How Church of England's slavery ties went to top of hierarchy

An archbishop of Canterbury in the 18th century approved payments for the purchase of enslaved people for two sugar plantations in Barbados, documents seen by the Observer have revealed.

- Desirée Baptiste and Jon Ungoed-Thomas

Thomas Secker agreed to reimburse a payment for £1,093 for the purchase of enslaved people on the Codrington Plantations, as well as hiring enslaved people from a third party. The measures were "calculated for the future lasting advantages of the estates".

The papers are among a cache of documents in the archives of Lambeth Palace Library in London, which detail the direct links between the Church of England and chattel slavery on plantations owned by its missionary arm, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG).

Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, said: "Every new piece of evidence around the Church's involvement in the slave trade is sobering, and reading that a former archbishop of Canterbury was involved in the purchase of enslaved people is particularly painful. It is also a reminder that this work is not finished and there is more we need to do to examine our role in the trade in enslaved Africans, which was a blasphemy against God's creation in treating men, women and children as less than human.

"While nothing can fully atone for these crimes, we are committed to finding out more, realising that this will take many years and could span generations."