sir joseph williamson's mathematical school
Rochester
Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical School was founded in 1701 in accordance
with the last will and testament of Sir Joseph Williamson, who bequeathed five
thousand pounds “towards the building and carrying on and perpetual maintaining
of a free school at Rochester for the instructing and educating of such youth
there who were or should be the sons of freemen these towards the Mathematics
and all other things which fit and encourage them for the sea service and arts
and callings leading and relating thereto”. Sir Joseph Williamson served as a
leading politician and diplomat during the reign of King Charles II. He was
first elected as MP for Rochester in 1690 and held various offices (including
Secretary of State aged 41) until his retirement in 1699 when he settled to live
at Cobham Hall. At one time he was President of the Royal Society, Keeper of the
King’s Library at Whitehall and Editor of the Oxford Gazette. He receives
mention in the diaries of Samuel Pepys. Williamson’s life and work is not
without controversy. He was an investor and administrator in the Royal African
Company, a trading company set up in 1660 and led by the Duke of York (future
King James II). This company held the monopoly of the English slave trade from
Africa to the West Indies. Professor William Pettigrew from Lancaster
University, in his book ‘Freedom’s Debt: The Royal African Company and the
Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672-1752’ (2016) writes that the 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’.
