John Blanke (also spelled ‘Blak’ or ‘Banke’), a Tudor court trumpeter of African descent, participated in some of the key ceremonial events of the early Tudor period. He was granted mourning livery for the funeral of Henry VII on 9 May 1509, was issued with ‘scarlet’ as one of the nine ‘Kyngs Trompyttes’ for the coronation of Henry VIII on 24 June six weeks later, and rode in the opening and closing processions at the two-day tournament organised in honour of the birth of the second Tudor's first son Henry, Duke of Cornwall, on 12–13 February 1511. This event is commemorated visually in the Westminster Tournament Roll, where a black musician appears as one of a group of six royal trumpeters, and has been identified, originally by Sydney Anglo, with Blanke. Blanke's established position as one of the king's servants is underscored by his receiving ‘a gown of violet cloth, a bonnet and a hat’ as a marriage gift from the king on 14 January 1512. The records also appear to reveal that following the death of his – presumably Italian – colleague Dominic Justinian, John Blanke (in this document called Blake) formally petitioned Henry VIII to request permission to take on Justinian's position, and with that, to ask for a raise in wages. Like the majority of petitions, this one was not dated; they rarely are. But Dominic Justinian was last seen in the records on 24 June 1509, when he was listed as one of the trumpet players present at Henry VIII's coronation. And, given that, as we will see below, Blanke asked to be paid in arrears for work done in lieu of the deceased from ‘the furste day of Decembre last passed’, this day in the year 1509 could be considered a theoretical terminus post quem for Blanke's request.

Blanke's petition pleads that ‘his wages nowe and as yet is not sufficient to maynteigne and kepe hym to doo your grace lyke seruice as other your Trompetours doo’, suggesting a discrepancy between the other trumpet players’ wages and his own.