presided by Justice Smith Thompson of the United States Circuit Court. U.S. District Attorney W.S. Holabird led the prosecution, while Attorney Roger Sherman Baldwin led the Amistad defense. Baldwin was assisted by lawyers Seth Perkins Staples and Theodore Sedgwick.
The defense first asked the court to issue a writ of habeas corpus for the captive girls, but this was immediately blocked by Holabird. He asserted that the African children were considered as properties and not humans, so the principles of the writ of habeas corpus did not apply to them. Besides, he already had secret orders from President Van Buren to wrap the case up so it could be transferred to Cuba as quickly as possible.
Baldwin countered this and presented the little girls to the court to garner sympathy for their plight. The children were visibly distressed during their appearance. The argument whether to grant the girls the writ of habeas corpus went on for two days before Holabird did an abrupt about-face. He acknowledged that the girls were humans and were born free so that a writ was completely unnecessary. He also asserted that the girls should be sent back to Africa as soon as possible. The truth, however, was Holabird was pressured to deflect anything in the trial that might taint Van Buren’s reputation and damage his campaign.
On September 23, Justice Thompson declared that the case could not be tried by a U.S. court as the mutiny happened in waters controlled by Spain. The judge, however, did not issue a writ of habeas corpus as the matter of whether the Africans were properties of Ruiz and Montes was yet to be decided. The second trial was set in a U.S. District Court.
The District Court Trial
The Amistad Committee had already realized that their case might be in danger when they learned that it was assigned to Judge Andrew T. Judson. The prejudiced Judson had prosecuted the Connecticut schoolteacher Prudence Crandall when she tried to integrate an African-American girl into her school in 1833. The odds were against the abolitionists and the Amistad mutineers, but the Committee and the legal defense continued to prepare for the trial.
While they awaited the trial, members of the Committee were busy combing through New York Harbor in search of a Mende interpreter. They were lucky to find James Covey, a native of Sierra Leone and former captive himself, who worked as a sailor on a British vessel.
To the Committee’s surprise, however, Judson allowed a little improvement on the prisoners’ living conditions. He permitted them to be brought outside every now and then to do some exercises and breathe in some fresh air. The captive children were sent to private homes where foster families taught them the English language. Students from the nearby Yale College visited the captives to evangelize and teach them English.
Dr. Richard Madden, an Irish abolitionist who lived and worked in Havana, had hurried to Connecticut to give his sworn testimony on the thriving slave trade in Cuba. This damning testimony shredded the credibility of Montes and Ruiz, and they were soon charged with imprisonment. Both men were arrested and sent to prison in New York in October 1839. Montes posted bail and quickly sailed to Cuba, while Ruiz refused to post bail (he did not want to admit to any wrongdoing) and remained in prison. He eventually posted bail and also fled to Cuba. The indictment and imprisonment of his compatriots outraged the Spanish foreign minister. The events only added to the pressure on the beleaguered Van Buren.
The District Court hearing of the Amistad finally began on January 7, 1840, in New Haven. With James Covey as interpreter, Sengbe was able to narrate how they were captured in Sierra Leone and eventually sold in Havana. While the Amistad narration was ongoing, two ships were already waiting on the dock to take the Africans away. The first one was the USS Grampus, a vessel sent by Van Buren to take the captives to Cuba after the trial. The Amistad Committee, however, had prepared their own chartered ship. The abolitionists’ ship was to take the Africans to Canada after the trial.
Judge Judson shocked everyone when he ruled in favor of the captives on January 13, 1840. The court granted Lieutenant Gedney one-third of the value of the Amistad and its cargo as per U.S. law of salvage. He, however, was not allowed to claim the captives as part of the salvage as the Africans were transported to Cuba illegally. The judge ruled that the captives should be returned to Africa posthaste. Captain Green’s claim, on the other hand, was denied by the court. Perhaps one of the most unhappy persons at that time was Van Buren who, despite his illegal maneuvers, was not successful in his reelection bid later that year.
The Final Showdown
The prosecution, naturally, was unhappy with the decision and decided to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. A new trial was set on February 22, 1841.
For the defense, the chances of winning the case did not look too good once again as five out of nine Justices (including the Chief Justice) came from the South. The abolitionists, therefore, was forced to look for a prominent anti-slavery advocate who would support their case and lend a voice to the cause. They found one in the former U.S. president John Quincy Adams.
The 73-year old John Q. Adams was the son of the United States second president John Adams and his progressive first lady, Abigail Adams. A staunch anti-slavery advocate, he had already served the United States as a senator, ambassador, and Secretary of State. He served as U.S. President between 1825 and 1829 and was serving as a Representative of Massachusetts when Attorney Baldwin approached him. He was initially hesitant to accept the Committee’s offer because of his age, but Baldwin eventually convinced him to join the defense team.
The Supreme Court trial began on February 22, 1841. The U.S. Attorney General Henry D. Gilpin led the prosecution this time and was first to deliver the opening statements. Baldwin’s opening statements, meanwhile, hinged on three premises. First, he questioned and demolished the truthfulness and validity of the papers produced by Montes and Ruiz. He then argued that the Adams-Onis Treaty did not apply to the captives as they were not born in the Spanish colony of Cuba. Lastly, he argued that since Sengbe and the other captives were free men, the U.S. Federal government had no right to send them to Cuba as it would go against the U.S. Constitution.
Four days later, John Quincy Adams himself addressed the Supreme Court. He stated that the Adams-Onis Treaty could only be used during wartime, and its terms did not apply to the Amistad case. He also blasted former President Van Buren in front of the Supreme Court for interfering with the Amistad case. His lecture on the Amistad case went on for another eight hours.
The Supreme Court finally reached a decision in March 1841. The Court determined that Sengbe and the other mutineers were free men, and as such, they were to be released from prison and be allowed to return to their homeland immediately. The Justices also decided that Ruiz, Montes, and the Spanish foreign minister had no right to hold the captives or prevent them from returning to Sierra Leone. To the Amistad Committee’s relief, the Justices asserted that all human beings have the right to fight for their freedom and the captives had earned theirs through the mutiny. Gedney’s claims to a portion of the cargo were also affirmed. Attorney Baldwin was not present when the Supreme Court handed the decision on the case so Adams sent him an ecstatic note instead.
Bittersweet Victory
Sengbe and his fellow captives were at first skeptical when the news of their freedom reached them. But celebrations and joy replaced their initial skepticism when they realized that they were finally going home. The abolitionists also met the news with great joy and were quick to publicize the Amistad victory. The Africans stayed in Connecticut for several months while the abolitionists were raising funds so they could charter a ship back to Sierra Leone. Sengbe and his companions helped in raising funds by creating and selling handicrafts.
