What was a 22-year-old member of the Devon squirearchy doing in Cuba at this time? The memorial explains. Her husband, Edward Schenley, held “the honorable office of Judge in the Mixed Commission Court at the Havannah for the suppression of the slave trade”.
Schenley spent nearly 20 years working to free slaves. In Suriname he did his duty so zealously that he was nearly killed by angry Dutch plantation owners.
The memory of countless Church of England members like Schenley, who worked assiduously to suppress slavery worldwide, will be on the mind of today’s parishioners following the new statement by Sarah Mullally, Archbishop of Canterbury-elect, that she still supports Project Spire: the Church’s plan to spend £100m of the Church Commissioners’ funds, intended for poor parishes, on a program of slavery “reparations”.
Parliamentarians recently called for the Church to rethink Project Spire, but Mullally and the Church Commissioners have both refused. They insist that these payments must be made because their funds profited from slavery in the early 18th century.
However, their new statements refuse to respond properly to scholarship showing that there was no such Church investment in the trade.
They also belittle the work of people like Schenley. Mullally says that Project Spire “does not diminish the legacy of those within the Church who led the fight for freedom and equality”. This is simply untrue. The Church’s own recent “anti-racism” reports constantly downplay and sideline the sacrifices made by the British in the suppression of slavery.
They claim that “the Church of England has taken little action in addressing the historic slave trade and its legacy”. This completely ignores decades of preaching and activism which led to the 19th century abolition of the trade and the economic cost which probably obliterated the accumulated profits of the trade.
It also led to the establishment of the Royal Navy’s West Africa squadron, and the dispatch of missionaries to combat slave traders beyond the reach of British armed forces.
At least 17,000 British sailors died battling the trade, and the death rate of these anti-slavery missionaries, who could have had affluent lives at home, was higher than officers on the Somme. By these measures, the moral debt has amply been repaid.
Schenley was absolutely no paragon. Later in life, he eloped with a 15-year-old girl and corruptly bought his way into parliament. Earlier members of the gentry family, who were slave owners, had a greater sense of noblesse oblige within the parish.
One, for example, oversaw an early programme of inoculation for the local poor. Their memorials, accumulated over time, record not only history, but make one ponder the complexity of moral judgments and how they change over time.
However, another aspect of the Church’s anti-racism work, from which Project Spire has also grown, is to call for all such memorials to be removed, regardless of their historical or moral lessons.
Mullally speaks of her “commitment to sustaining parish life”. But parishioners everywhere see exhausted clergy split between many parishes, and desperate struggles to raise money even to keep their churches heated.
It is unsurprising that 61 per cent of Anglicans will stop giving to the Church if Project Spire goes ahead. This will be much more if they are asked to spend money removing memorials.
We are in a sorry place when ordinary parishioners have a clearer moral vision than the new Archbishop, and the Church establishment is given more to moral grandstanding than to stewardship.