Welby goes public on family link to slavery

Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, has revealed that his ancestor owned enslaved people on a plantation in Jamaica and was compensated by the British government when slavery was abolished.

- Natricia Duncan, Harriet Sherwood

Welby disclosed his ancestral links in a personal statement that reiterated his commitment to addressing the enduring and damaging legacies of transatlantic slavery.

The archbishop, who is the leader of the global Anglican church, said he recently discovered that his late biological father, Sir Anthony Montague Browne, a private secretary to Winston Churchill, “had an ancestral connection to the enslavement of people in Jamaica and Tobago”.

In 2016, Welby learned that he had been conceived as the result of a brief fling between his mother, Jane, and Browne, and that Gavin Welby, whom she married shortly afterwards, was not his biological father. Justin Welby had no relationship with Browne, who died in 2013.

The archbishop's statement says Browne was the great-great-grandson of Sir James Fergusson, the 4th Baronet of Kilkerran and the owner of enslaved people at the Rozelle plantation in St Thomas.

Fergusson, who died in 1838, received part of a £20m compensation package from the British government for the loss of their "property" after slavery was abolished.