A Trumpeter Documented in Wages, Petitions, and a Royal Portrait
Unlike Ziryab and Alessandro de' Medici, whose specific ethnic origins this course's first two units examined as genuinely contested historical questions, John Blanke presents a case this unit can establish with considerably greater documentary confidence. Blanke served as a trumpeter at the English royal court from at least 1507, performing at Henry VII's funeral and Henry VIII's coronation in 1509, and appears twice in the Westminster Tournament Roll of 1511, a 60-foot vellum manuscript commissioned by Henry VIII, making Blanke's the only surviving contemporary portrait of any identified Black Tudor. Blanke's presence in the historical record extends beyond this visual documentation: National Archives records show he received regular wages, and in 1509, following Henry VIII's accession, Blanke successfully petitioned the new king directly for a pay increase, from eight pence to sixteen pence daily, a request the historical record confirms was granted.
Not an Isolated Case
Blanke's documented presence at the very center of Tudor court life, rather than representing an isolated exception, reflects a considerably broader pattern historians have only recently worked to fully document. Historian Miranda Kaufmann's research, published in her 2017 book Black Tudors: The Untold Story, identified at least ten specific individuals, and historians estimate roughly 200 Africans total, living and working across Tudor England in occupations ranging from Blanke's court trumpeting to salvage diving, silk weaving, needlework, and household service. These individuals arrived in England through diverse routes, some with privateers, pirates, and merchants, others accompanying aristocrats or, in at least one documented case, arriving alongside Catherine of Aragon's own Spanish retinue when she traveled to England to marry Prince Arthur in 1501.
Free, Waged, and Legally Recognized
The specific legal and social status of these documented Tudor Africans differs importantly from the enslaved populations this course's second unit examined in Portugal, and from the chattel slavery this course's companion Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latino curricula have examined extensively across the wider Atlantic world. Kaufmann's research establishes directly that Tudor England's documented Africans were generally free, paid regular wages, and could testify in court, rights not typically available to enslaved populations elsewhere in the same period. They were baptized, married, and buried through the Church of England's own parish record system, meaning their lives left the same kind of documentary trail English parish administration left for any other resident, a considerably different pattern of historical visibility than this course's earlier units encountered in less thoroughly documented cases.
A History Recovered, Not a History That Was Always Told
This unit must be honest about a specific historiographical point directly relevant to this course's broader argument: despite this substantial documentary record, having existed continuously in British archives for centuries, popular historical memory and mainstream education about Tudor and Stuart England largely omitted this African presence until relatively recent, deliberate historical recovery work, led by historians including Kaufmann, Onyeka Nubia, and Imtiaz Habib, working specifically to compile and publicize records that had, in a strict factual sense, never actually been lost. This pattern, well-documented historical fact existing in archives for centuries before receiving serious popular attention, directly echoes this course's second unit's material on Lisbon and Alessandro de' Medici, and previews a pattern this course's remaining units will trace repeatedly across different European countries and centuries.
