Description
Vaughan notes that at least 25 Native people resided in Britain as “servants” in the final quarter of the 17th century. The girl here was taken from the estate by an ally of Nathaniel Bacon after “Bacon’s Rebellion” in 1676-7. Only thirteen years old, she was given to an English sea captain who was reported as having carried her to England. Whether she arrived or not, and where she lived, is not on record. The 16-year old George, meanwhile, appears in a parish register in 1675, an “India servant of Mr Robert Andrews”. He may have been from the subcontinent, but Vaughan explains that ordinarily that would have been prefixed with the word “East”. We have not yet identified the Andrews residence, and in the absence of a long overdue memorial to slavery (as of March 2021) this flag is placed at the Buxton Memorial Fountain in Millbank, which commemorates the emancipation of slaves in 1834.
Bibliographic sources
Alden T. Vaughan, Transatlantic Encounters, 105.