Ignatius Sancho

Charles Ignatius Sancho was born on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean, in what was known as the Middle Passage. His mother died not long after arriving in the Spanish colony of New Granada, which formed parts of modern-day Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela.[5][6][7] He was baptised and named by the Catholic bishop of the colony.[8] His father reportedly took his own life rather than live as a slave.[8]

Sancho's owner took the young orphan, barely two years old, to England and gave him to three unmarried sisters living together in Greenwich, where he lived from 1731 to 1749. The sisters gave him the surname Sancho as they believed he resembled Don Quixote's squire.[8] The Duke of Montagu, a frequent visitor to the sisters, became impressed by Sancho's intellect, frankness, and amiability. The Duke not only encouraged Sancho to read, but also lent him books from his personal library at Blackheath.[5][6][7]

Portrait of an African, attributed to Allan Ramsay, a painting some suggest depicts a young Ignatius Sancho.[9][10] It was previously believed to have depicted the writer Olaudah Equiano.

Sancho's informal education made his lack of freedom at Greenwich unbearable, and he ran away to Montagu House, Blackheath in 1749. For two years until her death in 1751, Sancho worked as a butler for the Duchess of Montagu at her residence, where he immersed himself in music, poetry, reading, and writing.[6][7] Upon her death in 1751, Sancho received an annuity of £30 (equivalent to £5,000 in 2021) and a year's salary.[6] On 17 December 1758[8] he married a West Indian woman, Anne Osborne, becoming a devoted husband and father. They had seven children: Frances Joanna, Ann Alice, Elizabeth Bruce, Jonathan William, Lydia, Katherine Margaret, and William Leach Osborne.[2] Around the time of the birth of their third child, Sancho became a valet to George Montagu, the son-in-law of his previous patron.[6] Sancho remained a valet until 1773.[6]

In 1768, British artist Thomas Gainsborough painted a portrait of Sancho at the same time as the Duchess of Montagu sat for her portrait by Gainsborough as well.[1][notes 1] By the late 1760s, Sancho had already become well accomplished and was considered by many to be a man of refinement.[6] In 1766, at the height of the debate about slavery, Sancho wrote to Anglo-Irish novelist Laurence Sterne,[11] encouraging the famous writer to lobby for the abolition of the slave trade.[12]

That subject, handled in your striking manner, would ease the yoke (perhaps) of many – but if only of one – Gracious God! – what a feast to a benevolent heart!

In July 1766, Sancho's letter was received by Sterne shortly after he had finished writing a conversation between his fictional characters, Corporal Trim and his brother Tom in Tristram Shandy, wherein Tom described the mistreatment of an African servant in a sausage shop in Lisbon that he had visited.[13] Sterne's widely publicised 27 July 1766 response to Sancho's letter became an integral part of 18th-century abolitionist literature.

There is a strange coincidence, Sancho, in the little events (as well as in the great ones) of this world: for I had been writing a tender tale of the sorrows of a friendless poor negro-girl, and my eyes had scarce done smarting with it, when your letter of recommendation in behalf of so many of her brethren and sisters, came to me – but why her brethren? – or your’s, Sancho! any more than mine? It is by the finest tints, and most insensible gradations, that nature descends from the fairest face about St. James’s, to the sootiest complexion in Africa: at which tint of these, is it, that the ties of blood are to cease? and how many shades must we descend lower still in the scale, ’ere mercy is to vanish with them? – but ’tis no uncommon thing, my good Sancho, for one half of the world to use the other half of it like brutes, & then endeavour to make ’em so."[13]

Following the publication of the Sancho-Sterne letters, Sancho became widely known as a man of letters.[1] Sancho, a British subject and voter in Westminster, noted that despite being in the country since the age of two he felt he was "only a lodger, and hardly that." In other writings he describes his life: "Went by water – had a coach home – were gazed at – followed, etc. etc. – but not much abused" (that time).[4] On another occasion, he writes: "They stopped us in the town and most generously insulted us."[14][15]

In 1774 with help from Montagu, Sancho, suffering from ill health with gout, opened a grocery shop, offering merchandise such as tobacco, sugar and tea, at 19 Charles Street in London's Mayfair, Westminster.[16][notes 2] These were goods then mostly produced by slaves in the West Indies.[5]

As a shopkeeper Sancho enjoyed more time to socialise, correspond with his many friends, share his enjoyment of literature, and his shop had many visitors. He wrote and published a Theory of Music, though no copy is extant today.[18] There are 62 known compositions by Sancho, which were printed in four collections in London between c. 1767 and 1779: Minuets Cotillons & Country Dances, book I (c. 1767), containing 24 dances; A Collection of New Songs (c. 1769), six songs on words of William Shakespeare, David Garrick, Anacreon, and unidentified authors; Minuets, &c., &c., book II (c. 1770), with 20 dances; and Twelve Country Dances for the Year 1779.[18][19] In addition, he wrote two plays. At this time he also wrote letters and in newspapers, under his own name and under the pseudonym "Africanus".

