**The Queen has attended a thanksgiving service in Bermuda to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the island’s settlement by the British.**During the service, the island’s troubled involvement with the slave trade was highlighted.
The Bishop of Bermuda lamented how the church did not challenge the practice and described the period as a “dark time” for Anglicans.
The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh are on a three-day tour of Bermuda.
The Bishop of Bermuda, Dr Patrick White, also highlighted present issues facing the island like tackling the problem of rising violence among young people and interracial tensions.
‘Enlightened attitudes’
Britain’s presence on the island happened by chance when a group of colonists heading for Jamestown, Virginia, was shipwrecked off the territory in 1609.
When they left Bermuda the following year a small party remained behind to lay claim to the islands that remain a British Overseas Territory.
The Bishop described how the settlement of Bermuda was a commercial venture and how slaves were brought to the island.
“But where was the church” he said.
"There in the middle still baptising, burying and so on, but not rising above and challenging the process of slavery in any significant way at first.
“From time to time there were flashes of more enlightened attitudes but they were like matches struck in a dark place to flare up and die out very quickly.”
Foreign Secretary David Miliband was among the congregation in Bermuda’s Anglican cathedral.
The royal couple arrived on the island on Tuesday and will also travel to Trinidad and Tobago later this week.
The Queen first travelled to Bermuda in 1953, just five months after her coronation.