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The Essence of Medieval Urban Communities: the Vill of Westminster 12001540 The Alexander Prize Essay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

A. G Rosser
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Extract

THE modern study of urban history began in the nineteenth century, and has since continued to reflect the preoccupations of its founders. For these historians, the towns of the European Middle Ages nurtured the seeds of political democracy and economic liberalism. Consequently, two great historians of the late nineteenth century, Charles Gross and F.W. Maitland, laid down criteria for the definition of towns which stressed above all the theme of administrative independence. It was declared that fundamental legal differences distinguished the borough from other forms of community, in particular the village. Burghal status, and the features associated with itsuch as the existence of a civil constitution, the right to representation in parliament, and the free tenure of propertyhave been exhaustively analysed by subsequent writers, not-ably James Tait. This emphasis upon the legal autonomy of towns has been strengthened by the prestige of the great medieval cities of Flanders, Germany and Italy, which repeatedly exemplify the trade centre fighting or bargaining to achieve communal independence from feudal overlords and control over the surrounding countryside. In accordance with this pattern of urban development, historians have tended to seek, as a necessary first stage of growth, evidence of such a struggle for self-governing independence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 34 , December 1984 , pp. 91 - 112
Copyright
Copyright Royal Historical Society 1984

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References

1 Gross, C., The Gild Merchant (Oxford, 1890)Google Scholar; Maitland, F. W., Township and Borough (Cambridge, 1898)Google Scholar. I should like to thank Dr Caroline Barron for the generous encouragement which she gave me in the writing of this essay.

2 Tait, J., The Medieval English Borough (Manchester, 1936)Google Scholar; Weinbaum, M., The Incorporation of Boroughs (Manchester, 1936)Google Scholar. For the continuing debate about boroughs, see Beresford, M. W. and Finberg, H. P. R., English Medieval Boroughs: a Handlist (Newton Abbot, 1973)Google Scholar, introduction. The compilers explain that they resisted the temptation to include a place simply because it is known to have had an urban character in the Middle Ages. Urban, on analysis, turns out to be an even more elusive concept than burghality (256). But this does not make burghality a more useful or important question than the concept of what is urban.

3 A theme developed by Pirenne, Henri in particular; see Medieval Cities: their Origins and the Revival of Trade (Princeton, 1925)Google Scholar, chap. vii.

4 Reynolds, S., Medieval history and the history of political thought, Urban History Yearbook (1982), 1423Google Scholar, esp. 17. Madox himself assembled voluminous materials to demonstrate the rights which unincorporated communities shared with corporate boroughs. Madox, T., Firma Burgi (1726)Google Scholar, passim.

5 Hilton, R. H, Towns in societiesmedieval England, Urban History Yearbook (1982), 713Google Scholar. The agricultural aspect of medieval urban life was a theme of Maitland's Township and Borough.

6 An Acte for the good Government of the Cyttie or Burroughe of Westmynster, 27 Eliz. cap. 31, Statutes of the Realm, iv (1819), 76364Google Scholar. The situation in the early sixteenth century is conveniently described in a draft of a petition to parliament on this very subject, composed by the then abbot. Westminster Abbey Muniment (WAM) 6576.

7 Lobel, M. D., The Borough of Bury St. Edmunds (Oxford, 1935), 5960Google Scholar, 123 and chapter iii, passim. See also Gottfried, R. S., Bury St. Edmunds and the Urban Crisis: 12901539 (Princeton, 1982), 16780Google Scholar. For other examples of conflict, at Coventry, Reading and elsewhere, see Trenholme, N. M., The English Monastic Boroughs (University of Missouri Studies, ii (3), Columbia, 1927)Google Scholar, passim.

8 Sawyer, P.H., Anglo-Saxon Charters. An Annotated List and Bibliography (Royal Historical Society, London, 1968)Google Scholar, no. 670. There accepted as a Saxon copy of a more or less genuine original. The impossible date it bears, 951, is usually corrected to 959, within Edgar's reign, on the grounds that Dunstan was bishop of London in that year. But Dunstan is in fact referred to in the charter as archbishop; so a date of 960 or later could be argued.

9 Cf. Gelling, M., The boundaries of the Westminster charters, ransactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, new ser., xi (1953), 1014Google Scholar.

