61 He may have come from England. Thornton and Heywood, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles and the Foundation of the Americas, p. 320.
62 Breen and Innes, ‘Myne Owne Ground’.
63 Higginbotham, In the Matter of Color, pp. 32–40.
64 Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia, ed. McIlwaine, p. 33. See Chapter 6, p. 176, n. 87.
65 Thornton and Heywood, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles and the Foundation of the Americas, p. 320.
66 Coldham, The Complete Book of Emigrants, 1607–1660, pp. 62, 67. This Antonio’ was actually Anthony Johnson, Breen and Innes, Myne Owne Ground, p. 8. These Africans could also have joined ship en route, in the same way that Angelo came to be on board the Treasurer.
67 The average voyage to Virginia took 11.5 weeks, with a range from 7–25 weeks, with the return voyage being 6.5 weeks ranging from 4.5–9 weeks: Steele, ‘Empire of Migrants and Consumers’, p. 498.
68 This was Jacob Braems’s version of events, as reported to the High Court of Admiralty.
69 A Voyage to Virginia in 1609, ed. Wright, pp. vii, xv.
70 Morgan, P. D., ‘British Encounters with Africans and African Americans’, p. 169; Bernhard, ‘Beyond the Chesapeake’, pp. 547, 554.
71 Bernhard, A Tale of Two Colonies, pp. 160–1, 181; Kingsbury, The Records of the Virginia Company of London, I. Kingsbury (ed.) p. 367.
72 Personal correspondence with Dr. Richard Blakemore, University of Reading.
73 According to Thomas Fulnetby and John Berry. Appleby, Women and English Piracy, pp. 51–86 shows how pirates were able to sell their plunder in England in spite of the authorities, often with the help of female receivers.
74 Braemes, Arnold (1602–81), of Bridge, Kent’, The History of Parliament.
75 Thomas Lawley, by then ‘of London’ gave evidence to the Exchequer aged 36 in 1624. ‘Lawley, Thomas (1580/3–1646), of London; Twickenham, Mdx. and Spoonhill, Much Wenlock, Salop; formerly of Middelburg, Zeeland and Delft, Holland’, The History of Parliament.
76 Daniel Braems later said he saw this tobacco stored in the cellar of Lord Zouche’s house in Hackney.
77 See n. 47 above.
78 TNA, SP 14/110, f. 104 (Braems served notice to appear before Lord Zouche on 23 September, 17 September 1619); ‘James 1 – volume 110: September 1619’, in Calendar of State Papers Domestic: James I, 1619–23, ed. Mary Anne Everett Green (London, 1858), pp. 74–82. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/domestic/jas1/1619-23/pp74-82 [accessed 2 April 2017].
79 The friend was one Mr Broadreaux.
80 ‘Breeches (ensemble)’, 1600–1700, Museum of London, ID no: 53.101/1b: http://collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/online/object/83032.html; Elizabeth I and her People, ed. Cooper, item 84, pp. 202–3; Cunnington and Lucas, Occupational Clothing in England, pp. 55–58.
81 Blakemore, ‘Pieces of eight, pieces of eight: seamen’s earnings and the venture economy of early modern seafaring’, pp. 1–32.
82 For example, Vincent Lovet, groom, petitioned Lord Buckingham in March 1628 for 13l. 6s. he was owed after the last expedition to Cadiz, in which voyage he ‘received many wounds’... Sir Thomas Love (who had an African servant – see p. 218, n. 4 above) ‘in his life always put him off, saying he had no money of the King’s in his hands’: CSPD, 1628–29, p. 51. For examples from the High Court of Admiralty see Steckley, ‘Litigious Mariners: Wage Cases in The Seventeenth–Century Admiralty Court’, pp. 315–345.
83 See cases of Grebby and Claybrook (1561–2) and Leache (1564–5) in Hair and Alsop, English Seamen and Traders in Guinea, 1553–1565, pp. 116, 298, 323.
84 Harris, ‘Mainwaring, Sir Henry (1586/7–1653)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
85 ‘Extracts from the Accounts of the Burgh of Aberdeen’, in The Miscellany of the Spalding Club, ed. Stuart, V, pp. 79, 85.
