15 Boulton, Neighbourhood and Society, p. 9. The church was demolished in 1928, and the art deco St Olaf’s House built on the site is now used by the London Bridge Private Hospital as consulting and administration rooms. Edward Walford, ‘Bermondsey: Tooley Street’, in Old and New London: Volume 6 (London, 1878), pp. 100–117. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/old-new-london/vol6/pp100-117 [accessed 31 March 2017]; Coltman, R., ‘St Olaf House, London’, Modernist Britain.
16 Boulton, Neighbourhood and Society, pp. 19–20, 64.
17 ‘Clink’ in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, ed. Rockwood, p. 272.
18 Browner, ‘Wrong Side of the River’, Essays in History.
19 Whitelock, Elizabeth’s Bedfellows, p. 26; Nichols, Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, II, p. xlii; Luu, Immigrants and Industry, p. 181.
20 Mikhaila and Malcolm–Davies, The Tudor Tailor, p. 37.
21 Beer, Bess: The life of Lady Ralegh, p. 123.
22 Luu, ‘Immigrants and the diffusion of skills in early modern London: the case of silk weaving’ Documents pour l’histoire des techniques.
23 Dekker et al., Patient Grissill, Act 2, Scene 1.
24 Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Act 4, Scene 3; Othello, Act 3, Scene. 4.
25 Luu, Immigrants & Industries, p. 180, citing The Anatomy of Abuses (1583), p. 10.
26 Mortimer, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England, p. 158; Cox, ‘An Act to avoid the excess in apparel 1554–5’, p. 41. In 1559, Elizabeth I had issued a proclamation declaring that the sumptuary laws issued by her father in 1533 and her sister Mary in 1554 were still to be obeyed.
27 Habib and Salkeld, ‘The Resonables of Boroughside, Southwark’, p. 6.
28 Ingram, The Business of Playing, p. 39.
29 Luu, Immigrants & Industries, p. 183. 12,000lbs were imported in 1559–60, growing almost fivefold to 52,000 in 1592–3. 12,000lbs = £9,920; 52,000lbs = £40,000. Stevenson, Praise and Paradox, p. 33; Coates, The Impact of the Civil War on the Economy of London, pp. 3–4; Stern, ‘The Trade, Art or Mystery of Silkthrowers in the City of London’, pp. 25–8; Millard ‘Import trade of London’, pp. 234–235.
30 Steggle, ‘New Directions: Othello, the Moor of London: Shakespeare’s Black Britons’, p. 113.
31 Schoeser, Silk, pp. 17–48.
32 Luu, ‘Immigrants and the diffusion of skills in early modern London: the case of silk weaving’ Documents pour l’histoire des techniques; Luu, Immigrants & Industries, p. 179.
33 My thanks to Dr Howard Bailes for bringing this subject to life for me from 1998–2000. For a thorough account see Israel, The Dutch Republic, pp. 9–587. See also Kamen, Philip II and Parker, The Dutch Revolt and The Grand Strategy of Philip II.
34 Luu, ‘Immigrants and the diffusion of skills in early modern London: the case of silk weaving’ Documents pour l’histoire des techniques.
35 Stow Survey of London, ed. Strype, V, p. 233. See also 1583 complaint of the Company of Weavers that ‘Since the Flight of Strangers into these Parts’, certain freemen of the City had ‘learned of these Strangers . . . the Art of Silk–weaving; namely, making of Silk–lace, and such like things in the Loom’: Ibid., V, p. 219.
36 Luu, ‘Immigrants and the diffusion of skills in early modern London: the case of silk weaving’ Documents pour l’histoire des techniques; Luu, Immigrants & Industries, pp. 184–5, 194.
