Racism and assimilation in Restoration London

[wolfinthewood]

One of the scandals of 1664 was the burglary of Thomas Tryon, a wealthy merchant of London, by his friend James Turner, a somewhat shady businessman. This is a passage from a pamphlet ‘life’ of Turner published after he was hanged:

About September 1662, Colonel* James Turner sent to a citizen of London to come to him to the Castle Tavern in Cornhill, who found a gentleman with the said Turner, to whom two captains also came ... Turner swore very much without any provocation; the citizen told him if he continued to swear, he would not stay in his company. Whiles they were drinking a blackamoor boy of some fourteen years of age brought pipes** and small beer. Turner swore and cursed the boy, and said he was like the Devil, for which the company did much reprove him. The drawer*** standing by said the blackamoor was to be baptized the next Lord’s day with his master’s child, his wife then lying in. The citizen, to try the blackamoor’s fitness for baptism, asked him who made him, who answered, “God.” Turner very furiously replied and swore desperately the Devil made him, earnestly saying and swearing, “You rogue, the Devil made you, God never made you.” The citizen desired Turner to forbear his swearing, and had much ado to get him to be quiet whilst he asked him further interrogatories. The blackmoor replied Christian-like answers to the questions of who redeemed him, who sanctified and preserved him, wherefore God made him, and several other Christian-like answers the boy gave, till he came to answer to the priestly, prophetical and kingly office of Christ. Turner still continued vehemently cursing and swearing against the boy. It being now near ten o’ clock at night, the four gentlemen present, and also the drawer and the blackamoor, Turner sitting with his face against the casement, therein came a mighty great flap or stroke upon the window as if two great wings would have drove the window into the room upon the company, which made them all in a great amazement, whereupon the citizen ran to the window, opened the casement, but could not see any thing as the cause, not a quarrel**** broke, nor any dirt upon the window. Turner gave over cursing and swearing, and sat as a man ready to sink into the ground, that one of the captains told Turner, this is because of your swearing and cursing. The window was near a story from the yard which belonged to the tavern, and a shed of boards from it downward, that in no probability any man did it.

*Turner was a lieutenant-colonel in the London militia

**pipes: clay tobacco-pipes, ready filled

***drawer: wine-drawer

****diamond-shaped pane of glass

from The Triumph of Truth (1664)


Though the moral of this passage concerns Turner’s habit of swearing, it is clear that his extreme racism is also not approved of. For Turner, the black boy is simply not human. The boy’s fellow-servant, the drawer, stands up for him. He tells the company that the boy is soon to be baptized, at the same time as his master’s new baby, indeed. This tells us a little bit about the master and his wife too. It was common for seventeenth-century household servants to be treated, up to a point, as members of the family. This boy had probably been brought to England as a slave (since he is unbaptized, it seems fairly certain he has come from somewhere else). He may or may not be considered to be a slave by his present master: at this date there was a lot of legal uncertainty about the precise status of slaves once they had been brought to England. But it seems clear that to the household he lives in he is a human being. His reception into the Church of England will put a seal on his acceptance as fully human as well as being an important mark of his assimilation into the community. The ‘citizen’ (who may have been the writer’s source for this anecdote) treats the boy as potentially human, subject to his giving satisfactory answers to a Christian catechism. As for the boy – the story shows him intent on satisfying the citizen, this latest judge of his humanity.


race | ibarw | history


<link>