 At this time the cases in which the English courts had recognised property in slaves had arisen from purely commercial disputes and did not establish any rights exercisable as against the slaves themselves, if the slave was within the jurisdiction.As with villeins centuries before, the analogy with chattels (as between putative owners) failed to answer the leading question whether slaves could establish their freedom by bringing suit in the courts (as between slave and owner).The writ "de homine replegiando" was outmoded, and so the usual eighteenth-century question was whether "habeas corpus" lay to free slaves from captivity.