Among his acquaintances were figures such as Thomas Gainsborough, the Shakespearean actor David Garrick, violin virtuoso Felice Giardini, the preacher William Dodd,[6] the sculptor Joseph Nollekens, and the novelist Laurence Sterne. Nollekens gave Sancho a plaster cast of his 1766 marble bust of Sterne. Sancho received many prominent visitors at his shop, including statesman and abolitionist Charles James Fox, who successfully steered a resolution through Parliament pledging it to abolish the slave trade. He oversaw a Foreign Slave Trade Bill in spring 1806 that prohibited British subjects from participating in the trading of slaves with the colonies of Britain's wartime enemies, thus eliminating two-thirds of the slave trade passing through British ports.[20][notes 4]

As a property owner, and regardless of his ethnicity, he had the right to vote for Members of Parliament. He voted for the Westminster constituency in the 1774 general election and the 1780 general election. Voting was not secret at the time, and it was recorded that he voted for Hugh Percy and Thomas Pelham-Clinton in 1774, and for George Brydges Rodney and Charles James Fox in 1780.[17] He was the first person of African origin known to have voted in Britain.[21][17]

Ignatius Sancho died from the effects of gout on 14 December 1780 and was buried in the churchyard of St Margaret's, Westminster. There is no memorial at the church, as the grave stones (which lie flat) in the churchyard were covered over with grass in 1880 and no inscription was found for him when a record was made of the existing epitaphs.[22] He was the first person of African descent known to be given an obituary in the British press.[22]

Plaque in King Charles Street, City of Westminster, London marking the location of Sancho's grocery store

While his correspondence often included domestic issues, it also commented on the political and literary life in 18th-century Britain.[3][12] One of his more famous series of letters includes his eye-witness accounts of the Gordon Riots in June 1780. The angry mob passed outside his shop on Charles Street. Beginning as a Protestant protest against parliamentary extension of Roman Catholic enfranchisement it grew into a violent mob of 100,000 looting and burning parts of London.[23]

There is at this present moment at least a hundred thousand poor, miserable, ragged rabble, from 12 to 60 years of age, with blue cockades in their hats – besides half as many women and children, all parading the streets, the bridge, the park, ready for any and every mischief. Gracious God! What's the matter now? I was obliged to leave off – the shouts of the mob, the horrid clashing of swords, and the clutter of a multitude in swiftest motion drew me to the door, when everyone in the street was employed in shutting up shop. It is now just five o'clock – the ballad-singers are exhasting their musical talents with the downfall of Popery, S-h and N-h, Lord S-h narrowly escaped with his life about an hour since' the mob seized his chariot going to the house, broke his glasses and, in struggling to get his lordship out, they somehow have cut his face.

In 1782 Frances Crewe, a correspondent of Sancho, arranged for 160 of his letters to be published in the form of two volumes entitled The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African. The book sold very well, with more than 2,000 subscribing to it. His widow received in royalties more than £500, equivalent to £66,567 in 2021.[24] Joseph Jekyll provided a memoir of Sancho for the first edition, and four more editions had been issued by 1803.[25]

Sancho's son, William Leach Osborne Sancho, inherited the shop on Charles Street, Mayfair, and transformed it into a printing and book-selling business. In 1803 at this shop he printed a fifth edition of Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho with Memoirs of His Life by Joseph Jekyll,[16] with a frontispiece engraving by Bartolozzi.[26]

A letter sent 1st April 1779 by Sancho to William Stevenson read ''I am Sir an Affrican – with two ffs – if you please – & proud am I to be of a country that knows no politicians – nor lawyers – [...] –nor thieves of any denomination save Natural....''[27][28]

Sancho was unusually blunt in his response to a letter from Jack Wingrave, John Wingrave's son. Jack wrote about his negative reaction to people of colour based on his own experience in India during the 1770s. Sancho's response was as such:[29]

