On an autumn day in 1786, an unexpected package arrived at Carlton House, the London home of George, Prince of Wales. It was sent by Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, a free Black man living in London, one of about 4,000 people of African descent in the city at the time. Inside were pamphlets detailing the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade and the brutal treatment of enslaved people in Britain’s Caribbean colonies. The accompanying letter, signed by Cugoano under his alias “John Stuart,” urged the heir to the British throne to read the “little tracts” and to “consider the case of the poor Africans who are most barbarously captured and unlawfully carried away from their own country.” Cugoano warned that Africans were treated “in a more unjust and inhuman manner than ever known among any of the barbarous nations in the world.”
At the time, Cugoano worked as a domestic servant for the fashionable painters Maria and Richard Cosway, whose home was just two blocks from Carlton House. Richard Cosway had recently been appointed principal painter to the Prince of Wales, and his residence at Schomberg House on Pall Mall had become a gathering place for artists, aristocrats, and politicians. Weekly salons and concerts, approved by the prince himself, attracted high society. Through this position, Cugoano gained something rare for a formerly enslaved man: regular, direct access to Britain’s elite and the royal family.
He used it to full advantage.
Schomberg House was a monument to social ambition. Its grand drawing rooms opened onto gardens that stretched almost to the edge of Carlton House’s grounds. Cosway, newly elevated by royal favor, filled his home with lavish furnishings and dressed his Black servant in flamboyant custom livery—crimson silk or velvet trimmed with lace and gold buttons. In Georgian Britain, Black servants were fashionable accessories, visible symbols of wealth and imperial reach. Kings, princes, admirals, and aristocrats employed them. In portraits of elite families, Black attendants hovered at the edges, holding trays, opening doors, silent witnesses to English life.
Cugoano, however, was not silent.
Born around 1757 in a Fante village on the coast of what is now Ghana, Cugoano’s childhood ended abruptly when slave traders raided his community. At 13, he was kidnapped, marched in chains to the coast, and forced onto a slave ship. He later described the Atlantic crossing as a passage of terror, a “state of horror and slavery.” The ship delivered him to Grenada, where he was sold and forced to labor in a plantation slave gang.
After nearly two years, his enslaver brought him to England in late 1772—just months after Lord Mansfield’s famous ruling in the Somerset case, which declared that enslavers could not forcibly remove enslaved people from England. Though narrow in legal scope, the decision sent shockwaves across Britain. Many believed, mistakenly but hopefully, that touching English soil meant freedom.
Cugoano soon claimed his liberty. Whether he fled or was cast out is unclear, but freedom in London was precarious. Formerly enslaved people were vulnerable to kidnapping and resale. On the advice of “some good people,” Cugoano was baptized at St James’s Church, Piccadilly, adopting the name John Stuart so that he “might not be carried away and sold again.” An Anglo-Christian name did not guarantee safety, but it offered camouflage.
Over the next decade, Cugoano learned to read and write, became a devout Anglican, and embedded himself in London’s small but vibrant free Black community. By the mid-1780s, he had joined a group of Black activists called the Sons of Africa—formerly enslaved men, sailors, and Black loyalists who had supported Britain and George III during the American Revolutionary War.During the American Revolutionary War, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano and other members of the Sons of Africa wrote letters, published pamphlets, lobbied Members of Parliament, and fought against the illegal capture of free Black people in Britain.
One of their interventions saved a man named Harry Demaine, who had been recaptured by a Jamaican plantation owner and forced onto a ship bound for the Caribbean. Acting quickly, Cugoano and another Son of Africa alerted the abolitionist lawyer Granville Sharp, who secured Demaine’s release just minutes before the ship set sail. Demaine later said he would have jumped into the sea rather than be sent back into slavery.
These acts of resistance took place under the shadow of royal authority.
Cugoano knew that ending the slave trade would require more than rescue missions. It would need the support—or at least the acceptance—of the monarchy. For generations, enslaved people across the British Empire had petitioned the king, believing him to be a distant source of justice capable of overriding colonial brutality. Abolitionists also recognized the symbolic power of royal endorsement.
From his position at Schomberg House, Cugoano observed the Prince of Wales up close. He noted the prince’s vanity, his desire for praise, and his obsession with his legacy. So when Cugoano finally wrote to him, he crafted his appeal to match.
Cugoano promised that if the prince used his future power to end the “wicked traffic of buying and selling men,” his name would “resound with applause from shore to shore” and be held “in the highest esteem throughout the ages.” It was a calculated appeal to ambition: history, glory, immortality.
The following year, Cugoano sent the prince a copy of his newly published book, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species. It was the first anti-slavery treatise written by a formerly enslaved African in Britain. He reminded the prince that enslaved Africans had no ambassadors or formal representatives. Their only hope was to “lay our case at the feet of your Highness.”
