Elizabeth 1and The Black Moor Expulsion That Never Was

[anansi]

The below is a corrective I and others have assumed happened or was about to happen under Elizabeth I,





Elizabeth I and the 'Blackamoors': the Deportation that never was

This is perhaps the most oft-quoted (sometimes the only quoted) "fact" relating to the history of Africans in Tudor England. Recently, I have seen it repeated in the Guardian Black History timeline, the Medieval POC tumblr, and the New York Times.

It has also been peddled by historians, including the wonderful Peter Fryer, who wrote in his magisterial Staying Power in 1984: “The queen was soon expressing strong disapproval of the presence of black people…in the realm and indeed, ordering that ‘those kinde of people’ should be deported forthwith.” While Ania Loomba went so far as to assert in 1992 that “Elizabeth I's communique deporting blacks... [indicates that] the 'preservation' of the white race is seen to be at stake.”

It's a prime example of how anything can become "fact" through repetition. and it is a particularly dangerous story to peddle in our immigration- obsessed times. It is all too easy to elide the centuries and imagine that Elizabeth I had an immigration policy that would have been approved of by Enoch Powell.

The "fact" has made its way into the classroom. In 2009 year 7 pupils at St John Plessington Catholic College in the Wirral were to be taught: “To understand the reasons for Elizabeth I’s policy of expulsion”, while the BlackHistory4Schools website has a lesson plan which explicitly compares the Tudor rhetoric with modern newspaper headlines.

What makes this all worse, on a personal level, is that I wrote an article disproving this so-called "fact" some seven years ago. Clearly, academic articles are not as widely read as academics might like. And looking back, I can see it is a bit dense. Maybe "Caspar van Senden, Sir Thomas Sherley and the ‘Blackamoor’ Project" wasn't the most catchy title?

Anyway, now I'm taking to my blog to explain the truth behind the myth once and for all, in plain terms (but still with some original quotes!).

So, What really happened?

Well, on 18 July 1596, the Privy Council issued an open letter addressed “to the Lord Mayor of London and to all vice-admirals, Mayors and other public officers whatsoever to whom it may appertain.” The letter authorised a merchant of Lubeck named Caspar Van Senden to “take up…Blackamoores here in this Realm and to transport them into Spain and Portugal.”

Crucially this required the "consent of their masters.” It was this requirement that made this a dead letter, as I learnt from reading the various petitions from a disappointed Van Senden amongst Robert Cecil’s papers. In an undated petition to the Queen, Van Senden asks for a far more powerful authorisation to take Africans out of the country, without the "interruption of their masters or any other persons." He complains that the 1596 Council warrant was not effective as he:

"together with a Pursivant [basically an enforcer] did travell at his great Charges into dyvers partes of your highness Realme for the said Blackamoores, But the masters of them, perceiving by the said warrant that your orator could not take the Blackamoores without the Master’s good will, would not suffer your Orator to have any one of them."

Van Senden did not get what he wanted. Another document of 1601 has been quoted as a second Privy Council letter or proclamation, but in fact it was never promulgated, and only exists as a draft amongst Cecil’s papers. It might have been drafted by Van Senden himself, as it is more strongly worded that the 1596 letter.

Ultimately Van Senden's schemes were unsuccessful. This was not a deportation, but rather a small-scale bargain with a persistent merchant, on an individual basis. Van Senden was supported by the bankrupt, probably Catholic, Sir Thom

Elizabeth I did not expel Africans from England. In fact, Africans, who had been present in both England and Scotland from the earliest years of the sixteenth century, continued to live here for the rest of her reign, and beyond. I have found evidence of over 360 African individuals living in these isles between 1500 and 1640. We no longer need to rely on the 1596 document to make the point that there were Africans in Tudor England.


​Since writing this blog, an excellent new article has been published on the subject by Emily Weissbourd.
www.mirandakaufmann.com/blog/elizabeth-i-and-the-blackamoors-the-deportation-that-never-was

Here is the quote in the fullest, it seemed it was because of the general hardship and drought that drive her to want to curve immigration at that time, not necessarily racism, and only reduction not Iberian type mass expulsions.
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/early_times/transcripts/privy_van_senden.htm

[anansi]

Btw I think I may have posted this before, same author .

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

Thx man

It always bugged me none us were in that
old Henry the VIII series. I waited hoping
season after season. No show.

Good seeing yardie Rogers vindicated at last
by mainstream yte western authorities in my
lifetime.

[anansi]

Up date on more of the Black Tudors this one was actually knighted for his military action.
‘SIR PEDRO NEGRO

here is part of his story.
It's a long article so please visit the link.



