On Friday evening, I spoke at the Readers Research: Blacks in Renaissance Britain event at the British Library, along with Open University graduate Michael Ohajuru  (you can read his highly complimentary version of events here). The event was chaired by Dr. Caroline Bressey of the UCL Equiano Centre. 

It was quite a thrill to be speaking at the British Library, a place I have made regular pilgrimages to for many years now. I even spent some time there helping to catalogue some watercolours of animals in the first Indian zoo in Barrackpore back in 1999.  But I digress...

Michael spoke first, and I was very jealous of his excellent presentation skills and all the lovely pictures he had to illustrate his talk, which was on the black magus he had found in a rood screen painting of The Adoration of the Magi (c.1520) in the V&A, which was probably made in Devon.  In fact, he very effectively compared it with other rood screen images he had found in Devon, and traced the journey of the black magus image from Cologne to Bruges, Alsace and Devon. You can read a transcript here and download his  presentation.  One of the most interesting images for me was of Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI's entrance into Sicily in 1191, heralded by black trumpeters, as it reminded me of the long tradition of royal musicians to which John Blanke, Henry VIII's 'black trumpet' , who I am speaking about on Tuesday at Peckham Library, belonged. 

My only real criticism was that Michael didn't really differentiate between  Europe and England, with statements such as "Blacks were seen legally as slaves and culturally as barbarians." Whereas my research has show that Africans were not slaves in England at this time. He quotes  "the chronicler of an English voyage to Guinea" in 1554 (Robert Gainsh) as describing "A people of beastly living, without god, lawe, religion or common wealth". However, that same voyage brought five Africans back to London, who admittedly were described as "slaves" in the text, but  were not treated as  such, but only kept here only long enough to learn some English, after which they were returned to Guinea to act as interpreters and trade factors. The only record we have of their experience is brief but evocative: "some were tall and strong men, and could wel agree with our meates and drinkes" although "the coulde and moyst ayer dooth sumwhat offende them". Looking out the window today, I can imagine why they might have found the London air objectionable! Though, at least according to the Cartwright judgement of 1569, "the air of England is too pure an air for slaves to breath in". 

My own talk is a bit of a blur now (Michael seems to remember it better!).  Basically I shared some documents I'd found in the Lansdowne Manuscripts, a collection held by the British Library.  A letter written by the Mayor of Bristol, William Hopkins to the Privy Council in 1590 (two years after the Armada battle and at the height of the war with Spain), and an attached set of accounts written by his Chamberlain, regarding a prize ship that had been brought into Bristol by her Majesty's (Elizabeth I's) pinnace The Charles (captain Jonas Bradbury). There were 32 Spanish or Portuguese and 135 Africans on board the prize ship.  Using the documents, I explained why they were on the ship, what happened to them during their stay in Bristol, and the significance of the fact that they were sent back to  Spain within the week. 

The conversation and Q&A afterwards was wide-ranging: from Hollywood swashbucklers to Moorish Spain via Caspar Van Senden.  Perhaps the most philosophical question came from a gentleman from Ghana: why do we always view Africa as peripheral to Europe, perhaps Europe is in fact peripheral to Africa? This is a matter of perspective I suppose. One book I've read that tries to address this is David Northrup's Africa's Discovery of Europe (Oxford, 2002).  I think I'll read it again!

The event was recorded, and we're hoping it will be available as a podcast in due course.  

Our talks were actually the first in a Readers' Research series- which seems a great idea. Often I look around  (and I think  Dr. Bressey made this point too) and wonder what the studious-looking people around me are studying. On the ocassions when I have managed to strike up a conversation, it has always been interesting. So anything that encourages us to interact and gives us more reason to hang out in the BL's many cafés, seems like a good idea! The fact that Michael and I, not exactly wallflower types, actually both discovered the material we presented in summer 2008 but never met until last autumn shows how much more could be done to forge connections between readers.

 If you're kicking yourself that you didn't make it, or were turned away (we sold out!), then please come along to one of my upcoming talks at Peckham Library on Tuesday or The National Archives on Friday 16th November. 

