Ignatius Sancho

The conjectural account of Ignatius Sancho's earliest years offered by Prof Brycchan Carey in his talk for the Equiano Society  is extremely plausible and answers one puzzle, that presented by his name.  while Equiano through and after his years of enslavement acquired several names, as was common for such displaced individuals, Sancho  appears to have had only one from the age of around two years - and one that did not change when he was domiciled in Britain - where Ignatius was an unusual appellation.

Enslaved people - boys especially - were often mocked by being given classical names such as Pompey, Caesar, Hector, presumably as a kind of joke, underscoring their utterly powerless status with a heroic comparison.  Ignatius wouldn't work in quite the same way.  In Britain it was a Papist name, from Ignatius Loyola,  founder of the hated Jesuit order which in the early 18th century was still popularly believed to plot to 'return' Britain to Catholicism.  Attached to a friendless African orphan, it also would have a mocking element, which might explain why it was not changed to a more easily pronounceable name for a household servant.

In the preface to the   Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African, it is stated  that Sancho  was 'born A. D. 1729, on board a ship in the Slave-trade, a few days after it had quitted the coast of Guinea for the Spanish West-Indies, and, at Carthagena, he received from the hand of the Bishop, Baptism, and the name of Ignatius.   

Starting here, Brycchan Carey posits that the boy was in a shipment of captives  landed at the slave entrepot of Carthagena [now in Colombia]  where the Jesuit order ran the church  and organised mass  baptism for Africans, in a cathedral dedicated to Loyola.  Hence his 'Christian name'.  

Thence he was transported to Cadiz in Spain, another great trading city,  where ships of the British Navy were then able to anchor, and where he was acquired or bought by a young naval officer.  [If the dates are right, he seems a bit young - under three - for this, but maybe it was comparable to acquiring a puppy]  The midshipman was related to sisters living in Greenwich (conjecturally identified as Elizabeth, Susanna and Barbara Legge)  to whom on his return to Britain it is suggested young Ignatius was presented as a gift   According to the Letters preface, these women ' surnamed him Sancho, from a fancied resemblance to the 'Squire of Don Quixote.'    A fanciful name for a black servant who had apparently come from Spain.

African Hospitality ???

 

African Hospitality, a painting by George Morland from 1790, was companion piece to the artist's Execrable Human Traffic  known as the Slave Trade.    The latter (RA 1788)  shows African captives forced on onto a slaving ship.  African Hospitality depicts local people rescuing shipwrecked Europeans off the African coast, an imagined scene from an actual event.

Both works were engraved for sale within the nascent campaign to abolish the Slave Trade launched in London in 1787.   Both found their way into the collection of Alexander Dennistoun, a Glasgow merchant with family investments in north American cotton production.   African Hospitality was loaned to the 1857 Art Treasures exhibition in Manchester (#136), together with another Morland canvas listed in the Art Treasures catalogue as ‘The Englishman’s Return for African Hospitality’ (#143)

Having vainly searched for an image of 'The Englishman’s Return' I now assume it was in fact Execrable Human Traffic.  Following the death of Alexander Dennistoun’s son, both paintings were sold as 'African Hospitality' and 'Slave Trade', at Christie's, London, 9 June 1894, lot 43 (33.5 x 47 inches) and lot 44 (32 x 47 inches )  [credit to Donato Esposito - see BM database for images of both engravings]

So I am curious as to how and when the extended title was attached to Execrable Human Traffic specifically accusing the 'English'.