Black Tudors

by Miranda Kaufmann

  97 Villault, A relation of the coast of Africa called Guinee, p. 77. This defunct factory is also referenced in an ‘Account of the Limits and Trade of the Royal African Company’ amongst the Colonial State Papers in 1672: ‘they trade to Cabe Mount and Cestos for elephants’ teeth, where there was formerly a factory’: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, ed. Noel Sainsbury, 1669–1674, pp. 412–3.

  98 Barbot on Guinea, ed. Hair, Jones and Law, I, p. 273.

  99 The Gynney and Bynney Company was a chartered company headed by Lord Rich (Earl of Warwick from 1619), Sir Robert Mansell (Treasurer of the Navy) and Sir Ferdinando Gorges: Kelsey, ‘Rich, Robert, second earl of Warwick (1587–1658)’, Thrush, ‘Mansell, Sir Robert (1570/71–1652)’, and Clark, ‘Gorges, Sir Ferdinando (1568–1647)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Scott, English, Scottish and Irish Joint–Stock Companies, II, pp. 11–13; Jobson, The Discovery of River Gambra (1623), ed. Gamble and Hair, Introduction. For Davies’ career see: Blake, ‘The farm of the Guinea Trade in 1631’, pp. 92–3; R. Porter, ‘The Crispe Family and the African Trade in the Seventeenth Century’, p. 58; Blake, ‘The English Guinea Company, 1618–1660’, pp. 17, 22; Hair and Law, ‘The English in Western Africa’, p. 252.

  100 Keay, The Honourable Compan, p. 15; Hair, ‘Africa (other than the Mediterranean and Red Sea lands) and the Atlantic Islands’, p. 207.

  101 These events were described when the Guinea Company complained to Parliament in 1650 regarding interlopers to the African trade: TNA, CO 1/11, no. 15 (Colonial Papers, 25 May 1650).

  102 Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, pp. 222–229.

  103 McFarlane, The British in the Americas, p. 49.

  104 Voyages: The Trans–Atlantic Slave Trade Database.

  105 Davies, Royal African Company, p. 41.

  106 An answer of the Company of Royal Adventurers of England trading into Africa to the petition . . . exhibited to the Honourable House of Commons by Sir Paul Painter, Ferdinando Gorges, Henry Batson, Benjamin Skutt, and Thomas Knights on the behalf of themselves and others concerned in His Majesties plantations in America (1667), p. 11; Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England, p. 220. See also Zook, Company of Royal Adventurers and Davies, Royal African Company. For a recent account of the Royal Africa Company (which succeeded the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa in 1672) see William Pettigrew, Freedom’s Debt: The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672–1752 (2013).

  107 TNA, CO 268/1, ff 5v (Accompt of the Limits & Trade for the African Company, 1672).

  Chapter 8

  1 John Anthony is described in this way in the two petitions for payment of wages due to him for his service aboard the Silver Falcon that he sent to Lord Zouche over the winter of 1619 that form the basis of this chapter. They appear in the State Papers, held at the National Archives: TNA, SP 14/113, ff. 59–60. The summary of these two documents listed as nos. 28 and 29 in CSPD, 1619–1623, p. 131 is too brief to do them justice, but have nonetheless formed the basis of the limited scholarly comment on Anthony to date (e.g. Habib, Black Lives, p. 221, who mistakenly characterises the petitions as a legal suit). The following item in the Calendar (CSPD, 1619–1623, p. 131, no. 30/TNA, SP 14/113, ff. 61–2) is also pertinent. In this letter, Sir Henry Mainwaring (whose relationship to John Anthony will become clear as this chapter unfolds) mentions to Lord Zouche that ‘the black boy’ has been paid, with interest.

  2 Bolster, Black Jacks, p. 9.

  3 Burial 23 November 1618: Centre for Kentish Studies, TR2451/6 (St Mary’s, Dover). This was likely to be the ‘Capt. Ward of Dover’ whose funeral was reported by Richard Marsh to Edward Nicholas on 3rd March 1623: CSPD, 1619–1623, p. 509, i.e. William Warde, the Mayor of Dover who appears later in this chapter, and who was buried on 1 March 1623 at St James’s, Dover: Canterbury Cathedral Archives, U3/26/1/1, p. 33.

