London Archive
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Identifying Women Proprietors in Wills from Fifteenth-Century London
Posted on April 21, 2013 | No CommentsMost Londoners lodged their post obit requests with the Husting Court, the county court of London. The testators were primarily wealthy artisans and merchants, since one needed to possess a substantial amount of property in order to register the details of the division of that property. -
The Interrogation of of a Male Transvestite Prostitute in Fourteenth Century London
Posted on April 11, 2013 | No CommentsDespite the general rule that sexual offenses were matters for the church courts, in some cases the city of London took charge of these offenses. Prostitution and procuring, for example, involved public order; the temporal courts dealt with them for that reason, so that the same people might be prosecuted in both jusrisdictions for the same offense. -
Burial ground discovered in London may be victims of Black Death
Posted on March 14, 2013 | No CommentsThirteen skeletons have been uncovered lying in two carefully laid out rows on the edge of Charterhouse Square at Farringdon, and are believed to be up to 660 years old. -
The tailors of London and their guild, c.1300-1500
Posted on February 8, 2013 | No CommentsThe unusually full medieval records of the guild of London tailors, known from 1503 as the Merchant Taylors' Company, provides a rare opportunity to assess the variety of roles which these organisations played in late-medieval London. -
The Danish attacks on London and Southwark in ‘1016’
Posted on January 28, 2013 | No CommentsThis incident has been fatally embroidered by many local historians, taking their cue from various sources, so that the popular accounts have distorted what was already a confusing set of events. -
City and Countryside in Medieval England
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsAn impressive array of data, ranging over the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, has been collected by two full-time researchers, James Galloway and Margaret Murphy. Of primary importance for the project are demesne farming accounts and inquisitions post mortem (detailing manorial land and other assets, especially again those of the demesne), both of which sources survive in very large numbers for the period under review. Also, the project incorpor- ates large amounts of data from urban records, particularly those dealing with merchants who were prominent in organizing London's food supply. -
The Curious Career and Uncertain Past of Perkin Warbeck
Posted on December 2, 2012 | No CommentsWas Warbeck just another in a long line of pretenders to the throne of England, or did his appearance in Ireland in 1491 prove the innocence of Richard III, whom most historians accuse of murdering his nephews, the Princes in the Tower? -
A Marginal Occupation? The Medieval Laundress and her Work
Posted on November 22, 2012 | No CommentsThe wider study of an ostensibly menial activity that, with certain notable exceptions, offered insecure and poorly paid employment to illiterate women of low status is certainly beset with problems. -
Flemings in the Peasants’ Revolt, 1381
Posted on November 14, 2012 | No CommentsWhile the Peasants’ Revolt has been studied in depth by generations of medieval historians, the same cannot be said of England’s foreign-born inhabitants, and the largest group among these, the so-called Flemings (a term which was also applied to those from other principalities in the Low Countries besides Flanders). -
‘In the Beginning’: The London Medieval Graduate Network Inaugural Conference
Posted on November 13, 2012 | No CommentsThis is a summary of the The London Medieval Graduate Network Inaugural Conference by Rachel Scott. The conference was held on November 2nd at King's College London. -
The Disposal of Human Waste: A comparison between Ancient Rome and Medieval London
Posted on October 11, 2012 | No CommentsThis essay examines the waste disposal options used in Ancient Rome and Medieval London, two cities that dealt with sewage in different ways. -
Apprentices and Apprenticeship in Early Fourteenth-Century London
Posted on September 12, 2012 | No CommentsWhat was the nature of the medieval institution which in the early modern period became such a prominent feature of London life? -
The King’s Mercy. An Attribute of Later Medieval English Monarchy
Posted on September 9, 2012 | No CommentsModern assumptions about medieval justice still tend to see this process of amelioration as merely occasional and exceptional: mercy needed to be applied only where special circumstances made it inappropriate to apply the full rigours of the law. This, however, is seriously to misunderstand both the purpose and the pervasiveness of mercy in the operation of medieval justice. -
The Lost Leprosy Hospitals Of London: Leprosia
Posted on September 1, 2012 | No CommentsBy focusing upon the institutional provision made available for victims of leprosy in London between 1100 and 1500, we can explore the complexity of reactions to a disease that might be regarded as either a punishment for sin or a mark of divine favour. -
London Medieval Society
Posted on August 24, 2012 | No CommentsThe British capital is home to numerous universities, museums and archives. It is also home to the London Medieval Society, an organization that provides a forum for medievalists to gather and exchange ideas. -
Ancient DNA analysis indicates the first English lions originated from North Africa
Posted on August 19, 2012 | No CommentsAlthough the Royal Menagerie and its animals are known from documentary records, few physical re- mains survive (O’Regan et al., 2005). Amongst the rare exceptions are two lion skulls that were recovered from the moat of the Tower of London during excava- tions in 1936-1937. These skulls were recently radio- carbon-dated to AD1280-1385 and AD1420-1480. -
Cranial Trauma and Treatment: A Case Study from the Medieval Cemetery of St. Mary Spital, London
Posted on August 19, 2012 | No CommentsThe individual under examination was context number 19893, from a burial pit situated to the southwest of an early 14th century charnel house. -
The Government of London and its relations with the Crown 1400 – 1450
Posted on August 13, 2012 | No CommentsThe Aldermen and civic officials emerge as conservative, but conscientious, men who might press hardly upon minority interests, but had constantly before their eyes the needs of the City as a whole. -
The effect of sex on risk of mortality during the Black Death in London, A.D. 1349-1350
Posted on August 12, 2012 | No CommentsThe purpose of this study is to determine whether the Black Death was similarly selective with respect to biological sex-that is, did either sex face an elevated risk during the epidemic or were men and women at equal risk of dying? -
Volcano blast led to thousands of deaths in London in 1258, archaeologists find
Posted on August 5, 2012 | No CommentsA report to be released tomorrow by the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) will reveal that a mass burial on the site of the Augustinian priory and hospital of St Mary Spital had thousands of victims from a famine that occurred in 1258. -
15th century Italian banking records discovered in London manuscript
Posted on July 24, 2012 | No CommentsRecords of Italian bankers partially covered over fifty years later by traditional English crests -
City Orphans and Custody Laws in Medieval England
Posted on July 16, 2012 | No CommentsThe extent to which English towns protected children during the Middle Ages is known only in broad outline. -
Non-noble deeds of arms in the Late Middle Ages
Posted on June 22, 2012 | No CommentsI want to put forward the idea that a great many non-nobles fully accepted the wellestablished equivalence between being brave, well-trained and well-armed and being a legitimate member of the ruling class. -
Tourists and Tabulae in Late Medieval London
Posted on May 4, 2012 | No CommentsMichael Van Dussen examines a late-medieval Czech account of St Paul's Cathedral in London -
Reputation and Economic Performance: The Competitive Strategies of Medieval English Town
Posted on March 6, 2012 | No CommentsThe focus of the research will be on evidence relating to London, Norwich, Great Yarmouth, Colchester, Exeter, Bristol, Leicester, Nottingham and York during the period 1250-1500.