37 A. Blakely, Blacks in the Dutch World: The Evolution of Racial Imagery in a Modern Society (1994), p. 226; Debrunner, Presence and Prestige, p. 57; Wojciehowski, Group Identity in the Renaissance World; pp. 161–3. There was no explicit slavery legislation in the Netherlands, and there are a couple of examples of courts asserting the freedom of Africans. More research is needed to ascertain exactly what the legal and practical status of Africans was and how it was affected when the northern Netherlands became the independent United Provinces, or Dutch Republic, under William of Orange from 1581, before the Dutch East India Ordinances were issued in 1622. See Huussen, ‘The Dutch Constitution of 1798 and the Problem of Slavery’, p. 104; Hondius, ‘Black Africans in Seventeenth–Century Amsterdam’, pp. 89–108; Hondius, ‘Blacks in Early Modern Europe’, pp. 29–47; Hondius, Blackness in Western Europe, pp. 134–142; and Lowe, ‘The Lives of African Slaves and People of African Descent in Renaissance Europe’, pp. 16, 26.
38 Albrecht Dürer, ‘Study of Katharina’, 1521, Uffizi Gallery, Florence; Jan Mostaert, ‘Portrait of an African Man’, c. 1525–30, The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Bate and Thornton, Shakespeare: Staging the World, pp. 170, 180–181. Another image from the Netherlands of a high status but as yet unidentified African is: Flemish/German?, ‘Portrait of a Wealthy African’, 1530–40, Private Collection, Antwerp. See Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, ed. Spicer, pp. 16–17, 87–88.
39 Hondius, ‘Black Africans in Seventeenth–Century Amsterdam’, p. 88. Revealing the Black Presence in Renaissance Europe, ed. Spicer, pp. 82–3; see also Blakely, Blacks in the Dutch World, pp. 78–170; Boele, Kolfin and Schreuder, Black is Beautiful: Rubens to Dumas; Kolfin. ‘Rembrandt’s Africans’ in The Image of the Black in Western Art, ed. Bindman and Gates, III, part 1, pp. 271–306.
40 Stow, Annales, ed. Howe, p. 1038. Imtiaz Habib suggests that his behaviour would have provoked ‘resentment and animosity’, but this is unsubstantiated: Habib, Black Lives, p. 45; see also Onyeka, Blackamoores, pp. 235–8.
41 A Relation, or Rather a True Account, of the Island of England, ed. Sneyd, pp. 42–43.
42 Reddaway, ‘Elizabethan London – Goldsmith’s Row in Cheapside 1558–1645’, p. 199.
43 BCB, III, f. 221v.
44 Bromley, The armorial bearings of the guilds of London, p.182; Edmondson, Complete Body of Heraldry, I, p. 339; Price, The Worshipful Company of Needlemakers of the City of London, p. 10.
45 LMA, MS 09221; MS9222/1 (St Botolph Aldgate, 20 August 1593).
46 At her burial ‘Suzanna Pearis a blackamoore’ was described as servant to a hatband maker named John De Spinosa. LMA, MS 09221; MS 09222/1 (St Botolph Aldgate, 8 August 1593). He was born in Spain, but with a French wife, and previously resident in France. In 1583, he was listed as a denizen of ten years, resident in East Smithfield, where he was still living, near the sign of the Fleur de Lys, at his death in July 1594: Returns of Aliens, ed. Kirk and Kirk, II, 361; LMA, MS 09234/4 (parish clerk’s memorandum book, St Botolph Aldgate, 7 July 1594); in September 1602, a ‘blackamoore’ woman in the household of hatmaker Thomas Browne committed the abominable sin of whoredome’ with fellow servant Roger Holgate and conceived a child as a result of their continuing affair: BCB, IV, f. 344r (5 January 1603); Griffiths, Lost Londons, p. 74, n. 25. See also BCB, V, f. 7v (9 January 1605) for possible further reference to the same case.
47 None of the Blackman children were described as bastards in the church records, so it follows that their parents were married. If John was their son, then we can date their marriage to early 1579.
48 Wrigley, Davies, Oeppen and Schofield, English Population History from Family Reconstitution, p. 123.
49 This was still the case in 1837: Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners for England and Wales, III, p. 143.