  4 No comparable names have as yet been found. LMA, MS 09222/1 (St Botolph, Aldgate, 26 November 1623); PROB 11/152 (Will of Sir Thomas Love, 1627). He also sponsored privateering voyages, and had his portrait painted: English School, ‘Sir Thomas Love, c. 1571–1627’, c. 1620, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

  5 The Marriage Registers of St. Dunstan’s, Stepney, ed. Colyer–Fergusson, I, p. 78; The Jeronimos appear in the Middesex Sessions records, when Helen was accused (but exonerated) of theft by the converso merchant Francis Pinto in 1616: ‘Sessions, 1616: 5 and 6 September’, in County of Middlesex. Calendar To the Sessions Records: New Series, Volume 3, 1615–16, ed. William Le Hardy (London, 1937), pp. 288–312. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/middx-sessions/vol3/pp288-312 [accessed 2 April 2017]; LMA, MJ/SR/S53, nos. 112, 113 (Middlesex Sessions Roll); LMA: MJ/SR/2/346, 349a (Middlesex Sessions Register); LMA: GDR 2/93 (Gaol Delivery Registers). Once a widow, Helen successfully petitioned the company for financial assistance: BL, IOR, B/8, f. 280. (East India Company Court Minute Book, 26 November 1623); BL, IOR, B/9, f. 78. (Helen Jeronimo’s second petition to the East India Company, 18, August 1624); BL, IOR, B/10, f. 102. (Helen Jeronimo’s third petition to the East India Company, 7 July 1625). A further example of the Black presence in maritime Stepney is the February 1631 baptism record for: ‘James, son of Grace a blackmore servant of Mr Bromfield of Limehouse begotten as she affirmeth by James Diego a Negro late servant to Mr Bromfield born in the house of William Ward of Limehouse mariner’, LMA, P93/DUN/256 (St Dunstan and All Saints, Stepney, 9 February 1631). This Mr. Bromfield was probably Richard Bromfield, a merchant linked to the East India Company through both his daughter Elizabeth’s marriage to a Company captain, and his son Robert’s apprenticeship to the Company: Habib, Black Lives, p. 155; ‘East Indies: December 1627’, in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, East Indies, China and Persia, Volume 6, 1625–1629, ed. W Noel Sainsbury (London, 1884), pp. 428–438. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/colonial/east-indies-china-japan/vol6/pp428-438 [accessed 2 April 2017]; TNA, PROB 11/175/364 (Will of Bence Johnson, Mariner of Limehouse, 21 November 1637).

  6 There were 46 English, 5 ‘Swarts’, 15 ‘Japaners’ and 3 ‘passengers’ aboard the Clove when it departed Hirado, Japan on 5 December 1613. Eleven of the Japanese men returned home on the Expedition in 1615. The voyage of Captain John Saris to Japan, 1613, ed. Satow, p. 183.

  7 LMA, MS 017602 (St Dionis Backchurch, 22 December 1616), MS 09659/2 (St Katharine by the Tower, 20 August 1623).

  8 Jayasuriya, S. de S., ‘South Asia’s Africans’, History Workshop Online, and The African diaspora in Asian trade routes and cultural memories.

  9 Barbour, ‘The English Nation at Bantam’, p. 179.

  10 ‘East Indies, China and Japan: September 1621’, in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, East Indies, China and Japan, Volume 3, 1617–1621,ed. W.Noel Sainsbury (London, 1870), pp. 450–462. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/colonial/east-indies-china-japan/vol3/pp450-462 [accessed 3 April 2017].

