Has Jesus College learned anything from its Rustat defeat?

When Jesus College in the University of Cambridge set up a committee looking for ‘legacies of slavery’, they found what appeared to be the perfect culprit: Tobias Rustat. A cavalier and courtier, Rustat made benefactions to the university library and Jesus College. Important enough to merit an article in the ‘Dictionary of National Biography’, Rustat was not so well known that his cancellation would lead automatically to controversy – or so the powers that be thought.

But history doesn’t allow for surgical strikes on the past. Now the plan to move Rustat’s monument is over. A church court has ruled that the removal of the Rustat memorial from the college chapel would cause ‘considerable or notable harm to the significance of the chapel as a building of special architectural or historic interest’. While Rustat had certainly invested in the slave trade, David Hodge QC, the deputy chancellor of the diocese of Ely, found that a false narrative had been disseminated about his role and the amount that he – and Jesus College – gained from those investments.