A correspondence with the famous author Laurence Sterne further enhanced Sancho’s status in learned London society. Sancho became well-known in London society circles, especially after sitting for a portrait by the famous artist Thomas Gainsborough-who also painted Sancho’s patroness, the Duchess of Montagu. The Montagus provided him a job as a butler-and, vitally for Sancho’s future prospects, with opportunities to explore the arts, literature, and learning. In an unlikely turn of events, Sancho befriended the 2nd Duke of Montagu, eventually escaping captivity in Greenwich to live with that aristocratic family. The man who enslaved the toddler in the colony of New Granada took Sancho to England and gave him to a family who lived in Greenwich. Sancho was orphaned when he was only two years old. Ignatius Sancho was born while crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a vessel carrying captive Africans to Spanish colonies in the Western hemisphere, where the captives were sold as enslaved people.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |