That King Charles descends from rulers who waged wars, built empires, and extracted wealth from colonies has long been part of the historical record. But according to new archival research published by the Guardian, it now appears that the monarch’s direct ancestors were slave owners too.
According to historical documents unearthed by researcher Desirée Baptiste, whose investigation into the Church of England’s links to the slave trade is the subject of her play Incidents in the Life of an Anglican Slave, Written By Herself, King Charles is the direct descendent of Edward Porteus, a 17th century tobacco plantation owner in Virginia who in 1686 received a shipment of at least 200 enslaved people from the Royal African Company.
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Porteus’s son Robert, who moved his family to England in 1720, inherited his father’s estate, including a number of slaves, according to the Guardian. One such slave, referred to in Edward Porteus’s will as “my negroe girl Cumbo,” was left to Robert’s mother, Margaret. It was Robert’s great-great-great-granddaughter, Frances Smith, who married the British aristocrat Claude Bowes-Lyon. The granddaughter of Smith and Bowes-Lyon was the late queen mother, who is the grandmother of King Charles.
Read article: https://time.com/6275179/king-charles-iii-ancestors-slavery/
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