Your editorial (14 April) supports the Archbishop of Canterbury in calling for the removal of monuments such as that to Tobias Rustat, whose wealth derived from slavery. But the Church of England was part of the establishment in the 18th and early 19th century, and for the most part strongly defensive of slavery – as were William Gladstone (later prime minister) and John Newman (later cardinal).
The first paragraph of six pages on Anglicanism and slavery in Michael Taylor’s The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery, led me to Bishop Richard Watson of Llandaff, who defended the slave trade. Watson is buried in St Martin’s Church in Bowness-on-Windermere, where the vestry has a memorial to him by John Flaxman. In the south aisle of the church is a marble slab commemorating John Bolton, a slave trader and plantation owner who died in 1837 – after abolition. Admittedly, the churchyard has a headstone dated 1822 inscribed to the memory of a freed slave named Rasselas Belfield, thought to have been in service locally.
