Professor Sydney Anglo

1507 entry in John Heron Accounts

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Black Trumpet John Blanke Detail 1511 Westminster Tournament Roll

Bulletin of John Rylands Library xliii Volume 43 1960 - 1961

The Historian Who First Identified John Blanke

Professor Sydney Anglo was the first to recognise the connection between the John Blanke​ depicted in the Art of the 1511 Westminster Tournament  Roll and his references in the Archives in the accounts of John Heron Treasurer to Henry VII and Henry VIII.

John Blanke was brought to our attention as a footnote by Professor Sydney Anglo in  the Bulletin of John Rylands Library xliii Volume 43 1960 - 1961 in an article entitled The Court Festivals of Henry VII: A Study Based Upon the Account Books of  John Heron, Treasurer of the Chamber By Sydney Anglo, B.A., Ph.D. Research Fellow of the University of Reading the footnote read :

3 I believe this John Blank [sic] was , in fact, a Negro in the Great Roll of the Tournament at Westminster in February 1511,  preserved at the College of  Arms, a negro musician is twice depicted  amongst the king’s trumpets. This I think was John Blank, the “blacke trumpet”.

Here  Professor Anglo describes how he made the discovery:

My discovery that John Blanke, the ‘Blacke Trompette’ in [John] Heron’s Accounts was, in fact, depicted in the Great Tournament Roll of Westminster was purely the result of straightforward historical research in the very distant past ( the mid 1950s) when I was a postgraduate student preparing for a Ph.D thesis on Early Tudor Court Festivals under the supervision of Frances Yates at the Warburg Institute. 
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I was working my way systematically through the Account Books of John Heron Treasurer of the Chamber ( preserved at the public Record Office), covering the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII and there under December 7th 1507 was the first of several payments of wages to ‘John Blanke ‘the blacke trumpet’ 

At about the same time I was also working on manuscripts at the College of Arms among which, course, was the Great Tournament Roll of Westminster. There I found two representations of ‘Les Trompettes’ the first at membranes 3-4 which included a black trumpeter in the middle of the second row of three; and the second at membranes 27-28 , ‘Le son des Trompettes. A lostel’ with the black trumpeter again in the second row. 

I fear I cannot claim a great deal of perspicacity in recognising that the only black trumpeter mentioned by Heron must be the only black trumpeter depicted in the Great Tournament Roll. On the other hand I must admit that I still take pleasure in the identification and in the fact that the heraldic artist responsible was meticulous enough to record John Blanke’s presence.

Professor  Sydney Anglo
Private correspondence Dec 2015
Used with permission