Thomas Clarkson (Portraiture of Quakerism) has given an elaborate and sympathetic account of the Quakers as he knew them when he travelled amongst them from house to house on his crusade against the slave trade.
His services as an abolitionist pioneer are recorded in Clarkson's History of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade.
The distribution of Clarkson's book led to his forming connexions with many persons of influence, and especially with William Wilberforce.
As many slaves, Clarkson tells us, came annually from this part of the coast as from all the rest of Africa besides.
A Gothic monument commemorates Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846), a powerful opponent of the slave-trade, and a native of the town.