This print is taken from a painting by L. Abbott made in 1784. It depicts the prominent abolitionist and author Granville Sharp holding a copy of his own book 'The claims of the people of England', which had been published two years earlier. Sharp first became seriously interested in the abolition of the slave trade in the mid 1760s after a chance encounter with an escaped slave called Jonathan Strong. Sharp was particularly interested in the legal status of slaves in Britain (as opposed to the British colonies) and in 1772 won the legal case of James Somerset. This case, which became known as the Mansfield Judgement, was interpreted to mean that a person could not be a slave in Britain. By depicting him with a pile of seminal British legal books, such as Wilkin's 'Leges Anglo Saxon', Abbott underlines Sharp's importance to the development of British law.