The Drake Jewel: Art and Race in the Elizabethan Age, Decoding Messages Within Jewelry

Abstract

“An open letter to the lord mayor of London and the aldermen and his brethren, and to all other mayors, sheriffs, etc. Her majesty, understanding that there are of late divers blackmoors brought into this realm, of which kind of people there are already here too many, considering how God hath blessed this land with great increase of people of our own nation as any country in the world, whereof many for want of service and means to set them on work fall to idleness and to great extremity. Her majesty’s pleasure therefore is that those kinds of people should be sent forth of the land…” (Letter by Queen Elizabeth I, 11 July, 1596).