A story on a stone

Wandering about as ever, this time in Bowness-on-Windermere while LotH ascertained the range and accessibility of the local retail sector, I was drawn to the splendid St Martin's church.

Built in the 13^th century, burnt down and restored in 15^th century, added to in 19^th and restored again in the 20^th, it has pre-reformation murals, the original font and some ancient stained glass.

The murals on the spandrels of the arches are texts believed to be from a book by Robert Openshawe published in 1590. Whitewashed over, they were discovered at restoration. complete with idiosyncratic spelling.

Catechisms on the arches

In the graveyard surrounding the church is the grave of Rasselas Bellfield, "native of Abyssinia".

A few enquiries elicited the story of this man's remarkable life.

Attitudes to slavery were very different  in the eighteenth and nineteenth  centuries even after the work of Wilberforce in late 1700's.

John Bolton was a Cumbrian who made a fortune as a Liverpool slave trader. He bought nearby Storrs Hall with some of the proceeds and used the residence to entertain in style, holding regattas on the lake which were attended by Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott amongst others. The hall is now a luxury hotel.

So much for Wordsworth's championing of Liberty!

As John Bolton's wealth indicates, the slave trade was a profitable business. Against the wall of the south aisle is a white veined marble slab to the same John Bolton, the slave trader and plantation owner who died in 1837.

According to W. Sayer's 'History of Westmorland', written in 1847, the young man, Rasselas, commemorated by the headstone was brought to England by a Major Taylor, who had bought him as a child from his mother for the equivalent of about £5. Taylor is said to have been engaged, with his regiment, in the campaign of the East India Company Army against Tippu Sahib, celebrated ruler of Mysore, South India, which culminated in Tippu's death in 1799.

The headstone's inscription describes Rasselas as 'A Native of Abyssinia', suggesting that he was born there, and it may be that Taylor travelled back to England by way of Abyssinia and acquired Rasselas then. On the other hand, Abyssinian slaves and solders - 'Habshis' - had been brought to India from the 15th century onwards.

It is possible that Rasselas entered Taylor's service whilst the soldier was still in India; the boy, still very young, may have been employed by the army.

One way or another, Taylor and his companion had arrived at Bowness-on-Windermere by 17 April 1803, when the baptism is recorded of 'Rasilais Bellefield, Captain Taylor's servant of Bellefield'. Rasselas would then have been aged about 13.

Like many in Britain, the Taylor family had slaves and plantations in the Americas from which they derived great wealth.

Rasselas's master was Peter Taylor who joined the army in 1794. When he returned from the East with the Abyssinian boy, he joined his mother and sister, Isabella, at Bellfield. Isabella, then aged had literary tastes - it is possible that she had a hand in choosing the stranger's first name.

'The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia' was a popular novel by Samuel Johnson. That such a name was chosen for the young servant suggests the Taylors enjoyed his exotic heritage, and the cachet it gave the household.

It would be interesting to know whether they thought of the Abyssinian as having anything in common with the slaves of South Carolina and the West Indies to whom their fortune was indebted. The inscription on Rasselas's headstone demonstrates that by 1822 at least, the Taylor family had been convinced of the iniquity of slavery.

In 1807, the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act had been passed on a wave of popular support, largely engendered by William Wilberforce. Wilberforce may personally have influenced the Taylors as, between 1780 and 1788, he spent his summers at Rayrigg Hall, a mile or two from from the family.

It is evident from the quality of Rasselas Belfield's headstone, with its poetic inscription, that Rasselas was valued by the Taylor family. He is likely to have served Peter Taylor in a capacity similar to that of a valet.

A Slave by birth I left my native Land / And found my Freedom on Britannia's Strand: / Blest Isle! Thou Glory of the Wise and Free, / Thy Touch alone unbinds the Chains of Slavery.

The epitaph raises all sorts of questions about attitudes to slavery in England in the early 19th century  despite having been abolished in 1807. Was Rasselas Belfield a slave, and if so, at what stage in his life? "Born a slave" would be unacceptable now but ideas regarding slavery would have been even more uncertain on the African and Indian subcontinents at that time than in England.

To us, the idea that Rasselas had won his freedom by being sold, and taken to another country to work as a servant, may seem a contradiction in terms but the inscription seems to suggest that slavery was almost  regarded as the natural condition of an Abyssinian and celebrates the enlightened government and people of Britain!

Poor Rasselas succumbed at the age of thirty two, possible to pneumonia. 

He is buried next to the Bishop of Llandarff. The worms recognise no social order!

It's always seems worthwhile when a chance finding leads to a story otherwise missed.

Oak chest