86 Sim, Masters and Servants in Tudor England, pp. 44–45; Kaufmann, ‘Africans in Britain’, pp. 189–201; The Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, ed. Dickson, Balfour Paul, McInnes et al., XII, 97, 18, Laing, ‘Notice Respecting the Monument of the Regent Earl of Murray, Now Restored, within the Church of St. Giles, Edinburgh’, pp. 52–53; The 6s payment was made at Theobalds in Hertfordshire, formerly a Cecil house, but by 1622 a favourite residence of James I: Cecil Papers, Box F/8, Cash Book 1622, f. 18r; Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury, ed. Dyfnallt Owen, XXII, 166; Daniel Lysons, ‘Theobalds’, in The Environs of London: Volume 4, Counties of Herts, Essex and Kent (London, 1796), pp. 29–39. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/london-environs/vol4/pp29-39 [accessed 2 April 2017].
87 Blakemore, ‘Pieces of eight, pieces of eight: seamen’s earnings and the venture economy of early modern seafaring’, pp. 1–32.
88 TNA, PROB 11/257/248 (Will of John Anthony, Shipwright of Dover, Kent, 16 July 1656). This man’s family can be traced in the parish records of St Mary’s Dover. On 4 December 1628, a John Anthony married Sybil Sparks, widow of Giles. He is described in their marriage licence as being a ‘ship carpenter, a bachelor of the age of 24 years or thereabout’. She died and was buried on 5 May 1629. Soon afterwards, on 5 April 1630, John Anthony married Elizabeth Hazelwood. They had two sons and two daughters. Richard, the eldest, was born in May 1634. John arrived in February 1636, but died the following year. Martha was born in April 1638 and Sarah in September 1640. There is also a baptism record, of a ‘John Anthony, son of John Anthony’ on 20 January 1620. As none of these records include an ethnic descriptor, and John Anthony is not an uncommon name it’s impossible to tie them definitively to the African sailor aboard the Silver Falcon. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, CCA-U3-30 (St Mary, Dover Parish Registers); CCA-DCb-L/R/vol 11, f. 223v (Register of General Licences, 1625–1629). Strangely, a man described as ‘John Anthony of Inde, musician and moor’ was bound for Helen Jeronimo to appear before the Middlesex Sessions in 1616; see n. 5 above.
Chapter 9
1 Fryer, Staying Power, p. 8, Sherwood, ‘Blacks in Tudor England’ p. 41; Scobie, Black Britannia, pp. 5–8; Habib, Shakespeare and Race, pp. 13, 30–31. See also Kaufmann, M., ‘Time Traveller’s Guide to Africans in Elizabethan England’, http://www.miranda-kaufmann.com, which engages Ian Mortimer in debate over the proposition on his BBC2 programme Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England, Episode 3: ‘Brave New World’, broadcast 14 June 2013, that ‘rich men are lending out their black female servants to friends and neighbours for sexual novelty and experimentation’.
