Right here is an engraving of General George Monck, Duke of Albemarle. He was a very important English politician, a soldier who led campaigns in Ireland, and was crucial to the restoration of the monarchy after the English Civil War.
Now, I’m not an expert on racial physiology or anything but come on, the guy in that picture looks at least partially black.
There are other portraits of Monck - this one is probably the best known - where he looks far more Caucasian. Still somewhat “ethnic” - kind of a Jon Lovitz, Jewey look - but nowhere near as dark and black-looking as he does in the engraving.
Still, I have to wonder about the guy’s heritage. It would have been pretty remarkable for an English general of that time to have non-white ancestry. Does anyone know any more details of Monck’s ancestry?
He looks like one of those “Spanish Moor in the Woodpile” sort of limey that’s been common since, um, whenever all those Spanish Moors got in the woodpile was…
He wasn’t on his father’s side, at least, and I don’t believe on his mother’s side. Both his parents were from Devonshire, and he was actually descended on his father’s side from Edward IV.
The apparent darkness of his skin is just the way Loggan has done the shading, combined with the less-than-perfect state of the plate when this particular impression was taken.
We know that his skin was not dark. Lorenzo Magalotti mentions that Albemarle had ‘a complexion partly sanguine and partly phlegmatic’, which rather suggests pale skin which had become weather-beaten. Magalotti even added that this was ‘as indeed is generally the case with the English’.
Also, Albemarle’s ancestry fascinated his contemporaries. On the one hand, there were those in 1660 who used his Plantagenet descent to argue that he should claim the throne for himself, while, on the other, there were those who thought of him as an upstart unworthy of a dukedom with an even more questionable wife. Having black ancestors was just about the only accusation not made against him.
