Black Tudors

by Miranda Kaufmann

  12 Sir Francis Drake’s West Indian Voyage, 1585–6, ed. Frear Keeler, p.215, n.1;Greville, The Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney, p. 105. It was Sidney’s friend Hubert Languet, reporting on a visit to Venice, who warned that young men might ‘soften their manly virtue’ by pursuing the arts of ‘courtly flattery’: Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, p. 87.

  13 Kelsey, Sir Francis Drake, 245–249; Sugden, Sir Francis Drake, pp. 180–1; Calendar of State Papers, Venice, ed. Brown, 1581–1591, pp. 124–5.

  14 Edward Wynter to Sir Francis Walsingham, 24 October 1585: TNA, SP 12/183/49; CSPD, 1547–1625, II, 278.

  15 Quinn, ‘Turks, Moors, Blacks and Others in Drake’s West Indian Voyage’, pp. 197–204; Further English Voyages to Spanish America, 1583–1594, ed. Wright, p. 159; Calendar of State Papers, Venice, ed. Brown, 1581–1591, pp. 155, 168.

  16 Drake’s West Indian Voyage, 1585–6, ed. Frear Keeler, p. 169.

  17 Drake’s West Indian Voyage, 1585–6, ed. Frear Keeler, pp. 32, 196, 242–3, 308.

  18 Captain William Cecil was assigned command of the soldiers on the Aid: Drake’s West Indian Voyage, 1585–6, ed. Frear Keeler, p. 253.

  19 Further English Voyages to Spanish America, 1583–1594, ed. Wright, xlvi–lvi; Drake’s West Indian Voyage, 1585–6, ed. Frear Keeler, pp. 33–37; Kelsey, Sir Francis Drake, pp. 264–269; Lemaitre, Historia General de Cartagena, II, p. 11. Don Juan de Castellanos mentions the African fishermen in a poem written as part of his history of Cartagena in 1586–7: ‘En la bahia apresaron los ingleses a dos negros que andaban pescando, quienes les informaron de las entradas de la ciudad y de estar sembradas las playas de puas venenosas. Sondearon el puerto donde esta la punta de las Hicascis, desguarnecida imprevisormente.’: Discurso del Capitan Francisco Draque, XLV.

  20 110,000 ducats was the price Giacomo Boncompagni, illegitimate son of Pope Gregory XIII, paid the Duke of Urbino for the Neapolitan dukedom of Sora and Arce in the Terra de Lavoro in 1579: Williams, G. L., Papal Genealogy: The Families and Descendants of the Popes, p. 90.

  21 Further English voyages to Spanish America, 1583–1594, Wright, (ed.) p. 159.

  22 Drake’s West Indian Voyage, 1585–6, ed. Frear Keeler, pp. 209–210.

  23 Edward Stafford to Sir Francis Walsingham, 20 August 1586: TNA, SP 78/16 f. 9. See also McDermott, ‘Stafford, Sir Edward (1552–1605)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition.

  24 De Belleforest, L’Histoire Universelle du Monde (1570), p. 550, cited in S. Peabody, There are no Slaves in France, pp. 12, 29. As we saw in Chapter Three, sailor William Collins also asserted in 1572 that neither in England nor in France were there any slaves. Collins’s cellmate Pedro de Trejo reported the following exchange between them to the Mexican Inquisition: “If you think you can deprive us of our dominion over the people of the new world you are welcome to try!” at which the said Guillermo [William] laughed much and said: “if the Queen cared to send a fleet to this land that the King of Castile would be hard put to it because if nothing else happened . . . the negroes and Indians would turn it over to us” because when the said Calens [Collins] told the negroes that neither in England nor in France were there any slaves they would answer that they were better Christians than the Spaniards. Cambridge University Library, G.R.G Conway Collection, Add. 7231, ff. 339–340.