  11 Senior, A Nation of Pirates, p. 7.

  12 Calendar of State Papers, Venice, ed. Brown, 1607–10, p. 192.

  13 Appleby, ‘Jacobean Piracy’ in The Social History of English Seamen, ed. Fury, pp. 277–299.

  14 The Life and Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring, ed. G.E. Mainwaring, II, pp. 8–9, 22; ‘Mainwaring, Sir Henry (1586/7–1653), of Dover Castle, Kent; later of Camberwell, Surr’., The History of Parliament; The Autobiography of Phineas Pett, ed. Perrin, p. 96; ‘Venice: January 1619, 21–25’, in Calendar of State Papers Relating To English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Volume 15, 1617–1619, ed. Allen B. Hinds (London, 1909), pp. 436–456. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/venice/vol15/pp436-456 [accessed 2 April 2017].

  15 ‘James 1 – volume 65: July 1611’, in Calendar of State Papers Domestic: James I, 1611–18, ed. Mary Anne Everett Green (London, 1858), pp. 51–65. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/domes
tic/jas1/1611-18/pp51-65 [accessed 2 April 2017].

  16 Thomas Duffus Hardy, ‘Appendix: G. Extracts from Letters relating to English Naval and Military Celebrities’, in Report to the Master of the Rolls On Documents in the Archives of Venice (London, 1866), pp. 84–86. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/master-of-rolls-report/pp84-86 [accessed 2 April 2017].

  17 ‘James 1 – volume 113: March 1620’, in Calendar of State Papers Domestic: James I, 1619–23, ed. Mary Anne Everett Green (London, 1858), pp. 127–135. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/domestic/jas1/1619–23/pp127-135 [accessed 2 April 2017].

  18 Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database; The Life and Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring, ed. G.E. Mainwaring, I, p. 42.

  19 Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia, ed. McIlwaine, p. 33.

  20 The figure of 30% (possibly exaggerated) comes from Clifford, The Black Ship, p. 165. See also The Social History of English Seamen, ed. Fury, p. 292; Earle, The Pirate Wars, pp.171–2. See also Bolster, Black Jacks; Costello, Black Salt; Linebaugh and Reddiker, The Many Headed Hydra, pp.165–7; Gates, ‘Were There Black Pirates?’, The Root; Kinkor, ‘Black Men under the Black Flag’, pp. 195–210.

  21 Newes from Mamora, tr. William Squire.

  22 Earle, The Pirate Wars, p. 33; The Life and Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring, ed. G.E. Mainwaring, I, p. 21. It is not impossible, given the black presence in Europe, that John Anthony joined Mainwaring in France.

  23 Earle, The Pirate Wars, p. 29; Tinniswood, Pirates of Barbary, p. 71; ‘Venice: March 1613’, in Calendar of State Papers Relating To English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Volume 12, 1610–1613, ed. Horatio F Brown (London, 1905), pp. 498–516. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/venice/vol12/pp498-516 [accessed 3 April 2017].

  24 Calendar of State Papers, Venice, Brown (ed.) 1613–1615, p. 509, and n. 3. The Life and Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring, ed. G.E. Mainwaring, II, pp. 12, 26; Horwood, Plunder & Pillage, p. 39. By Midsummer’s Day, Mainwaring may actually mean 4th July which was the midpoint by the Julian calendar (Britain only adopted the Gregorian calendar in the eighteenth century). The Spanish ships are recorded as returning to Lisbon on 8th July.

  25 The Life and Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring, ed. G.E. Mainwaring, II, p. 42.

  26 Jowitt, The Culture of Piracy, p. 156; ‘Venice: January 1618, 21–31’, in Calendar of State Papers Relating To English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Volume 15, 1617–1619, ed. Allen B. Hinds (London, 1909), pp. 108–126. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/venice/vol15/pp108-126 [accessed 3 April 2017].

  27 Thomas Duffus Hardy, ‘Appendix: G. Extracts from Letters relating to English Naval and Military Celebrities’, in Report to the Master of the Rolls On Documents in the Archives of Venice (London, 1866), pp. 84–86. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/master-of-rolls-report/pp84-86 [accessed 2 April 2017].

