ABSTRACT
The Elizabethan black subject is both a consequence of the history of black people in the previous period, and a divergence from it. Between 1558 and 1603 records of black people are comparatively much greater than in the previous period. Even as the black citations between 1558 and 1603 naturally define these records as Elizabethan, the overall increase in the citational volume from 1558 onwards necessitates a consideration of records pertaining to Elizabethan London separately from those of London in the seventeenth century and elsewhere in the kingdom. The five categories of Elizabethan London citations, namely, royal and aristocratic household accounts, government proclamations and legal records, parish entries, medical notations, and personal accounts. The records will be used as the simultaneous agents and mirrors of Elizabethan urban communal vision, revealing at once the hardening image of the black subject and the political nature of that vision.
