October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.

John Blanke was a black musician in London in the early 16th century.

He probably came to England as one of the African attendants of Katherine of Aragon in 1501, and is one of the earliest recorded black people in England after the Roman period.

Little is known of Blanke’s life, but he was paid 8 pence per day by King Henry VII. A surviving document from the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber records a payment of 20 shillings to “John Blanke the Blacke Trumpet” as wages for the month of November 1507, with payments of the same amount continuing monthly through the next year. He successfully petitioned Henry VIII for a wage increase from 8d to 16d.

Dr Sydney Anglo was the first historian to propose that the “Blanke Trumpet” in these accounts was the same as the black man depicted twice in the 1511 Westminster Tournament Roll – an illuminated, 60-foot-long manuscript now held by the College of Arms. It recorded the royal procession to the tournament held in 1511 to celebrate the birth of a son, Henry, Duke of Cornwall to Catherine and Henry VIII on New Year’s Day 1511. (Henry sadly died within two months.)

John Blanke is depicted twice, as one of the six trumpeters on horseback in the royal retinue. All six of the trumpeters wear yellow and grey livery, and bear a trumpet decorated with the royal arms; Blanke wears a brown and yellow turban, while the others are bare-headed with longish hair. He appears a second time in the roll, wearing a green and gold head covering.

Black trumpeters and drummers were documented in other Renaissance cities, including Naples and Edinburgh.