Black Tudors

by Miranda Kaufmann

  Portrait of a Moor by Jan Mostaert, c. 1525–30. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

  Anne of Denmark by Paul Van Somer, 1617. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

  Charles I and Henrietta Maria departing for the chase, c.1630–32, by Daniel Mytens. Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2017/Bridgeman Images.

  The Cowdray Engraving. Courtesy of Kester Keighley and the Mary Rose Trust.

  Canav Pour Pecher Les Perles (Canoe for Pearl-Fishing), Histoire Naturelle des Indes, ca. 1586, MA 3900 (fol. 56v–57). New York, the Pierpont Morgan Library. Bequest of Clara S. Peck, 1983. Photo © 2017, the Morgan Library & Museum/Art Resource, New York/Scala, Florence.

  The Drake Jewel, c. 1586. Courtesy of Universal History Archive/UIG/Getty Images.

  Sir Francis Drake by Marcus Gheeraerts, 1591. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

  Detail from Warriors of the Esmeraldas, 1599, by Adrian Sanchez Galque. Courtesy of Museo de America, Madrid, Spain/Bridgeman Images.

  Map illustrating Sir Francis Drake’s West Indian voyage, 1585–6, by Baptista Boazio. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2007626708/.

  Drake’s attack on Cartagena by Baptista Boazio. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

  Portrait of Peregrine Bertie, Lord Willoughby de Eresby, c. 1601. Courtesy of Grimsthorpe & Drummond Castle Trust/Ray Biggs.

  Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun, Moorish Ambassador to Queen Elizabeth I, 1600. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

  A Village Festival by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

  Portrait of an African Woman holding a clock, c. 1583–85, by Annibale Carracci. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

  Notes to Text

  Abbreviations

  APC: Acts of the Privy Council of England, ed. J.R. Dasent, (46 vols., 1890–1964).

  BCB: Bridewell Court Books, Minutes of the Court of Governors (37 vols., 1559–1971), Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives, http://archives.museumofthemind.org.uk/BCB.htm (accessed 30 March 2017).

  CSPC: Calendar of State Papers, Colonial series ed. W.N. Sainsbury (10 vols, 1860).

  CSPD: Calendar of State Papers, Domestic series, of the reigns of Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth and James I, 1547–1625, ed. R. Lemon, M.A.E. Green (12 vols., 1856–72).

  Calendar of State Papers, Domestic series, of the reign of James I, ed. M.A.E. Green (5 vols., 1857–1872).

  Calendar of State Papers, Domestic series, of the reign of Charles I, ed. J. Bruce (23 vols., 1858–1897).

  CSPS: Calendar of Letters and State Papers relating to English Affairs preserved in or originally belonging to the Archives of Simancas, ed. M.A.S Hume (4 vols.,1892–9).

  Hakluyt: R. Hakluyt, The Principall Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (12 vols., Glasgow, 1903–5).

  The History of Parliament: The History of Parliament Online, Member Biographies, http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/ (accessed 30 March 2017).

  L&P, Henry VIII: Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, ed. J.S. Brewer, R.H. Brodie and J. Gairdner (21 vols., 1810–1920).

  LMA: London Metropolitan Archives, 40 Northampton Rd, Clerkenwell, London EC1R 0HB.

  TNA: The National Archives, Kew Richmond, Surrey, TW9 4DU.

  Introduction

  1 Bennett, G., ‘Black history: the timeline’, Guardian; Kaufmann, M., ‘Elizabeth I and the ‘Blackamoores’, http://www.mirandakaufmann.com.

  2 Bartels, ‘Too Many Blackamoors: Deportation, Discrimination, and Elizabeth I’; Kaufmann, ‘Caspar van Senden, Sir Thomas Sherley and the ‘Blackamoor’ Project’; Weissbourd, “Those in Their Possession”: Race, Slavery, and Queen Elizabeth’s “Edicts of Expulsion”. This episode is discussed in Chapter 4 and Chapter 6.

