John Mabbe

John Mabbe or Mab was the name of two English goldsmiths working in Tudor London.

The senior John Mabbe (who died in 1582 and was buried at St Matthew Friday Street) was a son of John Mabbe of Clayton and his wife Joan Goble of Sussex. John Mabbe, the goldsmith, married Isabell Colley, and was Chamberlain of London from 1577 until his death. A daughter, Martha Mabbe married Clement Medley of Newstead, Hemsworth. His son John Mabbe the younger married Martha Denham, and they were the parents of another John Mabbe, and possibly the stationer Ralph Mabbe, and James Mabbe, a translator of Spanish literature.^[1][2]

The Tabard Inn

John Mabbe senior appears to be the goldsmith who worked for Princess Mary recorded as "Mabell" by her lady in waiting Mary Finch.^[3] He had an interest in the Tabard, Inn, Southwark, and wrote a will in 1578.^[4] His son Robert Mabbe, a goldbeater, inherited the property and pledged a share of the inn to the goldsmith Affabel Partridge.^[5] Affable Partridge had a daughter, Dionyssus, who married Stephen Mabbe, also a goldsmith and a younger son of John Mabbe senior.^[6] The layout of the Tabard Inn was described in a legal dispute, Partridge v. Mabbe, in 1601.^[7]

Jewels in 1576

An inventory of John Mabbe the younger's goldsmith stock in 1576 survives. After making a statute on the quality of gold sold in London, Elizabeth I allowed him to market his existing stock of jewellery made with gold under 22 ct fineness.^[8][9] His stock included jewels with the story of Joshua and Caleb, Charity, Hercules, Narcissus, Julius Caesar, a mermaid, the story of Mars, Venus and Cupid, Phoebus Apollo and Daphne, and the emblem Fama Perennis. A gold tablet or locket with a "Roman burning his hand in fire" told the story of Gaius Mucius Scaevola. There was a gold tortoise with a shell set with 39 topazes and a pendant emerald. He had 224 gold perfumed beads known as pomander beads from the name of the scented compound.^[10]

Kim F. Hall notes the representation of Black Africans depicted on gold brooches in Mabbe's 1576 inventory, with cameos of a "Mores-head", a "Blackamoore", and a woman like a "More".^[11][12]

References

1. Visitation of London in 1568 (London, 1869), p. 39.
2. Chris Laoutaris, Shakespeare’s Book: The Intertwined Lives Behind the First Folio (Harper Collins, 2023): Edward Arber, A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 2 (London, 1875), p. 119.
3. Frederic Madden, Privy Purse Expenses of Princess Mary (London, 1831), pp. 102, 234.
4. Forest Hill, 'The Tabard and John Mabb', Athenaeum, 3117 (23 July 1887), pp. 117–118
5. William Rendle & Philip Norman, Inns of Old Southwark (London, 1888), pp. 405-411.
6. Robin Myers & Michael Harris, The Stationers' Company and the Book Trade (Winchester, 1997), p. 74.
7. Hubert Hall, Society in the Elizabethan Age (London, 1887), pp. 82, 162
8. Thomas Rymer, Foedera, vol. 15 (London, 1713), pp. 756–59
9. Calendar of Patent Rolls, Elizabeth I, 7 (London: HMSO, 1982), p. 6.
10. Holly Dugan, The Ephemeral History of Perfume: Scent and Sense in Early Modern England (Baltimore, 2011), p. 111.
11. Kim Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Cornell UP, 1996), p. 215.
12. 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