Britain?

What was the experience of Black Tudors in Britain?

By: Sakeena Sanders

Contrary to common misconceptions of Tudor Britain, it was not a monoracial, monolingual or monocultural country. Black people were a part of many different levels of society, from musicians to circumnavigators, from merchants to silk weavers. They were present in the households of Sir Walter Raleigh and William Cecil and the royal courts of Henry VII, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and James I, prominent Tudor figures. Black Tudor’s arrival in Britain was intensified by increased trade between the UK and Africa, as well as more movement within Europe. A striking example of this is Diego, who, having been enslaved by the Spanish, asked to be taken aboard Sir Francis Drake’s ship in 1572 in Panama. In 1577 he circumnavigated the globe with Drake and later in 1579 they claimed California for Queen Elizabeth I.

As Britain was such a religious nation in the Tudor Era, Black Tudors’ acceptance into church life is a key indicator of the lack of discrimination they faced at the time. Records of Black people being baptised are especially significant as according to the church, which was the centre of people’s lives, ‘through baptism you are grafted into the community of God’s holy church’ . Therefore, discriminating against them, as fellow Christians, would have been going against God’s will: this directly contrasts later centuries when Black people were seen in British law as possessions to be bought and sold. Another measure of Black people’s acceptance into society was their ability to earn their own wage, giving them equal financial independence to their white British peers and allowing them to contribute to their community. A key example of this is John Blanke, a royal trumpet player and Black man, who was paid three times the wage of an average servant and double the average wage of an agricultural labourer. Despite his race, Blanke was selected to hold this prestigious position in the entourage of King Henry VII, performing at his funeral and Henry VIII’s coronation. Another example of Black Tudors’ ability to be present in the middle classes is Dederi Jaquoah, a West African prince, who spent two years living with an English merchant.

Despite facing less discrimination than Black people today, Black Tudors were often given the surnames ‘Blanke’ , ‘Blackman’ , ‘Blacke’ and ‘Swarthye’ . Even those who had impressive jobs like Reasonable Blackman, a silk-weaver, suffered this same form of, what would today be termed, collective othering. This slight exclusion from the rest of British Tudor society was exacerbated by how few ethnically diverse people there were in Britain. The historian Matilda Kaufmann has found records of only around 360 ethnically diverse people in Britain between 1500 and 1640 of a total Tudor population of 4 million in Britain.

Although some Black Tudors like Annie Cobbie, a prostitute, had difficult lives, their race did not seem to worsen their life. They faced similar obstacles as their white counterparts. However, with such a small black population in Britain they may have felt isolated. For example Cattelena was a woman who lived independently in Almondsbury and whose most valuable item was her cow.

This begs the question of why black Tudors were largely accepted as full members of Tudor society. Perhaps this was because Britain was a relatively weak, small island nation at the time, in religious turmoil and constantly fearing a Spanish invasion, as this could have decimated the country. Perhaps Britain did not yet have any colonies and was not involved in the slave trade. There is a vast contrast between Black Tudors’ relative acceptance in Britain and this same nation becoming the biggest slave traders in the world soon after.

Despite work by historians like Kaufmann, who is trying to piece together Black Tudor life in Britain, historical blanks persist due to the scarcity of complete evidence. This illustrates the effect that subsequent discrimination has had on the history of ethnic minorities. For example many children are still taught that America was ‘discovered’ , and Black Tudors are still omitted from the history curriculum, even when learning about the Tudors at A-Level.

As Britain again loses power on the international stage, as a result of leaving the European Union, will this cause race relations to worsen or will it lead to a new age of acceptance?