Who was Girolamo Bardoletti?

Who was Girolamo Bardoletti? 

John Wootton, 'Lamprey( a Racehorse)' 1723. oil on canvas, NMW A 600

The Morgan family of Tredegar were aristocrats who were keen to be noted as keeping up with the fashions of their day. A painting by artist John Wootton (1682-1764) shows Sir William Morgan’s picture of his racehorse Lamprey at Newmarket. It is on loan from National Museum Wales to The National Trust, Tredegar House. There is an identical painting by John Wootton held by the Yale Center for British Art and it is signed and dated 1723.  A race horse was an important acquisition but in the corner of the painting stands a black servant. Such servants had a decorative role in 18th century Britain as they were seen as exotic and were something to be displayed.  

A section of the painting provided by NMW.
Possibly one of the group would have been Sir William Morgan

So what do we know about the black man standing in the margins of the painting? Michael R. Apted, a commissioner of RCAHM Wales, wrote an article in The Monmouthshire Antiquary entitled ‘Social Conditions at Tredegar House, Newport in the 17^th and 18^th Centuries’.[1]  The man on the far left of the painting may be Girolamo Bardoletti mentioned in the Tredegar Records in the National Library of Wales. Michael Apted used the inventories from 1670-1770 which provided social  conditions at Tredegar House and also looked at the accounts of James Pratt the chief agent at Tredegar from 1701-1732. 

When the painting was produced in 1723 Sir William Morgan (1700-1731) was Girolamo Bardoletti’s employer or owner and was Member of Parliament for Monmouthshire from 1722-31. However, eight years after the painting was produced  Sir William died and so Girolamo Bardoletti had a new employer, William Morgan (1725-1763) who inherited the estate on his father’s death and also became Member of Parliament for Monmouthshire. Girolamo Bardoletti appears in family accounts surviving from this period. They indicate that he was a servant of some status. In 1732, materials for Girolamo's livery cost £3 2s and the cost of making his coat, waistcoat and leather breeches was 17s. Both were considerable sums. His annual wage of £5 was a typical amount then for upper servants. In comparison Thomas Williams the harper was paid £4 a year. Girolamo's duties are never clearly defined but he was given responsibilities that show he was a trusted servant. In 1725 he was paid expenses for his coach hire to transport Mrs Jenny and two clarinets to London. In 1729 he received expenses for travelling to Gloucestershire with the horses. It might be that he had special responsibility for horses given that he appeared in the painting with the racehorse Lamprey and is leading another horse. He was also recorded in a document as 'Jerolamo the black'. There was also another black servant as the record states there was a payment for shoes in 1724 for ‘David the black’. There might possibly have been a relationship between these two servants.

The horse was owned by Sir William but we do not know the exact status of Girolamo Bardoletti. When he appeared in the painting in 1723 it was before the abolition of slavery in Britain so we can assume that he was not ‘free’. But his annual wage of £5 a year gave him status and suggests freedom. However legally in 1723 his status in Britain was questionable. In the last quarter of the 18th century Great Britain was the largest trader of human lives between Africa and the plantations in the Americas and the Caribbean. Almost one million enslaved Africans in the British Caribbean worked about 3,000 hours a year producing sugar, cotton and coffee. The population of England at that time numbered only five million people.[2] The Gentleman's Magazine of 1764 gives some indication of how a black servant in Britain might have seen himself. It reported that there was 'supposed to be near 20,000 Negroe servants' in London’. The magazine went on to say that 'the main objections to their importation is, that they cease to consider themselves as slaves in this free country, nor will they put up with an inequality of treatment, nor more willingly perform the laborious offices of servitude than our own people'.[3]

There were legal rulings concerning slavery in Britain before the passing of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 both passed after Girolamo would have died. However, the Yorke-Talbot ruling of 1729 became law in his lifetime. It clarified the position of slaves from the West Indies. The ruling stated that such slaves in Britain with or without their masters were not free and the master's rights prevailed even if the slave was baptised and furthermore they could be forced to return to the plantation. In 1772 the slave James Somerset was the property of a Boston customs official, Charles Stewart. After two years in England he escaped, was recaptured and was forced onto a ship bound for Jamaica. With help from Granville Sharpe, a humanitarian anti-slavery campaigner, a writ of habeas corpus was granted by Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice. This ordered the captain of the ship on which Somerset was incarcerated to produce Somerset before a court. Somerset's legal team argued that although slavery was tolerated in the colonies, the Court of King's Bench was bound to apply the law of England. The subsequent ruling by Lord Mansfield stated that 'no master ever was allowed here (England) to take a slave by force to be sold abroad because he deserted from his service ... therefore the man must be discharged'. This judgment had a profound effect on slaves who celebrated the ruling. Many of them thought that the ruling emancipated slaves living in Britain, but this was not the case. The decision was that no slave could be forcibly removed from Britain and sold into slavery. Despite Lord Mansfield's ruling, slave owners continued recapturing their runaway slaves and shipping them back to the colonies. Numerous newspaper advertisements of the time show that Black slaves were still being bought and sold in England. A few years later, in 1785, Mansfield himself ruled that 'black slaves in Britain were not entitled to be paid for their labour' but free Black people were, however, paid. Perhaps the payment Bardoletti received indicates he was a free man living in Britain. [4]

Questions come to mind. Was he a free man? Secondly his Italian name Girolamo Bardoletti is a mystery. Did he come from Italy originally or did he obtain the name in Britain? Perhaps Bardoletti chose the name himself to increase his ‘exotic’ value and to protect himself from being confused with West Indian slaves, although he was known by that name in 1725 before theYorke-Talbot ruling of 1729. Also how did he eventually become a servant in Tredegar House. There is the possibility that William Morgan acquired him on an aristocratic ‘Grand Tour’ to Italy. We will probably never know the answer to these questions and only after lockdown can we continue our research. However, he is representative of many black servants in Britain but it would seem he was one of the more fortunate as his wage and the responsibility he was given suggest he was valued and trusted.

Christabel Hutchings and Anne Dunton

[1] Michael R. Apted, ‘Social Conditions at Tredegar House, Newport in the 17^th and 18^th Centuries’. The Monmouthshire Antiquary,  Vol III, Part II, 1972-73, p.130

[2] British Library: https://www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-century-literature/articles/african-writers-and-black-thought-in-18th-century-britain.

[3] Paul Edwards, ‘The History of Black People in Britain’, History Today Volume 31 Issue 9 September 1981.

[4] See: National Archives, ‘The Somerset Case’. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/rights/docs/state_trials.htm

Grateful thanks to National Museum Wales for providing the images and giving permission for this post.  See also http://friendsmuseumwales.org.uk/Blog/FullBlog.html for a shorter version.