Alex Boulevard

welcome to my site! this is where i dump all of my thoughts and interests at the minute.

homeabout meblog • sitemap • guestbook

Mary Fillis: A Black Tudor

28 Oct 2023

One common misconception found amongst historians is that black people first arrived in Britain from the Windrush Migration; Afro-Caribbean subjects of the British Empire who immigrated to the mainland after World War Two to help rebuild the British economy. But this is both misleading and harmful. Records of black people can be found in Great Britain, for instance Olaudah Equiano, a former slave from West Africa who bought his freedom in 1765 and went on to own property in London. Before this, the black trumpeter and herald John Blanke can be found in the account books of King Henry VII in 1507, and again during the Tournament of Westminster in 1511.

The person I want to focus on specifically is a black woman living in London in the 1570s and 1580s. Her name was Mary Fillis, a Moroccan seamstress living in London, and she was not the only black woman in her parish.


Mary was born in 1577 in Morocco to a craftsman named Fillis, who specified in basket-weaving and shovel-making. She was born during a time of political instability. Sultan Abdallah al-Ghalib, the ruler of Morocco for the past 17 years, had died in 1574, and his dynasty scrambled for power.

His younger brothers, who had fled to the Ottoman Empire upon al-Ghalib's ascension to power in 1557, came back to assert their claims to the throne. Abd al-Malik, the Sultan's brother, had fought with the Ottomans in Tunisia a few years prior, and he was gathering an army in Algiers. Meanwhile, al-Ghalib's sons were also fighting for power. Abdallah Mohammed was his eldest, and so he seized power as Sultan al-Mutawakkil in 1574. Immediately upon his ascension, he executed a younger brother and imprisoned Mulay en-Naser, who was serving as governor of the Moroccan province of Tadla. After two years of preparation, Abd al-Malik launched an invasion with 10,000 soldiers, promising to recognise the Ottoman Emperor as his liege. They captured Fez, the Moroccan capital, in less than a year, and overthrew al-Mutawakkil, his nephew.

Abd al-Malik ruled as a vassal of the Ottomans, and it was during his reign that the first Anglo-Moroccan trade negotiations started. A Mr. Edmund Hogan was dispatched to Morocco as a diplomatic envoy on his ship The Galleon of London on 22nd April 1577, arriving in the port town of Safi on 21st May of the same year. On the 27th May, or Whitsunday, 100 soldiers had arrived from Fez to escort them to the Sultan.