  3 This was reinforced by the range of exhibitions, programming and other materials widely circulated during the 2007 commemoration of the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the British Slave Trade.

  4 The Oxford English Dictionary, “slave, n.1 (and adj.)”, OED Online.

  5 Milton, White Gold, p. 304. See also Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters.

  6 235 Africans were sold in Lagos, Portugal; in 1444. Saunders, A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal, pp. 5–11.

  7 Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database calculates that 378,734 slaves disembarked from 1,328 voyages between 1514–1619.

  8 Wrigley and Schofield, The Population History of England 1541–1871, p. 528. Life expectancy markedly improved for those who survived their childhoods.

  9 Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Oakeshott, p. 94.

  10 Hargrave, An Argument in the Case of James Sommersett a Negro, p. 50–1, citing the 1569 Cartwright case: Rushworth, Historical Collections of Private Passages of State, II, p. 468; see also: Paley, ‘Somerset, James (b. c.1741, d. in or after 1772)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and Kaufmann, ‘Somerset Case,’ pp. 504–505.

  11 Cambridge University Library, G.R.G Conway Collection, Add. MSS, 7231, ff. 2, 157–8, 339–40.

  Chapter 1

  1 Westminster Tournament Roll, painted vellum, 1511 College of Arms, London; repro. in The Great Tournament Roll of Westminster, ed. Anglo, II, plate 3, membranes 3–5; plate 18, membranes 28–9.

  2 Kleist, ‘The English African Trade Under the Tudors’, p. 137; Blake, West Africa, pp. 60–62; Blake, Europeans in West Africa, p. 266; Calendar of State Papers, Venice, ed. Brown, 1202–1509, p. 142; Penn, Winter King, p. 32.

  3 Boorde, The Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, ed. Furnivall, p. 56.

  4 Personal correspondence with Matthew Dimmock. See also Friedman, ‘The Art of the Exotic: Robinet Testard’s Turbans and Turban–like Coiffure’, pp. 173–191. Henry VIII and the Earl of Essex appeared in Turkish costume during Shrovetide 1510: Johnson, So Great A Prince, p. 203.

  5 Kisby, ‘Royal Minstrels in the City and Suburbs of Early Tudor London’, p. 201; Stevens, Music and Poetry, p. 307.

  6 TNA, E 36/214, f. 109. The document can be viewed online at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/early_times/docs/blanke_payment.htm

  7 Lowe and Earle, Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, pp. 12, 252.

  8 Records of English Court Music, ed. Ashbee, VII, pp. 185–188.

  9 Thirsk, Chapters from the Agrarian History of England and Wales, I, p. 18; Woodward, Men at Work, p. 172.

  10 The Household of Edward IV, ed. Myers, p. 131.

  11 Stevens, Music and Poetry, pp. 235–7, 313. Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well, Act 5, Scene 2; ‘Parishes: Richmond (anciently Sheen)’, in A History of the County of Surrey: Volume 3, ed. H.E. Malden (London, 1911), pp. 533–546, n. 50. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/surrey/vol3/pp533-546 [accessed 30 March 2017].

  12 Stevens, Music and Poetry p. 313; G. R. Rastall, ‘Secular musicians in late medieval England’, pp. 149–50.

  13 ‘Introduction’, in Memorials of London and London Life in the 13th, 14th and 15th Centuries, ed. H.T. Riley (London, 1868), pp. vii–li, n. 94. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/memorials-london-life/vii-li [accessed 30 March 2017].

  14 Numbers 29:1; Leviticus 23:24.

  15 Sarkissian and Tarr, ‘Trumpet’ Grove Music Online.

  16 Herbert, ‘“. . . men of great perfection in their science . . .”: the trumpeter as musician and diplomat in England in the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’, pp. 1–2, 10.

  17 Records of English Court Music, ed. Ashbee, VII, p. 234.

  18 Records of English Court Music, ed. Ashbee, VII, p. 184.

  19 Penn, Winter King, pp. 4–5.

  20 Kaplan, ‘Introduction to the New Edition’, in The Image of the Black in Western Art, ed. Bindman, Gates & Dalton, II, 1, pp. 13–14; Kaplan, ‘Black Africans in Hohenstaufen Iconography,’ pp. 29–36.