  25 TNA, REQ 2/164/117 For more on Hector Nunes and the Ethopian Negar see Chapter 2, Chapter 6 and also Kaufmann, M. ‘African freedom in Tudor England: Dr Hector Nunes’ petition’, in Our Migration Story http://www.ourmigrationstory.org.uk/oms/african-freedon-in-tudor-england-dr-hector-nuness-request.

  26 The Household Papers of Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, ed. Batho, p. 74. For Robert Crosse, Captain of the Bond, see: McDermott, ‘Crosse, Sir Robert (c.1547–1611)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Drake’s West Indian Voyage, 1585–6, ed. Frear Keeler, pp. 69, 292; Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp. 90, 94, 255.

  27 Edward Wynter to Sir Francis Walsingham, 18 August 1587: Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, Elizabeth, 1558–1589, ed. Stevenson, Crosby, Butler, et. al,, XXI, part 3: pp. 250–1; Gloucestershire Record Office, D421/9; Strype, Annals, III, 2, pp. 38–40; ‘Wynter, Edward (c.1560–1619), of Lydney, Glos.’, The History of Parliament.

  28 No baptism record has yet been found for Edward Swarthye. The Lydney parish registers do not survive before 1678.

  29 Anonymous, Sir Thomas More, Act III, Scene 1, 132–135.

  30 Anthony Maria Browne, Viscount Montague’s Household Book of 1595 contained a section on ‘The Porter and his office’: St. John Hope, Cowdray and Easebourne Priory, p. 128. His household would have been far grander than Wynter’s, with maybe four times as many servants. Elzinga, ‘Browne, Anthony, first Viscount Montagu (1528–1592)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

  31 Kaufmann, ‘Africans in Britain’, p. 161; Leicester: Household Accounts and Disbursement Books of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, ed. Adams, p. 178, n. 364; Percy: The Household Papers of Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, ed. Batho, p. 74; Cecils: Hertfordshire Archives & Local Studies, DP/29/1/1 (Baptism of Fortunatus, St Mary the Virgin, Cheshunt, 16 April 1570); City of Westminster Archives Centre, St Clements Danes Parish Registers, vol.1 (Burial of Fortunatus, servant to Robert Cecil, 21 January, 1602) Ralegh: Household Accounts and Disbursement Books of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, ed. Adams, p. 210, n. 444; TNA, SP 12/262/104 (declaration of John Hill of Stonehouse, Plymouth, 1597); CSPD,1595–1597, p. 381; Throckmorton: Canterbury Cathedral Archives, U85/38/14 (Sir Arthur Throckmorton’s Diary, 18 July 1589); Porter: City of Westminster Archives Centre, St Martin’s in the Fields Parish Registers, vol. 2 (Baptism of Maria, servant to Endymion Porter, 8 February 1621); Arundel: TNA, SP 14/148/99 (John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton, 12 July 1623); The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. McClure, II, 506–7; CSPD, 1623–1625, p. 13.

  32 TNA, STAC 5/S14/26 (Court of Star Chamber, Hugh Smyth v Sir John Younge, Sir George Norton et. al., Interrogatory 3, and testimony of Anne White, 11th April 1580); Portrait of Peregrine Bertie, Lord Willoughby de Eresby (d.1601), Grimsthorpe Hall, Lincolnshire: Hall, Things of Darkness, p. 5; The Diary of the Lady Anne Clifford, ed. Sackville–West, lxi; Devon Household Accounts 1627–59, Part II, ed. Gray, pp. 33, 52, 65, 117, 173, 178, 206, 248, 297; Domingo’s burial: LMA, MS 09222/1, MS 09221, MS 09234/1, f. 127v (St Botolph Aldgate, 27 August 1587).

  33 Pierre Mignard, ‘Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth’ (1682), National Portrait Gallery, London. NPG 497. See Hall, Things of Darkness, pp. 242–252 and Amussen, Caribbean Exchanges, pp. 197–214 for further examples.

  34 This was the method recommended by a book of advice in 1583: Sim, The Tudor Housewife, p. 55.

  35 A. P. Baggs and A. R. J. Jurica, ‘Lydney’, in A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 5, Bledisloe Hundred, St. Briavels Hundred, the Forest of Dean, ed. C. R. J. Currie and N. M. Herbert (London, 1996), pp. 46–84. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol5/pp46-84 [accessed 31 March 2017].