  28 The Seaman’s Dictionary was written in 1623 while Mainwaring was at Dover Castle, though only published in 1644. It formed the basis of the Virginia governor Captain John Smith’s popular and repeatedly printed maritime manual, An Accidence, or the Path-Way to Experience, Necessary for All Young Seamen (1626), revised and republished as A Sea Grammar (1627). Morgan, ‘Smith, John (bap. 1580, d. 1631)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Blakemore, ‘Orality and Mutiny’, p. 257, n. 21. Cruz, N., ‘The Seaman’s Dictionary: ‘This book shall make a man understand’, Royal Museums Greenwich blog.

  29 The Life and Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring, ed. G.E. Mainwaring, II, p. 278.

  30 Ibid., I, p. 29, II, p. 277.

  31 There had been an unsuccessful English expedition against Algiers in 1620–1. The government continued to struggle with the problem of Barbary pirates throughout the 1630s and 1640s. See Matar, Britain and Barbary, pp. 45–75.

  32 Earle, The Pirate Wars, p. 28.

  33 The Life and Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring, ed. G.E. Mainwaring, II, p. 11, 26.

  34 APC, 1615–1616, pp. 359–60.

  35 Zell, Early Modern Kent, p. 151; Worthington, Proposed Plan for Improving Dover Harbour, p. 11; Hasted, ‘The town and port of Dover’, pp. 475–548.

  36 Senior, ‘An Investigation of the Activities and Importance of English Pirates, 1603–1640’, pp. 411–12; The Westward Enterprise: English Activities in Ireland, the Atlantic and America, 1480–1650, ed. Andrews, Canny, Hair and Quinn, pp. 132–3; Appleby, ‘Thomas Mun’s West Indies Venture, 1602–5’, pp. 101–110. The Lives, Apprehensions, Arraignments, and Executions, of the 19. Late Pyrates, sig. E2r; Weatherford, Crime and Punishment in the England of Shakespeare and Milton, pp. 100–1; Depositions relating to this case are to be found in T.N.A., HCA 1/47, ff. 4–5 [William Hill 1 May 1609], f. 56 [William Longcastle], ff. 56–57 [William Tavernor], f. 59 [John Moore, 20 November 1609].

  37 Sweet, Recreating Africa, pp. 94–5; citing ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processos, no. 5964.

  38 McCaughey, ‘Pett, Phineas (1570–1647)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

  39 Knafla, ‘Zouche, Edward la, eleventh Baron Zouche (1556–1625)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

  40 The Autobiography of Phineas Pett, ed. Perrin, pp. 116–7.

  41 McCaughey, ‘Pett, Phineas (1570–1647)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The Naval establishment caught up with Pett, and his associates Sir Robert Mansell and Sir John Trevor, in the course of an official enquiry into embezzlement in the Navy in 1608–9: Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea, pp. 365–8; ‘TREVOR, Sir John I (1563–1630), of Oatlands Palace, Surr.; Plas Têg, Flints. and Cannon Row, Westminster’, The History of Parliament; Jacobean Commissions of Enquiry, 1608 and 1618, ed. McGowan, pp. 260–5.

  42 The Life and Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring, ed. G.E. Mainwaring, II, p. 42.

  43 Giles Milton, White Gold, p.303. See also Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters.

  44 James I, A Counterblaste to Tobacco, sig D2r.

  45 Jones and Salmon. ‘Tobacco in Colonial Virginia’ Encyclopedia Virginia; Tilton, ‘Rolfe, John (1585–1622)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

