James Somerset,[7] a Negro slave of Charles Stewart in Jamaica, "purchased from the African coast in the course of the slave trade as tolerated in the plantations," had been brought by his master to England "to attend and abide with him and to carry him back as soon as his business should be transacted." The Negro refused to go back, whereupon he was put in irons and taken on board the ship _Ann and Mary_ lying in the Thames and bound for Jamaica. Lord Mansfield granted a writ of habeas corpus requiring Captain Knowles to produce Somerset before him with the cause of the detainer. On the motion, the cause being stated as above indicated, Lord Mansfield referred the matter to the full court of King's Bench; whereupon, on June 22, 1772, judgment was given for the Negro.[8] The basis of the decision and the theme of the argument were that the only kind of slavery known to English law was villeinage, that the Statute of Tenures enacted in 1660, expressly abolished villeins regardant to a manor and by implication villeins in gross. The reasons for the decision would hardly stand fire at the present day. The investigation of Paul Vinogradoff and others have conclusively established that there was not a real difference in status between the so-called villein regardant and villein in gross, and that in any case the villein was not properly a slave but rather a serf.[9] Moreover, the Statute of Tenures deals solely with tenure and not with status. But what seems to have been taken for granted, namely that slavery, personal slavery, had never existed in England and that the only unfree person was the villein, who, by the way, was real property, is certainly not correct. Slaves were known in England as mere personal goods and chattels, bought and sold, at least as late as the middle of the twelfth century.[10] However weak the reasons given for the decision, its authority has never been questioned and it is good law. But it is good law for England, for even in the Somerset case it was admitted that a concurrence of unhappy circumstances had rendered slavery necessary[11] in the American colonies; and Parliament had recognized the right of property in slaves there.[12] Consequently so long as the slaves, Panis or Negro, remained in the colony they were not enfranchised by the law of the conqueror but retained their servile status. The early records show the use of slaves. General James Murray, who became Governor of the Quebec Fortifications and adjoining territory immediately after the fall of Quebec and in 1763 the first Captain General and Governor in Chief of the new Province of Quebec,[13] writing from Quebec, November 2, 1763, to John Watts in New York speaks thus of the promoting of agriculture in the Province: