Time Traveller's Guide to Africans in Elizabethan England

17/6/2013

I was looking forward to catching up with the Time Traveller's guide to Elizabethan England series on BBC2, having enjoyed the book, and even used its tips on Tudor greetings last time I tried my own hand at time travel by dressing in Elizabethan costume on a visit to Hampton Court. I was particularly interested in what Dr. Ian Mortimer had to say about Africans in Elizabethan England.

About 45 minutes into the third episode, Brave New World, Dr. Mortimer dives into what he calls "the darker side" of Elizabethan human nature. Warning the viewer that they will likely be shocked and appalled by the racism and prejudice of Elizabethan Englishmen, he embarks upon a brief but devastating denunciation of the treatment of Africans in Elizabethan England.

The most shocking records, he says, "suggest that rich men are lending out their black female servants to friends and neighbours for sexual novelty and experimentation." Our modern moral outrage at such practices would "baffle" Elizabethans, we are told. But a quick glance at the church court records, where hundreds of cases of fornication were routinely punished every year, shows that the Elizabethans would be equally appalled at such behaviour.

But what is Dr. Mortimer's evidence for this scandalous assertion? He quotes from the baptismal register of St. Andrew's, Plymouth, 2nd May 1593, which reads:

"Helene, daughter of Cristian the negro servant to Richard Sheere, the supposed father beinge Cuthbert Holman, base "

There is no indication in this record of the kind of nefarious activity that Mortimer suggests. Elizabethan parish registers are peppered with records of illegitimate children, born to both African and Englishwomen. Indeed some 4% of all children were born illegitimate in the late 16th and early 17th century. Furthermore, the majority of children born to servant women out of wedlock were fathered by a fellow servant. This was sometimes spelt out in the records: for example in St. Keverne, Cornwall, ‘Constance the base child of a blackmore ye reputed father John the servant of John Langford’ was baptised in January 1605.

Far from being free to sexually experiment, Elizabethan Englishmen regularly found themselves in court and paying for their amatory actions: in January 1603, Roger Holgate, servant to Thomas Browne, a hatmaker, confessed to the Bridewell Court that ‘he hath committed with his fellowe a blackmoore in the house the abominable synne of whoredome’. He was punished and, more importantly ‘kept till he put in sureties to discharge the cittie and parishe of the childe and children’.

Dr. Mortimer does not mention that Cristian had at least one other child, as on 14 April 1594 ‘Cristian, daughter of Cristian, Richard Sheer's Blackmoore’ was buried in the same parish. This time, no father is named, and the child may have died before she could be baptized, or may have been an older child, baptized elsewhere with the name ‘Christian’.

Unfortunately neither Sheere nor Colman have left many records in Plymouth- the only reference I found was to Sheer hiring out a horse in 1591. Holman could just as well have been Sheer's servant, as his friend. Further research into these individuals is required if we are to fully understand Christian's experience of Elizabethan Plymouth.

Her experience should also be viewed alongside those which tell a more positive story, such as this St. Philip's and St. Jacob's, Bristol baptism record of 18 August 1600:

"Richard a Bastard, the sonne of Joane Marya a Black Moore & nowe the wyffe of Thomas Smythe Byllysmaker[a manufacturer of bills, a type of weapon] was baptized."

Besides the transformation of Richard Sheere of Plymouth into some sort of racist pimp, Dr. Mortimer further comments that made my hackles rise. Although I realise that the exigencies of filming and editing can result in valuable qualifying clauses being left on the cutting room floor, having spent years of my life researching Africans in Britain, 1500-1640, I could not stand by and let some of the resulting statements go unchallenged.

Dr. Mortimer's comment, "Before the slaving expeditions of the 1560s, there were only a handful of black men and women in England" suggests that Africans largely came to England as a result of the slave trade, which is not true. A successful slave trading operation would result in Africans arriving in the Americas, not England. In fact, Africans were more likely to arrive in England as a result of (non-slave) trade with Africa, privateering voyages, or via Europe. Mortimer refers to Francis Drake in the preceding segment of the programme, but without mentioning how some of his privateering voyages brought Africans to England, or the significance of the black man's head on the Drake Jewel which he wears round his waist in the portrait we see.