2 G.B. Harrison, Shakespeare at Work (1933), p. 310.
3 The details of Anne Cobbie’s life and circumstances of her employment in the Bankes’s bawdy house in this chapter are largely drawn from the case brought against the Bankes by Clement Edwards and Mary Hall at the Westminster Quarter Sessions in 1625–1626. The relevant documents are held at the London Metropolitan Archives and comprise: LMA, WJ/SR/NS/15/104 (Clement Edwards’s indictment, Westminster Sessions Roll, 24 June 1625); WJ/SR/NS/15/24 (Solomon Carr, surgeon and Richard Watmough, cordwainer, of St Clements Danes bound for John and Jane Bankes to appear at the next Sessions, 10 February 1626); WJ/SR/NS/15/26 (John Bankes and Solomon Carr bound for Anne Edwards to appear at the next Sessions, 16 February 1626); WJ/SR/NS/15/130 (The Information of Mary Hall against John Bankes and Jane his wife for keeping a bawdy house, Westminster Sessions Roll, 23 February 1626): printed, with a commentary by Martin Ingram in Reading Early Modern Women, ed. Ostovich and Sauer, pp. 40–41; WJ/SR/NS/15/71 (John Little, butcher, Peter Johnson, bricklayer, both of St Clements Danes and James Wright of St Martins in the Fields, gentleman, bound for Mary Hall to appear, 27 February 1626); WJ/SR/NS/15/76 (Clement Edwards and Francis Heath of London, draper, to give evidence against John and Jane Bankes, and Anne Edwards, 16 February 1626); WJ/SR/NS/16/120 (John Bankes, Thomas Caulfield of St Martin in the Fields, gentleman, and Peter Collier of London, cook, bound for Jane Bankes to appea
r, 2 June 1626); WJ/SR/NS/16/121 (John Bankes and John Fuller of London gentleman, and Brian Buckley of Westminster, gentleman, bound for John Bankes to appear, 2 June 1626); WJ/SR/NS/16/41(Clement Edwards to appear to prosecute Mr and Mrs Bankes, 4 June 1626); WJ/SR/NS/16/153. (Mrs and Mrs Bankes appear on list of prisoners in the Gatehouse, 23 June 1626); WJ/SR/NS/17/56 (John and Jane Bankes, Peter Collier of St Dunstan in the West, cook, Brandon Buckley, of St Margaret’s, Westminster, gentleman and William Smith of Hampstead Norris, Berks, yeoman bound for the Bankes to appear to prosecute a traverse on the indictment against them 11 July 1626).
4 In the eighteenth century, a sample of prostitutes working around the Strand were found to be aged 15–22, with a median age of 18: Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, p. 618.
5 The Oxford English Dictionary, ‘tawny–moor, n’., OED Online.
6 The Right Plesaunt and Goodly Historie of the Foure Sonnes of Aymon, tr. Caxton, p. 565.
7 Thomas, Principal Rvles of the Italian Grammer, X2r.
8 Shakespeare, Othello, Act 1, Scene 2; Titus Andronicus, Act 4, Scene 2.
9 Schlueter, ‘Rereading the Peacham Drawing’, pp. 171–184.
10 This is Eldred Jones’ conclusion in his ‘Racial Terms for Africans in Elizabethan Usage’, p. 85. See also Chandler, ‘The Moor: Light of Europe’s Dark Age’, pp. 144–175. G.K. Hunter concluded in 1967 that the term ‘Moor’ had ‘no clear racial status’: Hunter, ‘Othello and Colour Prejudice’, p. 147.
11 Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 2, Scene 1; Antony and Cleopatra, Act 1, Scene 1.
12 Leo Africanus, The History and Description of Africa, trans. Pory, I, p. 205, n.13.
13 Boling, ‘Anglo–Welsh relations in Cymbeline’, p.52; Owen, Description of Pembrokeshire, p. 46.
14 Hanks, Coates, and McClure, ‘Cobby’, The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, I, p. 533.
15 The eighteenth century survey of girls arrested in the streets around the Strand found the median age of first becoming a prostitute was 16½ while seven of the girls had begun at 14 or less: Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, p. 618.
16 Sugden, A Topographical Dictionary to the Works of Shakespeare and his Fellow Dramatists, p. 489. The poet was Joshua Sylvester, his surname giving rise to the epithet ‘silver-tongued’. ‘Sylvester, Joshua (1562/3–1618)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
17 Merritt, The social world of early modern Westminster, p. 182.
18 Shugg, ‘Prostitution in Shakespeare’s London’, p. 295; Sugden, A Topographical Dictionary to the Works of Shakespeare and his Fellow Dramatists, pp. 58, 488. Ben Jonson uses these terms in Bartholomew Fair, Act 2, Scene 6, and in his ‘An Epistle to Sir Edward Sackville, now Earl of Dorset’.
19 Merritt, The social world of early modern Westminster, pp. 168, 225.
20 Shugg, ‘Prostitution in Shakespeare’s London’, n. 33; Sugden, A Topographical Dictionary to the Works of Shakespeare and his Fellow Dramatists, p. 124.