The Africans boarded the ship Gentleman on November 25, 1841, and said tearful farewells to their American friends. They were accompanied by American missionaries who saw an opportunity to evangelize in Sierra Leone. The Amistad mutineers and the American missionaries arrived in Sierra Leone in January 1842.
References:
Picture by: Unknown – New Haven Colony Historical Society and Adams National Historic Site, Public Domain, Link
Kromer, Helen. The Amistad Revolt, 1839: The Slave Uprising Aboard the Spanish Schooner. New York: F. Watts, 1973.
Osagie, Iyunolu Folayan. The Amistad Revolt: Memory, Slavery, and the Politics of Identity in the United States and Sierra Leone. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003.
Zeinert, Karen. The Amistad Slave Revolt and American Abolition. North Haven, CT: Linnet Books, 1997.
The British government finally abolished slavery in its colonies in the West Indies (as well as South Africa and Canada) with the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. The law was the fulfillment of the efforts and hopes of British abolitionists, as well as the struggles of slaves themselves in the Caribbean. This event is recorded on the Biblical Timeline Chart with World History during that time.
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The Abolitionist Movement and the Abolition of Slave Trade Act of 1807
The abolitionist movement in Britain began to gain momentum during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The French and Haitian Revolutions played a large role in the spreading the belief in liberty and equality on both sides of the Atlantic. However, it was homegrown abolitionists who lived in Britain that helped to transform the narrative. British Quakers, as well as middle-class and working-class women’s groups, were the primary allies in the fight to abolish slavery. At the center of the abolitionist movement, however, were former slaves themselves. They organized groups and spoke in public about the evils of slavery. They also petitioned Parliament to end the slave trade and abolish slavery altogether.
The efforts of the British abolitionists finally bore fruit when the Parliament passed the Abolition of Slave Trade Act in 1807. The Act forbade British ships from transporting slaves, as well as imposed a fine on ship captains who broke the law. (Several ship captains conveniently ignored the law since slave trade was lucrative). Plantation owners, merchants, and other people whose livelihood depended on the exploitation of slaves met the passage of the Act with resistance, but to no avail. Although the law only abolished the slave trade in the British colonies, it did not abolish slavery itself. This only pushed the abolitionists to work harder to help the slaves attain their freedom.
Prelude to Freedom
William Wilberforce was an English politician who represented the abolitionists in Parliament.
The slave rebellions in British Guiana and Jamaica accelerated the end of the slavery in the West Indies. In 1823, rumors of emancipation reached a group of slaves working in the Demerara region of British Guiana. Upon hearing the news, they demanded that their masters grant them freedom immediately. Their owners, however, denied the news of emancipation. It soon became a rebellion, and 13,000 slaves soon joined in the uprising. The rebellion was brutally crushed. The leaders of the Demerara Rebellion were executed, while the rest remained in slavery.
It was the death of the missionary John Smith in British Guiana that galvanized the abolitionist movement in Britain. John Smith ministered primarily to slaves in the Demerara’s ‘Le Resouvenir’ plantation. The authorities soon linked his name to the uprising and accused him of inciting the slaves to rebel. He was convicted and sentenced to hang but was saved when the sentence was commuted to imprisonment. Unfortunately, he died of pneumonia while in prison. The British authorities hurriedly buried him in an unmarked grave in the early morning hours so as not to arouse the anger of the slaves. But news of the “Demerara martyr” soon reached England and outraged the public. In the same year, British newspapers and the Parliament were flooded with condemnation of Reverend Smith’s death. Concerned groups also petitioned Parliament to pass laws that would protect the slaves and the missionaries who ministered to them.
The British colony of Jamaica was not a stranger to slave rebellions. Slave uprisings flared every now and then, but the rebellion which rocked it in 1831 was the largest one yet. It started with a peaceful protest, but soon snowballed into riot and destruction. It was eventually subdued, but not before a number of whites and hundreds of black slaves lost their lives. Samuel Sharpe and other leaders of the rebellion were sentenced to death. Not only did the brutality of the rebellion shock England, but it also made the plantation owners realize that it was only a matter of time before another uprising would destroy their properties. They decided to accept the inevitable and cut their losses by agreeing to the passage of laws that would eventually end slavery.
Britain Finally Ends Slavery in the West Indies
British abolitionists continued to speak out against and write about slavery between 1823 and 1833. They published and distributed literature which greatly influenced the public’s opinion on slavery. Prominent Quakers, such as William Wilberforce and Thomas Fowell Buxton, represented the abolitionists in the Parliament. Buxton himself managed to get 1.5 million signatures on his petition to end slavery in the British Empire. His efforts to set the slaves free, however, encountered great resistance from merchants, planters, and members of Parliament who were sometimes plantation owners themselves.
The tide against slavery finally turned in 1833. The Whigs (composed largely of members of the middle class) dominated the House of Commons after the Great Reform Act of 1832. The proslavery lobby pushed back by arguing that slavery was crucial to the prosperity of the West Indies and the British Empire.
The Colonial Secretary Edward Smith-Stanley penned a new proposal in an attempt to find a win-win solution to the issue. The MPs debated the secretary’s proposal in the Parliament, but the terms proved unacceptable to both sides. After a period of negotiation and debate, both sides finally found the terms acceptable in summer of 1833. The Abolition of Slavery Act (also known as British Emancipation Act) was finally approved on August 28, 1833. The law finally became effective on August 1, 1834. The government compensated former slave owners for their loss, while emancipated slaves spent many years as “apprentices” to “prepare” them for their new life.
From 1899 to 1902, the British Empire fought the two Boer states (the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic) in what would be known as the Second Boer War. After suffering humiliating defeats at the hands of the Boer forces in late 1899, the British army came roaring back and destroyed their defenses. Brutal and relentless on the battlefield, the British commander Lord Kitchener gained notoriety byapplying the “scorched earth” tactic on the Boer properties and by establishing one of the first concentration camps of the 20th century. The deliberate neglect of the concentration camps killed thousands of Boer women and children, as well as the indigenous South Africans who were forced into similar camps. These events are recorded on the Biblical Timeline with World History during this time.
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The First Boer War: The Quest for Land, Diamonds, and Gold (1880-1881)
Britain completely took over Cape Colony after the Convention of London in 1814. The British occupation drove the remaining Boer settlers to leave the Cape and make the “Great Trek” into Basutoland (modern Lesotho) and the Zulu territory. Some of the Boer settlers established the Orange Free State in the early 19th century. The State’s independence was formally recognized by Britain in 1854. A separate group of settlers created the independent Transvaal (South African Republic) which later received recognition in 1856. All of this, however, was accomplished at the expense of South Africa’s indigenous people.
The British government was content to leave the Afrikaners alone until the discovery of diamond mines at Kimberley near the Orange Free State in 1867. Uitlanders (mostly British settlers) flocked to the area to try their luck in the mines. More uitlanders migrated to the Afrikaner-held areas when gold mines were discovered in Transvaal in 1872. The Afrikaners, however, disdained these new migrants. Uitlanders lived and mined alongside the Afrikaners, but it did not mean that Boer government was obligated to grant them their rights.
The abundance of diamond and gold (as well as the “plight” of the uitlanders) made British intervention in the Afrikaner states seem inevitable. The British authorities first needed a solid reason to intervene. The Afrikaner governments themselves were not only torn in internal disputes but were also involved in long-running armed conflicts with the natives. The British colonial government reasoned that the hostility between the Afrikaners and the blacks endangered its territory, so the authorities used it as a pretext to finally annex Transvaal in 1877.
The Afrikaners hated the interference, so they rebelled and declared war on Britain (First Boer War) in 1880. They managed to overpower British troops so that the Cape Colony government was forced to sue for peace in the following year. Guns were finally silenced when representatives of the Afrikaners and the British government signed the Treaty of Pretoria in 1881.
It wasn’t long until greed overrode the fragile peace that the Afrikaners and the British forged in 1881. Cecil Rhodes, owner of the De Beers Consolidated Mines at Kimberley and later Prime Minister of Cape Colony, rose to become one of the wealthiest and influential men in the region. After annexing Zimbabwe, he soon dreamed of a British trans-African railway which spanned from Cairo to the Cape.
Unfortunately for Rhodes, the presence of the Afrikaner states stood in the way of his ambitious project. He tried to undermine the Afrikaner government by fomenting unrest among the discontented (mostly British) uitlanders in Transvaal. In 1895, he sent soldiers to Transvaal to conduct the Jameson Raid. The raid was a failure, and the embarrassment led Rhodes to resign as Prime Minister. His successor, Governor Alfred Milner, continued Rhodes’ work and encouraged the uitlanders to urge the Transvaal government for the right to vote. In 1899, the frustrated uitlanders finally appealed to the British government to intervene. The Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic responded by declaring a renewed war on Britain on October 12, 1899. So began the Second Boer War.
Second Boer War (1899-1902)
Herbert Kitchener was the commander in chief of the British Army during the latter half of the Second Boer War.
Though vastly outnumbered by their enemies, the Afrikaner soldiers were adequately armed and knew the landscape well. They managed to route the British troops during the early phases of the war in 1899. Between the 10th and 17th of December (also known as the Black Week), the British troops were decimated in three separate encounters with the Boers at Colenso, Magersfontein, and Stormberg. The Boer troops also inflicted an embarrassing and heartbreaking defeat to the British at Spion Kop in January 1900.
The British government sent additional troops to South Africa after the devastating fiasco of Spion Kop. By the middle of the year, Britain had already reversed its losses. The British reinforcements finally forced the Afrikaner commander Louis Botha and his troops to surrender in September 1900. The rest of the Boer army, on the other hand, was forced to resort to guerrilla warfare. Some guerrillas became involved in sabotaging British communication lines, as well as railways that transported supplies to its troops.
The sabotage enraged Lord Kitchener, the ruthless commander-in-chief of the British troops in South Africa. To punish the Boers, he ordered his troops to blow up the houses of the farmers and burn their crops. Herds of animals owners by Boers were senselessly slaughtered. Rape was also used by British troops to further punish Boer women. After the senseless destruction, Kitchener ordered his soldiers to round up Boer elders, women, and children and herd them all together in a concentration camp.
The British authorities deliberately neglected the prisoners so that thousands of Boers interred inside the camps died of diseases and starvation in 1900. News of the dire conditions of the concentration camps trickled to the international community. Britain was later shamed into improving the condition of the camps, thereby reducing the number of deaths until the end of the war in 1902.
Black South Africans employed by Boers as farmhands or servants sometimes fought against the British during the course of the war. Their families were also put in separate concentration camps where conditions were even worse than those of the Boers. The death toll in the black concentration camps was also high.
The Boers knew that they could not conduct a war of attrition, and they were finally forced to lay down their arms in May 1902. Representatives of both sides met at Pretoria to sign the Treaty of Vereeniging on May 31, 1902. After nearly a century of resistance, the Afrikaners were finally forced to accept British sovereignty. In exchange, Britain allowed her Afrikaner subjects the right to govern themselves and create their own laws. As part of the compromise and due to fear of provoking another Boer rebellion, the British colonial government conveniently overlooked any issues the blacks might have had during the negotiations.
The Zulus rose to prominence during the reign of King Shaka (1818-1828). He lived his early years in exile but became strong enough to wrest the crown from his half-brother. After organizing the Zulu government, he transformed the Zulu army and led it into battle against neighboring tribes. Although he later became a tyrant, Shaka is still revered in present-day South Africa as one of its greatest heroes. These events are recorded on the Biblical Timeline with World History during that time period.
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The great Zulu king Shaka was born between 1781 and 1787 in present-day KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. He was the son of the Nguni chief Senzangakhona. His mother was Nandi, a girl from the Langeni tribe. Shaka’s grandmother and the Langeni tribe attempted to conceal Nandi’s pregnancy and childbirth from Senzangakhona by telling him that she suffered from an intestinal bug or “itshati.” (The name evolved to “shaka” which also meant “early pregnancy” or “ax.”) Eventually, Senzangakhona heard of Shaka’s existence, so he immediately set out to kill the child. A Zulu man named Mudli took the child and his mother out of the chieftain’s reach and sent them into exile to save their lives.
In another version, Nandi was Senzangakhona’s secondary wife. It was rumored that she possessed a fiery temper which displeased the Zulu royal court. She and her son were driven out of Zulu land and was forced to live with the Langeni. Mother and son, however, were considered outsiders by their own people. Despite being a prince, the children of the Langeni bullied him. This only gave Shaka the motivation to work hard and become more powerful.
In his youth, he served in the army of Dingiswayo, the powerful chief of the Mthethwa state. He found favor with Dingiswayo for his strength and heroism on the battlefield. Senzangakhona died in 1816, and his son, Sigujana, acceded the throne. Shaka now saw his chance to take the Zulu throne. With the support of his half-brother Ngwadi and his overlord Dingiswayo, he assassinated Sigujana and crowned himself the new chieftain of the Zulu in 1816.
