Yesterday, as when I went to the library looking for a book on another subject, I stumbled across a scholarly book called "Black London: Life before Emancipation" [Gretchen Gerzina, John Murry Publishers, Great Britain & Rutgers University Press, USA]. This book focuses on what life was like for Black Britons in the 18th century. However, it provides some historical information about Black people in Britain prior to that century.

Among the books that Gerzina lists in her bibliography is what she refers to as an exhaustive work by Peter Fryer: "Black People in the British Empire" {London: Pluto Press, 1988}. Gerzina includes this quote from that book "the presence [of Black people] here [in Britain] goes back some 2,000 years and has been continuous since the beginning of the sixteenth century or earlier." p.xiv.

Another source that Gerzina quotes is Ben Jonson's "Masque of Blackness", 1605.

To add to the previous discussion on this subject, I'm providing these excerpts from the preface of Gerzina's book:

"..most historians give 1555, when five Africans arrived to learn English and tereby facilitate trade, as the beinning of a continual black presence in Britain. By 1596 there were so many black people in England that Queen Elizabeth I issued an edict demanding that the leace. At that times slaves provided a lifetime of wageless labour for the cost of the initial purchase, and increased the status of the owner. Alarmed that they might be taking jobs and goods away from English citizens and that 'the most of them are infidels having no understanding of Christ or his Gospel', the Queen issued another ineffectual edict, then finally commissioned a Lubeck merchant, Casper van Senden, to cart them off in 1601. "[i]f there shall be any persons or persons which are possessed of any such blackamoors that refuse to deliver them', the Queen wrote,'other citizens were to notify the government of their presence'.

Van Sender and the Queen waited in vain for black people were by then firmly ensconced in Britain's houses, streets and ports and portrayed in its stages...

As early as the beginning of the sixteenth cenury black entertainers had begun to appear in Scotland. Imported by the royal courts they quickly became not only popular but fashionably essential in England as well. Elizabeth herself, like her father before her, brought into her court and African entertainer and a page, making it 'clearly difficult for her to take a stand against the employment of Blacks when monarchs and their court favorites had themselves seen fit to find a niche for them in court'..blacks weres seen as fashion accessories..James I continued in this fashion ..he had a group of black minstrels and his wife had black servants. Whites 'blacked up' for roles as Africans in plays and masques. The theatrical draw then, as later, was in the visual contrast and spectacle, but also probably in the assumption that more behavioural and verbal freedom could occur under the guise of a 'black' skin." pp.3-4

-snip-

In her book's preface Gerzina also writes that "The roots of many English names come from the word 'Moor': Moore, Blackamore, Morris, Morrison, Morrow and others probably derive from Moorish ancestry as well as ownership. Morris dancing may have a similar source. Heraldry gives dozens examples of Negro heads on coats-of-arms" p. 5

-snip-

Gerzina also writes that "In 1768 Sharp and others put the number of black servants in London at 20,000, out of a total London population of 676,250. {Others, depending upon the year and the source, put the figure somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000, although the accurate figure is probably closer to 15,000.} These numbers were augmented by sailors, by students sent to study in Britain, by musicians who had become de riguere in English military and domestic orchestras and bands, later in the century by refugees from America who fought on the loyalist side in exchange for promised freedom in Britain or land in Canada, and finally by the natural growth of the community." pp 5-6

end of quotes.

It seems to me that although there may be no way to determine what influences Black Britons had on British folk music and other aspects of folk culture prior to the 20th century, the fact that they had a great deal of influence is indisputable.