Mortimer asserts that "the majority of black men and women are to be found serving in the houses of the powerful", however, there is more evidence of Africans living in merchant households, and even in the homes of seamstresses and beer brewers, and indeed the majority of Africans in England are not recorded as having masters at all. Some were financially independent, working as craftsmen, like Reasonabel Blackman, a silkweaver in 1590s Southwark.

Mortimer suggests there were efforts to deport "as many [Africans] as possible" in 1596 and identifies a "rising tide of racism, as attitudes that were once based on curiosity and ignorance turn hostile". However, as I showed in my article about Caspar Van Senden, the merchant who was given permission to take Africans to Lisbon, the events of 1596 were less of a deportation act and more of a money-making scheme cooked up by a foreign merchant and a bankrupt politician. Far from reflecting a rise in racism, the fact that these men were ultimately unsuccessful in their attempts, shows that the position of Africans in Elizabethan society was stronger than Mortimer suggests. His main evidence for racism in Elizabethan society comes from Shakespeare and Reginald Scot. However, literature is devised to entertain and is prone to exaggeration. The more prosaic evidence of the archives, which show that Africans were baptised, married Englishmen and women, were paid wages, or were able to earn their own living, and were allowed to testify in court, shows that they were treated much better than Dr. Mortimer suggests. The subject is fascinating, and not only deserves, but requires, a programme, or even a series, of its own to properly explore its complexities.

22 Comments

Ian Mortimer link

17/6/2013 12:57:24 am

I'm interested by your alternative point of view and welcome it, despite the somewhat combative tone with which you greet mine. I'd very much like to think my ancestors were more sympathetic than the plays, geographical textbooks and moral diatribes of the period make out. Maybe they were: I just don't see that sympathy in the evidence though, except on an occasional basis, and so am less inclined to give the 16th-century people in general the benefit of the doubt. I think the racism of the period would appall anyone rational living in England today. Some black servants were no doubt impregnated by fellow servants, granted (and I'd say that that in itself is dubious...). Others were clearly not (e.g. from the same register: 'baptism of Cristien, daughter of Mary, a Negro of John Whites and the supposed daughter of John Kinge, a Dutchman, illeg., 17 11 1594'). And the 'entertainers' as you describe them knew their audiences well: black subjugation and denigration amused and enthralled them. A third of Londoners saw a play every month - and almost all of them that presented black people did so ni an extremely negative light.
All in all, I decided there was more historical value in highlighting the strong evidence showing the difficulties black people faced in 16th century rather than presenting a positive gloss that could just as easily be shown to be a partial view. The alternative, as I'm sure you know only too well, is simply to ignore this subject.
As you intimate, the limited scope of a TV programme allows for very little context or variation to the main message. You really only have one chance to say one thing, and any caveats are likely to result in the whole section being deemed too complex for the layman/woman. The result is either a meaningless compromise (as there is no scope for nuance) or the firm expression of a point of view. I agree with the point at the end of your post - about there needing to be a greater concentration on this question. The real difficulty is how to make what some of us would describe as 'difficult history' more of a priority without it being touched by the prejudices of our own time, including political correctness, or dumbed down.
I hope this goes some way to explain why I said what I did, and I wish you luck in presenting your alternative view of this difficult question on the small screen in due course.

Miranda Kaufmann link

17/6/2013 01:38:29 am

Dear Ian,

I'm delighted that you've read my blog and taken the time to respond at length. I hope you took my "combatative" tone in the spirit of historical debate in which it was intended.

I think a really important question here is the question of evidence. You mention "plays, geographical textbooks and moral diatribes" whereas my research involved finding references to over 360 African individuals living in England and Scotland 1500-1640, in parish registers, tax returns, court records, letters, diaries, household accounts etc. And I feel that these more quotidian sources give a more positive impression than the one you have championed. I suppose I've taken an "actions speak louder than words" sort of approach?

It also seems to me that prejudice based on class and religion was far more virulent in this period than racial prejudice. In fact, I concluded that due to the relatively small numbers of Africans in England at this point, they evaded the kind of legislation that discriminated against them elsewhere. I think the relative absence of racial prejudice in England at this point raises more interesting questions about how and when it developed.

I hope you find time to read my article about the so-called deportation of 1596. http://www.mirandakaufmann.com/caspanvansenden.html
It's a perfect example of people reading 20/21st century concerns into Elizabethan documents without fully understanding the context of their production.

Anyway, I hope we continue this debate in future, be it in person, on Twitter, or even on the small screen!

Kathleen Chater

18/6/2013 02:04:17 am

I notice Dr Mortimer carefully does not give any evidence for what he admits is a 'point of view', rather than a substantiated argument. When I worked at the BBC we had to distinguish very carefully between fact and opinion. As we were told, everything that goes out [on the news or in current affairs programmes] has to stand up in a court of law or before the Broadcasting Complaints Commission, as it then was. Dr Mortimer says it's difficult to present caveats. But there is no caveat here - he's just sexing it up to make a good soundbite but, in my view, bad television.

Imagine my surprise when I moved into academia and discovered that academics don't have an equivalent to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission. They are under no obligation to do the difficult work of proving something - they can just have a 'point of view' Should we set up an Academics Complaints Commission?

18/6/2013 06:15:04 pm

Yes, having got caught up in the wider debate, I overlooked the question how can you say:

"Helene, daughter of Cristian the negro servant to Richard Sheere, the supposed father beinge Cuthbert Holman, base "

"suggest[s] that rich men are lending out their black female servants to friends and neighbours for sexual novelty and experimentation." ??

Ian Mortimer

17/6/2013 05:21:58 am

Thanks for your speedy reply. Yes, of course, it's very much a question of evidence interpretation. And it's one that puts me in mind of another contentious and heavily politicised debate, namely the role of women as healers at this time. Many well informed writers will point out the roles that women (especially gentlewomen and clerical wives) played in the health of their communities. Individual women were widely praised for their actions. But when I reconstructed 18,000 fatal cases from probate accounts, across the period 1570-1720, almost no women were paid for medical help for the seriously ill. They were paid for children's ailments and minor sicknesses; and one cannot help but see in the self-help books of the period that many women were the first point of reference for ill people in the household or community; but they did not provide a significant portion of the medical help to the those who were so sick they ended up dying. It was 99.9% men who did (or at least were paid for) that work.

I feel that there is something similar going on here - specific examples at the quotidian level do not necessarily tally with the generalisations repeated or assumed - but that does not mean general attitudes were without currency or significance. I do think it would have been a mistake, given the parameters of my TTG conceit, to underplay the general attitudes of the period, and those are unequivocally racist. I am pretty confident that the vast majority of non-specific references to black people in society were negative. It might have been players and playwrights who entertained the crowds with stories of evil or subjugated blackmen - but did not James VI of Scotland make it a reality, and actually have a chariot pulled by black men?

I like your point about there being no legislation against black people. But (playing devil's advocate) I wonder about context here: if it was generally assumed that black people were still owned - and they were very frequently referred to as 'so and so's blackamoor' - the lack of legislation might in itself have been a reflection of their otherness, their being less than equal in the eyes of the law.

I too hope we get the chance to carry on the debate. It's a problematic subject but one that raises not only the fascinating question of the plight of a minority in England but also the limits of the interpretation of evidence, which is itself an absorbing subject.

all the best,
ian

17/6/2013 07:43:58 pm

Dear Ian,

Your work on early modern doctoring sounds fascinating- would your article 'The Triumph of the Doctors: Medical Assistance to the Dying, c1570-1720', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 15 (2005), pp. 97-116, be a good place to start to learn more?

My feeling is that many of the experts who've analysed attitudes to race in Tudor literature have done so without any knowledge of the specific examples of actual Africans living in Britain at the time. And in many cases, they've been informed by their own, modern preoccupations. But just as your work on probate records should allow a new synthesis, along the lines of "Women provided valuable day-to-day medical care, but men were considered the professionals for times of crisis" (Though one might argue that prevention is better than cure, and that those who went to women healers lived, while male doctor's patients ended up in probate!!- I jest).

There are positive general references to Africans- Hakluyt's voyage accounts often describe merchants and kings- April Hatfield wrote an interesting article on this: Hatfield, A. L., ‘A ‘very wary people in the bargaining’ or ‘very good merchandise’: English Traders’ Views of Free and Enslaved Africans, 1550-1650’, Slavery and Abolition, 25, no. 3 (Dec. 2004), pp. 1-17.
The relationship with the Cimarrones of Panama is interesting too- and the image of a black man on Drake's Jewel seems pretty positive too- see D.S. Shields, ‘The Drake Jewel’, Uncommon Sense, 118 (2004)- http://oieahc.wm.edu/uncommon/118/drake.cfm

But, back to specifics, which I admit I prefer! You ask whether James VI of Scotland had a chariot pulled by black men.

William Fowler's account of the pageantry marking the baptism of Prince Henry in Scotland in 1594 reads:

"there came into the sight of them all, a Black-Moore, drawing (as it seemed to the beholders) a triumphal Chariot (& before it, the melodious noise of the Trumpets & Howboyes) which Chariot entred the Hall, the motion of the whole frame (which was twelve foot long, and seven foot broad) was so artificial within it selfe, that it appeared to be drawne in, onely by the strength of a Moore, which was very richly attired, his traces were great chaines of pure gold… This Chariot which should have bene drawne in by a Lyon (but because his presence might have brought some feare, to the nearest, or that the sight of the lights and torches might have commoued his tameness) It was thought meete, that the Moore should supply that roome."

Firstly, the chariot seems to pretty such drive itself, and the "Black-Moore" is there for show. Courtiers and even the queen also performed in masques.

It is however difficult to be sure from this text whether the man is an African or a Scot dressed as a "Moore". At James VI's own baptism in 1566, six shillings was laid out from the royal coffers for: "thre lamis skynnis quhairof was maid four bonnets of fals hair to the saidis mores [three lambs skins, whereof was made four bonnets of false hair for the said moors]"- but no similar payments were to be found in 1594, and the royal household and treasurer's accounts do show there was an African in the royal household in 1590 who could have performed at the baptism and may also have performed at Queen Anne's entry into Edinburgh that year. A Danish account records:

"Because of the numerous people who were pressing to see the queen, fifty people had been ordered to walk the whole time in front of her majesty's coach to make space and room. These people were masked with faces of lead, iron and copper which were made so cleverly that it was not easy to tell that they were made of these materials, so natural were they. Some had blackened their faces so that their heads were just like those of blackamoors, but an absolutely real and native blackamoor was their leader. He had a drawn sword. On their bodies they only had the sort of tunics seamen wear, something like boatsmen's half smocks, and these were made of white bliant with half-sleeves and no collar. Their necks, arms and hands were blackened, and around their necks they had beautiful gold chains."

I have not undertaken a full analysis of the role of Africans or feigned Africans in Tudor masques and pagentry, but I don't think the portrayal seems 100% negative.

As to the legal position, I have written about this here: http://www.mirandakaufmann.com/common-law.html
It was not "generally assumed" Africans were owned- a court ruled in 1569 that "the air of England was too pure an air for Slaves to breathe in" and even the Spaniards mentioned in their letters about Drake (for example) that Africans were free in England. Their equal status in the eye of the law is clearly demonstrated when they are allowed to give evidence in court- for example in the case of Edward Swarthye in 1597- which I recorded a podcast about at the National Archives last year: http://media.nationalarch

17/6/2013 07:46:27 pm

Oh dear, I think my post was so long it cut it off.

I was saying, my podcast on Swarthye is available to listen to here: http://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/the-strange-journey-of-edward-swarthye-an-african-in-elizabethan-england-from-the-spanish-caribbean-to-rural-gloucestershire/

I don't think the possessive language of some of the records proves much. I found only 18 of 124 Africans recorded as having a master or mistress described with possessive words such as ‘of’ or ‘my’ or ‘his’. Most servants would have considered themselves as belonging to a household or master, and it is not just Africans described in this way: in the Returns of Aliens, we find a reference to: ‘Peter Martynne, Spanyarde, who belongith to the Spanishe Embassador’, and in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Duke Orsino addresses the Lady Olivia’s servants: ‘Belong you to the Lady Oliuia, friends?’, and the Clown answers: ‘Ay, sir; we are some of her trappings’.

Looking forward to hearing your further thoughts on all this and continuing the debate! I feel a lot of the evidence is little-known and requires further mainstream interpretation.

Miranda.

Emma Kennedy link

17/6/2013 08:40:16 pm

Hi! After a Twitter conversation with Miranda I thought I'd weigh in on a few points - I hope they're of some use!

On the subject of stage plays: they do tend to mock various groups of people for entertainment, up to and including their own patrons, so I'm not sure that negative portrayal of anybody in a stage play can be used as proof of, say, mass hatred without being backed up by substantial other evidence.

I work on civic pageantry in early modern London, and in those pageants there's often a positive portrayal of people of other races: several feature a 'King of the Moors' who is rich in his own right, and trading with him is something for the livery companies, who sponsored these works, to boast about.

I think racism - thought not as we know it today - was certainly around and available for early modern writers and thinkers to draw upon. However, I'm not sure that it was as culturally entrenched as it was later (and even today, some might argue), and that there were other possible viewpoints - helped by the fact that Africans and others of colour existed, as Miranda notes, in positions other than slavery. For more on civic pageantry and race, I'd recommend Ania Loomba's introduction to the 1622 Lord Mayor's Show, Thomas Middleton's _The Triumphs of Honour and Virtue_, in the new Collected Works (of Middleton) published by OUP.

Thanks to you both for engaging in such a fascinating debate! It's been great to read both your thoughts.

Emma

17/6/2013 11:55:20 pm

Some further thoughts on this thought-provoking debate.

First point: this is not directly relevant to the past we are now discussing (the past as it was, in the traditional style of von Ranke) but is relevant to the way I presented my TV series, which is the very opposite of Rankean. It’s the matter of modern preconceptions.

When a scholar studies the past, he or she eschews modern assumptions, prejudices and preconceptions. In a Time Traveller’s Guide, the central figure in the story is the reader, the visitor – you and the people around you – with all your modern prejudices, preconceptions and assumptions. Now, if you are black, and I describe the experience you will have if you go to Elizabethan England, that you might suffer enforced deportation (for private profit, as Miranda’s article makes clear, but perhaps for other reasons too) and that your body may be used for sexual experimentation, or simply that you may be abused verbally, you will not think Elizabethan England a welcoming place. Making the past meaningful to the modern man and woman in the street requires such a juxtaposition of the then and now. If I had described the relationship betwen black and white in the 1590s absolutely accurately (whatever that might have been) and fully (an impossible task) I still would have failed to bring home to a modern audience the fact that political correctness of the sort we understand today was not to be found in Elizabethan society. Therefore I would have failed to guide my prospective traveller accurately.

(I’d add that you could take this point about modern preconceptions further, as some philosophers of history do (and as I did in the conclusion to my book 1415), and say that one cannot ever entirely remove the modern assumptions and prejudices from the history. No historical work has any value unless it has an audience, and the audience will automaticaly juxtapose the past they read about with their own time – indeed many of the most powerful reactions to historical writing are triggered by our shock/horror at what happened in the past compared to now. But this is getting off the subject.)

It would be true to say that I focused on the racism that would appall a modern audience, and did not select an example to the contrary. Why? Four reasons, I guess. First, that was what I made of the evidence I read (more on this below). Second, as a historian I have a prejudice to use history to shake modern people out of their complacency that the past is a cosy little place; indeed, that is part of the purpose of my Time Traveller’s Guides. Third, why should any one detail to the contrary suffice? I might have selected an isolated case. Fourth, to say one thing (e.g. society was racist) and then immediately to provide an example that seemingly contradicted that statement would have confused many TV viewers.
Personally, it would have been better history to present a range of attitudes to reflect this contentious subject more fully; that goes without saying. However, to do so, the programme would have had to have been more directly about race in the 16th century. In reality it was fortunate that the race angle was included at all, as I did not write the script: the programmes were written by the directors, using my book, and I simply put into my own words the scripts they gave me, and corrected them where necessary. The problem with TV history – or the reason why it is so difficult – is that the balance is so difficult to maintain. Even if I were to write a 60-minute programme on something I am expert in – early modern medical practitioners, Edward II’s death, Henry IV’s reign, or archival methodology – it would be incomplete, and I could potentially be castigated by a fellow expert in one of these fields for leaving out this or that. However, at the same time, Joe Public would think, who needs all this detail? TV is a compromise between these two extremes – but one which is hugely weighted towards Joe Public.

When it comes to the interpretation of evidence, I am fascinated by the references that Miranda has to show that the situation on the ground was far more varied and sympathetic (at least sometimes) than I presented. But the fact that society had a range of reactions should not surprise anyone. As with the details I gave about medicine, the onus is on the presenter to say things which are encapsulations of what was generally true. Taking specific pieces of evidence and drawing out conclusions based on those specific instances can be very dodgy: for example, thousands of references exist in manorial records to people throwing animal entrails and excrement into water courses. On that basis many people presume that medieval and early modern manors were stinking places. But to use these specific references is to use evidence selectively. In fact, all the references to entrails and effluent are legal records: you wo

Mike Mwiti

29/10/2017 03:04:04 pm

Racism was a concept invented around the time of the Atlantic Slave Trade.

The men who set out to defend slavery assembled a huge arsenal of new claims about black people, which they then codified, refined and disseminated through books, pamphlets, cartoons and speeches. They did it to justify their evil trade in the eyes of the general public.

Before that, as Dr. Kaufman quite rightly puts it, there was class and religious discrimination rather than skin colour.

Africans (Moors) could and did rise to the higher echelons of society e.g. João de Sá Panasco, Abram Petrovich Gannibal, Saint Maurice, Saint Gregory, Dom Miguel de Castro, John Blanke , Dorothea of Denmark (Duchess of Prussia), Alessandro de Medici, etc

These are examples of Africans who attained high status in Europe at that time; including into the ranks of the nobility and the church.

ian Mortimer

17/6/2013 11:59:23 pm

[whoops, mine too lnog as well..]

... to use these specific references is to use evidence selectively. In fact, all the references to entrails and effluent are legal records: you would expect there to be thousands of instances of leakage and sewerage offences in England over 300 years – and these records show that it did not go unpunished. Quite the opposite. If you were to have the modern equivalent, you would find burst water pipes and river contamination being mentioned i our records. It does not mean we are all flooded or our rivers devoid of life. For this reason, although my archival background makes me instinctively do what Miranda has done and go for specific detaisl of actual events, when writing in general terms for TV, I am cautious o the too-specific. Instead to represent attitudes I look for cultural statements of attitude. And in the plays, one finds them. And they aren’t pretty.

