Thomas Clarkson in the context of "William Wilberforce"

St John's College, formally the College of St John the Evangelist in the University of Cambridge, is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, founded by the Tudor matriarch Lady Margaret Beaufort. In constitutional terms, the college is a charitable corporation established by a charter dated 9 April 1511. The aims of the college, as specified by its statutes, are the promotion of education, religion, learning and research. It is one of the largest Oxbridge colleges in terms of student numbers. For 2022, St John's was ranked 6th of 29 colleges in the Tompkins Table (the annual league table of Cambridge colleges) with over 35 per cent of its students earning first-class honours. It is the second wealthiest college in Oxford and Cambridge, after its neighbour Trinity College, Cambridge.

Members of the college include the winners of twelve Nobel Prizes, seven prime ministers, twelve archbishops of various countries, at least two princes and three saints. The Romantic poet William Wordsworth studied at St John's, as did William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, two abolitionists who led the movement that brought slavery to an end in the British Empire. Prince William was affiliated with the college while undertaking a university-run course in estate management in 2014.

Granville Sharp (10 November 1735 – 6 July 1813) was an English scholar, philanthropist and one of the first campaigners for the abolition of the slave trade in Britain. Born in Durham, he initially worked as a civil servant in the Board of Ordnance. His involvement in abolitionism began in 1767 when he defended a severely injured slave from Barbados in a legal case against his master. Increasingly devoted to the cause, he continually sought test cases against the legal justifications for slavery, and in 1769 he published the first tract in England that explicitly attacked the concept of slavery.

Granville Sharp's efforts culminated in 1772 when he was instrumental in securing Lord Mansfield's ruling in Somerset v Stewart, which held that slavery had no basis in English law. In 1787, Sharp and Thomas Clarkson founded the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The continuing campaigns of Sharp, Clarkson and William Wilberforce led to the abolition of slave trade through the Slave Trade Act 1807. Sharp died in 1813, two decades before the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which abolished slavery in most of the British Empire.