James Stout

Lyle doesn't want to deal with Strong anymore, but he works.

He says like, hey, I own this guy and he's really healthy.

You just got to go get him if you give me 30 pounds.

So he like sells this guy and then he hires slave catchers to abduct Strong out of his new life.

Yeah.

He's a real stand-up guy.

Great dude.

Months of conflict.

Granville Sharp, who has been studying the law, is like, you can't do this.

He's a free man now.

You can't make him leave.

You can't take him to another foreign country, right?

Like, you can't do that.

So there's a...

Conflict follows.

There's like – this goes on for a while before like the court case actually resolves.

And at one point during the proceedings, Lyle challenges Sharp to a duel and Sharp's like, let's settle this in court basically.

At another point, lawyers that Granville consulted warned him that English law saw slaves as property even once they were taken onto English soil.

And Sharp has a moment of horror where he's like, there's no way the laws of my beloved England are this bad.

So he spends the next like two years making himself an expert in the law and fighting this case, fighting Lyle and the man Lyle had sold strong to, James Care.