As King of the Zulu
An 1824 impression of King Shaka by a European artist.
Shaka immediately overhauled the Zulu army when he gained the throne. During his service in Dingiswayo’s army, he saw how ineffective the assegais (long throwing spears) were in combats with large armies. He replaced the weapon with a shorter stabbing spear and retained the use of the large Nguni shields.
Shaka also maintained a large standing army by requiring his vassals to send their men to his royal household. These soldiers would stay in barracks and could be quickly summoned whenever an enemy threatened the Zulu. With their troops under his command, Shaka ensured his rivals would not be able to launch rebellions and coups.
He also realized that the way the Zulu army engaged in combat was disorderly, so he introduced a new tactical formation called the “buffalo horns.” He placed the majority of the army at the center or the “chest.” Two separate columns then flanked the chest in a formation that resembled a cow’s horns. The “horns” would close in on the enemy until the “tips” meet in a circle. This was the signal for the “chest” to attack the enemy. The men assigned to be the army’s “loins” would sit with their backs to the battlefield, and would only be summoned as reinforcements to the tired men who made up the “chest” and “horns.”
Shaka, the Empire Builder
In 1817, his mentor Dingiswayo died in a battle against Zwide, the chieftain of Ndwandwe. Shaka saw this as an opportunity to bring the Mthethwa people under his wings and absorb the tribe’s troops into his army. He and the Zulu army fought Zwide and Ndwandwe troops in the Battle of Gqokli Hill in 1818. The Zulu troops routed Zwide’s army, but the fight was not yet over. Zwide assembled a bigger army and prepared to fight Shaka once again.
Shaka knew that his army was no match for Zwide larger one. He waged a war with the Qwabe tribe with the intention of bringing them into his fold. After successfully routing them, he added their remaining troops to the Zulu ranks.
In February 1818, the Zulu troops faced the more formidable Ndwandwe army once again. This time the Zulu’s discipline and tactics proved much superior to those of the Ndwandwe, and they proceeded to decimate the enemy. Zwide barely escaped with his life, and his people were forced to flee to Mozambique after their defeat. The refugees joined the former Ndwandwe General Soshangane to form the Gaza Empire later on.
Other Conquests and Trade with the Portuguese and English
From 1818 onwards, the Zulu people continued their conquests of neighboring tribes until the Zulu state became an empire. Weaker tribes who could not afford to go to war would often declare him as their sovereign. By the 1820s, the Zulu Empire had managed to conquer the Sotho, Swazi, and Tsonga peoples.
The Zulu people under Shaka traded with the Portuguese at Maputo (Lourenco Marques) in present-day Mozambique. They also acquired guns from English traders at Durban (Port Natal) and allowed English traders to visit the Zulu royal court.
Shaka’s Deterioration and Death
Shaka’s empire was built at the expense of the neighboring tribes, so it was only natural that his enemies would want to have him killed in revenge. In 1824, Ndwandwe men traveled to Shaka’s court and stabbed him. The king was saved after his guest, the English trader Henry Francis Fynn, dressed his wound.
Zwide, Shaka’s mortal enemy, died in 1825. He was succeeded by Sikhunyana who then tried to rally the remnants of the Ndwandwe army to attack the Zulu. The revamped Ndwandwe army, however, was defeated despite its adoption of Zulu strategies.
Shaka’s mother Nandi died in 1828, and he soon became a tyrant to his people because of his grief. His mental state deteriorated further after a failed embassy to the British governor of Cape Colony. He then launched another campaign against General Soshagane’s people, but stayed behind and allowed his troops to push the refugees further north without him at the helm. The Zulus won the battle but made no substantial gains.
It was during this time that his half-brothers, Dingane and Mhlangana, started to plot against him. While the army was busy decimating Soshagane’s people, Shaka’s brothers stabbed him to death. Dingane then killed Mhlangana so he alone could rule the powerful Zulu Empire.
In 1789, the book entitled “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African” was published. Penned by the freedman Olaudah Equiano himself, the book was part travelogue and part autobiography. When distilled, however, the book was a searing condemnation of slavery and the British Empire’s part in the slave trade.
The indomitable Equiano himself went on a tour of Britain, Scotland, and Ireland between 1789 and 1791 to promote his book. It became a bestseller and soon inspired the growing abolitionist movement in England. Together with the anti-slavery group Sons of Africa, Equiano and other black activists intensified their lobbying against slavery in the British Parliament.
Despite the hardships he experienced, Equiano’s story had a happy ending. His marriage to Susanna Cullen of Cambridgeshire produced two daughters. His book went on to have several editions and later translated into several languages. Equiano was one of the wealthier Englishmen when he died in 1797. He, however, did not live long enough to see his book’s impact on the abolitionist movement. Britain finally passed the Act for the Abolition of Slavery in 1833. These events are recorded on the Bible Timeline with World History during that time period.
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Olaudah Equiano was born in 1745 in present-day Igboland region of Nigeria. Olaudah in the Igbo language “signifies vicissitude or fortune also, one favoured, and having a loud voice and well spoken.” His father was one of the “embrence” (chieftain or elder) under the suzerainty of the distant king of Benin. He had several siblings and was very close to his sister.
He was also close to his mother, and he sometimes accompanied her to the market as a child to trade with a neighboring people called “oyibo.” Their peoples often traded food, but there were instances when he saw slaves being traded in the market. These slaves were often prisoners of war or were convicted of crimes.
His parents and the other adults were working in the fields when some men came to their village and kidnapped some children, including the eleven-year-old Olaudah and his sister. It was the last time Olaudah would see his village or family again. To his grief, the kidnappers separated him and his sister. He was sold to the chief of another village where he worked as a servant for some time before he was sold again.
Olaudah was briefly reunited with his sister when he and the slave traders arrived at the Atlantic coast. The reunion was shortlived as he and his sister were separated by the traders once again. The slave traders brought him to a place called Tinmah and sold him to a wealthy widow. The widow and her young son treated him as if he was one of their own, but his time with them did not last long. The slave traders suddenly uprooted him again and passed the child from one slave trader to another.
After six or seven months, Olaudah was forced to board a slave ship bound for the West Indies. It was the first time the boy had seen white men who then crammed him and other slaves inside the ship’s hold. He and the other slaves were then transported to the West Indies in a dangerous journey across the Atlantic called the Middle Passage. The young Olaudah was chained together with other prisoners inside the foul smelling and densely packed hold. During the course of the journey, the boy once gave in to despair and refused to eat, but the slave traders flogged and force-fed him as punishment. Other slaves became sick and later died because of starvation and the unhygienic conditions of the hold.
