Cast in Stone

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• Carteret, George
  Royalist statesman in Jersey and one of the original lords proprietor of the British colony of Carolina. Carteret was one of the six founding members of the Company of Royal Adventurers into Africa, an early predecessor of the Royal African Company (RAC), and later became a consultant and investor in the RAC.
• Cartwright, Thomas
  English stonemason and sculptor
• Charles II
  King of Scotland (1649-1651) and King of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1660-1685). Charles granted a royal charter to the slave-trading Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa and made investments in the company. He was later founder and patron of the Royal African Company alongside his brother the Duke of York.
• Clayton, Robert
  Member of the Court of Assistants to the Royal African Company (1672-1682) and Lord Mayor of London (1679-1680). Clayton also acquired a large plantation in Bermuda through his wife Martha Trott, who was the daughter of a Bermuda merchant and factor.
• Colston, Edward
  English slave trader, merchant, philanthropist, and politician. Colston was a Member of the Royal African Company from 1680 to 1692 as well as Deputy Governor from 1689 to 1690. He was also Member of Parliament for Bristol from 1710 to 1713.
• Coram, Thomas
  English sea captain and philanthropist who created the Foundling Hospital in London. Coram founded a shipyard in Massachusetts in 1694, and was later appointed as a trustee of the Georgia Colony in 1732.
• Cromwell, Oliver
  English military and political leader in the seventeenth century. A pivotal figure in British history, and one whose historical reputation has long been the source of debate, Cromwell's colonial legacy is symbolised by the war in Ireland (1649-1653) and the capture of Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655. Jamaica became one of Britain's wealthiest colonies through the use of enslaved African labour, with the British occupying the island for the next three centuries.
• Drake, Francis
  English sailor, privateer and slave-trader in the sixteenth century.
• Edward VI
  King of England (1547-1553)
• Edward, the Black Prince
  Eldest son and heir apparent of King Edward III of England. Although Edward obviously predates the British Empire, his nickname "The Black Prince" (an appellation whose origins are uncertain) raises interesting questions about the meanings of blackness in fourteenth century Europe, or indeed how ideas of blackness have been reconfigured in the present. His equestrian statue in Leeds was also dedicated as a tribute to Edward VII, who was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 1901 until 1910.
• Gibbons, Grinling
  Anglo-Dutch sculptor and wood carver in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. A number of his works depict figures with connections to the transatlantic slave-trade, including the statue of Robert Clayton at St Thomas' Hospital, the statue of John Moore at Christ's Hospital, and the statue of Charles II at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea.
• Guy, Thomas
  British slave-trade investor, bookseller, politician, and founder of Guy's Hospital. Much of Guy's wealth was made through his investments in the South Sea Company, which was involved in the transatlantic slave-trade from 1713 onwards. He founded Guy's Hospital in 1721.
• Locke, John
  English philosopher, physician and one of the most important Enlightenment thinkers. Locke had an investment in the Royal African Company between 1672 and 1675. As the Earl of Shaftesbury's personal secretary, Locke also served as the official clerk for the Council on Foreign Plantations and helped to draft the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina (1669), which explicitly promoted hereditary nobility and slavery in North America.
• Raleigh, Walter
  English statesman, writer, soldier, and colonial explorer in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Raleigh was one of the leading figures in the English colonisation of North America as well as being involved in the suppression of the Desmond Rebellions in Ireland. Raleigh also made two expeditions to Guiana in 1595 and 1617.