  36 Dimmock, The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Culture in Early Modern England, pp.273–5; Wordie, ‘The Chronology of English Enclosure, 1500–1914’, pp. 483–505.

  37 A. P. Baggs and A. R. J. Jurica, ‘Lydney’, in A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 5, Bledisloe Hundred, St. Briavels Hundred, the Forest of Dean, ed. C. R. J. Currie and N. M. Herbert (London, 1996), pp. 46–84. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol5/pp46-84 [accessed 31 March 2017].

  38 Ibid.; for the Earls of Rutland, see: Sim, Masters and Servants in Tudor England, p. 122, and for the Earl of Leicester: Adams, Leicester and the court, p. 362, n. 122.

  39 Sir Edward Wynter to the Lord Admiral and Sir Robert Cecil, 5 February 1596: Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury Cecil, Roberts, Salisbury, et al (eds) VI, pp. 43–58.

  40 There are no explicit records of Guy’s child
hood, besides the references to his education in the Wynter household in the 1597 Bucke vs. Wynter case in Star Chamber. Accounts of his early life quickly skip from his birth to Bristol shoemaker, as revealed in his baptism record, to his mercantile career post 1597: English, ‘Guy, John (c.1575–1628)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; ‘Guy, John (d.1629), of Small Street, Bristol, Glos.’, The History of Parliament; Williams, A.F., John Guy of Bristol and Newfoundland, pp. 25–27.

  41 Bridgen, New Worlds, Lost Worlds, pp. 242–245; Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, p. 242; Canny, Making Ireland British, pp. 121–164.

  42 The Star Chamber case does not yield any further information about where in Ireland Guye intended to go, or what he intended to do once he got there. One possibility is that he was scouted by Percival Willoughby, who he certainly knew by 1610, through the Newfoundland Company: Williams, A. F., John Guy of Bristol and Newfoundland, pp. 52–3; University of Nottingham, Manuscripts and Special Collections, Middleton Collection, Mi X 1/2 and Mi X 1/7 (letters for John Guye to Percival Willoughby, 6 October 1610 and 17 June 1612). In 1594, Percival Willoughby had taken on the management of the iron works established by his father–in–law, Sir Francis Willoughby, in Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Derbyshire: R.S. Smith, ‘Willoughby, Sir Francis (1546/7–1596)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; R. S. Smith, ‘Sir Francis Willoughby’s ironworks,1570–1610’, pp. 90–140. Short of money, Percival may have been seeking to revive the attempts Sir Francis had made a decade earlier at iron working in Ireland. Sir Francis had acquired woodlands in Munster in 1586 in the hope of developing an iron manufactory at Kinalmeaky, West Cork, in association with the undertakers Phane Beecher and Robert Payne. Payne wrote to his co–investors, extolling the virtues of the project, and describing Kinalmeaky as the ideal location, rich in iron stone, lead ore and with enough wood to maintain ‘divers Iron and lead works (with good husbandry) forever’: Payne, A Brief Description of Ireland, p. 6. Sir Francis’s attempt had failed when the local Irish chief, Donal Graney O’Mahoney, attacked and laid waste to the land at Kinalmeaky in 1589: Horning, Ireland in the Virginian Sea: Colonialism in the British Atlantic (2013), p. 87. If Percival wanted an up-to-date assessment of the viability of establishing a new iron works in Ireland, and a manager on the ground to oversee it if he decided to go ahead, then John Guye, who he could easily have met through the small world of English iron-working, would have been the perfect man for the job.

  43 Sharpe, Crime in Early Modern England 1550–1750, p. 51.

  44 The full list or Privy Council members in 1597: John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, Sir Thomas Egerton, Keeper of the Privy Seal, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Lord Treasurer; Robert, Earl of Essex; Charles, Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admiral; Sir George Carey, Lord Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain; Sir Roger North, Lord North, Treasurer of Her Majesty’s Household; Sir Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst; Sir William Knollys, Comptroller of Her Majesty’s Household; Sir Robert Cecil, Principal Secretary and Sir John Fortescue, Chancellor of the Exchequer.

