The Wyvill family who were "an enemy of slavery" and the admiral who took the fight to end it to the high seas – The Northern Echo

OUR recent series on slavery shows how, even though the North-East is not associated with the trade, its tentacles and its riches reached into our communities.

But the trade also had its opponents, like the Wyvill family of Constable Burton, near Bedale, in North Yorkshire.

The Reverend Christopher Wyvill was nominally in charge of the parish of Black Notley in Essex but he very shrewdly married his cousin, Elizabeth, who was more than 20 years older than him but was the heir to the family hall.

When her father, Sir Marmaduke, died in 1774, he inherited Constable Burton Hall and an income comfortable enough for him to be able to give up his parish.

However, he was desperately keen to see improvements in Britain and in 1779 formed the Yorkshire Association, a group of hundreds of independent members of the gentry which lobbied for economic and Parliamentary reform. Among the many reforming causes to which he gave his support was William Wilberforces crusade to end slavery.

On his death in 1822, his eldest son, also Marmaduke, inherited Constable Burton.

He was the MP for York from 1820 to 1830 and he, too, sided with Wilberforce, declaring himself an enemy of slavery. In 1829, he presented a petition to Parliament signed by hundreds of people in York demanding freedom for slaves.

Admiral Christopher Wyvill, who crusaded against slavery on the east coast of Africa. Picture courtesy of Charles Wyvill

The reverends second son was Admiral Christopher Wyvill who in the 1840s commanded HMS Cleopatra. He took the battle against slavery to the high seas.

He was stationed off the Cape of Good Hope, patrolling the east coast of Africa, where Portuguese traders still harvested slaves in Mozambique and sold them to the plantations of the Americas.

The admiral would chase after the slavers. Some he would capture and liberate hundreds of captives; others, though, would flee from him and in their desperation to escape would run aground. The crew would get away but the human cargo beneath the battened hatches might not be so lucky.

HMS Vestal, the sister ship of HMS Cleopatra which was commanded in the 1840s by Admiral Christopher Wyvill on an anti-slavery crusade

Then the admiral took the fight onland.

The Portuguese, like the Lascelles family of Northallerton MPs whose story we told last week, would pen the Africans in a makeshift prison until there was a ship to sail them off to slavery.

The admiral would destroy these slave factories the permanently moored prison ships pioneered by Henry Lascelles MP or he would land and burn the barracoons the stockades where the captives were incarcerated.

At the end of a long naval career, the admiral retired to The Grange, which is opposite Bedale sports ground, where he died in 1863 aged 71.

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The Wyvill family who were "an enemy of slavery" and the admiral who took the fight to end it to the high seas - The Northern Echo