Tobias Rustat (bapt. 17 September 1608 – 15 March 1694 N. S.) was a courtier to King Charles II and a benefactor of the University of Cambridge. He is remembered for creating the first fund for the purchase of books at the Cambridge University Library. He was an investor in, and Assistant of, the Royal African Company, an English mercantile company involved in the slave trade.
Rustat was born at Barrow upon Soar, Leicestershire, where his father Robert was vicar. [1] His mother Alice was a sister of Robert Snoden, bishop of Carlisle, 1616–1621. He was baptised at Barrow on 17 September 1608. [2]
After an apprenticeship to a barber-surgeon in London, Rustat entered the service of Basil Feilding, 2nd Earl of Denbigh and attended him in his embassy to Venice, before becoming a servant to his nephew George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. An ardent Royalist, he acted as a courier between England and the exiled court. During the Second English Civil War, Rustat joined Buckingham in a 1648 uprising in Kent, where he saved the Duke's life. In 1648 he escaped to the continent with Buckingham. He was present following the Battle of Worcester (1651) and aided the escape of Charles II. [3]
In 1650 Rustat was made Yeoman of the Robes to Charles II, remaining in the position until the king's death in 1685. Rustat's personal wealth came from his career as a courtier and his loyalty to the king. He became an investor, alongside the king and his brother the Duke of York, in a series of trading companies including the Royal African Company and the Gambia Adventurers. Rustat played a role in running the Royal African Company, being elected for three one-year terms as an Assistant (equivalent of a company director) in 1676, 1679 and 1680. [4] The Members of the Court of Assistants can be considered equivalent to a modern-day board of directors. [5] [6] Historian William Pettigrew has stated that this company “shipped more enslaved African women, men and children to the Americas than any other single institution during the entire period of the transatlantic slave trade” and that investors in the company were fully aware of its activities and intended to profit from this exploitation. [7]
In 1675, the University of Cambridge awarded Rustat a Master of Arts degree per literas regias . [8]
John Evelyn wrote of Rustat "He is a very simple, ignorant, but honest and loyal creature." [9]
Rustat is buried in the chapel of Jesus College, Cambridge where there is a monument to him by the studio of Grinling Gibbons. This bears an inscription to Rustat's belief that giving away as much as one is able in life can bring one closer to God in death, and records that he died at the age of 87 on 15 March 1693 (Old Style). [10]
In later life Rustat became an important benefactor to a number of colleges of the University of Cambridge, in particular to Jesus College where his father had been a student. [11] In January 1667 he created the first fund for the purchase of books at the Cambridge University Library with a donation of £1,000. [12] The books purchased from the fund [13] were to be bound in the same way with Rustat's arms stamped in gold on the cover, [14] kept in one place in the library, and recorded in a vellum book. [2]
Rustat created a scholarship at Jesus College for the orphan sons of Anglican clergymen. Among the Rustat scholars were poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge [11] and clergyman Henry Venn. [15] The Tobias Rustat's Charity supports vicars in Leicestershire. [16]
Rustat commissioned three statues of Stuart kings from the workshop of Grinling Gibbons in the 1670s and '80s. These were the standing statue of Charles II at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, an equestrian statue of Charles II in Windsor Castle and the statue of James II, now in Trafalgar Square. The last was commissioned for the Palace of Whitehall, apparently at the same time as the standing Charles II, and the two works might have been intended as pendant pieces. [17]
Jesus College, Cambridge owns a 1682 portrait of Rustat painted by Godfrey Kneller (previously attributed to Lely). [18] This used to hang in the senior combination room but has been placed in storage. The college commemorated him in the naming of Rustat Road in Cambridge. [19] The Rustat Conferences, founded in 2009, were named after him; in 2020 they were renamed the Jesus College Conferences.
Rustat is commemorated by a small, late 19th-century stone statue at the Old Schools, the original site of the University Library. [20]
A white marble memorial monument to Rustat in the chapel of Jesus College is attributed to the studio of Grinling Gibbons, with parts carved by Arnold Quellin and others less certainly by John Nost. [10] The college proposed that this memorial should be removed from the chapel, [21] and a faculty application to permit this was made to the Diocese of Ely in December 2020. [22] [23]
The removal of the monument from the west wall of the college chapel was opposed by Rustat’s descendants and some alumni. An objection by 65 alumni, calling themselves the Rustat memorial group, stated that the character of the chapel would be altered, that the college was trying to alter that character, and that its arguments opposed the whole idea of heritage. The objectors stated that Rustat's involvement with the slave trade was marginal in his life and not unusual in the culture of his time. [24] [25] Evidence had been filed with the University of Cambridge Advisory Group on Legacies of Enslavement which attempted to exonerate Rustat from any significant links to the 17th-century slave trade, as his RAC holdings constituted only 1.7 per cent of his total worth measured by his lifetime giving and his estate at death. [24] English Heritage opposed the proposed relocation while the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby criticised the delay in removing what he described as "a memorial to slavery" on 8 February 2022. [26]
The faculty application to move the Rustat memorial was considered at a three-day consistory court hearing in February 2022. [27] [28] David Hodge QC, Deputy Chancellor of the Diocese of Ely, ruled that removing the memorial would case significant harm to the chapel as a building of special historical and architectural interest. His judgement concluded that Jesus College had not presented a clear and compelling case for removal that outweighed this harm. [29] [30] After the ruling the Archbishop of Canterbury stood by his comments and stated "Memorials to slave-traders do not belong in places of worship." [31]
Jesus College spent £120,000 attempting to remove the Rustat memorial from its chapel, The college has decided against an appeal. Costs were not awarded to the opponents. [32] [33]
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is the largest Oxbridge college measured by the number of undergraduates and has the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford.
