Two hundred and sixty-four years after his death, Benjamin Lay has suddenly come into vogue. He is the subject of a new play opening on Tuesday at the Finborough theatre in London, which joins both a fine work of history and a graphic novel based on his life. Or perhaps we should say lives, because Lay was a shepherd, a glover, a sailor, an author, a bookseller. Most importantly, he was a revolutionary, who waged a lifelong battle for a cause that then looked hopeless but today is seen as unquestionably just. Half a century before William Wilberforce began cajoling fellow parliamentarians, Essex commoner Lay fought to stop slavery. For his pains, he was scorned and humiliated and spurned by his community. Yet in his life is a story for our times.
Born in 1682 with dwarfism, and standing 4ft tall, Lay was raised as a Quaker and taught its principles of democracy and equality. Though he came from a village outside Colchester, he could never settle, switching jobs, moving to London and then taking to the sea. Over 18 months in the slave society of Barbados, he and his wife, Sarah, witnessed how Africans were whipped, starved and burned by their wealthy white enslavers. He befriended enslaved people and one, “a lusty fellow”, swore he would kill himself rather than be whipped again. After he did so, Lay left the island knowing “sugar was made with blood”.