 

An anonymous Spanish chronicler tells us how Pedro Negro came to be in King Henry VIII’s service. He writes that more than a thousand Spaniards were waylaid by unfavourable weather in the Downs, and ‘being tired of the sea, sent for the King to know whether he would take them into his service’. Henry does so, and grants ‘to Pero Negro four hundred ducats’.5 This is corroborated by a letter of 14 January 1545 in which the Privy Council wrote to Sir Philip Hoby concerning ‘the suit of Pedro Negro and other Spaniards for their abode in safety and offer of service’.6 ‘Captayne’ Negro, ‘Spaniard’, ‘the king’s servant’, then begins to receive regular payments from the Crown: starting with £25 on 3 July 1545; £75 on 8 August 1546 and £100 that October.7 In the summer of 1546 he travelled into France with ‘diverse other Spanish knights and gentlemen’, under the command of Spanish colonel Pedro de Gamboa. He was with Julian de Romero, an Italian mercenary, when he challenged and beat Captain Antonio de Mora, another mercenary, for deserting King Henry VIII’s service on 15 July, after which all the Spanish captains were awarded lifetime annuities. 

When Colonel Pedro de Gamboa was dismissed, Negro was sent north to take charge of his men. He took with him letters of recommendation from the Council.9 On 28 September 1547 he was knighted by the Lord Protector, Edward Duke of Somerset at the camp beside Roxborough, after the taking of Leith.10 As Holinshed recounts it, ‘the same daie after noone, the duke of Summerset adorned with titles of dignitie diverse lords knights and gentlemen’.11 The most detailed description of the brave deeds of war that made him worthy of knighthood is to be found in the Spanish chronicle. In a chapter dedicated to recounting ‘How by the Industry of Captian Pero Negro, Haddington was not lost that time’, we hear how, when the 6,000 English in the castle of Haddington were outnumbered by 10,000 besieging Scots, Negro suggested and executed a successful strategy to help. Haddington was a vital fort, 20 miles to the east of Edinburgh, in East Lothian, which gave the English command of the country right up to the gates of Edinburgh.12 It had to be succoured. On 30 June 1548,13 Negro took 200 Englishmen and 100 Spaniards on horseback, each with 10 or 12 pounds of gunpowder hung from his saddlebow. These men took the Scots by surprise, charging through them while firing muskets, and were able to break through to the castle gates. Here they had to sacrifice the horses, as there was no space or food for them in the castle and they could not give them to the Scots. So the price of delivering 3,600 pounds of gunpowder to the beleaguered castle was the slaughter of 300 horses.

However, within three days, the siege was broken, as the English fired their newly-fuelled artillery day and night, and the Scots ‘decided not to await the bad smell’ which would come from the horses’ carcasses. This ‘pretty feat of war’ gained the captain the General’s recommendation that he be given 200 crowns.14 This story is corroborated in the Scottish state papers, when on 7 July 1548, Thomas Holcroft and John Brende wrote to Protector Somerset, detailing how a mixed group of 150 Spaniards under Negro, plus about 210 English, ‘every one of them a bagge of goonpowder and a rolle of mache before them’ were appointed to succour the besieged. The letter goes on to stipulate that if it proves impossible to bring the horses back, they are to kill them. The corresponding detail makes the Spanish chronicler’s supposedly unreliable15 account ring true. It was reported throughout Europe: at the end of August 1548, Van der Delft wrote to the Emperor Charles V: ‘These people (the English) have every day been receiving good news from their forces defending Haddington. They Report that the French besieging army were powerless to do them much harm, and that in spite of the enemy the defenders had been reinforced by 3,000 (300?) men each carrying a good stock of powder’

In another escapade, Negro’s men captured M. d’Etauges, Commandant of the Garrison of Dundee when he came too close to the walls of the English fort of Broughty Ferry.17 Negro and his men had arrived at Broughty from Haddington sometime before 2 March 1549.18 Negro continued to serve, as evinced in regular payments made to him by the Treasury, until 10 April 1550.19 He died in London on 15 July 1551, of the sweating sickness.20 As John Strype recounts: ‘July 10, by reason of this new sweat, the King removed from Westminster to Hampton Court: for there died certain beside the Court, which caused the King to be gone so soon.’ ‘Sir Peryn Negroo’ is listed amongst all those who ‘died in July within a few days one of another’. A total of 872 died from 8 to 19 July in London of this sweat.21 His funeral was quite a ceremony, with 12 ‘stayffes’, ‘torches burning . . . flute playing’, his flag bourne, and the street hung with black and with his arms. The preacher was one Dr Bartelet and it was attended by the company of Clerks, ‘a harold of armes and mony morners’.

www.mirandakaufmann.com/pedro-negro.html
Go here for more, included in the link is one person questioning his blackness, however his case seems weak,but pls judge for yourself