Epilogue: King

ABSENTED from his Master’s Service, a likely BLACK BOY, named KING, but sometimes calls himself JOHN KING, about sixteen Years of Age, and is somewhat paler than the generality of Negroes. Took with him a good Hat with a Silver Button and Loop, an old blue Frock and Waistcoat much worn and dirtied, Leather Breeches, and spotted Worsted Stockings. He left a new Livery behind him, probably that he might the better pass for a free Negroe; but it is not unlikely that he may change his Cloaths. It is supposed that he has an intention of going on board some Privateer or Letter of Marque. All Captains of Vessels or others, to whom he may apply, are requested to stop him, and send Information thereof to Mrs. Stevenson near Charing-Cross. Whoever apprehends and secures the said Negroe, or informs where he is, so that his Master may have him again, shall have One Guinea for their Trouble, and all reasonable Charges.

N.B. Whoever harbours or conceals him will be prosecuted.

The Public Advertiser, 13 April 1762

It is perhaps not surprising that Benjamin Franklin helped introduce both newspapers and runaway slave advertisements to some of England’s plantation colonies. Between 1724 and 1726 Franklin had completed his apprenticeship as a printer in London, and once back in Philadelphia he began editing the Pennsylvania Gazette. Notices for runaways comprised about one quarter of the advertisements published by Franklin and as such represented a significant source of his income.¹ By the time that Franklin returned to London in 1757 his publishing business had helped to make him a wealthy man, and he and his son William were accompanied by two enslaved servants named Peter and King. On at least two occasions King escaped, and both of these attempts prompted the Franklins to place newspaper advertisements in London’s Public Advertiser.²

The runaway slave advertisement had come full circle. This mechanism for the recovery of enslaved people who had escaped would eventually create the largest and richest resource for the study of resistance by escape in England’s colonies and then in the United States. But it had been invented in London, where it was used for half a century before the first colonial newspapers began printing runaway advertisements. More than a century after London’s first such notices appeared, the most famous of all colonial newspaper editors and printers did not hesitate to write and publish his own runaway slave advertisement in a London newspaper. A year earlier Benjamin had written to his wife, Deborah, that King had been ‘of little Use, and often in Mischief’, but what was an annoyance to the Franklins may have been ‘good trouble’ for King. The Franklins’ advertisement noted that the young man had already rejected the single name imposed upon him, and he ‘calls himself JOHN KING’. Only sixteen years old, John King walked in the footsteps of the many enslaved people who been brought to London since the mid seventeenth century and had asserted their independence and sought freedom by escaping.³ Although Peter returned to Philadelphia with Franklin, there is no further mention of John King. We do not know whether he secured his freedom, but we do know that he was one of the many bound and enslaved Black Londoners who, for more than a century, had asserted their freedom in London.