KS3 History: The Slave Owner - Sir Richard Pennant

If we want to understand the past, we have to understand the people who lived in the past. We can study monarchs, we can study ordinary people, we can study heroes, but sometimes we have to study people who maybe we don't like the sound of all that much.

I'm here at Penrhyn Castle in North Wales, the ancestral home of Richard Pennant, a wealthy landowner who made his money from slavery during the 18th century. But who was Richard Pennant and what did he think about slavery? He was 1st Baron of Penrhyn, he was an MP, and he owned over 1,000 slaves. In fact, he was a passionate defender of slavery and he even argued against the people who wanted to see it abolished.

DOOR CREAKS

The castle was rebuilt in 1822 and is now owned by the National Trust, but it retains this grand dining room where Richard's portrait hangs, as it would have done when he was alive. It was painted at the height of Richard's power, when he was an MP speaking regularly in support of the slavery that had made him so rich. Portraits like these were incredibly expensive and were statements about your wealth and status. I found a source online which covers a debate that was introduced by William Wilberforce to Parliament on 12th May 1789.

This was a powerful debate about whether or not slavery should be abolished. Many of the MPs spoke saying that they thought it should be. In amongst all this, though, Lord Penrhyn, or Richard Pennant, speaks up and gives his verdict in support of keeping slavery. He says this - "The question, therefore, was, "if they passed the vote of abolition, "they actually struck at the 70 millions of property…" …they ruined the colonies, and by destroying an essential nursery for seamen, give up the dominion of the ocean at a single glance.

MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT: Hear! So what he's talking about here is the potential for Britain to lose her colonies, the potential for Britain to lose control of the seas, so his arguments in favour of keeping slavery are very much about influence, power, money, and not at all about compassion.

Publicly, Richard was a strong defender of the slave trade, but what about in private? Can sources reveal anything more about this man?

In fact, Richard left hundreds of letters he wrote to his plantation managers in Jamaica and they're stored a few miles away, in the archives of Bangor University. Richard Pennant wrote these letters in the 1780s, when he inherited the estate from his father.

If we take this one, for example, which he's written to his plantation manager, he says, "The life and health of the negroes "is of the utmost importance. "They should not be overworked "and that they should be treated with tenderness "when they are ill "and with humanity and some attention at all times." So on the surface, he's concerned about welfare, but if we read between the lines, we can see that there's actually something else going on here. He says, "Humanity, "as well as the interests of the proprietor, "demand that they should be taken care of." He's interested in seeing his slaves taken care of because he wants an efficient plantation.

He goes on - "That the negroes may have provisions "and the cattle food." He's lumping them in together and talking about them in the same context. This makes me think, how much is his care about the slaves motivated by his concern for their welfare and how much is he really just concerned about them as commodities? And in this way, this source is great. It allows us to understand the mentality of Richard Pennant in a little bit more detail. We've seen some fascinating sources that really allow us into the mindset of Richard Pennant. The portrait showed us that he thinks of himself as this great man, the speech allows us to see how he justified slavery in public and, with the letters, we saw that he thought of slaves as commodities.

What else would we do next as historians?

If we want to understand more about the mentality of slave owners, we'd look for other sources which would allow us to do just that.