10 Ada Stephani Langton 12071228, ed. Major, K. (Canterbury and York Society, 1, 1950) 6973Google Scholar; and see Saunders, G., Results of an enquiry concerning the situation and extent of Westminster, at various periods, Archaeologia, xxvi (1836), 22341CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Sawyer, op. cit., no. 1127; Calendar of Charter Rolls, 122657, 2089; ibid., 12571300, 23839; Placita dt Quo Warranto (Record Commission, 1818), 479Google Scholar.

12 There are no more than one or two references to tenurial services in the Westminster deeds of the thirteenth century (see n. 14), and none in the manor court rolls of the later period, discussed below.

13 On the centralisation of government in Westminster, see Brown, R.A., The treasury of the later twelfth century, Studies Presented to Sir Hilary Jenkinson, ed. Davies, J. Conway (1957), 3549Google Scholar; Tout, T. F., The beginnings of a modern capital: London and Westminster in the fourteenth century, Proceedings of the British Academy, x (1923), 487511Google Scholar.

14 There is space here only for a summary account of the development of property in the vill, which is based upon a thorough study of rich materials among the Westminster Abbey Muniments. Among these are some two thousand deeds and leases relating to the vill, and dating from between the late twelfth and the early sixteenth centuries. They survive either as originals or, for the earlier period, transcribed into the fourteenth century cartulary known as the Westminster Domesday. The other invaluable source is the series of account rolls of the various monastic obedientiaries, of whom six derived a significant portion of their respective incomes from the lease of properties in the vill of Westminster. These were the sacrist, almoner and cellarer, and the wardens of the Lady chapel, of the new work and of the rents of the new purchase. The earliest of these annual accounts date from the late thirteenth century; from the late fourteenth century until the Dissolution, the survival rate is good: approximately two-thirds in each case. The accounts contain both rentals and tallies of expenditure on the construction or maintenance of properties. By correlating these two sources, it has been possible to compile detailed tenement histories, and so to perceive general trends of settlement and occupation. For these various classes of documents, see the calendar of manuscripts in the Muniment Room.

15 The Middlesex (Ossulstone Hundred) poll tax return for 1377 is at Public Record Office (PRO), Ei 7914123. Those taxed in the vill of Westminster, as distinct from other parts of the manor, numbered 280; this was supposed to be the total lay population aged fourteen or over. The chantry return is printed in London and Middlesex Chantry Certificate 1548, ed. Kitching, C.J. (London Record Society, xvi, 1980)Google Scholar, no. 139. The number of communicants entered in the returnsupposedly the total population of St Margaret's parish (for which see below) aged fourteen and above is 2,500. Even if, as is very possible, the former figure is an under-assessment and the latter rounded up, the difference between the two is striking.

16 The comparative figures are set out in Russell, J.C., British Medieval Population (Albuquerque, 1948), 27475Google Scholar.

17 Harvey, B.F., Westminster Abbey and its Estates in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1977), 6869, 332Google Scholar.

18 E.g. in a charter of 1393 cited by Saunders, , Results;, 236Google Scholar, 239. This document has since been lost, see Bailey, E.P., Notes upon the boundaries and jurisdictions of the city and liberties of Westminster (1973)Google Scholar, typescript circulated by the Executive Committee of the Victoria County History of Middlesex, n. 8. On the parish perse, see below.

19 See n. 14. About 150 Westminster wills of the period 15041540, registered in the Peculiar Court of Westminster, are preserved in the Westminster Public Library, Archives Department, in named volumes.

20 Occupations in Westminster were, indeed, more varied than in many of the small towns discussed by Hilton. ProfessorHilton, R.H., The small town as part of peasant society, The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1975), 7694Google Scholar, esp 80.

21 Trenholme, , Monastic Boroughs, 912Google Scholar; Tait, , Medieval Borough, 2256Google Scholar; Reynolds, S., An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns (Oxford, 1977), 1647Google Scholar.

22 PRO, SC 8783889. The subsequent inquisition confirmed the justice of the claims that the vill relied heavily upon rents, and that it possessed hardly any arable land. PRO, C1451327.

23 Hilton, , The small town, esp. 91Google Scholar.

24 About 70 court rolls are extant from the period 13641514. A very small pro-portion of these rolls relates to meetings held around 1 November, which were similar to the evidently more important sessions of June. WAM 50699777; and a stray at PRO, SC219166.