50 LMA, St Olave, Tooley Street: X097/233 P71/OLA/009 Edward’s baptism: 19 February 1587: p. 00052, Jane and Edmund’s burials, 13 and 16 October 1592: p. 000126; St Saviour’s, Southwark, John Blakemore baptism, 26 October 1579: LMA, P92/SAV/3001.
51 Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 5.
52 Prayger, ‘The Negro Allusion in the Merchant of Venice’, pp. 50–52; The Merchant of Venice, ed. Russell Brown, p. 99n.
53 Habib and Salkeld, ‘The Resonables of Boroughside, Southwark’, pp. 19–20.
54 The Marriage Registers of St. Dunstan’s, Stepney, ed. Colyer Fergusson, I, pp. 70, 72, 78. These ‘three marriages . . . between Negroes’ were noted by the East London History Group in 1982, but without further elucidation or comment: French et. al., ‘
The Population of Stepney in the Early Seventeenth Century: a report on an analysis of the parish registers of Stepney, 1606–1610’, p. 173. Another possible Stepney example is Helen and Thomas Jeronimo, both ‘moors’, though, as discussed in Chapter 8, they could have been of east Asian origin.
55 Burial of ‘Anne Vause a Black-more wife to Anthonie Vause, Trompetter of the said Country’: LMA, MS 09222/1 (St Botolph Aldgate, 27 April 1618). See Chapter 1, n. 100.
56 The Book of Common Prayer, ed. Cummings, p. 164, 157; Baptism of Samuel Munsur: LMA, P78/NIC/001, (St Nicholas Greenwich, 28 November 1613); Marriages of Samuel Munsur: LMA, P78/NIC/001(St Nicholas Greenwich, 26 December 1613) and James Curres: LMA, MS 09155 (Holy Trinity the Less, 24 December 1617).
57 Hakluyt, VII, p. 262.
58 Another possible example is Anthony Ffageamy, described ass ‘Mauri’ (the Moor) in the baptism record of his son Michael (his wife was named Phyllis): City of Westminster Archives Centre, St Martin in the Fields Parish Registers, vol. 2. (15 March 1620)
59 Cornwall Record Office, St Mary’s Truro, FP236/1/1: Richard’s baptism, 1 October 1612; Maria’s burial 18 August 1611; Emmanuel’s burial 9 August 1623. The parish registers of St Mary’s were written in Latin. In the three entries relating to the family, Emmanuel is described variously as ‘Emmanueli Mauris Anglice (the Moore)’; ‘Emmanuelis Maurus anglice the Moore’ and ‘Emanuelius Mauri al[ia]s Emanuel the Moore’. ‘anglice’ was short for vocat in anglice (called in English), which means that the scribe wasn’t sure what the Latin for Moor was. The only other African I have found described in this way was ‘Christiana Niger anglice a blackamoore’ baptised at St Peter’s, Sibton, Suffolk on 25 December 1634. Suffolk Record Office, FC 61/D1/1.
60 Centre Kentish Studies, All Saints Church, Staplehurst, P347/1/1, f. 108 (marriage 25 October 1616), f. 115 (George baptised 13 February 1620) and f. 119 (Elizabeth baptised 19 May 1622).
61 Steggle, ‘New Directions: Othello, the Moor of London: Shakespeare’s Black Britons’, pp. 118–120. For Jetto, see Chapter 4, p. 126, n. 50.
62 The Book of Common Prayer, ed. Cummings, p. 145.
63 LMA, P71/OLA/009 (St Olave’s Tooley Street, 14 July 1592). See also Habib and Salkeld, ‘The Resonables of Boroughside, Southwark’, p. 19.
64 APC, 1592, pp. 118, 183.
65 Ibid., p. 221.
66 ‘Accounts: December 1591 – December 1593’, in St Martin-in-The-Fields: the Accounts of the Churchwardens, 1525–1603, ed. J V Kitto ([s.l.], 1901), pp. 435–456. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/churchwardens-st-martin-fields/1525-1603/pp435-456 [accessed 1 April 2017].
