Ellen or Elen More () was an African servant at the Scottish royal court. She probably arrived in Scotland in the company of a Portuguese man with imported animals.Imtiaz Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500–1677: Imprints of the Invisible (Routledge, 2008), pp. 30-34, 281–283. There are records of clothing and gifts given to her, although her roles and status are unclear. Some recent scholarship suggests she was enslaved, and her arrival in Scotland can be linked indirectly with the slave trade.Louise Olga Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), p. 250. She is associated with a racist poem by William Dunbar, and may have performed in Edinburgh as the "Black Lady" at royal tournaments in 1507 and 1508.Bernadette Andrea, 'The Presences of Women from the Islamic World', Merry Wiesner-Hanks (ed), Mapping Gendered Routes and Spaces in the Early Modern World (Routledge, 2016), p. 295: Carole Levin, 'Women in the Renaissance', Renate Bridenthal, Susan Stuard, Merry Wiesner (eds), Becoming Visible: Women in European History (Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 1998), pp. 152-173 at 161-4.
Background Ellen More was employed in Edinburgh Castle in the household of Lady Margaret, the daughter of James IV of Scotland and his mistress Margaret Drummond.Mairi Cowan & Laura Walkling, 'Growing up with the court of James IV', Janay Nugent & Elizabeth Ewan, Children and Youth in Premodern Scotland (Boydell, 2015), pp. 20-1, 25: Mary E. Robbins, 'Black Africans at the Court of James IV', Review of Scottish Culture, 12 (1999), pp. 34–45: James Balfour Paul, Accounts of the Treasurer of Scotland, vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1901), pp. lxxxv, 182. Ellen More and Margaret More were later attendants of Margaret Tudor at Linlithgow Palace.Accounts of the Treasurer of Scotland, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1902), pp. 232, 324, 404, 434: Miranda Kaufmann, Black Tudors (London, 2017), pp. 17-18: Sue Niebrzydowski, 'The Sultana and her Sisters: Black Women in the British Isles before 1530', Women's History Review, 10:2 (2001), pp. 187-2. : Imtiaz Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500-1677: Imprints of the Invisible (Ashgate, 2008), pp. 292-3.
She was first mentioned by name, "Elen More", in the royal accounts in December 1511. Possibly remaining in the household of the young James V, she was last mentioned in the accounts in August 1527, as "Helenor the blak moir".Imtiaz Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500–1677: Imprints of the Invisible (Routledge, 2008), pp. 291-2, 294. The name "More" recorded in the Scottish accounts seems to be from the word "moor", meaning, in the Scots Language, an African person. A number of individuals are identified as "moors" in the records of the Scottish royal court, and other people of African origin living in Scottish communities are not conspicuous in the records."Mor", Dictionary of the Older Scottish TongueNubia, O., (2019, October 10), 'Africans in England and Scotland (1485–1625)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.Nandini Das, João Vicente Melo, Haig Z. Smith, Lauren Working, Blackamoor/Moor, Keywords of Identity, Race, and Human Mobility in Early Modern England (Amsterdam, 2021), pp. 40-50
African people at other European courts Servants of African origin were employed at other courts in Europe at this time. After her marriage to Francesco II Gonzaga in 1490, Isabella d'Este specified a young black girl be obtained or bought to serve her in Mantua, and wrote of another older African girl in her household who was being trained to be a "buffoon" or entertainer.Fiona Lindsay Shen, Pearl: Nature's Perfect Gem (London: Reaktion Books, 2022), pp. 222-223: Paul Kaplan, 'Isabella d'Este and black African women', Thomas Foster Earle & K. J. P. Lowe, Black Africans in Renaissance Europe (Cambridge, 2005), p. 134. As in Scotland, African and exotic themes featured in pageantry of these courts. Wedding festivities in 1502 at the marriage of Lucrezia Borgia to Alfonso, son of Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, included a morisco dance "of Moors with flaming tapers in their mouths and a dance of sauvages".Louise Olga Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), p. 247. In Spain and in Spanish realms, the names "le More" or "le Négre" could function more as a descriptor than a surname for servants of African origin.Nadia T. van Pelt, Intercultural Explorations and the Court of Henry VIII (Oxford, 2024), p. 33.
In the same years in England, African servants were recorded in the household of the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon, the wife of Prince Arthur and Henry VIII, including the trumpeters John Blanke and Alonso de Valdenebro, and a groom Francis Negro.Nadia T. van Pelt, Intercultural Explorations and the Court of Henry VIII (Oxford, 2024), p. 9: Imtiaz Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives (London, 2008), pp. 37-8, 45, 47, 50. The lawyer Thomas More was surprised by the appearance of Africans in Catherine of Aragon's entourage in procession during her formal Entry to London in November 1501. He wrote about them in racist terms to John Holt.Matthieu Chapman, Anti-Black Racism in Early Modern English Drama (Taylor & Francis, 2016), pp. 48-50.Sydney Anglo, 'The London Pageants for the Reception of Katherine of Aragon: November 1501', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XXVI (1963), pp. 53-89.Maria Teresa Micaela Prendergast, "Black Stitch, Dark Skin, and English Ale: Catherine of Aragon as the First Foreign Tudor Princess", in Elizabeth Hodgson and Sarah Crover, Nationalism and Royal Women in Early Modern England (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026), pp. 18–20: Nadia T. van Pelt, Intercultural Explorations and the Court of Henry VIII (Oxford, 2024), p. 154. Catherine of Aragon also had a bed chamber servant of Muslim origin, Catalina of Motril, who may have joined her retinue as a slave. In 1501 Juan Davalos of Granada had been paid for a slave for the Princess of Wales, as Catherine was then known.Nadia T. van Pelt, Intercultural Explorations and the Court of Henry VIII (Oxford, 2024), pp. 37–38. The English and Scottish courts in the 16th century included black people in spectacle and drama.Lorna Hutson, England's Insular Imagining: The Elizabethan Erasure of Scotland (Cambridge, 2023), pp. 221–222.