Christ's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college includes the Master, the Fellows of the College, and about 450 undergraduate and 170 graduate students. The college was founded by William Byngham in 1437 as God's House. In 1505, the college was granted a new royal charter, was given a substantial endowment by Lady Margaret Beaufort, and changed its name to Christ's College, becoming the twelfth of the Cambridge colleges to be founded in its current form. Alumni of the college include some of Cambridge University’s most famous members, including Charles Darwin and John Milton.
Peterhouse is the oldest constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England, founded in 1284 by Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely. Today, Peterhouse has 254 undergraduates, 116 full-time graduate students and 54 fellows. It is quite often erroneously referred to as Peterhouse College, although the correct name is simply Peterhouse.
St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge founded by the Tudor matriarch Lady Margaret Beaufort. In constitutional terms, the college is a charitable corporation established by a charter dated 9 April 1511. The full, formal name of the college is the College of St John the Evangelist in the University of Cambridge. The aims of the college, as specified by its statutes, are the promotion of education, religion, learning and research. It is one of the larger Oxbridge colleges in terms of student numbers. For 2022, St John's was ranked 6th of 29 colleges in the Tompkins Table with over 35 per cent of its students earning first-class honours. It is the second wealthiest college in Oxford and Cambridge, after neighbouring Trinity, at Cambridge.
Clare College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. The college was founded in 1326 as University Hall, making it the second-oldest surviving college of the University after Peterhouse. It was refounded in 1338 as Clare Hall by an endowment from Elizabeth de Clare, and took on its current name in 1856. Clare is famous for its chapel choir and for its gardens on "The Backs".
Selwyn College, Cambridge is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1882 by the Selwyn Memorial Committee in memory of George Augustus Selwyn (1809–1878), the first Bishop of New Zealand (1841–1868), and subsequently Bishop of Lichfield (1868–1878). Its main buildings consist of three courts built of stone and brick. There are several secondary buildings, including adjacent townhouses and lodges serving as student hostels on Grange Road, West Road and Sidgwick Avenue. The college has some 60 fellows and 110 non-academic staff.
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the city.
Thomas Rotherham, also known as Thomas (Scot) de Rotherham, was an English cleric and statesman. He served as bishop of several dioceses, most notably as Archbishop of York and, on two occasions as Lord Chancellor. He is considered a venerable figure in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, his town of birth.
Tobias Matthew, was an Anglican bishop who was President of St John's College, Oxford, from 1572 to 1576, before being appointed Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University from 1579 to 1583, and Matthew would then become Dean of Durham from 1583 to 1595. All three positions, plus others, were appointed to Matthew by Elizabeth I. Eventually, he was appointed Archbishop of York in 1606 by Elizabeth's successor, James I.
The Royal African Company (RAC) was an English mercantile (trading) company set up in 1660 by the royal Stuart family and City of London merchants to engage in the trade of extracted resources and human trafficking, along the west coast of Africa. It was led by the Duke of York, who was the brother of King Charles II and in 1685, York took the throne as James II.
Barrow upon Soar is a large village in northern Leicestershire, in the Soar Valley between Leicester and Loughborough, with a population at the 2011 census of 5,856.
Gonville and Caius College, often referred to simply as Caius, is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348 by Edmund Gonville, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges and one of the wealthiest. In 1557, it was refounded by alumnus John Caius. The college has been attended by many students who have gone on to significant accomplishment, including fifteen Nobel Prize winners, the second-highest of any Oxbridge college after Trinity College, Cambridge.
John Green was an English clergyman and academic.
The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the third-oldest university in continuous operation. The university's founding followed the arrival of scholars who left the University of Oxford for Cambridge after a dispute with local townspeople. The two ancient English universities, although sometimes described as rivals, share many common features and are often jointly referred to as Oxbridge. In 1231, 22 years after its founding, the university was recognised with a royal charter granted by King Henry III.
Jesus College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's full name is The College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund, near Cambridge. Its common name comes from the name of its chapel, Jesus Chapel.
Sonita Alleyne, is the Barbados-born British co-founder and former CEO of Somethin’ Else, a cross-platform media production company. Alleyne is a member of the BBC Trust, the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation, and Master of Jesus College, Cambridge.
Trinity College Chapel is the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Part of a complex of Grade I listed buildings at Trinity, it dates from the mid 16th century. It is an Anglican church in the Anglo-Catholic tradition.
The statue of Charles II stands in the Figure, or Middle, Court of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, London. The sculptor was Grinling Gibbons, and the statue was executed around 1680–1682. The king founded the Royal Hospital in 1682 as a home for retired army veterans. The statue is a Grade I listed structure.
The statue of Robert Clayton stands at the entrance to the North Wing of St Thomas' Hospital, Lambeth, London. The sculptor was Grinling Gibbons, and the statue was executed around 1700–1714. Sir Robert was a banker, politician and Lord Mayor of London. As President of St Thomas', he was responsible for the complete rebuilding of the hospital, and associated church in the late 17th century. The statue was designated a Grade I listed structure in 1979.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)