Bank of England's founding tied to slave trade wealth, research reveals

When the Bank of England opened its doors in 1694, it did so with capital that had been accumulated through one of history's most systematic atrocities. New research into the founding of Britain's central bank reveals that dozens of the men who established and directed the institution—including four of its original founders and the reigning monarchs themselves—had made their fortunes from the trafficking and enslavement of African people across the Atlantic.

Dr. Michael Bennett of the University of Sheffield has spent years tracing the connections between the Bank's leadership and the slave trade. His findings show that 24 directors of the Bank invested substantially in the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans. Four of these men were among the elite financiers who founded the Bank in its opening year. Another 20 served as directors over the following century. Nine of the 24 rose to the position of governor. The last of these men, Christopher Puller, remained a director for 11 years until his death in 1789. Puller had been a weapons shipper for the slave trade and co-owner of a 1786 voyage that transported enslaved people from the Gambia to Jamaica.

When Bennett examined the founding subscribers—the investors who provided the Bank's initial capital—he discovered that at least 30 of them had money invested in enslaving and trafficking Africans. At the top of this list were King William III and Queen Mary II, who held shares in the Royal African Company, the chartered monopoly that dominated English slave trading. The wealth that flowed from this trade, Bennett concluded, formed part of the Bank's foundational capital. One emblematic figure was John Rudge, an MP for Evesham who served as a Bank director from 1699 to 1740 and as governor in 1713 and 1714. Rudge held shares in the Royal African Company, served as one of its directors, and was deputy governor of the South Sea Company, another major financial institution built partly on slave-trade wealth.

The most striking case is that of Humphry Morice, who served as a Bank director and governor from 1727 to 1729. Morice was also an MP, and he used his position to defraud the Bank itself in order to fund his trafficking operations. Between 1704 and 1732, Morice equipped approximately 110 ship voyages that transported more than 30,000 enslaved men, women, and children to Jamaica, Barbados, Virginia, and other colonies in the Americas. This trafficking was his principal business. When the Bank later acknowledged its history, it described Morice as the largest London-based trafficker of enslaved people from Africa to the British colonies.

Research conducted by historians at University College London's Legacies of British Slavery archive has added further weight to these findings. That work documented that 16 past governors of the Bank of England and 26 directors had direct financial interests in the ownership of enslaved people and plantations before abolition in 1833. The Bank itself owned 599 enslaved people on two plantations. In 2022, the Bank mounted an exhibition that included the names of these people—most listed with European names such as Pierre, Catherine, and Alexandre, with no information about the countries from which they had been taken.

When slavery was abolished in 1833, the British government did not compensate the enslaved or their descendants. Instead, it paid £20 million—equivalent to approximately £23 billion in today's money—to the enslavers themselves as compensation for the loss of their human property. The Bank of England and the Treasury were centrally involved in distributing these payments. The Treasury has never publicly acknowledged its role in this system or apologized for it, maintaining the government's broader position of resisting discussion of reparations and refusing to acknowledge culpability for centuries of trafficking and enslavement.

The Bank of England has acknowledged its history and apologized. In a statement, a Bank spokesperson said it had explored its connections to enslavement in depth through its 2022 exhibition and expressed gratitude for Dr. Bennett's collaboration on that work. But the Treasury's silence stands in contrast. As pressure builds from Caribbean and African nations demanding accountability, Bennett's research—which will reveal even more connections between the Bank's leadership and the slave trade—is likely to intensify calls for the government to do the same.