The Prince of Wales kept the book—it remains in the royal collection—but took no further action.
Cugoano also sent his book to King George III, this time using a different approach. To the king, who was head of the Church of England, he appealed to Christian duty and moral responsibility. He wrote that justice and humanity were his motives, and surely a sovereign would want to support the natural liberties of people.
Yet Cugoano’s book did not flatter the monarchy; it accused it.
He argued that for centuries, European kings had approved, defended, and profited from the trade in African captives. In Britain, the transatlantic slave trade was not an accident or a marginal enterprise. It was formally established by royal authority when Charles II granted a monopoly charter to the Royal African Company. Later monarchs and their families continued to benefit from investments in slavery. To claim royal innocence now, Cugoano insisted, was a fiction.
The king and his relatives held the highest position in British society. Yet as descendants and beneficiaries of England’s first major investors in the slave trade, George III and the royal family set a corrupt example for the nation to follow. Monarchy did not just preside over slavery; it normalized and legitimized it.
Cugoano went on to argue that Christian justifications for slavery fell apart under examination. Enslavers often denied religious instruction to the very people they claimed to be civilizing. Plantation slavery was not a benevolent system but a regime of terror. If kings and nations had the power to stop such injustice and refused to act, how could they expect God’s favor—or escape his judgment?
This was no polite request. It was a warning.Cugoano wrote that the British government continued to traffic in human beings—a crime established by royal authority and still supported by a Christian state. He argued that responsibility lay not only with slave traders and plantation owners, but with the entire nation, and most of all with its king. Kings and “great men,” he insisted, were especially guilty.
He warned that unless George III acted to end the slave trade, divine punishment would follow. White abolitionists avoided such direct language, preferring to appeal to the monarchy’s mercy rather than assign blame. But Cugoano refused to soften his words. He would not hide his disgust for the British people and a sovereign who had profited from his enslavement and ignored the suffering and deaths of countless Africans. He called for immediate abolition, universal emancipation, and political rights for Black people as free subjects—positions most Britons, whether abolitionist or not, saw as dangerously radical.
“But why,” he asked, “should total abolition and the universal emancipation of slaves, and the enfranchisement of all Black people working in the colonies, not take place at once—without hesitation or delay—even if it might seem to cause some loss to the government or to individuals?”
Few listened at first, and his book initially attracted little notice. Yet his ideas endured. By 1791, an abridged edition gained support from influential figures—artists, aristocrats, and politicians. The movement he helped inspire grew stronger, pushing abolition from pamphlets into Parliament, and from London’s drawing rooms to the farthest reaches of Britain’s slave empire.
Cugoano himself soon disappeared from the historical record, his later years unknown. But one trace remains: the book he placed in royal hands, the arguments laid before a future king, and the silence that followed.
The monarchy had been confronted—directly and unmistakably—by a man who had survived its slave system and refused to thank it for his freedom. An opportunity for moral leadership was offered. It was declined.
That silence would echo for generations.
This is an edited extract from The Crown’s Silence by Brooke Newman, published by HarperCollins on 29 January at £25. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
Frequently Asked Questions
Of course Here is a list of FAQs about the topic Unjust and inhuman How the royal family ignored a Black abolitionists plea to end the slave trade
BeginnerLevel Questions
1 What is this story about
This story is about a Black abolitionist named Ottobah Cugoano who in 1791 wrote a bold letter directly to King George III and the Prince of Wales He pleaded with them to use their power to abolish the Atlantic slave trade immediately calling it unjust and inhuman His plea was completely ignored
2 Who was Ottobah Cugoano
Ottobah Cugoano was an abolitionist writer and former enslaved person He was kidnapped from presentday Ghana as a child and enslaved in Grenada and later England After gaining his freedom he became one of the first Black authors in Britain to publish a forceful attack against slavery
3 What did his letter actually say
In his letter Cugoano argued that slavery was a monstrous crime against humanity He urged the King to not just reform the trade but to abolish it completely and to punish slave traders He framed it as a moral and Christian duty
4 How did the royal family respond
They did not respond at all There is no record of any acknowledgment reply or action taken by King George III or the Prince of Wales The letter was filed away and forgotten in the royal archives
5 Why does this matter today
It reveals a direct historical moment where the highest institution in Britain was confronted with the moral evil of slavery by a Black man who had experienced it and chose silence It challenges narratives of gradual peaceful abolition and highlights the resistance of powerful institutions to radical change
AdvancedLevel Questions
6 What was the political context in Britain in 1791
The abolition movement led by figures like William Wilberforce was gaining momentum in Parliament However the slave trade was immensely profitable and the monarchy was deeply conservative The French Revolution also made the British establishment fearful of any radical ideas or upheavals
7 How was Cugoanos approach different from other abolitionists
Unlike some white abolitionists who argued for a gradual end to the trade Cugoano demanded