  21 Lowe & Earle, Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, pp. 39, 118; Kaufmann, ‘Courts, Blacks at Early
Modern European Aristocratic’, pp. 163–166.

  22 The Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, ed. Dickson, Balfour Paul, McInnes et al., II, 477 and III, 132; “Taburn(e) n.”, and “Taburner n.”, The Dictionary of the Scots Language. The last mentions of the African drummer at James IV’s court suggest he died as a result of an injury sustained in the summer of 1506. The King paid his medical bills from June to August, but thereafter was supporting his wife and child. His drum was given to another musician, named Guillaume, the following summer. The Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, ed. Dickson, Balfour Paul, McInnes et al., III, pp. 197, 206, 330, 335, 377, 388; Habib, Black Lives, p. 30; Robbins, ‘Black Africans at the Court of James IV’, p. 42.

  23 A rare and important French Renaissance tapestry of Le Camp du Drap d’Or, the meeting of Kings Henry VIII and François Ier, c.1520, probably Tournai, sold at Sothebys, New York, 11 December 2014: http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2014/masterworks–n09209/lot.14.html

  24 The Engagement of St Ursula and Prince Etherius, 1522, St Auta altarpiece, Convent of Madre de Deus, Lisbon.

  25 Ashbee and Lasocki, eds., A biographical dictionary of English court musicians, I, p. 238; Dumitrescu, The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations, pp. 33, 67–8.

  26 Records Of English Court Music, ed. Ashbee, VII, p. 174.

  27 T. Knighton, ‘The Spanish Court of Ferdinand and Isabella’, pp. 341–343.

  28 Elbl, ‘The Volume of the Early Atlantic Slave Trade’, pp. 31–75; Phillips, Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia, p. 64. Melchor de Santa Cruz, Floresta espanola p. 197, n. 11. See also Blumenthal, Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-Century Valencia.

  29 T. Knighton, ‘The Spanish Court of Ferdinand and Isabella’, p. 349.

  30 Tremlett, Isabella of Castile, p. 119.

  31 Fraccia, ‘The Urban Slave in Spain and New Spain’, p. 199; Hilgarth, The Mirror of Spain, pp. 243–51.

  32 Tremlett, Catherine of Aragon, pp. 40–41.

  33 Crónica Del Rey Enrico Otavo De Ingalaterra, ed. Roca de Togores, Marquis de Molins, p. 326; CSPS, 1485–1509, pp. 246, 252, 254; Williams, P., Katherine of Aragon, p. 108.

  34 Ibid., pp. 107–109.

  35 BL Arundel 249, f. 85v; The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, ed. Rogers, pp. 3–4; Orme, ‘Holt, John (d. 1504)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Chronicles of London, ed. Kingsford, p. 334 and The Receyt of the Lady Kataryne, ed. Kipling, p. 33; discussed by Habib, Black Lives, pp. 24–7 and Onyeka, Blackamoores, pp. 191–6. See also Johnson, So Great a Prince, p. 205.

  36 Johnson, L., ‘A Life of Catalina, Katherine of Aragon’s Moorish Servant’, English Historical Fiction Authors; Johnson, So Great a Prince, pp. 205–6 and p. 298, n. 2. L&P, Henry VIII, 1531–32, p. 169 (Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to Isabella of Portugal, 31 July 1531). As Johnson explains (p. 298, n.2), Catalina of Motril has been confused in the secondary literature with a completely different woman, Katherine of Aragon’s maid of honour, Lady Catalina de Cardones. See, Crónica del rey Enrico otavo de Ingalaterra, ed. Roca de Togores, Marquis de Molins, pp. 325, 329; Ungerer, The Mediterranean Apprenticeship of Slavery, p. 97 and Onyeka, Blackamoores, pp. 198–9.

