LITMIR.BIZ

      INTRODUCTION

       Atlantic Lives

       Anglo-African Trade in Northern Guinea

      A EURO-AFRICAN widow named Hope Heath traveled the main carriage road leading from her residence in Leyton, Essex, to London in July 1697. There, on July 10, she married Samuel Meston at St. James Duke’s Place, the Anglican parish church of Aldgate Ward in the City of London.¹ Her second marriage must have been a welcome new beginning for Hope and her two-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, after enduring several years of difficult family disputes and legal struggles in the wake of her husband’s death. What had set off seemingly endless rounds of acrimonious controversy were the deaths of two important English men in Hope’s life—John Booker, her former master; and William Heath, her first husband. It was because of them both that she had left the northern Guinea Coast, land of her birthplace, to live the life of a free woman of color in London.

      These three people were brought together by the Guinea trade and England’s Royal African Company (RAC) at James Island fort on the lower Gambia River. Booker had first arrived at James Island in 1680 and quickly rose to serve as assistant to the company’s principal agent there. William Heath arrived in June 1683, serving as a soldier at the fort and then at Juffure, a company outpost on the mainland. In March 1686, Heath assumed the important position of company factor, which put him in charge of keeping track of the trade goods stored in their warehouse and handling the company’s sales and purchases.² It was around this same time that Esperança (Hope) must have come to James Island, though involuntarily as a child captive. Where she had come from and who named her Esperança will probably never be known. She had been born into a community on the mainland in about 1675, but she then suffered some kind of horrible calamity that tore her from home and family and forced her into captivity. On James Island, she lived and worked as one of Booker’s personal household slaves inside the fort, along with her so-called brother, Sanko. In assuming for himself the role of paterfamilias to his child slaves, Booker sent her away to a boarding school in England in the 1680s to learn to read and write in English. And young Esperança came to be known among English-speakers as Hope Booker.³

      Her life changed dramatically upon the death of John Booker in early June 1693. Calling her “my girle Speranca,” Booker gave Hope in a codicil to his will her unconditional freedom, title to her jewelry and other personal possessions, stewardship of his slaves, and an impressive lifetime annuity of £25 for her maintenance.⁴ If Hope Booker and William Heath had not been acquainted earlier, they certainly did get to know each other very well as they collaborated to carry out Booker’s funeral and burial arrangements and set about administering his personal estate at James Island. Heath began to court her, pleading that she agree to marry him there according to the local custom on the Guinea Coast and promising that at the first opportunity they would marry again in a formal Christian ceremony. Their marriage took place on the island in October 1693 at a public celebration in which they pledged before God and an audience of witnesses their lifelong love and devotion to each other.⁵

      The following March, William Heath sent his wife to London, where he planned to join her after completing his work for the company and putting his own and what remained of Booker’s affairs in order.⁶ Delays kept him tied down at the fort for over a year, with the result that he was not able to be with Hope for the birth and christening of their daughter, Elizabeth. This failing he lamented publicly to his coworkers in the many toasts he drank to the health and safety of his wife and child.⁷ When he finally did set out for England, he stopped over and spent several months in Lisbon, primarily to sell off some of Booker’s estate and his own personal property and trade goods to contacts he had among English and Portuguese merchants who resided there. Sadly, when at last on the final leg of his homeward voyage, he died at sea in December 1695 without ever having made out a will.⁸

      When the news of William’s death reached them, Hope Heath was about twenty years old, well into her second year in England, and baby Elizabeth had just had her first birthday. A storm of wild accusations and outlandish charges was soon to erupt and further complicate Hope’s already difficult circumstances. Her circle of English acquaintances centered on the contacts and associates of Booker and her husband, and they all had interests, as did she, in seeing to the administration of the estate Booker had amassed on the Guinea Coast. To that end, the merchant Humphrey Dyke, executor of Booker’s original will, had already presented a copy of the codicil to it in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC) in August 1695. But when news of the death of William Heath arrived, William’s brother, Samuel, filed a bill of complaint against Dyke and three others, including Hope. All of them, he claimed, were conspiring to defraud him of his right to inherit his brother’s personal property. Referring to Hope as “Sparnissa, alias Hope Booker,” he charged that she had lived with William Heath as his hired servant, not as his wife.⁹ Dyke then appeared again before the PCC, this time to present evidence of the legality of Hope and William’s marriage, the legitimacy of Elizabeth as their daughter, and thus the right of Elizabeth to inherit. The court ruled that the marriage and daughter were indeed legitimate and also granted Dyke the authority to administer the personal estate of William Heath.¹⁰

      In records of the defendants’ official answer to Samuel Heath’s complaint, there appears a section that is of special interest, as it was framed by Hope Heath herself. In the section, she outlined her own specific concerns and objections. As written in the court documentation, she insisted on registering her proper English name,

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