John Mabbe

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]

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]