Olaudah noticed the crew use a mariner’s quadrant during the few times he was allowed on deck for some fresh air. The seamen, in a fit of benevolence, showed him how to use it. The boy was astonished by what he saw and considered it a magical device. Little did he know that his interest in the mariner’s quadrant would change his life later on.
After several weeks at sea, the slaves disembarked at Bridgetown in Barbados. Plantation owners and merchants flocked to the port to check and buy the slaves. Some buyers often picked and chose among the slaves, so that mothers were sometimes separated from their children, wives torn from husbands, or siblings separated from each other.
Olaudah and those who were not fit for sale were forced to board a sloop bound for North America. When they arrived in Virginia, the boy was brought to the plantation of a man named Mr. Campbell. The new master soon changed his name from “Olaudah” to “Jacob.” After working for some time in Virginia, he was sold to Henry Pascal, the captain of a British trade ship and an officer in the royal navy. After bringing the boy to his ship, Pascal ordered his crew to sail back to England. Olaudah spent the next few years as Pascal’s personal servant.
On a whim, Pascal gave the boy a new name. He called Olaudah “Gustavus Vassa” after the great 17th-century Swedish king. Olaudah refused to answer when Pascal called him by the name and insisted that his new master call him by the name “Jacob.” Pascal responded by hitting him.
The journey across the Atlantic was long and rough, but the crew’s mistreatment of Olaudah made it more difficult. A boy named Richard Baker later befriended him, making the voyage more bearable. Richard (or Dick as he was called by the crew) became the boy’s interpreter, and Olaudah learned more of the English language because of him.
Olaudah became curious after he saw Dick and Pascal reading books. With his curiosity piqued, he took a book and proceeded to “talk[ed] to it, and then put my ears to it, when alone, in hopes it would answer me; and I have been very much concerned when I found it remained silent.”
They arrived in Falmouth, England in spring of 1757. During the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), Olaudah accompanied Pascal (who recently returned to the navy) to Guernsey, Holland, Scotland, the Orkneys, Turkey, and the coast of France. He was not a part of the English navy, but his mere presence in Pascal’s ship compelled him to help the crew during naval engagements with the French.
During a trip to London, Pascal left Olaudah under the care of his relatives, the Misses Guerins. The sisters showered him with kindness and became his first instructors in Christianity. They taught him how to read and write, but supplemented it by sending him to school. The boy later asked them to allow him to be baptized. They agreed to his suggestion, and he was baptized in St. Margaret’s Church in Westminster in 1759.
He accompanied Pascal to the American colonies before sailing to Cape Breton in 1758. They returned to Europe after the successful siege of Louisbourg (Nova Scotia) but was grief-stricken when he learned of Dick’s death in 1759. In 1761, the crew sailed to Gibraltar but soon went back to the Atlantic coast to capture Belle-Isle. By the end of the war in 1763, the 18-year-old Olaudah was already a battle-hardened veteran.
Olaudah and his friends fully expected for Pascal to set him free now that the war was over. When they arrived in England, however, Pascal informed him that he had been sold to a Captain James Doran. The young man protested, saying that he had served Pascal faithfully and that his master had taken whatever meager salary he was supposed to receive. Besides, he was already baptized as a Christian, so no one had the right to sell him. However, the protests fell on deaf ears, and he was forced to make a new voyage across the Atlantic not unlike to the one he took in 1756.
Captain Doran’s ship took him to Montserrat where he was then sold to a Quaker merchant, the kind and humane Robert King. Olaudah initially worked odd jobs for King, but King elevated him to the position of a clerk when his master realized that he had someone capable and talented in his hands. For the next three years, he became King’s most trusted slave.
Olaudah saw for himself how fellow slaves were treated in the West Indies. In St. Kitts, for example, he saw that it was common “for the slaves to be branded with the initial letters of their master’s name; and a load of heavy iron hooks hung about their necks. Indeed on the most trifling occasions they were loaded with chains; and often instruments of torture were added. The iron muzzle, thumb-screws, etc. are so well known, as not to need a description, and were sometimes applied for the slightest faults. I have seen a negro beaten till some of his bones were broken, for even letting a pot boil over.”
They did backbreaking work for long hours in return for measly wages. Masters sometimes purchased slaves and rented them out to plantation owners, but tended to withhold the slaves’ wages the plantation owners paid them. Those who dared complain about this would be beaten or flogged. Robert King, a staunch Quaker, earned the goodwill of the other slaves when he himself fed them when their masters would not.
Any property a slave possessed was fair game for the West Indies white elites. Olaudah once heard of a slave who was able to buy a boat after saving up money from his meager wages. The governor, however, seized the boat without giving the slave compensation. The slave later complained to his master, but to no avail. Olaudah sense of justice was later satisfied when he learned that the governor died in the King’s Bench in England… in great poverty.” Equiano’s Narrative contains more harrowing accounts about the life of slaves in the West Indies. His firsthand experience with slavery had a profound effect on his spirituality and pushed him to be involved in England’s abolitionist movement.
He was later loaned out to Captain Thomas Farmer as a sailor. Olaudah started trading fruits and other merchandise while traveling as a sailor in the West Indies and the American east coast. He started with a capital of three pence but managed to save his earnings from his small enterprise. Robert King had remarked to Olaudah that he would set him free if he came up with 40 pounds sterling. King’s promise of freedom only motivated him to work harder.
Second Volume
By 1764, Olaudah had saved as much as 47 pounds sterling from trading in the islands of West Indies and the American east coast. He approached King when he went back to Montserrat and to his master’s surprise, handed him the 40 pounds sterling he had saved up. He asked King to grant him his freedom, but King loathed to let a talented worker go. With the help of Captain Farmer, he eventually convinced his master to grant him his freedom and release his manumission papers. Despite King’s protests, Olaudah left Montserrat and sailed all over the West Indies and North American east coast again. Captain Farmer, however, died at sea before Olaudah sailed for England.
Upon Captain Farmer’s death, Olaudah continued his adventures in the Americas when he joined Captain William Phillips’ crew. He visited Savannah, Georgia, but did not stay long when a couple of hostile white patrollers tried to kidnap him and send him back to slavery. Luckily, he was able to bluff his way out of the kidnapping. He then went back to Montserrat to say goodbye to Robert King before sailing for London. He immediately visited the elderly Guerin sisters to thank them for their kindness.
He found that living in London was not as easy as he envisioned. He could not find work, so he apprenticed as a hairdresser under Dr. Charles Irving. He worked as a steward and hair-dresser to the captains of ships bound for Montserrat and Turkey. He later joined a voyage to the Arctic with Dr. Irving in 1773 where they trapped in ice for eleven days.