  45 There are no fines recorded in the Star Chamber records for Bucke or Wynter before the end of Elizabeth’s reign, i.e. between 1597 and 1603: TNA, Barnes Index, ‘Fines handed down by Star Chamber’ (unpublished finding aid).

  46 Gloucestershire Record Office, D 421/T 31; ‘Wynter, Edward (c.1560–1619), of Lydney, Glos.,’ The History of Parliament.

  47 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Calendar of the manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury, XIV, p. 143: Hatfield, Petitions p. 151. A pursuivant was ‘a royal or state messenger, esp. one with the power to execute warrants; a warrant officer, “pursuivant, n. and adj.”’. OED Online. December 2016. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/155082?redirectedFrom=Pursivant (accessed January 11, 2017).

  48 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”. See also Chapter 6, pp. 183–4.

  49 Pepys wrote that he found John Wynter ‘a very worthy man; and good discourse.’ They discussed the iron works of the Forest of Dean, ‘with their great antiquity’: The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 14 August 1662; Warmington, ‘Winter, Sir John (b. c.1600, d. in or after 1676)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; A. P. Baggs and A. R. J. Jurica, ‘Lydney’, in A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 5, Bledisloe Hundred, St. Briavels Hundred, the Forest of Dean, ed. C. R. J. Currie and N. M. Herbert (London, 1996), pp. 46–84. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol5/pp46-84 [accessed 31 March 2017].

  50 Henry Anthony Jetto was baptised aged around 26 at St Martin’s, Holt on 21 March 1596 and buried there on 30 August 1627. His will, dated 20 September 1626, executed 13 September 1638, left goods to the value of £17 15s 8d. His wife was named Persida (d.1640) and his five children were Sarah, Margaret, John, Helena and Richard, all baptised in Holt between 1598–1608. Bourne, R., Ancestor was the first black person in the county’, Worcester News, 23 February 2007, p. 3; Onyeka, Blackamoores, pp. 149, 342–247; personal correspondence with Peter Bluck, Jetto’s nine-times great-grandson; Worcester Archive and Archaeology Service, BA4286 (i) (St Martin’s Holt Parish Register), BA3583 1638 102 (Will of Henry Jetto, 1638), BA3585 box 231b 1640 126 (Will of Persida Jetto, 1640).

  51 English, ‘Guy, John (c.1575–1628)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; ‘Guy, John (d.1629), of Small Street, Bristol, Glos.’, The History of Parliament; Williams, AF, John Guy of Bristol and Newfoundland, p. 26.

  52 Williams, A. F., John Guy of Bristol and Newfoundland, pp. 52–3; University of Nottingham, Manuscripts and Special Collections, Middleton Collection, Mi X 1/2 and Mi X 1/7 (letters for John Guye to Percival Willoughby, 6 October 1610 and 17 June 1612); Bacon, ‘Of Plantations’, The essays, or councils, civil and moral, p. 93.

  53 Williams, A. F., John Guy of Bristol and Newfoundland, pp. 118–126.

  54 Aubrey, Brief Lives ed. Clark, I, 277; Williams, A. F., John Guy of Bristol and Newfoundland, pp. 225–30, 316–321; John Guye’s will, 6 May 1629: TNA, PROB 11/155, f. 387.

  Chapter 5

  1 Slack, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England, p. 296; LMA, MS 04887 (St Dunstan’s in the East, Vestry Minutes), p. 278.

  2 Indeed, some Africans had the surname ‘White’. Such as John Blanke (blanco=white) and ‘Phillip White alias Haumath, a barbarian Moore’, baptised in Temple Church, Bristol on 17 February 1619: Bristol Record Office, FCP/Tem/R/1(a).

