James Stout

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.

And he eventually wins.

Strong's legal defense wins.

This is a significant case in like British like legal history.

And it's the kind of thing where they win Strong's freedom, but they don't get a ruling that alters English law in respect to the rights of enslaved people, right?

Yeah.

So it's good because Strong doesn't have to be sold into slavery again.

But it also doesn't like – it doesn't go any further, right?

And Sharp is disappointed by this.

Yeah.

Because by this point, after two years of fighting this case and immersing himself in the law, Granville Sharp has become, in Siddharth Kara's words, the first British person to devote his life to the extirpation of slavery.

And his influence actually goes beyond that, though.

It's wild how influential this motherfucking dude is.