Just back from a great talk by my friend Dr. Kathy Chater, who I've mentioned here before. She told us some of the fascinating stories she'd uncovered in the Old Bailey court records.  You can now check them out yourself online: http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/ 

But back in 2000, when Kathy began her research, she had to go through the cases on microfilm, scanning the pages for mention of black people. I sympathise as I've spent plenty of time doing the same with parish registers! The advantage of this over the modern keyword search is that you get a feel for the source and the context- Kathy noted how other people were treated in court, so was able to understand the black experience better.  

One of the great things about the Old Bailey records is that they're verbatim accounts of what was said in court, so you really hear people's voices coming through.  One memorable quote came from Ann Duck, who is recorded as shouting during an assault: "Hamstring the dog that he may never run after me again!", another one that made us laugh was the woman who testified "he put his impudence into me"!

Chater concluded that black people in the long 18th century were pretty law- abiding, as she's found less than 200 of them appearing in some 54,000 trials. There were still some juicy stories to be told however- of highwaymen and footpads, theft, rape and murder.  I was reminded of how extreme and sometimes gruesome 18th century punishments could be (see Hogarth's print above). We also learnt of Thomas Latham,  possibly the first black police constable (c.1746). The case is copied on the excellent Black Presence website, here: http://www.blackpresence.co.uk/black-people-at-the-old-bailey/

Anyway, I'm not going to try to recount every case here. You'll have to look for them yourself on the amazing Old Bailey website, or check out Kathy's book, now in paperback.

Just wanted to draw your attention to this great resource.  Kathy is the expert on Africans in the period following mine, and has amassed a huge database of references to their lives here in Britain. This is a recording of her speaking at the National Archives last year. You can download it here. 

The talk  is described  on the site as follows:

"What was life like for the ‘average’ black person in England before the 20th century? Most were quietly getting on with their lives, seeking employment, getting married and raising families. It takes a lot of work to uncover their life histories because there was no legal discrimination against these individuals. Glimpses into their lives can be found buried in The National Archives’ vast collection, which reveals unexpected stories. Dr Chater’s talk challenges some commonly held assumptions that have been made about the lives of black Britons during the period of the British slave trade. Dr Kathleen Chater is an independent historian and writer. Her doctoral thesis is published as Untold Histories: Black people in England and Wales during the period of the British slave trade, c. 1660-1807. She came to the history of Black British people through genealogy and has written books and articles on this subject. This talk was part of our diversity week event in November, highlighting the diversity of The National Archives’ collection." 

Kathy has also written a book on the subject which I've illustrated above, and is giving a talk about Black People at the Old Bailey in Islington next month, which looks really interesting.  The records of the Old Bailey are available online and are a fascinating source of information on everyday life from 1674-1913, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.  So once you've listened to Kathy, you can look up some of the cases for yourself!

A while ago I spent some time looking into the history of Sir Pedro Negro, a Spanish mercenary soldier who served Henry VIII in his Scottish wars and was knighted by Protector Somerset in 1548. 
There was some dispute about what colour his skin was. So I dug about and found his coat of arms, his will and a strange letter written  in 1549 by Marion, Lady Hume,  which refers to a 'Mour'... 

My article, 'Sir Pedro Negro: what colour was his skin?' originally published in Notes & Queries in 2008, has now been posted on www.blackpresence.co.uk , a great site which aims to bring together information about Black British History and make it freely available online.

Excited to see that my article on Africans in Early Modern London is now online.  


The London Metropolitan Archives are a great place to research, with friendly and helpful staff  and quite a variety of records- recently augmented by the transfer of records from the Guildhall Library Manuscripts Section, which is where I first went to search for Africans in parish registers. 


Read my article to find out more about Helen Jeronimo, suspected of stealing ‘14 bookes of callikoe, 26 pieces of pachers and 108 lb. of suger’ from a merchant named Francis Pinto, her husband  Thomas Jeronimo 'mariner and moor' and other stories of Africans in Early Modern London that I found in the archives...

My thesis 'Africans in Britain, 1500-1640' is now available to read in the Bodleian library. You can access the listing on SOLO [Search Oxford Libraries Online] or read the short abstract. 

