A document that revealed an ancestor owning shares in a slave-trading organization prompted King Charles III to publicly endorse inquiry into the British monarchy’s connections to slavery for the first time, a representative for Buckingham Palace recently noted.
According to the palace, Charles takes the matter “profoundly seriously,” and researchers will have access to the royal collection and archives.
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The declaration was made in reaction to an article in The Guardian newspaper that disclosed a document proving that the deputy governor of the slave-trading Royal African Company transferred 1,000 pounds worth of stock in the company to King William III in 1689.
The document was discussed in the newspaper as a part of a series of articles on royal riches and finances as well as the monarchy’s role in slavery.
Following the passing of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, Charles was crowned as the new head of Britain. His coronation is scheduled for May 6 of this year.
While expressing their regret over slavery, Charles and his eldest son, Prince William, have not mentioned the crown’s involvement in the slave trade.
The Commonwealth, a global association of nations made up primarily of former British colonies, is one of the countries the monarch has indicated he is working to better understand because of “slavery’s enduring impact.”
During a ceremony honoring Barbados’s two-year anniversary of being a republic, Charles talked of “the darkest days of our past and the appalling atrocity of slavery, which forever stains our history,” English settlers used slaves from Africa to turn the island into a successful sugar plantation.
Manchester University and Historic Royal Palaces are both co-sponsoring the study, which should be finished by 2026, examining the monarchy’s connections to slavery.