Emma Kennedy notes above that at certain times playrights wrote entertainments that mocked hierarchies; she implies that the racism of the plays does not necessarily reflect what people actually thought. To which I would reply that it was not the plays alone that caused me to write what I did about racism in the book The Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England - it was the correlation of racist attitudes to black men in the geographical literature concerning Africa and the plays put in London and the references ot the Devil’s appearance in books such as Reginald’s Scot’s book, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, which had no particular axe to grind on matters of race. When the 16th century geographical writers refer to black women being wanton and sexually incontinent, one tends to see references to them having illegitimate children by known white fathers as part of the spirit of exploration that pervaded places like Plymouth in the 1590s. Just as people flocked to see an Indian (as Shakespeare noted) and to taste exotic fruit, so the sexually incontinent African woman was a subject for discovery. I could be wrong but I certainly don’t think one can dismiss the racist correlations of aaron ni Titus Andronicus and the rapist nature of the African man as described ni various geography books of the time; I certainly don’t think one can presume the opposite. To do so would be to select which evidence you want to believe and lay aside anything that contradicts your chosen views, and that is bad history. The only way to do this is to follow Miranda’s method has done and make an exhaustive study of ALL the evidence and look at it in its entirety. But even then, theer will be questions of meaning about almost every reference.

That’s enough from me. I started this morning writing about the information revolution afforded by the mass of new monasteries set up in the wake of Bernard of Clairvaux and its impact on the twelfth century Renaissance - now I find myself thinknig about 16th century approaches to non-white races. I can’t think in two centuries at once. It is time to go for a walk.

ian

PS Miranda, re: my medical history, no, that essay just gives an overview of the trends. It does not deal with the methodological problem in any depth. It's in my book 'The Dying and the Doctors'; however, if you want I'll email you the relevant sections.

18/6/2013 10:23:48 pm

Hope you enjoyed your walk Ian- I too have taken some time to clear my head.

I sill feel that the black time traveller to Elizabethan England (Did you see that episode of Dr. Who by the way? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shakespeare_Code -might have to write a blog on that one day!)
- could have had children with a black father, like Grace and James Diego, both servants to a Mr. Bromfield of Limehouse, although James had moved on by the time their child was baptized at St. Dunstan and All Saints, Stepney in February 1631:
James sonne 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.

or, had formed a relationship with a local woman, like Gylman Ivie, an African who had two children with Anna Spencer in Dyrham, Gloucestershire in 1578 and 1581.

Or indeed got married, but I won't keep bombarding you with the specific evidence.

Though I can't resist quoting another bit of Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft:

"a young woman... brought foorth a young blacke Moore, by means of an old black Moore who was in hir house at the time of her conception, whome she beheld in phantasie as is supposed: howbeit a gelous husband will not be satisfied with such phantasticall imaginations. For in truth a blacke Moore never faileth to beget black children, of whatever colour soever the other be."

Which tells us as much about early modern medical theory as it does about racial attitudes!

Michael L. McQuown link

8/1/2014 07:03:31 am

None of the writer seem to have read E. C. Bartel's dissertation on Elizabeth's proposal to deport a number of black people in 1596, which examines her motives from a political as well as social view. Elizabeth wrote three letters on the matter between 1596 and 1601 and each emphasised different aspects of the issue. Ultimately, there does seem to be a racist slant.
What was not included in her article, nor in any of yours, was reference to interracial marriages recorded at the time, and cited in the mini-series "Seeking Shakespeare,"which may be more recent than any of the cited material. Whether this was a factor is moot; the narrator doesn't expand beyond suggesting that this information inspired the writing of "Othello." (He also mentions Shakespeare's comments on an immigration issue of the time, set down, not in one of his own plays, but in a segment written for a multi-author vehicle about Sir Thomas More.)
So we see that everything old IS new again, and that some lessons of history never seem to get learned at all.

Camila

11/5/2014 07:21:23 pm

Me and my friend were arguing about an issue similar to this! Now I know that I was right. lol! Thanks for the information you post.