The Arctic incident made him grateful for God’s mercy. When he returned to London, he immediately pushed himself “to seek the Lord with full purpose of heart ere it was too late” and become a” first-rate Christian.” He “shopped” around for a church where he could join and began reading the Bible earnestly. He continued to work as a steward, but his spiritual crisis deepened during a voyage to Spain where he claimed to have seen a religious vision. This vision had a profound effect on his life, and he went back to London a transformed man.
Olaudah met Dr. Irving once again and agreed to accompany him to Jamaica’s Miskito Coast to establish a plantation. He worked as Irving’s overseer, but his heart yearned for cosmopolitan London. After some resistance on Irving’s part, they finally parted ways amicably in 1776. He secured a passage first to Jamaica on board a sloop, but Hughes, the vessel’s captain, tried to kidnap him on the way. Olaudah, however, was lucky enough to escape and reach England several months later.
He was already tired of seafaring, but there was no work available for a man like him in England. During this period, he became involved with the Sons of Africa, an anti-slavery group whose members were former slaves. They spoke out against slavery and lobbied in Parliament to end the enterprise.
In November 1786, Olaudah became the commissary of the British slave repatriation expedition bound for Sierra Leone. He quickly lost his enthusiasm for the job when he witnessed the ineptitude and abuses of the British leaders of the expedition. He tried to intervene, but the authorities fired him as a result. He went back to London, wrote to Queen Charlotte, and asked for her support for the abolitionist movement. Olaudah ended his narrative with his views on slavery and how he became involved in England’s abolitionist movement.
References:
Picture by: Unknown – Project Gutenberg eText 15399 – http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/15399Author: Uploader: User Tagishsimon on en.wikipedia; description page is (was) here* 01:52, 17 April 2005 [[:en:User:Tagishsimon|Tagishsimon]] 455×700 (50,997 bytes) <span class=”comment”>([[:en:Olaudah Equiano]] – [[:en:Project Gutenberg]] eText 15399.png From http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/15399 {{PD}})</span>, Public Domain, Link
Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings. Edited by Vincent Carretta. London: Penguin, 2003.
Equiano, O. (2005). The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African, by Olaudah Equiano. [online] Project Gutenberg. Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15399/15399-h/15399-h.htm [Accessed 20 Nov. 2017].
The Republic of Haiti was founded in 1804 after a series of bloody revolts against the oppressive rule of the French colonists. The Haitian Revolution (1791) came close on the heels the French Revolution (1789) and was led by mulatto and black leaders. After a long and bloody struggle for freedom, the Haitians finally drove the French off the island and succeeded in establishing the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere. These events are recorded on the Bible Timeline Chart with World History during that time.
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The Taínos (Antillean Arawaks) were the first people Christopher Columbus and his crew encountered when they landed in Haiti in 1492. The Spaniards later renamed the island Hispaniola and established mines and farms in the area during the early 16th century. The colonists forced the Taíno people to provide cheap (in most cases, free) labor in their mines and fields.
The backbreaking work and their lack of immunity to Old World diseases, however, decimated the indigenous people. By the early 1500s, many of Hispaniola Taínos had died out and the Spanish authorities were faced with a serious labor shortage. The thriving transatlantic slave trade presented the Spaniards with a handy solution to this problem. Beginning in 1517, thousands of slaves were shipped from West Africa to Hispaniola to fill in the labor shortage.
The Spanish Empire, however, started to crumble during the early 17th century, resulting in the government authorities’ neglect of Hispaniola. This allowed the French to slowly encroach upon the island. They first landed on the island of Tortuga on Hispaniola’s northwest tip. In 1659, the French had established a permanent settlement on Tortuga. They then crossed to the northwest part of Hispaniola mainland during the latter part of the 1600s.
By the 1670s, the French colonists had already established Cap-Haïtien as its largest settlement on the island. These early colonists established coffee, sugar, cotton, cocoa, and indigo plantations. Like the Spaniards, the French used slave labor to plant, cultivate, and harvest crops.
Near the end of the Nine Years’ War in 1695, several European nations signed the Treaty of Ryswick which divided the island of Hispaniola between Spain and France. Spain received the eastern part of the island which it renamed Santo Domingo. France, meanwhile, received the western part which it renamed Saint Domingue.
Social Stratification and Slavery in Saint Domingue
In Saint Domingue, French plantation owners and other elites (grand blancs) claimed superiority above everyone else. A number of plantation owners sexually abused their black female slaves, and the result of these assaults (or in some cases, consensual liaisons) were the gens de couleur or mulattoes. Their white fathers often freed their mixed-race children, and sometimes granted them properties and sent them to France to study. Below the gens de couleur in status were the impoverished or convicted whites (petit blancs) who were sent to the colony as servants or laborers. The grand blancs looked down on the petit blancs and often treated them with contempt equal to the black slaves. At the bottom of the hierarchy were the noirs or black slaves who worked as domestic servants or laborers. They also made up the bulk of Saint Domingue’s population.
Life as a black slave in Saint Domingue was hellish. Healthier and able-bodied men and women bore the brunt of the hard tasks in the fields. Pregnant women, nursing mothers, and those who just arrived from the Middle Passage were given lighter tasks. Work started at 5 in the morning and was broken at intervals so the slaves could eat and rest. Work continued until the sun sets, and the slaves when they were sent to meager dinners. In some cases, sugarcane plantation owners forced their slaves to wear masks to prevent them from eating the cane they harvested. Some masters felt that they should not be responsible for feeding their workers, so they sometimes allocated small plots of land so that their slaves could grow their own food. Managers and foremen supervised the slaves and were ready to whip those who took a break from the grueling work. Some slaves fled to the mountains to escape the spirit-breaking work at the plantations. These escaped slaves (later called Maroons) often mixed with the few remaining Taínos in the mountains.
The mulattoes, too, had their grievances against the system. They initially enjoyed the freedom and privileges of the elites, but the whites later became worried that they might be overpowered when the number of gens de couleur increased. To this end, the whites slowly curtailed the freedom and privileges of the Saint Domingue mulattoes. Segregation in public spaces became a policy. Gens de couleur were forbidden marry white men and women, as well as insult or harm them. Carrying arms was also strictly prohibited.
The privileges enjoyed by the white elite caused great resentment among the poor whites, the mulattoes, and the African slaves. It was only a matter of time before this resentment would boil over and upend the French dominance in the island.
The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)
François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture had an important leadership role in the Haitian Revolution.