25 WAM 50705 seq.

26 M See WAM 6576.

27 In a sample year, 1505 (WAM 50770), the jury was made up as follows (in order of seniority): Thomas Bough, gentleman usher of the king's exchequer (cf. Peculiar Court of Westminster (PCW), Wyks, pp. 2202); Robert Stowell, master mason (see below, n. 71); Thomas Eton, innkeeper (cf. WAM 507706); Thomas Hogan, baker (cf. PCW, Wyks, pp. 2428); William Yonge, victualler (cf.WAM 5076070); Robert Morley, citizen and clothier of London (cf. PCW, Wyks, pp. 8492); William Baynard, brewer (cf.WAM, Register Book I, f. 141141V); John Norreis, yeoman of Eybury (cf.WAM, Register Book I, ff.64v65); William Waller, brewer (cf. PCW Wyks, pp. 245); William Bate, stainer or butcheror both (cf. WAM, Register Book I, f. 150V; 50770); Quentin Poulet, librarian to King Henry VII (cf. PCW, Wyks, pp. 65); John Attwell, gentleman, chandler and groom of the cellar of Westminster Abbey (cf. PCW, Bracy, ff. 12v15; WAM, Register Book II, ft. 199V, 264V).

28 W A M 50706 seq.

29 W A M 50773 seq.

30 Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London, 141337, ed. Thomas, A. H. (Cambridge, 1943), 116Google Scholar and cf. p. xxx seq.; Barron, C.M., The government of London and its relations with the crown 14001450 (Ph.D. thesis, London Univ., 1970), 4048Google Scholar. Compare with Westminster the case of the unincorporated monastic town of Reading, where in the late fifteenth century the townspeople, complaining of bad government by the abbot's officers, unconstitutionally elected their own. Trenholme, , Monastic Boroughs, 723Google Scholar.

31 WAM 50764.

32 PRO, C 132687. Datable to the chancellorship of Archbishop Wareham, 150415. The term hedborowis was also used to describe the chief pledges by the early sixteenth century abbot who drafted the document cited in n. 6. The significance of this term, which is found elsewhere, was pointed out to me by Dr G.H. Martin.

33 Cal. Plea and Mem. Rolls, 141337, 115 seq., 150 seq.; Corporation of London Record Office, Ward Presentments, Portsoken Ward, 522 Edw. IV, 23 Hen. VII (loc. ref. 242A).

34 See Sabine, E.L., Butchering in medieval London, Speculum, viii (1933), 33553CrossRefGoogle Scholar; C. Barron, M., The quarrel of Richard II with London 13927, The Reign of Richard II, ed. Boulay, F. R. H. Du and Barron, C.M. (1971), 173201Google Scholar, esp. 1756.

35 W A M 50712 seq.

36 W A M 50718; 188667, 18869; 5984 notice of proceedings in 1523, at the end of the period, lists seven butchers and others who had overcharged the common, in each case, with between four and twenty-three beasts. WAM 50778.

37 W A M 50738.

38 W A M 50745.

39 Ibid.

40 W A M 50745, 507601.

41 W A M 50770. Fishmongers were to be subject to the same restrictions.

42 E.g. WAM 50758, 50760.

43 E.g. WAM 50760.

44 E.g. WAM 50718 (1386); 50745 (1422, William Cros obstructed the street with a rostyngherthe). See London Lickpenny, verse 8, ed. Hammond, E.P., English Verse between Chaucer and Surrey (Durham, N. Carolina, 1927), 2389Google Scholar. The court also made stipulations about the quality of bread in 1488, and about the price of victuals in 1494. WAM 50761, 50767.

45 Post, J.B., A fifteenth-century customary of the Southwark stews, Journal of the Society of Archivists, v (1974 1977), 41828Google Scholar.

46 Thirty-one people said to be ill-governed of their bodies were thus driven out from the franchise in 1508. WAM 50773.

47 See the decree of 122a cited in n. 10.

48 Saunders, , Results, 23639Google Scholar. St Martin-in-the-Fields parish was in existence by c. 1300. See Westminster Domesday (WAM, Book 11), ff. 562V563.

49 The earliest reference to the church occurs in a grant of Abbot Herbert (1121 c. 1136). W A M 3435; British Library, Cart. Had. 84 F.46. But there was a fourteenth-century tradition at Westminster that a church had been built by Edward the Confessor. Westminster Liber Niger (W A M, Book 1), f. 76V; and see Westlake, H.F, st Margaret's, Westminster (1914), 34Google Scholar.

50 Copies of these donations fill many pages of the Westminster Domesday. They included numerous gifts of land and rents in the vicinity of the abbey.

51 An impression derived from a reading of the Westminster Domesday, and confirmed by the historian of the royal work, who remarks, of private benefaction there is very little evidence. Colvin, H.M., ed., The History of the King's Works, i (H.M.S.O., 1963), 130, 135Google Scholar.