15/5/2014 06:39:00 pm

I am surprised that in all this nobody has mentioned the most obvious example: "Othello." Clearly, Shakespeare has held the character in high regard: noble, but human; loving, but capable of extreme jealousy and violence. It is the white Iago who is the villain, deceptive and manipulative, narcissistic, willing to destroy what he cannot have. Are there other examples in his private correspondence of his feeling on the matter?

Michael Mwiti

29/10/2017 03:07:24 pm

Joseph

5/2/2018 01:21:53 am

racism was never invented it simply didn't crop up much as the amouny of black people in europe was a tiny periphery minority

we could talk in the same breath about white people in japan during medieval times or even as they are today, but being less than 1% of the society (as black people in britain were until the 1960s) they are on the edge of society.

5/2/2018 01:30:12 am

That's not what the evidence proves. Are you familiar with the concept of "scientific racism"?. Racism was a systematic tool developed to justify the trade in human beings.

Before the Atlantic slave trade, there were many high ranking Africans in Europe, as I previously mentioned.

Aparba

28/7/2018 09:34:18 pm

This is a fascinating and absolutely vital discussion. However I think there is something that needs to be pointed out here - Dr Mortimer seems to suggest that black and other POCs visitors to the past would find sexual violence and objectification and fetishisation, as well as open slander, a jolt to their systems. They wouldn't. It is something they/we face regularly today -and it's not spoken about enough. We are not living in a post racial world. Might Dr Mortimer be making the present too "cosy" in his mission to deromanticise the past?
I do also find it a little problematic that white scholars use their own opinions to judge the offensiveness and positivity of contemporary Tudor descriptions of black people.

cathy sinclitico link

1/1/2019 09:28:11 pm

IN THE MOVIE MARY QUEEN OF SCOTTS,THERE ARE BLACK NOBLEMEN WHO ADVISE THE QUEEN-DID THAT REALLY HAPPEN? THEY ARE ALSO SHOWN IN HIGH POSITIONS SERVING ENRY'S DAUGHTER,QUEEN ELIZABETH. I KNOW THERE WERE BLACK FEMALE SERVANTS.THAT IS ALL I KNOW. IS THE MOVIE BEING TRUTHFUL? THANKS,CATHY

Farah Karim-Cooper

18/9/2021 04:27:21 am

Great literature and drama of the period is NOT just about entertainment; it registered felt experience; chronicled the time; showcased the appetites and systems of thought of the period; it uses human language, ideation and emotion to express an age as well as human nature. Kaufman's work is solid on archival data but she does very little analytical work (as her dismissal of Shakespeare as 'entertainment' suggests) or sociological work to connect the art of the period with the archival data. There are multiple definitions of race and racism that have been circulating for a long time, but there is very little precision in the way Kaufman defines race or racism. Brilliant scholars have shown ample evidence of racial formation and what we might call xenophobia, anti-black sentiment, antisemitism (indeed legislated in the 11th century- See Geraldine Heng on The Invention of Race in the Middle Ages); anti-Catholic and misogynistic and ample evidence of misogynoir. The 18th century saw the development of race through the pseudoscience and classification of humanity that has stuck with us and that was used specifically to justify the Atlantic Slave Trade. However, that was not when the invention of race took place, friends. You'd have to go back to classical antiquity - see Benjamin Isaac on this- if you really want to track its formation. While some travel narratives from the Elizabethan period comment positively on black Africans, there are many that do not. It is true that acceptance, marvel, wonder, anxiety and fear as well as disgust all accompanied English attitudes towards different racial, ethnic and religious identities. So you can't say, the Tudors were not racist, nor can you say all fo them were. We can't cherry pick. Regarding the proclamations - Kaufman is absolutely correct in that there were very specific reasons for the transport of 'Blackamoors'; but if you're not going to name or identify the human sentiment that enables you to see human beings as something to be trafficked regardless of why they are, then that's a blindspot- we all have them. White scholars show more of them when writing about the experiences of black and brown people.

alina

24/12/2023 11:19:40 pm

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Time Traveller's Guide to Africans in Elizabethan England

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