Descended from Francis Price, who had settled in Jamaica and with a great-uncle, Sir Charles Price, who was for many years Speaker of the Jamaica House of Assembly, Penzance – born Sir Rose Price had wealthy parents whose wealth was based on their Jamaican sugar plantations.  At Penzance, Price’s parents kept a retinue completely comprised of black servants; in other words slaves.

Educated at Harrow and Oxford (Magdalen College) he subsequently  conducted a Grand Tour of Europe which coincided with the French Revolution.  In 1790, he was sent to Jamaica to improve the family’s plantations and between then and 1796 he had greatly increased the number of slaves ‘owned’ by his family.

In 1814, he bought the Trengwainton Estate in Penzance but soon became reviled both for being a slave owner and for being a believer in the ‘Unitarian’ concept that God is one entity as opposed to the conventional Holy Trinity of God, the Father, God the Son (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit.  Price lived at Kenegie in Gulval whilst the Trengwainton mansion was rebuilt and the ‘pleasure gardens’ established. 

Whilst the slave trade had been abolished in 1807, slavery itself was not banned until 1833 the year before Price died and his estate received compensation of £5241 3s 7d for the loss of his human ‘property’,  numbering a total of 543 slaves.