News of the success of the French Revolution during the spring of 1789 quickly reached Saint Domingue. The mulattoes, led by Vincent Ogé, hoped that the Revolution’s motto “liberty, equality, fraternity” also applied to them. The colonial government, however, thought otherwise. The French authorities knew that if they granted rights to the mulattoes, they would also be compelled to grant the same rights to the slaves. The prosperity of the island hinged on the exploitation of the black slaves, so setting them free was out of the question. Vincent Ogé led the disaffected mulattoes in a rebellion, but it was quickly crushed by the colonial authorities. His execution outraged both the National Assembly in France and the black slaves of Saint Domingue.
In 1791, a number of black slaves started attending meetings led by the Vodou priest Dutty Boukman. These night meetings were disguised as Vodou rituals to escape the notice of the French authorities. On August 22 of the same year, Dutty Boukman and his rebel forces launched brutal attacks against their white masters. They burned down plantations and massacred their white masters along with their wives and children. Thousands of French plantation owners died in 1791 alone, while those who survived fled Saint Domingue for France. Mulattoes soon joined the rebellion against the whites, but would sometimes turn against the blacks. Peace was finally restored when the French government sent reinforcements in 1792. In his eagerness to address the island’s problem, the colonial commissioner and abolitionist Léger-Félicité Sonthonax declared the abolishment of slavery in 1793 without the knowledge of the National Assembly.
Spain and Britain soon stepped in to take advantage of the chaos, and (along with the French) made separate alliances with black and mulatto rebel leaders. The black leader François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, however, successfully used the tangled alliances to his advantage beginning in 1793. His rival to the south, the mulatto rebel leader André Rigaud, also made alliances with colonial powers but was less popular because of his insistence to keep slavery the status quo. The French authorities, on the other hand, tried to weaken the rebel forces by pitting the blacks and the mulattoes against each other. This only served as kindling to the civil war that eventually engulfed the colony.
In 1799, the black forces led by Toussaint Louverture and the mulatto régiment led by Rigaud faced off in the War of the Knives. Toussaint Louverture’s troops were able to rout Rigaud’s. By the end of the war, around 10,000 mulatto lives were extinguished. Rigaud and other mulatto leaders fled to France upon their defeat.
With the French colonialists and Rigaud out of the way, Toussaint Louverture was free to establish a new Saint Domingue government with him at the helm. His regime tried to modernize the island and improve its economy, but he and his cronies proved to be just as corrupt as the French. His military cronies became the new plantation owners. The implemented the fermage system which initially improved the condition of the workers but later proved to be slavery in all but name. To his people’s dismay, Toussaint Louverture’s regime became as oppressive and tyrannical. In response, disaffected blacks and mulattoes took up arms and launched an uprising in 1801. The uprising, however, was quickly crushed by Toussaint Louverture and his troops.
In February 1802, Charles-Victor-Emmanuel Leclerc, Rigaud, and 21,000 French troops landed in Saint Domingue. They had been sent by Leclerc’s brother-in-law, Napoleon Bonaparte, to retake the island. Toussaint Louverture knew that his troops were no match for the French, so he retreated to the mountains with his forces. They burned fields and massacred white civilians as they made their retreat. Toussaint Louverture later tried to sue for peace, but he was arrested during a meeting and was soon shipped as a prisoner to France in exile. He died in France in 1803.
Nature was the blacks’ and mulattoes’ best ally against the French. One by one, Leclerc’s soldiers died of yellow fever until he himself succumbed to the disease in October 1802. He was succeeded by the tyrannical General de Rochambeau who wanted to reinstate the unequal system of the French colonial government. This united Toussaint Louverture’s black general Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Rigaud’s mulatto supporter Alexandre Sabès Pétion against Rochambeau. In 1803, their combined black and mulatto forces defeated the French and successfully drove them out of the island.
In January 1804, Dessalines declared Saint Domingue independent and soon reverted the island’s Taíno name Haiti. Haiti was the first independent black state in the Americas. Its constitution was ratified in the following year. Violence, however, continued as blacks and mulattoes took part in the massacre of the few remaining French settlers of the island.
References:
Picture by: Unknown – NYPL Digital Gallery, Public Domain, Link
Collier, Simon, Thomas E. Skidmore, and Harold Blakemore, eds. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Latin America and the Caribbean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Fagg, John Edwin. Cuba, Haïti, & the Dominican Republic. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1965.
Girard, Philippe. Haiti: The Tumultuous History – From Pearl of the Caribbean to Broken Nation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
John Wycliffe was a 14th-century English scholar, theologian, professor, and reformer. He is considered as one of the first reformers of the Church during the Late Medieval Period. He studied at Oxford and was known as a brilliant teacher and writer. John Wycliffe’s criticism of the policies of the Avignon popes was useful to the powerful Duke of Lancaster. Pope Gregory XI later condemned John Wycliffe’s beliefs as heresies in a papal bull in 1377 and forbade him to preach them any longer. He translated the Latin Vulgate Bible into Middle English with his friends during the last years of his life. John Wycliffe, the “Morning Star of the Reformation,” died in 1384. These events are recorded on the Biblical Timeline Chart with World History during that time.
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John Wycliffe was born in 1324 or 1329 in the village of Hipswell in North Riding of Yorkshire. He came from a well-to-do family who lived in the village of Wycliffe-on-Tees in Yorkshire. Little is known about his life as a boy, but he was one of the fortunate ones who survived the Black Death. His family had enough money to send him to Oxford during the mid-1330s. It was said that he studied either at the Queen’s College, Merton College, or Balliol College in Oxford. However, it is mostly likely that he attended Merton or Balliol College.
It was in Oxford that he learned logic, philosophy, canon and civil law, mathematics, and theology. He became fluent in Latin—a skill that came in handy when he translated the Bible during the later years of his life. He became the Master of Balliol College in 1360. Wycliffe left the job to serve as a vicar of Fillingham in 1361 and returned to Oxford to study again in 1363 and 1368. He received his bachelor’s degree in divinity in 1369 and finally became a doctor of theology in 1372.
While serving as a vicar of Fillingham, John Wycliffe requested the papal court in Avignon to provide him with additional allowance (prebend). Pope Gregory XI, however, did not grant this request and this rejection became the early source of his resentment of the papacy. In 1374, John Wycliffe served at the rectory of Lutterworth after his appointment by Edward III.
Wycliffe’s Politics and Criticism of the Avignon Papacy
John Wycliffe advocated for the Bible to be translated into the vernacular.