I am sorry to observe that the practice of your country (which as a resident I love – and for its freedom – and for the many blessings I enjoy in it – shall ever have my warmest wishes, prayers and blessings); I say it is with reluctance, that I must observe your country's conduct has been uniformly wicked in the East – West-Indies – and even on the coast of Guinea. The grand object of English navigators – indeed of all Christian navigators – is money – money – money – for which I do not pretend to blame them – Commerce was meant by the goodness of the Deity to diffuse the various goods of the earth into every part – to unite mankind in the blessed chains of brotherly love – society – and mutual dependence: the enlightened Christian should diffuse the riches of the Gospel of peace – with the commodities of his respective land – Commerce attended with strict honesty – and with Religion for its companion – would be a blessing to every shore it touched at. In Africa, the poor wretched natives blessed with the most fertile and luxuriant soil – are rendered so much the more miserable for what Providence meant as a blessing: the Christians' abominable traffic for slaves and the horrid cruelty and treachery of the petty Kings encouraged by their Christian customers who carry them strong liquors to enflame their national madness – and powder – and bad fire-arms – to furnish them with the hellish means of killing and kidnapping.[29][30]

Plaque in Greenwich Park, London

• A plaque to the memory of Sancho was unveiled on 15 June 2007, by Nick Raynsford, MP for Greenwich, on the remaining wall of Montagu House on the south-west boundary of Greenwich Park. The plaque was funded by the Friends of Greenwich Park to commemorate the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, made law in 1807. A second plaque to his memory is on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.[31]
• When the City of Westminster commemorated the bicentenary by creating a walking tour of Westminster highlighting events and individuals involved in the campaign to abolish the slave trade, they included 19 Charles Street. This was a collaboration with historian S. I. Martin, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Palace of Westminster, Tate Britain, Westminster City Archives, and Westminster City Council.[16]
• Sancho was commemorated on a 2007 postage stamp issued by the Royal Mail in recognition of his work as an abolitionist.[32]
• Sancho features on the list of "100 Great Black Britons".[33]
• The Portrait of an African (oil on canvas 61.8 x 51.5 cm, c. 1757–59; held in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, Devon) is probably of Sancho, although it was previously thought to be of Olaudah Equiano, and is now attributed to Allan Ramsay (1713–1784).[34][35] A full account of the attribution to Ramsay and identification of Sancho is contained in the article "The Lost African" published in Apollo magazine, August 2006.
• In 2015, a play based on the life of Ignatius Sancho, entitled Sancho: An Act of Remembrance, written and performed by Paterson Joseph, was staged at Oxford and Birmingham in the United Kingdom,[36] and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York.[37][38] From 4 to 16 June 2018 the play had its London premiere at Wilton's Music Hall.[39] Sancho is also the protagonist and narrator of Joseph’s 2022 novel The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho.
• On 1 October 2020, Google commemorated British Black History Month by honouring Sancho with a Doodle.[40]

• Black British elite, the class that Sancho belonged to
• Joseph Antonio Emidy, perhaps the first black English composer (1775–1835)
• George Bridgetower, virtuoso violinist (1778–1860)
• Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the most celebrated black English composer (1875–1912) best known for his trilogy of cantatas The Song of Hiawatha
• List of slaves

• Friends of Greenwich Park newsletter. Summer 2007.
• Joseph, Paterson. Sancho: An Act of Remembrance. London: Oberon Books, 2011. Print.
• "Ignatius Sancho: The Composer – Black History Month 2018". Black History Month 2018.
• Ignatius Sancho, Twelve English Country Dances written by an erstwhile slave (1779), Facs. Set for the harpsichord. (London: Thompson, 2014). Interpreted by V. Webster, illus. D. Durant, research S Petchy and P Cooper. Pbk 97 pp.
• Ignatius Sancho, Dances for a Princess, humbly dedicated (with permission) to the Princess Royal by Her Royal Highnesses Most Obedient Servant Ignatius Sancho, 191 pp; ed. & intro. by S. Petchey (64 pp). 22 dances & facs. of their music and two more pieces. A recording of these dances is available from Green Ginger at https://greengingerband.co.uk. ISBN 978-1-5272-3701-8.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Ignatius Sancho.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ignatius Sancho.

• Portraits of Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780) at the National Portrait Gallery, London
• John Madin, "Abolition: Trading faces", BBC – Devon, 28 October 2014.
• Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, An African. In Two Volumes. To Which Are Prefixed, Memoirs of His Life. Vol. I. London: Printed by J. Nichols, 1782.
• Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, An African. In Two Volumes. To Which Are Prefixed, Memoirs of His Life. Vol. II. London: Printed by J. Nichols, 1782.
• Carey, Brycchan. "Ignatius Sancho: African Man of Letters". Retrieved 9 January 2013. Brycchan Carey's comprehensive collection of resources for the study of Ignatius Sancho.
• The Music of Ignatius Sancho
• Westminster Council's Abolition of the Slave Trade Commemoration website