“Slave Emancipation; or John Bull Gulled out of Twenty Millions”. Documents in the National Archives link two of the City’s most renowned names – NM Rothschild, patriarch of the banking dynasty, and James William Freshfield, founder of City law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer – more closely to slavery than had been previously disclosed. Until now Mr Rothschild’s chief known connection with slavery was helping to end it by lending the UK government £15m of the £20m it used in the 1830s to bail out slave-owners after it abolished slavery – depicted in this cartoon (by CJ Grant and reproduced with permission from the UCL Art Collection).

Rothschild’s Antigua counterclaim for compensation. For 170 years, papers documenting one of England’s darkest periods and showing companies, families and institutions that knowingly benefited from slavery, remained hidden in the National Archives. Nick Draper’s research will form the basis of a project by University College London to list every slave-owner resident in Britain in the 1830s and highlight the companies, art collections and institutions that have links to 19th century colonial slavery. © Daniel Lynch

Rothschild’s Antigua counterclaim for compensation. Among National Archives documents is a claim for £3,000 compensation made by Nathan Mayer Rothschild and his brother Baron James de Rothschild. The documents show the brothers agreed £3,000 owed to Lord James O’Bryen, after the sale of his estate in Antigua, should be secured to NM Rothschild via a mortgage on 88 slaves on the estate. © Daniel Lynch

Asset values. After the man who bought Lord James O’Bryen’s estate went bankrupt, NM Rothschild used the government compensation scheme to claim the £3,000. The documents reveal an inventory of slaves and their estimated values in sterling. The money was awarded to NM Rothschild’s estate after his death in July 1836. © Daniel Lynch

Details of claim. Neither the Rothschild family’s own archive nor Niall Ferguson’s history of the family, reveal Nathan Mayer Rothschild’s claim as a mortgagee of slaves under the compensation system he helped create. In the US, where Rothschild bank is still active, JPMorgan, the investment bank, apologised for its predecessor's history in mortgaging slaves in Louisiana and set up a scholarship fund there. © Daniel Lynch

Freshfield’s St Christopher counterclaim for compensation. The National Archives documents also show how James William Freshfield and his two sons counterclaimed for three groups of slaves in St Christopher. They based the claim on unpaid legal fees in connection with the earlier sale of the estate and its slaves. The claim was eventually withdrawn. © Daniel Lynch

Freshfield's signature on the counterclaim for compensation. Among founders of lawfirms whose successor companies still exist, the Freshfield's name appears most often in the slave compensation records, having successfully collected government bail-out money on 10 claims as trustees, or owners-in-fee of slave estates for a total of 4 clients, according to a parliamentary list of awarded claims. © Daniel Lynch

Particulars of Freshfield’s counterclaim. Uniquely within the records, Freshfields partners also entered a claim for money on behalf of their firm under the compensation scheme for slave-owners as they sought to recoup unpaid legal fees. © Daniel Lynch

Freshfield⬢s counterclaim for three groups of slaves in St Christopher. The claim was based on unpaid legal fees in connection with the earlier sale of the estate and its slaves. The claim states that the firm had a lien on the title deeds for the Belle Tete Estate and the slaves on it and that the firm would not give up the deeds until the outstanding fees had been paid. © Daniel Lynch

Freshfield’s counterclaim. The counterclaim, which was eventually withdrawn, gives a detailed description of Mr Freshfield’s authority as the holder of deeds over an estate and its slaves and his attempt to collect unpaid legal fees using the government system set up to compensate slave-owners sheds new light on the role he played in the slavery. © Daniel Lynch