  37 Ungerer, The Mediterranean Apprenticeship of British Slavery, p. 96; D’Azevedo, ‘Os Escravos’, p. 300, doc. III (transcription of Chancellaria de D. João II, Liv. pp. xvi, fl. 61).

  38 Rushworth, Historical Collections of Private Passages of State, II, 468; Harrison, Description of England, ed. Edelen, p. 118.

  39 Saunders, Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal, pp. 113–133; Fox, ‘“For good and sufficient reasons”, pp. 246–262; Peabody, ‘There Are No Slaves in France’, p. 11; Taylor, American Colonies, pp. 155–156, 213.

  40 Van Cleve, ‘Somerset’s Case and its antecedents in Imperial perspective’, pp. 608–9.

  41 Crónica Del Rey Enrique Octavo De Inglaterra, ed. Roca de Togores, Marquis de Molins, p. 329.

  42 Fraccia, ‘The Urban Slave in Spain and New Spain’, p. 195.

  43 MacCulloch, ‘Bondmen Under the Tudors’, pp. 94, 109.

  44 Beier, Masterless Men, p. 23.

  45 See n. 37 above; Tudor Exeter Tax Assessments 1489–1599, ed. Rowe, p. 18; For Jacques Francis, see Chapter 2; Northamptonshire Record Office, Microfiche 120p/3 (St Nicholas, Eydon, 16 December 1545); The Diary of Henry Machyn, ed. Nicholls, p. 74; Stow, Annales, ed. Howe, p. 1038.

  46 The Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, ed. Dickson, Balfour Paul, McInnes et al., II, pp. 465, 468, 469; III, pp. lxxxv, 94, 101, 172, 175, 182, 113, 114, 154–5, 361, 370–1, 387, 409, 336; IV: 51, 82, 59, 61, 100, 62, 116, 232, 324, 339, 401, 404, 434, 436; V, p. 328. For transcriptions see Kaufmann, ‘Africans in Britain’, Appendix: 5. Household Accounts, nos. 28–97.

  47 Harrison, J.G., “‘The Bread Book” and the Court and Household of Marie de Guise in 1549’, p. 30.

  48 The Scottish Correspondence of Mary of Lorraine, ed. Cameron, p. 296; see also Kaufmann, ‘Sir Pedro Negro: What colour was his skin?’, pp. 142–146.

  49 Williams, P., Katherine of Aragon, p. 155, 158–9.

  50 Penn, Winter King, pp. 213–225.

  51 Woodfield, The Early History of the Viol, p. 206.

  52 L&P, Henry VIII, 1509–1514, p. 14.

  53 Easterlings were merchants of the Dutch Hanse.

  54 L&P, Henry VIII, 1509–1514, pp. 8–24.

  55 L&P, Henry VIII, 1509–1514, p. 43.

  56 Hayward, Rich Apparel: Clothing and the Law in Henry VIII’s England, p. 17.

  57 Dillon, Performance and Spectacle in Hall’s Chronicle, pp. 25, 28.

  58 Ibid., p. 33; Johnson, So Great A Prince, p. 203.

  59 Stevens, Music and Poetry, p. 301.

  60 His songbook is BL, Additional MS. 31922, ff.14v–15; See also Helms, ‘Henry VIII’s Book: Teaching Music to Royal Children’, pp. 118–135 and D. Fallows, ‘Henry VIII As a Composer’, pp. 27–39.

  61 Stevens, Music and Poetry, p. 234.

  62 Erasmus, In Praise of Folly (1509), cited in Stevens, Music and Poetry, p. 287, see also pp. 265–266; Hayward, Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII, p.266; Princess Mary demanded music from Memo: L & P, Henry VIII, 1515–1518, pp. 1220–1236.

  63 Dumitrescu, The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations, pp. 68, 232; Records Of English Court Music, ed. Ashbee, VII, 22.

  64 TNA, E101/217/2, no.105. A searchable database of this tranche of documents has been created by Dr. James Ross of the University of Winchester: ‘Kingship, Court and Society: the Chamber Books of Henry VII and Henry VIII, 1485–1521’, https://www.tudorchamberbooks.org.