21 Taylor, ‘A Whore’, in All the Works of John Taylor the Water Poet, p. 110; Shugg, ‘Prostitution in Shakespeare’s London’, pp. 294; Sermons by Hugh Latimer, ed. Corrie, 133–34.
22 Archer, The Pursuit of Stability, p. 215; Nashe, Christ’s Tears Over Jerusalem, p. 141; BCB, III, f. 318.
23 Westminster Archives, St Martin-in-the-Fields, vol.1 (27 Sept 1571).
24 For Fortunatus, see Chapter 4, p. 116, n. 31 and Chapter 7, p. 184, and footnote. Issues of the Exchequer: Being Payments Made Out of His Majesty’s Revenue, ed. Devon, p. 98; ‘Stallenge, William (b.c.1545), of Plymouth, Devon’, The History of Parliament.
25 City of Westminster Archives Centre, St Martin’s in the Fields Parish Registers, vol. 2 (8 February 1621).
26 Asch, ‘Porter, Endymion (1587–1649)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Neither of his recorded trips to Spain (in 1612 and 1622–3) fits perfectly with the timing of Maria’s baptism. She was only born in 1616, so could not be a product of the first trip, and was already in London by the time Porter went back to Spain in 1622. So either he went there at another, unrecorded time, or one of his agents or contacts may have brought Maria to London on his behalf.
27 TNA, SP 14/148/99 (John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton, 12 July 1623); The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. McClure, II, pp. 506–7; CSPD, 1623–1625, p. 13.
28 DiMeo, ‘Howard, Aletheia, countess of Arundel, of Surrey, and of Norfolk, and suo jure Baroness Furnivall, Baroness Talbot, and Baroness Strange of Blackmere (d. 1654)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Howarth, ‘The Patronage and Collecting of Aletheia, countess of Arundel, 1606–54’, p. 130.
29 David Howarth has suggested that the ‘blackamore’ who came to London was the individual depicted in Van Dyck’s Portrait of George Gage with Two Attendants and The Continence of Scipio. However, the word ‘massara’ is the feminine form of ‘massaro’, an Italian word meaning servant, so Lady Arundel’s black servant was a woman, and therefore unrelated to the man depicted by Van Dyck. Howarth, Lord Arundel and his Circle, pp. 158, 196, 242. Anthony Van Dyck, ‘Portrait of George Gage with Two Attendants’, 1622–3, The National Gallery, London and ‘The Continence of Scipio’, 1620–1, Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford.
30 Griffiths, ‘The structure of prostitution in Elizabethan London’, pp. 49–50; Newman, Cultural Capitals, p. 137. Salkeld, Shakespeare amongst the Courtesans, pp. 164–5.
31 ‘An Act for The Reformation of Divers Abuses’, in Stow, The survey of London (1633), p. 681.
32 BCB, V, f. 26v.
33 Varholy, ‘Rich Like A Lady’, p. 10.
34 Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2.
35 BCB, IV, ff. 352r, 373r; Salkeld, Shakespeare amongst the Courtesans, pp. 64, 139; LMA, WJ/SR/NS/18/73 (Westminster Sessions Roll, 5 June 1627).
36 Griffiths, ‘The structure of prostitution in Elizabethan London’ p. 51, Griffiths, Lost Londons, pp. 149–30; Newman, Cultural Capitals, p. 140. LMA, MJ/SR/0510/33 (Middlesex Sessions Roll: Sessions of the Peace and Gaol Delivery, March 1612).
37 Griffiths, ‘The structure of prostitution in Elizabethan London’ p. 44; BCB, III, f. 121r.
38 Newman, Cultural Capitals, p. 136. Archer, The Pursuit of Stability, p. 213.
39 Griffiths, ‘The structure of prostitution in Elizabethan London’, p. 46.
40 Nashe, Christ’s Tears Over Jerusalem, pp. 141–2; Browner, ‘Wrong Side of the River’, Essays in History; Shugg, ‘Prostitution in Shakespeare’s London’, p. 301. The average fee in Elizabethan England was 4s 3d: Griffiths, ‘The structure of prostitution in Elizabethan London’, p. 47.
41 Dekker, The Honest Whore, Part II, Act 5, Scene 2.
42 Griffiths, ‘The structure of prostitution in Elizabethan London’, p. 47. n. 67; BCB V, f. 378r.
43 Newman, Cultural Capitals, pp. 140–142. Varholy, ‘Rich Like a Lady’, pp. 11, 16: Cranley, Amanda: or the Reformed Whore, p. 35.
44 Griffiths, ‘The structure of prostitution in Elizabethan London’, p. 45; Archer, The Pursuit of Stability, p. 213; BCB, III, ff. 279–81.
45 The other church frequented by the gentry was St Martins in the Fields. Merritt, The social world of early modern Westminster, pp. 145, 147, 151,195.
46 Dekker and Webster, Westward Ho!, Act 4, Scene 1.
47 Griffiths, ‘The structure of prostitution in Elizabethan London’, p. 55.
48 Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, p. 616; Archer, The Pursuit of Stability, p. 215.
49 A Pepysian Garland, ed. Rollins, p. 41.
50 Nashe, Christ’s Tears Over Jerusalem, p. 141; Griffiths, Youth and Authority, pp. 220–221.
51 BCB, III, ff. 218r (15 May 1577), 261v (16 December 1577), 277r–277v (15 January 1578); Griffiths, Lost Londons, p. 74, n. 25; D. Salkeld, Shakespeare amongst the Courtesans, pp. 106, 131. Habib (Black Lives, p. 109), insists that Rose Brown may also have been an African, due to her surname.
52 Newman, Cultural Capitals, pp. 13
9, 145.
53 By the Restoration failed erection had become a conventional topos in erotic verse, with poems such as the Earl of Rochester’s ‘The Imperfect Enjoyment’ and Aphra Behn’s ‘The Disappointment’, following the classical example set by, for example, Ovid’s Amores 3.7: Frick, ‘Sexual and Political Impotence in Imperfect Enjoyment Poetry’, Portals.
54 Nashe, The Choice of Valentines, lines 130–227, 257–259.
55 Lowe, An easie, certaine, and perfect method, to cure and prevent the Spanish sickness, sig. B2v; Dingwall, ‘Lowe, Peter (c.1550–1610)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
56 Brome, The English Moor, Act 3, Scene 3.
57 Hall, Things of Darkness, p.22. It seems unlikely that the character of Hermia was literally meant to be from Ethiopia. McCullough, The Negro in English Literature, p.24, concludes: ‘certainly . . . Hermia was not as black as the raven nor as dark as an Ethiope, yet she obviously was of a darker hue than the others’.
58 Jonson, The Characters of Two Royall Masques: The One of Blacknesse, The Other of Beautie (1608).
59 Hall, Things of Darkness, p.205. For further examples, see Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, IV, iii, 114–5, Two Gentlemen Of Verona, II, vi, 25–6.
60 Jonson, ‘Masque of Blackness’, in Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, ed. Lindley, p. 4.
61 Hall, Things of Darkness, pp. 206–10.
62 Shakespeare, Sonnets 127 and 144. Crewe, Trials of Authorship, p. 120; De Grazia, ‘The Scandal of Shakespeare’s Sonnets’, pp. 89–112; Hall, ‘These bastard signs of fair’, pp. 64–83; Hunt, ‘Be dark but not too dark: Shakespeare’s dark lady as a sign of color’, pp. 369–91.
63 Other examples include: John Collop, ‘On an Ethiopian Beauty, M.S.’ (1656); Walton Poole, ‘To a Black Gentlewoman: Mistress A.H.’ (1656); Abraham Wright, ‘On a Black Gentlewoman’ (1656); Eldred Revett’s One Enamour’d on a Black–Moor (1657); Edward Herbert, “Sonnet of Black Beauty” (1665). These and related poems are all printed in Hall, Things of Darkness, 269–290. For a broader context, see An Anthology of Interracial Literature, ed. Sollors.
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