The UK’s Guardian newspaper on Thursday reported that King Charles III of Britain has expressed his support for research into the British monarchy’s historical connections to transatlantic slavery after it published a document that shows what experts claim is proof of a stake in a slave-trading business owned by King William III.
The Guardian published the document as part of an investigation into the royal family’s past involvement in the slave trade. According to the newspaper, the document reveals a transfer of £1,000 worth of shares in the slave-trading Royal African Company from 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston to William III in 1689.
Colston was the company’s deputy governor. In 2020, anti-racism protesters famously toppled a statue of the slave trader in Bristol, southwest England, while demonstrating in solidarity with the US Black Lives Matter movement. The document reported by the Guardian was found in archives by Dr Brooke Newman, a historian at Virginia Commonwealth University, on a research trip to London in January, according to the newspaper.
A spokesperson for Buckingham Palace told the Guardian that this was a subject that the King “takes profoundly seriously.”
The statement added that the royal household would support the project by offering access to the royal collection and the royal archives, the Guardian reported.
Though the palace has not responded to CNN’s request for comment on the document, a spokesperson told the Guardian in a statement that King Charles supported a research project undertaken by historian Camilla de Koning at Manchester University, and co-sponsored by Historical Royal Palaces (HRP), which manages several of royal sites, looking into the monarchy’s links to the slave trade.
“This is an issue that His Majesty takes profoundly seriously,” the spokesperson said to the Guardian, pointing to comments made by the King at a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Rwanda last summer.
“I want to acknowledge that the roots of our contemporary association run deep into the most painful period of our history,” he said in June.
“I cannot describe the depths of my personal sorrow at the suffering of so many, as I continue to deepen my own understanding of slavery’s enduring impact.”