  65 Records of English Court Music, ed. Ashbee, VII, pp. 87, 100, 103, 192–201.

  66 Ashbee, ‘Groomed for Service: Musicians in the Privy Chamber at the English Court’, p. 188. The ‘More Taubronar’ at the Scottish court was provided with a horse (which previously belonged to court trumpeter Pete Johne) by James IV on 13 September 1504, but the king mostly met his travel expenses. In 1504 the drummer, along with four Italian minstrels, travelled with the itinerant court to Eskdale, Dumfries, Peebles, Falkland, Strethbogy, Brechin and ‘the Month’: The Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, ed. Dickson, Balfour Paul, McInnes et al., II, pp. 458 and 420, 435, 444, 451, 457, 458,459, 461, 462, 464.

  67 Stevens, Music and Poetry, p. 240. For further discussion of Tudor sumptuary laws, see Chapter 5.

  68 The Great Tournament Roll of Westminster, ed. Anglo, I, p. 1.

  69 L & P, Henry VIII, 1509–1514, pp. 369–377.

  70 Walker, ‘The Westminster Tournament Challenge (Harley 83 H 1) and Thomas Wriothesley’s Workshop’, pp. 1–13.

  71 Dillon, Performance and Spectacle in Hall’s Chronicle, p. 42.

  72 The Great Chronicle of London, ed. Thomas and Thornley, p. 373–4.

  73 L&P, Henry VIII, 1515–1518, p.1450.

  74 The following account of the Westminster Tournament is ta
ken from The Great Tournament Roll of Westminster, ed. Anglo, The Great Chronicle of London, ed. Thomas and Thornley, and Hall’s Chronicle, in Dillon, Performance and Spectacle in Hall’s Chronicle, pp. 37–42. Despite how they are dressed in the Tournament Roll, the Great Chronicle says the trumpeters were ‘clad in Red cloth’: Anglo, I, p. 85.

  75 The Great Tournament Roll of Westminster, ed. Anglo, I, p. 35, esp. n. 3.

  76 Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, ed. Wright, p. 69.

  77 The Great Chronicle of London, ed. Thomas and Thornley, p. 371.

  78 The Great Tournament Roll of Westminster, ed. Anglo, I, p. 55; The Great Chronicle of London, ed. Thomas and Thornley, p. 372.

  79 The Great Tournament Roll of Westminster, ed. Anglo, I, p. 96.

  80 The poems of William Dunbar, ed. Bawcutt, p. 113; Habib, Black Lives, p. 33, n. 40; Scott, Dunbar, p. 67. Bawcutt, ‘The Art of Flyting’, pp. 5–24; ‘The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy’, tr. Murphy, http://www.clanstrachan.org/history/Flyting_of_Dunbar_and_Kennedy.pdf (accessed 30 March 2017). The Poems of William Dunbar, Kinsley, p. 106.

  81 The Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, ed. Dickson, Balfour Paul, McInnes et al., III, p. 258; Lindsay of Pitscottie The Historie and Cronicles of Scotland, ed. Mackay Vol X p. 244.

  82 The Great Tournament Roll of Westminster, ed. Anglo, I, pp. 56–7. The original source, Gibson’s Revels Account, TNA, E 36/217, f. 70 refers to 1s 4d spent on ‘mendyng of the floor’ at the ‘bechop of harforthes plas’. Presumably this was the Bishop of Hereford, who in 1511 was Richard Mayhew: Newcombe, ‘Mayhew, Richard (1439/40–1516)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

  83 Dillon, Performance and Spectacle in Hall’s Chronicle, pp. 40–41.

  84 The Great Tournament Roll of Westminster, ed. Anglo, I p. 58; L&P, Henry VIII, 1509–1514, pp. 377–390.

  85 Bowsher, ‘The Chapel Royal at Greenwich Palace’, pp. 155–161; Thurley, The Royal Palaces of Tudor England, pp. 196–7 and personal correspondence.

  86 TNA, E 101/417/6, f. 50.