  46 Rolfe, A True Relation of the state of Virginia Lefte by Sir Thomas Dale Knight in May Last 1616, p. 37.

  47 Their correspondence is one of the main sources for the following account of the adventures of the Silver Falcon. It is preserved in the British Library, BL Add MS 37818, ff. 7v–34v (Lord Zouche’s letters to Warde, 27 January 1619–1 March 1620); and BL Egerton MS 2584, no. 245, f. 53, no. 255, f. 71v and no. 352, f. 240 (Warde’s letters to Lord Zouche, 13 February 1619, 1 March 1619 and 17 December 1619). These letter collections also contain relevant correspondence between the other key figures in this chapter: Jacob Braems’s letters to Lord Zouche, 12 Feb 1619 and 31st March 1619 (BL Egerton MS 2584, no. 243, f. 50, and no. 288, f. 133) and Lord Zouche’s letters to Mainwaring, 24 February 1620 and 20 March 1620 (BL Add MS 37818, f. 34r–35r). The other source for the following events are the various legal records generated when merchant Jacob Braems ended up in court in the aftermath of the Silver Falcon’s voyage of 1619. This account draws on papers in The National Archives from The High Court of Admiralty: TNA, HCA 1/48, ff. 310–311 (Examination of Jacob Braems, 13 May 1620) and the Court of Exchequer: TNA, E 112/88, no. 316 (Jacob Braems’s Bill of Complaint and the Answers of John Berry and Thomas Fultnetby, defendants, 1624); TNA, E 134/22Jas1/Mich38 (Interrogatories and Depositions in the case of Jacob Braems vs. John Berry and Thomas Fulnetby, 1624); TNA, E134/10Chas1/Trin6 (John Reston and his wife Susan v Jacob Braems and William Nethersole, 1634).

  48 TNA, CO 1/1, no.38 (Project of the intended voyage to Virginia by Captain Andrews and Jacob Braems in the Silver Falcon,? October 1618); ‘America and West Indies: October 1618’, in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies: Volume 1, 1574–1660, ed. W. Noel Sainsbury (London, 1860), pp. 1
9–20. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/colonial/america-west-indies/vol1/pp19-20 [accessed 4 April 2017].

  49 Billings, W. M., & the Dictionary of Virginia Biography, ‘Thomas West, twelfth baron De La Warr (1576–1618)’, Encyclopedia Virginia.

  50 Collins and Brydges, Collins’s Peerage of England, V, 23. Camden, Annals of King James I, p. 32; Calendar of State Papers Colonial, ed. Noel Sainsbury, 1574–1660, pp. 19–20.

  51 Lord De la Warr’s covenant to Lord Zouche for his adventure to Virginia, 27 December 1617: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, ed. W. Noel Sainsbury, 1574–1660, p. 18.

  52 Price, The Vitamin Complex, pp. 3–4; Bown, Scurvy, pp. 3, 5, 34.

  53 In 1624, Daniel Braems of London, aged 43, estimated his cousin Jacob Braems had spent more than £700 on fitting out the ship. Braems himself claimed he adventured £1700 and said the ship ‘did wholly or for the most part belong’ to him.

  54 The visitation of Kent, ed. Hovenden, pp. 215–6. In November 1624, Braems: TNA, E112/88/316.

  55 Hariot, A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia of the commodities and of the nature and manners of the naturall inhabitants, p. 9.

  56 See n.48 above.

  57 Fenner adventured £115: TNA, E 44/353. (Covenant between John Fenner, Henry Bacon and Jacob Braems concerning a voyage to Virginia and north–west and south parts of America for trade, discovery and plantation, 22 February 1619).

  58 TNA, CO 1/1, no 44 Warrant by Lord Zouche for John Fenner, Captain of the Silver Falcon, and Henry Bacon, master, to pass to Virginia, 15 February 1619. The ship then took two weeks to get as far as Dartmouth, where she spent at least seven days, finally heading into the Atlantic by the end of March, as Jacob Braems reported to Lord Zouche in a letter of 31 March 1619.

  59 Bernhard, A Tale of Two Colonies, pp. 40, 166, 109–110, 186.

  60 Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, p. 29; Sluiter, ‘New Light on the “20 and Odd Negroes” Arriving in Virginia, August 1619’, pp. 396–398; Thornton, ‘The African Experience of the “20 and Odd Negroes” Arriving in Virginia in 1619’, pp. 421–434.