Courtier to King Charles II and a benefactor of the University of Cambridge. He was an investor in, and Assistant (what we'd call Director) of, the Royal African Company, an English mercantile company involved in the slave trade.
The date we've given as his date of birth is actually the date of his baptism. Born Leicestershire.
Rustat commissioned three statues of Stuart kings from the workshop of Grinling Gibbons in the 1670s and '80s. These were the standing statue of Charles II at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, an equestrian statue of Charles II in Windsor Castle and the statue of James II, now in Trafalgar Square. The last was commissioned for the Palace of Whitehall, apparently at the same time as the standing Charles II, and the two works might have been intended as pendant pieces.
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