52 Cf. Harvey, , Estates, 42Google Scholar. The changing trend of patronage in an urban environment, that of Norwich, has been described by Alan Carter in a paper read to the Conference on Pre-Modern Urban History held at the Institute of Historical Research, London, on 5 Dec. 1981. The great period of benefaction and building of the religious houses of Norwich was over by 1380; after that date the direction of lay patronage shifted almost entirely to the parish churches.

53 Rackham, R.B., The nave of Westminster, Proceedings of the British Academy, iv (1909 1910), 3396Google Scholar; the overall distribution of the cost is set out on p. 91. Non-royal secular contributions supplied barely 15% of the total.

54 The major source is the churchwardens' accounts (C W A) 14601540 (of which period 14 years' accounts are missing), Westminster Public Library, Archives Department, M S S E.i (1460 seq.), E.2 (510seq.), E.3 (1530 seq.). (Only the first volume is paginated.) On the present fabric, see Royal Commission on Historical Monuments: London, ii (H.M.S.O., 1925), 99104Google Scholar and pis. 14952; N.Pevsner, The Buildings of England: London, i (1973 edn.), 4935Google Scholar.

55 For the former figure, see W A M 23602. The latter is an estimate; the incompleteness of the accounts for a few busy years of the rebuilding prevents an exact addition of the expenses.

56 C W A, sub annis.

57 C W A (146015130), pp. 308, 548.

58 C W A (151030), passim. The brewer, John Pomfrett, rented the Lamb Inn in King Street. W A M 19768807; Register Book II, f. 2626V.

59 CWA, sub annis 15023, 15034, 151617, 151819; see also Westlake, , Si Margaret's, 168Google Scholar.

60 CWA, , sub annis 152223, 152728Google Scholar.

61 For the bell-ringers' gild, see WAM 3455; Westminster Domesday, f. 183; Calendar of Patent Rolls, 124758, 403. Lack of evidence may conceal the existence of other such early gilds.

62 The nine gilds recorded after 1385 were dedicated, respectively, to St Mary of Rounceval, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, the Holy Trinity, St Cornelius, St George, St John the Baptist, St Christopher, St Anne and Corpus Christi. For the first two, see below. For the last, see notebook accounts of the curate of St Margaret's c. 1514: Item payd to corpus xpi brethered. 4d. it seems probable that the brother-hood mentioned was based in Westminster. WAM 33300, f. 18. For the remainder, see CWA, passim.

63 W A M 18890: the reference is to a quitrent owing from the gild. Royal licence for the constitution of the gild was obtained in 1440. Calendar of Patent Rolls, 143641, 448. Richard Willy, gentleman of Westminster and yeoman of the crown, who died between 1468 and 1471, was later said to have been one of the founders of the gild, which could not, in that case, have been instituted long before 1431. Calendar of Close Rolls, 146876, 33; Calendar of Patent Rolls, 146777, 281; C W A (14601510), 555.

64 Accounts of the gild 147477, 148790, 15058, 151518, 151821, bound together with records of the gild of St Mary Rounceval, are in Westminster Abbey Muniment Room, unnumbered.

65 Parish Fraternity Register, Fraternity of the Holy Trinity and SS. Fabian and Sebastian in the Parish Church of St Botolph without Aldersgate ed. Basing, P. (London Record Society, xviii, 1982), xviiGoogle Scholar.

66 See n. 15.

67 Gild accounts, passim; will of Cecily Selly, 1472, PRO, 16 Wattys.

68 The gild employed no less than three permanent chantry priests.

69 The existing general accounts are English Gilds, ed. Smith, Toulmin (Early English Text Society, xl, 1870)Google Scholar, introduction by L. Brentano; Westlake, H.F, The Parish Gilds of Medieval England (1919)Google Scholar; Unwin, G., The Gilds and Companies of London (1908, 3rd edn. 1938)Google Scholar, chapte r ix. See most recently Basing, Parish Fraternity Register.

70 Probably the old masters chose the new compare ibid., 3 (no. 15).

71 Gild accounts; W A M 5076170; 17809; 2353547; 1972049; PCW, W yks, pp. 14b, 435. See also Harvey, J.H, English medieval Architects. A Biographical Dictionary down to 1550 (1954), 153Google Scholar; Roberts, E., Rober t Stowell, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 3rd ser., xxxv (1972), 2438CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 Gild accounts; W A M 12366; King's Works, iii (1), 407Google Scholar; PRO, E17923898; W A M 50774, 50776; PCW, Bracy, ff. 28v, 3535V; C W A, sub anno 15334, week 14.

