‘Three African Youths’

The tapestry of stories we assembled in Chapter Seven points us toward an understanding of the history of Africans in East Anglia that underscores geographic mobility, social complexity, and unexpected turns of fortune. These stories also remind us that we should be wary of making any sort of generalisation or assumption about the experience of these Africans. Furthermore, we can see that their lives bore significant similarities to the lives of poor non-African workers in the region. Of course, for many Africans there was another layer to their experience, one where the mobility that affected the lives of many of the poor in the early modern period took a specific form because of their connection to the world of Atlantic slavery. This chapter explores three more stories that provide deeper insights into the intricacy of the situation of such Africans and into their mobility, both social and geographic, at the end of the early modern period.

The register of St Peter Mancroft Church in Norwich for 30 May 1813 records the baptism of three young men after the main Sunday service. The three were named as Paolo Loando, Edward Makenzie, and Charles Fortunatus Freeman. In each register entry the minister wrote a sentence across the two columns usually set aside to record the names of the parents of a baptised child. The phrase written was ‘Born of African parents (names unknown).’ Clearly feeling that some further explanation was required for this unusual situation, the minister also tucked a note into the pages of the register, explaining the circumstances of the baptism. The note reads, ‘These children Paolo Loando, Edward Makenzie, and Charles Fortunatus Freeman were thro. the humanity of the Hon. Captain Frederick Paul Irby of Boyland Hall Norfolk brought from Africa in His Majesty’s ship Amelia March 22 1813.’ A week after the baptism, the Norfolk Chronicle added extra detail. The ‘three African youths’ had been ‘taken out of a Portuguese slave ship’ by Irby, in his position as captain of the Amelia, and had been ‘sent by him to this City for education’. They had been baptised after the Sunday service, ‘in the presence of a very numerous congregation’.