67 Slack, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England, p.11. Balmford, A Short Dialogue Concerning the Plagues Infection, pp. 13–15 has a section on ‘how the plague may be in a garment’.
68 Sager, The Aesthetics of Spectacle in Early Modern Drama and Modern Cinema, p. 129.
69 APC, 1592, pp. 221, 230, 273.
70 Balmford, A Short Dialogue Concerning the Plagues Infection, pp. 33, 43–4. It is not clear when he started work at St Olave’s. He may have been working in Newcastle at the time of the 1592 plague, as in 1594 he dedicated A Short and Plaine Dialogue Concerning the Unlawfulness of Playing at Cards to his patrons, the mayor, aldermen, and burgesses of Newcastle upon Tyne: Jenkins, ‘Balmford, James (b. c.1556, d. after 1623)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
71 Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 2; Mabillard, ‘Worst Diseases in Shakespeare’s London’, Shakespeare Online. The plague is also mentioned in his other plays: including The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2; Timon of Athens, Act 4, Scene 3; and King Lear, Act 2, Scene 4.
72 Balmford, A Short Dialogue Concerning the Plagues Infection, p. 10.
73 Mabillard, ‘Worst Diseases in Shakespeare’s London’, Shakespeare Online.
74 Dekker, The Wonderfull Yeare, sig. D1r.
75 Slack, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England, p. 23.
76 Browner, ‘Wrong Side of the River’, Essays in History.
77 APC, 1592, p. 204. Slack, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England, p. 209. Orders, thought Meete by her Maiestie, and her Priuie Councell, sig C2v.
78 Kohn, Encyclopaedia of plague and pestilence, p. 231; Floyd–Wilson, Occult Knowledge, Science, and Gender on the Shakespearean Stage, p. 31–2.
79 Balmford, A Short Dialogue Concerning the Plagues Infection, pp. 39–40.
80 Harrison, G. B., The Elizabethan Journals, p. 175.
81 For example silk weaver Simon Brinkard lost his daughter Rachel on 14th July 1592, Hugh Van Aker’s daughter Elizabeth was buried on 26th July and William, son of William Powler, was interred on 24th October. LMA, P71/OLA/009 (St Olave’s Tooley Street Parish Register). LMA, MS 09221; MS 09222/1; MS 09223; MS 09234/4 (St Botolph Aldgate, 20 August, 8 October and 29 November 1593).
82 Stow, A Summary of the Chronicles of England, p. 438–439.
83 Kohn, Encyclopaedia of plague and pestilence, p. 231; Slack, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England, pp. 19, 26, 151, 228–235, 438–439; Orders, thought Meete by her Maiestie, and her Priuie Councell, sig. B2v.
84 Slack, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England, p. 292.
85 I. Archer, The Pursuit of Stability, p. 7; Strype, Annals, IV, pp. 234–6; for the full text of the Austin Friars verse see: Freeman, ‘Marlowe, Kyd, and the Dutch Church Libel’, pp. 44–52.
86 APC, 1592–1593, pp. 187, 200–201, 222.
87 An estimated 658,000 died of plague in England 1570–1670 (433,000 in London). Outbreaks occurred on average every 14 years. The so–called ‘Great Plague’ of 1665 resulted in 68,596 deaths (12% of the population), while the plagues of 1563 killed 20% of London’s population, and that of 1603 killed 18%. In comparison, the plague that killed the Blackman children in 1592 was, with its 8.5% mortality rate, a relatively minor outbreak. Kohn, Encyclopaedia of plague and pestilence, p. 231; Slack, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England, pp. 62, 85, 151, 174.
88 Slack, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England, p. 210, 297; Balmford, A Short Dialogue Concerning the Plagues Infection, p. 32.
