The book's title also suggests abolitionist sentiments, given its connection to William Murray, the 1st Earl of Mansfield who served as Lord Chief Justice of England from 1756 to 1788—and was known as Lord Mansfield. In 1772, Mansfield ruled on a court case involving James Somerset, enslaved in colonial Virginia and brought to England by his master. After escaping and being recaptured, Somerset faced sale to a Jamaican plantation. A London abolitionist network intervened, and Mansfield ruled that Somerset—chained on a boat in the Thames—be freed.