I found records of over 350 Africans in Early Modern Britain in the course of my research, and used them to consider questions including how Africans came to Britain, what work they did, their religious and social experience and their status in the eyes of the law. My thesis includes an appendix listing all the  evidence I found of Africans in a wide range of sources from parish registers to court records.

I sent the following letter to the BBC via their website, after Wood's article was published on 20th July 2012, but have received no response.  As I explain, it was great that they ran the article on this fascinating subject, but there is more to say:

                                                                                                                      London, 27th July 2012
Dear BBC News Magazine,

I was pleased to see Michael Wood’s article on ‘Britain's first black community in Elizabethan London’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18903391) on your magazine last week, as it brought a fascinating subject to your readers’ attention (in much greater depth than that night’s Great British Story). 

However, I feel that it did not tell the whole story. Having recently completed a D.Phil. thesis on ‘Africans in Britain, 1500-1640’ at Oxford University, in which I found evidence of over 350 Africans living in Britain during that time, I wanted to add to and comment on what Wood had to say. 

Firstly, I would question Wood’s use of the term “community”. How do you define “community”? A handful of people living in the same area? Though they may have had the same colour skin, they may not have socialised, or even spoken the same language. Kathy Chater’s book Untold Histories, on the 18th century black population questions the use of this term even then. 

My study showed that not only were Africans in Britain not slaves, but some were paid wages or even worked independently as craftsmen (I found a needlemaker and a silkweaver) or died leaving property.

They were not just musicians before Elizabeth I’s reign. Some were courtiers, but there was also a soldier in Exeter in 1522, a man buried in Northamptonshire in 1545, a diver in Southampton in 1547-8 and a needlemaker in Cheapside c.1554-8. 

Africans were not only living in London- they were in Southampton, Bristol and Plymouth, but also in less likely places, from Hull to tiny villages like Stowell in Somerset or Bluntisham-cum-Earith in Cambridgeshire. 

Wood asserts that two of Shakespeare’s greatest characters are black. We can assume he means Othello and...Aaron from Titus Andronicus? The latter is not usually described as “great”- as he is cruel, lascivious and murderous- even killing his own son!

The discussion of ‘Lucy Negro’ is misleading and conflates various unrelated biographies. This was a fairly common nickname, given to various women with dark hair in the literature and records of the period. There is no evidence of a real African woman of this name. In fact I found more evidence of African men using London prostitutes than African women working as prostitutes. 

In his comments on the attempt to transport Africans to Lisbon in 1596 and 1601, Wood concludes “Whether this actually happened is unclear.” In fact another letter in the Hatfield archives, from the merchant who had petitioned for permission to transport the Africans, Caspar Van Senden, shows that he was unsuccessful, as I explain in my full analysis of the situation in my article  ‘Caspar Van Senden, Sir Thomas Sherley and the “Blackamoor” project’, Historical Research, 81, no.212 (May 2008), pp. 366-371.


Some factual errors:
The”1602” letter of Denis Edwardes that Wood uses to prove Turnbull Street’s notoriety was in fact written in May 1599 (It is at The National Archives, TNA, SP 12/270/119). 

The figure of 20,000 black servants in 18th century London was suggested by the 
Gentleman’s Magazine in 1764. Modern estimates are more conservative, putting the figure at between 10,000-15,000. 

Wood says that “In 1599, for example, in St Olave Hart Street, John Cathman married Constantia "a black woman and servant".” Where is this quote from? The parish register (http://www.history.ac.uk/gh/baentries.htm) says only that her surname was “Negrea”- I wasn’t sure this was clearly an African.  I did however find 6 other records of marriages, 3 inter-racial (including 1617 Curres/Person mentioned here) and 3 between two black partners. 

I would like to end by thanking Michael Wood and the editor that commissioned him for bringing this subject to greater prominence- the article has at time of writing been shared 3487 times, and no doubt many more saw the TV programme. I realise that a short article cannot do the subject justice, and hope that further airtime will be given to this vital part of our shared history in the future. 

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Miranda Kaufmann