Did you know, John Blanke, a trumpeter for Henry VIII was in the Bayeux Tapestry?
A little-known fact is that black people and people of colour were living as ‘free people’ in the Tudor times, coming to Britain's shores in a variety of ways, mainly through trade with countries such as Morocco. But it wasn’t just in Elizabethan England that black people were making their presence known.
The Congolese ambassador Don Miguel Castro to the Netherlands in the 1640s was African and others such as Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke of Florence had a mother who was an African woman called Simonetta. Other notable black figures were members of Margaret of the Netherlands’ court, as well as many other black men and women, some of high status and ranking who were socially integrated into northern European cities. Rembrandt’s 1661 painting ‘Two African Men’ is one of the Dutch old master’s enigmatic works.
ENGLAND’S FREE SOIL
In England during the 16th century, there was a concept of ‘free soil’ which translated as meaning that if anyone set foot on England’s soil, they become free. The only court case to discuss slavery in this period concluded in 1659 that ‘England had too pure an air for slaves to breathe in’.
Possibly the main reason why England had this reputation was that in the 1500s there were still no English colonies before 1607 and in the West Caribbean not until 1623. Before the infamous trade in human cargo in which England became a main player during the 17th and 18th centuries, most enslaved African people were transported by Spanish and Portuguese merchants to Europe and later to their respective colonies in the Caribbean.
JACQUES FRANCIS & JOHN BLANKE
King Henry VIII (1491 - 1547) held two black people in particularly high regard. Jacques Francis and John Blake represent vital evidence of Africans holding important positions in 16th-century England. Both men were respected for their formidable skills that were acknowledged by one of the most influential and powerful kings in history.
Jacques Francis was held in high regard as he assisted King Henry VIII in retrieving lost treasure from a sunken ship. British people could not swim and so he was viewed as something of a miracle as he was able to swim. Jacques is also believed to be the first black man to give evidence in a British court.
John Blanke performed at Henry VIII's coronation in 1509, and in 1511 at the Westminster Tournament, a huge celebration organised in honour of the new prince, Henry. This child was born to Katherine of Aragon on 1st January 1511 but sadly died only ten days after the Tournament in February. It appears the 60 ft long Tournament Roll, (which depicts John Blanke twice, in the procession of people coming to and from the jousting event shown in the centre), was completed in that brief time. The Royal Exchequer accounts show that Blanke was paid ten times his usual wage for the Tournament, so he had cause for celebration too! And the following year, he had a personal celebration, as he married in 1512 and Henry VIII gave him a wedding present.
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