  3 Hanks and Hodges, A Dictionary of Surnames, p. 54. Hanks, Coates, and McClure, The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, I, p. 243 (Black); p. 246 (Blackman and Blackmore), III, 1872 (Moore), pp. 1880–1 (Morris); Reaney, A Dictionary of British Surnames, p. 35. Other medieval examples include ‘Elias le Blakeman’ and ‘Henry Blacman’: Bardsley, English Surnames, p. 444.

  4 Hitching, References to English Surnames in 1601, xxiii; Hughes, ‘Blacman, John (1407/8–1485?)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Leadam, ‘Blakman, Blakeman, or Blackman, John (fl. 1436–1448)’, The Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement, I, 215.

  5 Camden, Remaines concerning Britain, ed. Dunn, p. 92.

  6 Reaney, A Dictionary of English Surnames, p. 46.

  7 Bardsley, English Surnames, pp. 125, 161, 444; Reaney, A Dictionary of British Surnames, p. 34; Hanks and Hodges, A Dictionary of Surnames, pp. 54, 374; McKinley, A History of British surnames, pp. 11, 156–7; Reaney, A Dictionary of English Surnames, pp. 46–7, 313.

  8 Black, The Surnames of Scotland, p. 617.

  9 He is listed as ‘Resonablackmore’ in the St Saviour’s Token Book in 1579: LMA, P92/SAV/183, f. 7, line 33, and as ‘Resonable blackmor’ and ‘Resonabell blackmor’ on 13th and 16th October 1592 in the parish register of St Olave, Tooley Street: LMA, X097/233; P71/OLA/009 p. 000126. />
  10 Variants found in archival sources include blackamoor, blackamore, blackamoore, blackmoor, blackmore, blakemore, blackemore and blak moir. William Dunbar’s 1507 poem ‘Ane Blak Moir’ is the first known British text to use the word. This term was used in 158 (40%) of the entries in my database of Africans in Britain 1500–1640, compared with 93 instances of ‘Moor’, 47 of ‘Negro’, 24 of ‘Negar’ and 6 of ‘Ethiop’. See Kaufmann, ‘Africans in Britain’, pp. 56–71; Oxford English Dictionary, ‘blackamoor, n.’ OED Online.

  11 Haigh, Elizabeth I, p.113. Simon Healy suggested to me that ‘Reasonable’ might refer to the light of reason in a religious sense.

  12 Thomas More’s coat of arms also had a blackamoor crest: Chapelle Wojciehowski, Group Identity in the Renaissance World, p. 175, n. 98; Read., Mr Secretary Walsingham, II, p. 60; BL, Harley MS 6265, ff. 71v–72r.

  13 Smith–Bannister, Names and Naming Patterns in England, 1538–1700, pp. 18–19; The Herald and Genealogist, ed. Gough Nichols, V, 379.

  14 Blackman’s entry in the token book (LMA, P92/SAV/183, f. 7, line 33) does not yield a lot of information about his household. His name was a last-minute addition, written in over another name, which has been crossed out. The man whose name was erased, Thomas Bonit, was thought to have two adults in his household. This estimation was not crossed out when Blackman’s name was added, but we cannot be sure whether this indicates that there were also two adults in his household. Certainly, he did not purchase any tokens that year. See William Ingram and Alan H. Nelson, The Token Books of St Saviour Southwark: an interim search site: http://tokenbooks.lsa.umich.edu/. Imtiaz Habib has conflated Reasonable Blackman with a different individual mentioned in the Token Books, named John Reason: Habib and Salkeld, ‘The Resonables of Boroughside, Southwark’, 1–22. I do not believe Reasonable Blackman and John Reason can be the same person because the token books have only one reference to ‘Resonablakmore’ and half a dozen more to ‘John Reason’. Moreover in the same year (1579) that ‘Resonablakmore’ is recorded as living on the West Side (P92/SAV/183, f. 7, line 33), ‘John Reason’ appears 4 pages later on the Counter/East Side (P92/SAV/183, f. 11, line 24).