89 Florentine Chronicle of Marchionne di Coppo di Stefano Buonaiuti, tr. Usher, Rubric 634a.
90 Harding, ‘Burial of the plague dead in early modern London’, pp. 53–64.
91 LMA, MS 03572/1 (St Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, 10 and 23 May 1565).
92 LMA, MS 028867, St Olave, Hart Street, 26 and 28 January 1617).
93 Plymouth and West Devon Record Office, W132, f. 99v (Widey Court Book, 1593–4); Worth, Calendar of the Plymouth Municipal Records, p. 136. Another example is the burial of ‘a blakmore belonging to Mr John Davies, died in White Chappel parishe, was laied in the ground in this church yarde sine frequentia populi et sine ceremoniis quia utrum christianus esset necne nesciebamus (without any company of people and without ceremony, because we did not know whether he was a Christian or not)’ LMA, MS 07644 (St Mary Woolchurch Haw, undated, between entries for 24 April and 20 May 1597). Strangely John Davies seems to have been unable to tell the church what the African’s religious status was. For more on Davies and discussion of this entry see Chapter 7, p. 199.
94 Duffy, Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition, p. 125.
95 LMA, MS 09222/1, MS 09221, MS 09223, MS 09234/4, 6 (St Botolph Aldgate, 27 August 1587, 8 October 1593, 29 November 1593, 3 March 1596).
96 The Marriage Registers of St. Dunstan’s, Stepney, ed. Colyer–Fergusson, I, p. 90.
97 LMA, P71/OLA/009 (St Olave, Tooley Street, 30 August 1590).
98 Jane baptised 14 December 1614; Mary baptised 27 April 1617, buried 19 May 1620; William baptised 2 January 1619, buried 13 May 1621: LMA, P93/DUN/256 (St Dunstan’s and All Saints, Stepney).
Chapter 6
1 Dimmock, ‘Converting and not converting “Strangers” in Early Modern London’, pp. 457–478.
2 Thomas Harridance was an ironmonger who kept memorandu
m books detailing the life of the parish during his time as parish clerk, 1583–1600. Adlington, ‘Being no parishioner with us’, p. 21. Much of the detail of the lives of the inhabitants of the parish of St Botolph’s Aldgate, where Mary Fillis was baptised in 1597, comes from the parish’s registers of baptisms, marriages and deaths, 1558–1665 (LMA, MS 09920, 09221, MS 09222/1 MS 09222/2 MS 09223), and crucially, the eight volumes of parish clerk’s memorandum books, kept by Harridance and his two successors, which cover much of the period 1583–1625 (LMA, MS 09234/1–8). These have been transcribed by the Centre for Metropolitan History at the Institute of Historical Research, as part of their ‘Life in the Suburbs: health, domesticity and status in early modern London’ project. The dataset will be published as Elizabeth Adlington and Mark Merry, Parish Clerks’ Memorandum Books, St Botolph Aldgate, 1583–1625. Fillis’s baptism, on 3 June 1597, was recorded thrice: in the main register: MS 09220, f. 90r; the paper burial register: MS 09223; and by Harridance: MS 09234/6, ff. 257r–258r.
3 The Oxford English Dictionary, “fillis, n.” OED Online.
4 Henry A. Harben, ‘Blakegate – Blind Chapel Court’, in A Dictionary of London (London, 1918), British History Online http://british-history.ac.uk/no-series/dictionary-of-london/blakegate-blind-chapel-court (Accessed 11 April 2017).
5 Plummer, Roads to Ruin, p. 49; Leo Africanus, The History and Description of Africa, trans. Pory, II, p. 594; Zemon–Davis, Trickster’s Travels, p. 20; Messier, The Almoravids and the Meanings of Jihad, p. 45.
6 Brotton, This Orient Isle, p. 129; Leo Africanus, The History and Description of Africa, trans. Pory, II, p. 262.
7 Plummer, Roads to Ruin, pp. 3, 83, see also his Figure 1: Morocco Under Siege, p. xxii.
8 Willan, Studies in Elizabethan Foreign Trade, p. 93.
9 Plummer, Roads to Ruin, pp. 97, 107; Andrews, Trade, plunder and Settlement, pp. 101–2.
10 Brotton, This Orient Isle, p. 30.
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