73 Phythian-Adams, C. V., Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1979), 120Google Scholar; Records of the Gild of St George in Norwich, 13891547, ed. Grace, M. (Norfolk Record Society, ix, 1937), esp. 1213Google Scholar.

74 Fuller, E. A., Cirencester: the manor and the town, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, ix (1884 1885), 298344; esp. 329Google Scholar. A similar role was performed by the parish gilds of Gottfried, Bury St Edmunds., Bury St Edmunds, 18692Google Scholar.

75 Pullan, B., Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice. The Social Institutions of a Catholic State, to 1620 (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar.

76 Ibid., 99131.

77 Westlake, , St Margaret's, 547Google Scholar, prints in part the expenses of the feast of 1490 (sic).

78 The alley belonged to the gild as early as 1431, although the name is not given at that date. Cf. n. 63.

79 Gild accounts, sub annis.

80 Contrast, for example, the Whittington almshouse in London, the collaborative foundation of a rich individual and the Company of Imray, Mercers. J., The Charity of Richard Whittington (1968)Google Scholar.

81 Calendar of Charter Rolls, 122657, 1678.

82 See PRO, C 44118. See also Galloway, J., The Hospital and Chapel of Saint Maty Roncevall at Charing Cross (1913)Google Scholar. The gild records were unknown to Galloway.

83 See PRO, C 4742212. A fresh charter of foundation was secured in 1475. Calendar of Patent Rolls, 146JJJ, 542.

84 Accounts of the gild 15204, 153840 (see n. 64).

85 See expenses for the year 1521 2. Also described as the stablisshers (15234).

86 Nine tapestry-work bed-covers were bought in 152324; ten pairs of sheets were disposed of at the Dissolution in 153940. Other facilities included a buckyng tub (for washing linen), a rinsing tub and a pissing tub. Gild accounts, passim. Among bequests to the house was that of Anthony Leigh, who in 1518 left 66s. 8d. for the purchase of sheets, blankets and shirts. PCW, W yks, pp. 2605.

87 Gild, accounts, sub annis 15201522Google Scholar.

88 For the property, see PRO, C 1807413. For the hospital, see Oxford, Bodleian Library, Gough Gen. Top. 364, p. 661; CWA, sub annis 1526 (Joan of St Cornelius house'), 1531 (Philip at St Cornelius' hospital). See also Calendar of Letters and Papers, Henry VIII, i, no. 5101Google Scholar.

89 Jordan, W. K., Philanthropy in England, 14801660 (1959), 556, 1467Google Scholar.

90 After the Reformation, the development of effective poor relief in Westminster was delayed until the seventeenth century. See the forthcoming Oxford Univ. D.Phil, thesis of T.V. Hitchcock on poor relief in general.

91 Davis, N.Z., Poor relief, humanism and heresy, Society and Culture in Early Modem France (1975), 1764Google Scholar.

92 Ibid., 59. Compare Brigden, S., The early Reformation in London, 152047: the conflict in the parishes (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge Univ., 1978), 35463Google Scholar.

93 Nixon, H.M., Caxton, his contemporaries and successors in the book trade from Westminster documents, The Library, 5th ser., xxxi (1976), 30526CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

94 C W A, passim; Baillie, H.C., London churches, their music and musicians, 14851560 (Ph.D. thesis Cambridge Univ., 1958), 17Google Scholar and passim.

95 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. D.D. Queen's Coll. 1766.

96 See, for instance, Phythian-Adams, Coventry; Palliser, D.M., Tudor York (Oxford, 1979), 20125Google Scholar.

97 For example, in the Cheapside area of the nearby City of London, recovery from a fifteenth-century recession was not felt until the later sixteenth century, according to the initial findings of Dr Derek Keene's Social and Economic Study of Medieval London (personal communication). For the historical debate, see, notably, Dobson, R.B., Urban decline in late medieval England, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 27 (1977), 122CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rigby, S.H., Urban decline in the later Middle Ages, Urban History Yearbook (1979), 4659Google Scholar; A. Dyer, Growth and decay in English towns, 15001700, ibid., 6072; Reynolds, S., Decline and decay in late medieval towns, Urban History Yearbook (1980), 768Google Scholar.

98 See n. 2.

99 Heylyn, P., The History of the Reformation (1661; Cambridge, 1894edn.), i, 151Google Scholar.