Exotic animals at royal courts
Four African people, described as "More lasses" in Scotland in 1504, were accompanied by a Portuguese man and imported animals including a cat and a horse.Imtiaz Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500–1677: Imprints of the Invisible (Routledge, 2008), pp. 30-34, 281–283. The reign of James IV (1488 to 1513) coincided with the era of Portuguese exploration which established firm contact between Europe and Africa.Mairi Cowan & Laura Walkling, 'Growing up with the court of James IV', Janay Nugent & Elizabeth Ewan, Children and Youth in Premodern Scotland (Boydell, 2015), p. 24. At this time the Portuguese royal court became known for collecting exotic and rare animals from distant lands.Almudina Pérez de Tudela & Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, 'Renaissance Menageries', Karel A. E. Enenkel & Paulus Johannes Smith, Early Modern Zoology: The Construction of Animals in Science Literature and the Visual Arts (Brill, 2007), pp. 419-50: Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, 'The Portuguese Quest for Exotic Animals', Jessica Hallett, Triumphal Procession with Giraffes (Lisbon, 2009), pp. 33-77 Portuguese monarchs sent diplomatic gifts of rare animals to other courts.Catarina Santana Simões, 'The Symbolic Importance of the "Exotic" in the Portuguese Court in the Late Middle Ages', Anales de Historia del Arte, 24 (November 2014), p. 521. Henry VII of England received parrots and wild mountain cats at Richmond Palace in 1505 from a Portuguese traveller.Robert Folkestone Williams, Domestic Memoirs of the Royal Family, 1 (London, 1860), p. 350: Samuel Bentley, Excerpta Historica: Or, Illustrations of English History (London, 1833), p. 133 from British Library, Household account of Henry VII, Add MS 21480 f.24r
A pet monkey at the Scottish court was recorded as the "Marmoset of Calicut", reflecting Portuguese activity both on the Malabar Coast and on the coast of Brazil.Cecilia Veracini, 'Non Human Primate Trade in the Age of Discoveries', Cristina Joanaz de Melo, Estelita Vaz, Lígia M. Costa Pinto, Environmental History in the Making, II: Acting (Springer, 2017), pp. 147-172: Kathleen Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets (Boydell, 2012), p. 83: Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1902), pp. lxxxiii, 117.
A letter from a Southampton customs official describes a merchant's plan to present 2 musk cats, 3 little monkeys, a marmoset, and other exotic goods to Henry VIII.Henry Ellis, Original Letters, 3rd series vol. 2 (London, 1846), pp. 239-243. A portrait of Margaret Tudor includes a Brazilian marmoset, and may be a copy of a picture once in the collection of Henry VIII, described in his inventory as a "woman having a monkey on her hand".Lorne Campbell, 'Scottish Patrons and Netherlandish Painters', Grant G. Simpson, Scotland and the Low Countries 1124–1994 (Tuckwell, 1996): David Starkey (ed), Inventory of Henry VIII (London, 1998), p. 237 no. 10594. A monkey in a portrait of Catherine of Aragon, painted around 1531, appears to be a pet Marcgrave's capuchin, a type brought from Brazil by Portuguese traders. Catharine's portrait may follow an allegory of Christian faith.Karen Coke, 'Lambert Barnard, Bishop Shirborn's paynter', Andrew Hadfield, Matthew Dimmock, Paul Quinn, Art, Literature and Religion in Early Modern Sussex (Ashgate, 2014), p. 90.Brett Dolman, "Reading the Portraits of Henry VIII's Queens", Thomas Betteridge and Suzannah Lipscomb, Henry VIII and the Court: Arts, Politics and Performance (Ashgate, 2013), p. 117. Gifts of monkeys or marmosets were made at the English court in 1534 and 1535, but it was said that Anne Boleyn did not care for "such beasts".Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), p. 213: Maria Hayward, "Gift Giving at the Court of Henry VIII", The Antiquaries Journal, 85 (2005), p. 140. Lauren Working, A Golden World: How the Americas Transformed Renaissance England (Faber, 2026), p. 219.
Scotland, Portugal, and privateers James IV licensed Scottish privateers like Andrew Barton to attack Portuguese shipping by "letter of marque". The context was a dispute about the loss of a valuable cargo at Sluis belonging to John Barton of Leith back in the reign of James III.Claire Jowitt, Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550-1650 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 4-6: David Dunlop, 'The politics of peace-keeping: Anglo-Scottish relations from 1503 to 1511', Renaissance Studies, 8:2 (June 1994), p. 157. The Scottish kings gave Barton and his successors letters of reprisal to recover the loss. James IV and James V continued to send reminders to Manuel I of Portugal.Robert Kerr Hannay, Letters of James IV (SHS: Edinburgh, 1953), pp. 81-2 no. 125: Robert Kerr Hannay & Denys Hay, Letters of James V (Edinburgh, 1954), p. 401: Raphael Holinshed, First and Second Volumes of Chronicles: The Historie of Scotland (London, 1586), p. 293 Privateer activity may have provided a potential route for African people to reach Scotland, although there is no direct evidence of this.Norman Macdougall, James IV (Tuckwell: East Linton, 1997), p. 239: Steve Murdoch, Scotland's Maritime Warfare (Brill, 2010), p. 81.