King Edward sent John Wycliffe as one of England’s envoys who would settle the conflict with the papal legates in Bruges in 1374. The conflict stemmed from the Statute of Provisors which was passed by the English Parliament in 1351. The king had the right to appoint provisors (deputy clerics) to a benefice (rectory, vicarage, or curacy) even when it was not yet vacant. Before 1351, the pope could also appoint provisors, and his right to appoint them even overrode the king’s. The English resented this as many provisors appointed by the pope did not even live in England.
The fact that the pope was French and was entirely dependent on the French king during the Hundred Years’ War made matters worse. The Parliament was also worried that the charitable works were being neglected even if the money came from the English tithes. The negotiations in Bruges between the English envoys of Edward III and the papal legates failed. John Wycliffe became the rector of Lutterworth parish after the unsuccessful negotiations in Bruges.
Perhaps it was in Flanders that John Wycliffe met the Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt (Ghent). The Duke of Lancaster knew that Wycliffe was supportive of the English nobility, so he used it to advance his political ambitions. When he came back to England, John Wycliffe started to preach against the abuses of power within the Catholic Church.
It seemed to those who were present during his appearance in Parliament in 1371 that John Wycliffe supported the government’s plan of seizing church properties whenever necessary. He also encouraged the English government to keep the revenues within the realm which undoubtedly pleased John of Gaunt. Wycliffe also wrote tracts and articles that condemned some doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church. His criticism of the Church made the English bishops uncomfortable, so they convinced the Archbishop of Canterbury to interfere.
King Edward III died in 1377, and he was succeeded by his young grandson Richard II. As the new king was still a boy, the unpopular Duke of Lancaster became his regent. The Hundred Years’ War with France still raged on in the continent, and the English treasury was drained. To add funds to the crown’s treasury, John of Gaunt introduced a poll tax. Everyone—from the peasants to the clergymen—was required to pay one groat (a silver coin) to fund a prolonged war. The poll tax made the unpopular duke one of the most hated men in England. It did not help John Wycliffe that the duke was his supporter.
William Courtenay, the Archbishop of Canterbury and an enemy of the Duke, summoned Wycliffe to St. Paul’s Cathedral because of the ideas that he preached. He was escorted in Canterbury by John of Gaunt, Lord Percy and some friars from Oxford. Many residents of London were also present to witness the event. It was a fiasco. The discussion became a shouting match between Wycliffe’s supporters and enemies. It descended into a brawl, and John of Gaunt had to flee for his life.
The “Heretic”
On May 22, 1377, the pope sent bulls condemning John Wycliffe and his teachings. Wycliffe was imprisoned in the Black Hall at Oxford after the papal bulls reached the university. He was released later, but he was ordered to appear at the Lambeth Palace in 1378 to defend himself. Some residents of London who sympathized with Wycliffe interrupted the proceedings. The Queen Mother herself did not allow the bishops to do anything harsh against Wycliffe. The Archbishop called for a second trial, but the council followed the Queen Mother orders and did not issue a sentence. He was only commanded not to preach his “heretical ideas” again, but John Wycliffe only ignored it.
John of Gaunt, meanwhile, became even more unpopular when he imprisoned two English squires who held a Spanish hostage. They had refused to hand the hostage to the authorities and instead fled to the Westminster Abbey. The authorities dragged the two squires out of the sanctuary which was a direct violation of the right of asylum provided by the church. John Wycliffe backed the authorities and defended their actions in Parliament in front of the pope’s envoys.
John of Gaunt enjoyed Wycliffe’s full support, but the duke saw that he was fast becoming a liability. The duke started to abandon John Wycliffe in 1378, but by this time, the theologian had also gained a lot of followers. They would later be known as the Lollards, and they, in turn, preached Wycliffe’s sermons to the people. Still, the authorities at Oxford allowed him to teach at the university until 1381.
It was during this difficult time when John Wycliffe and his disciples translated the Bible from Latin Vulgate into English. Nicholas Hereford, one of Wycliffe’s closest associates in Oxford, translated the Old Testament up to the book of Baruch. Wycliffe translated the rest of the Apocrypha and portions of the New Testament, but many books were left untranslated even after his death. Other disciples took up the pen and continued to translate the Bible well into 1388. It was curated by his assistant, John Purvey.
1381 was a difficult year for John Wycliffe after he published his denial of transubstantiation. Transubstantiation refers to the doctrine that during mass, the bread and wine become the real body and blood of Christ. John Wycliffe insisted that the bread and wine were mere representations of Christ, and were not his actual body and blood. This rejection of transubstantiation outraged the priests who then rejected his ideas.
John of Gaunt had already withdrawn his support from Wycliffe. But even if they were on good terms, the duke was busy suppressing the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 to be of any help. In response to Wycliffe’s “heresy,” Chancellor William de Berton of Oxford assembled the university’s leading theologians into a council. The council then condemned him and his beliefs. They also did not allow him to teach the denial of transubstantiation in Oxford. Those who continued to teach Wycliffe’s heretical ideas would be punished with imprisonment or excommunication. Wycliffe immediately appealed his sentence to King Richard II, but many of his former supporters had abandoned him, so the appeal was denied.
Death and Condemnation
John Wycliffe left London in 1382 and returned to Lutterworth to spend the last years of his life there. He continued to serve the parish until December 28, 1384 when he suffered a stroke while celebrating mass. He died two days later.
Wycliffe remained controversial even after his death. In 1414, he was declared as a heretic along with the Czech priest Jan Hus in the Council of Constance in Germany. Wycliffe’s bones were removed from the grave and burned as punishment for his heresy. Afterward, his ashes were scattered in the Swift River.
Gascoigne, Bamber. A Brief History of Christianity. London: Hachette UK, 2013.
Murray, Thomas. The Life of John Wycliffe. Edinburgh: J. Boyd, 1829.
Payton, James R. Getting the Reformation Wrong: Correcting Some Misunderstandings. Westmont, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010.
Samworth, Herb. “The Work of John Wyclif and Its Impact.” Accessed January 18, 2017. http://www.solagroup.org/articles/historyofthebible/hotb_0006.html.
Stacey, John. “John Wycliffe.” Encyclopædia Britannica. September 18, 2008. Accessed January 18, 2017. https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Wycliffe.
Stephen, Leslie. The Dictionary of National Biography: Wordsworth-Zuylestein. Edited by Sidney Lee. Vol. LXIII. London: Oxford University Press, 1921.
Wycliffe, John. Writings of the Reverend and Learned John Wickliff. London: Printed for the Religious Tract Society, 1831.
Wycliffe, John, and Robert Vaughan. Tracts and Treatises of John de Wycliffe: With Selections and Translations from His Manuscripts, and Latin Works. London: Printed for the Society by Blackburn and Pardon, 1845.
