Robert Aske (merchant)

Robert Aske (24 February 1619 – 27 January 1689) was a merchant and haberdasher in the City of London. He is remembered primarily for the charitable foundation created from his estate, which nowadays operates two schools in Hertfordshire, Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School and Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls, and others elsewhere.

Robert Aske
Born	February 24, 1619
Died	January 27, 1689

Aske was the son of an affluent draper. Aske was apprenticed to John Trott, a haberdasher (dealer in raw silk) and East India Company merchant. Aske became a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers in 1643 and was elected an Alderman of the City of London in 1666. He became Master of the Haberdashers' Company, but was removed from that position by James II in 1687 when the Catholic King lost faith in Aske, a Protestant.

Aske held £500 of original stock in the Royal Africa Company, the equivalent of approximately £106,000 in 2020 calculated using the Bank of England inflation calculator. [1]

The Royal African Company of England charter granted it a monopoly in the transportation of people from the west coast of Africa to the English colonies in the Americas. It explicitly sanctioned “the buying and selling, bartering and exchanging of, for, and with any negro slaves, goods, wares and merchandizes whatsoever to be vended or found” in western Africa.[2] The company’s activities took the form of setting up forts and factories, maintaining troops, and exercising martial law in West Africa, in pursuit of trade in gold, silver and African slaves.[3]

The Royal Africa Company was, until 1687, very prosperous. It was during this time, the period Aske held investments, that the Company transported about 5,000 enslaved people a year to be bought and sold in markets. [4] As historian William Pettigrew states, 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,” and that investors in the company were fully aware of its activities and intended to profit from this exploitation.[5]

It is estimated that between 1663 and the end of the 17th century Britain had enslaved and transported over 332,000 Africans across the Atlantic where the majority were forced to work on plantations producing sugar, tobacco and other crops for European consumers. [6] [7]

Despite marrying twice, Aske had no children and left the bulk of his sizable estate, £32,000 (equivalent to £55.8m in 2010, against average earnings[8]), to his livery company for charitable purposes. He directed that £20,000 was to be used to buy a piece of land within one mile of The City upon which was to be built a "hospital" (almshouses) for 20 poor members of the Company and a school for 20 sons of poor Freemen of the Company. The remaining £12,000 was left to form the Haberdashers' Aske's Foundation, of which the Company is Trustee. The charity was incorporated by a private Act of Parliament in 1690.

An almshouse and school, Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, were built on 21 acres in Hoxton by 1692 to a design by Robert Hooke. A further 1,500 acres (6 km²) in Kent were acquired to provide an annual income of over £700. The buildings were demolished in 1824 and reconstructed in 1825 to a design by the architect, David Riddell Roper.[9] The almshouses were closed to enable the school to expand in 1874 to take 300 boys and 300 girls, and a second and third school were opened in Hatcham, Surrey in 1875. Haberdashers' Aske's School, Hoxton was relocated (Hampstead for the boys and Acton for the girls) in 1898, but both schools were reunited in 1974 at Elstree on adjoining sites. The Hatcham schools are now merged as a single state school, an Academy known as Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham College.

Aske, originally from Yorkshire, shares his name with another Robert Aske, who was executed for treason in 1537. The earlier Robert Aske, who died unmarried, is understood to be a collateral ancestor of Alderman Robert Aske. In 1922, another namesake, the lawyer Robert Aske, who also hailed from Yorkshire, was created a baronet.[10]