The black Tudors of England: African porter who whipped a white servant is among 350 stories revealing how early immigrants were treated as equals in the Elizabethan era
- Case of Edward Swarthye saw him whip fellow white slave on orders of employer
- He appeared at court to confirm that he whipped John Guy on employer's orders
- His story suggests that early black immigrants were treated as equals by Tudors
- Jaques Francis's tale saw him help salvage the wrecked Mary Rose warship
- His employer went on trial and Francis was invited to give evidence in a court
- This came despite other witnesses claiming he could not because he was a slave
Edward Swarthye's story suggests black immigrants in England were seen as equals. Pictured: Portrait of an African man, circa 1530
The case of a black servant whipping a white one forms part of a growing body of evidence that Africans were treated equally in Tudor England.
Edward Swarthye's dealings with the Elizabethan court is one of 350 examples of black people whose stories have been compiled in the book, Black Tudors.
The book is the first detailed study of early black immigrants and explores Swarthye's coming to England on a ship under the command of Sir Francis Drake.
According to Miranda Kaufmann, senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, Swarthye had a higher rank than that of fellow servant, John Guy, who would go onto become mayor of Bristol and a colonial governor of Newfoundland.
'The whipping is a shock today because when we think of whipping we usually think of a white man whipping a black man,' Dr Kaufmann told the Oxford Literary Festival.
'It utterly inverts everything we thought we knew about the Tudors.'
Black Tudors explores how Swarthye became a porter of Edward Wynter, a knight who joined Drake on a voyage to the Caribbean.