London: The Biography

The medieval city has been the object of much study, and all general histories of England survey its conditions. Contemporary documents sometimes provide haunting detail, and they can be found in The Chronicles of London edited by C.L. Kingsford (Oxford, 1905), The Chronicles of Richard of Devizes edited by J.T. Appleby (London, 1963), Fifty Early English Wills edited by F.J. Furnivall (London, 1882), The London Eyre of 1244 edited by H.M. Chew and M. Weinbaum (London, 1970), Calendar of Pleas and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London edited by A.H. Thomas and P.E. Jones, (London, 1924-1961) and Liber Albus of 1417 edited by H.T. Riley (London, 1861). Later historical studies include G.A. Williams’s indispensable Medieval London: From Commune to Capital (London, 1963), E. Ekwall’s Studies on the Population of Medieval London (Stockholm, 1956), S. Thrupp’s The Merchant Class of Medieval London (London, 1948), London 800-1216: The Shaping of a City by C.N.L. Brooke (London, 1975), London Life in the Fourteenth Century by C. Pendrill (London, 1925) and G. Home’s Medieval London (London, 1927). Especial mention must be made of L. Wright’s Sources of London English: Medieval Thames Vocabulary (Oxford, 1996) which brings the reader right down to the reeking waterside.

Accounts of sixteenth-century London are of course dominated by Stow’s A Survey of London; the edition by C.L. Kingsford (London, 1908) is still the most authoritative. More recent studies include Elizabethan London by M. Holmes (London, 1969), Worlds Within Worlds: Structures of Life in Sixteenth-Century London by S. Rappaport (Cambridge, 1989), Trade, Government and Economy in pre-Industrial England edited by D.C. Coleman and A.H. John (London, 1976), London and the Reformation by S. Brigden (Oxford, 1989) and The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London by I.W. Archer (Cambridge, 1991).

The diaries of John Evelyn, and of Samuel Pepys, are of course essential for any understanding of seventeenth-century London. And Macaulay’s History of England from the Accession of James II is still immensely readable. But there are specific volumes of great interest, among them London and the Civil War edited by S. Porter (London, 1996), and The Rebuilding of London After the Great Fire by T.F. Reddaway (London, 1940). P. Earle’s A City Full of People: Men and Women of London, 1650-1750 (London, 1994) is a fascinating quarry. L. Picard’s Restoration London (London, 1997) provides a detailed synopsis of daily living; it is complemented by the images within The Cries and Hawkers of London: The Engravings of Marcellus Laroon, edited by S. Shesgreen (Aldershot, 1990), which provide direct access to the streets and people of the late seventeenth century. I have also made use of Wenceslaus Hollar by R. Godfrey (New Haven, 1994) which provides different, but no less interesting, images. E. Ward’s The London Spy (London, 1697-1703) comes at the end of the century, but not at the end of a rich tradition of London “low life” sketches.