Scipio Africanus was born a slave, about 1702, to unknown parents probably from West Africa.

He became the servant of Charles William Howard , seventh Earl of Suffolk who, in 1715 married Arabella Morse. The Morse family lived in the Great House in Henbury, Gloucestershire near Bristol. How he was acquired is not known, but he died there on 21 December 1720. His master and mistress followed him two years later.

He is remembered because of an elaborate gravestone in the churchyard of St Mary’s, Henbury. It sports black cherubs and has an unusual epitaph:- “I who was Born a PAGAN and a SLAVE now sweetly sleep a CHRISTIAN in my Grave”.

It is thought that 10,000 black slaves and servants were in Britain in the early 18th century, but this is one of the very few memorials to them.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography