Paul Griffiths, Mark S R Jenner, eds. Londinopolis: Essays in the Cultural and Social History
of Early Modern London. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. xii + 284 pp. $74.95
(cloth), ISBN 978-0-7190-5152-4.
Lena Cowen Orlin, ed. Material London c. 1600. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2000. ix + 393 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8122-1721-6.
Reviewed by R. C. Richardson (History Department, King Alfred’s College, Winchester)
Published on H-Albion (August, 2001)
Deconstructing Early Modern London
Deconstructing Early Modern London
nor a comprehensive social study of Londoners. But each
stays clear of dealing with disembodied economic trends.
The publication in the same year of two volumes Each, in largely complementary ways, seeks to explore
of essays on early modern London is symptomatic of a some, at least, of the interlocking plural histories of Longrowing interest in the capital and, more generally, ur- don and Londoners. Social history predominates.
ban development. The first of them takes its title from a
book by James Howell published in 1657. Hastily written
Londinopolis is written entirely by historians. Maand very unsystematic in its arrangement of its contents, terial London has a more varied and interdisciplinary
Howell’s book by virtue of its kaleidoscopic nature paid cast list of contributors; historians are joined here by
unwitting tribute to the multiple dimensions of London’s specialists in literature, art, architecture, archaeology,
past and present, and its enthusiastic tone was itself an and anthropology. Editor Lena Cowen Orlin is based
eloquent testimony to the impact which London’s explo- in an American university English department though
sive growth and diversification had on those who par- she writes here on a historical topic. In both volumes
ticipated in, benefited from, and witnessed it. London’s the spatial distribution and structures of the city come
population went through a phenomenal tenfold increase under review as do the material circumstances of Lonbetween 1500 and 1700 and had almost half a million in- don’s life and economy and London’s changing place in
habitants as the eighteenth century dawned. Increased the national and international economic networks. The
population density within the old city limits and bold ex- anatomy and physiology of London’s different communipansion outwards into new districts and suburbs were ties and sub-communities, the different forms of governequally noticeable trends. The proportion of the national ment and hierarchies, factions, gender issues, conflictpopulation based in the capital went on increasing. The ing perceptions of ownership and rights, political coneconomic, social, cultural, religious, and political signifi- sciousness, cultural provision and representation, and
cance of the metropolis was emphatically pre-eminent. control mechanisms all receive attention here. Some esF.J. Fisher and E.A. Wrigley long ago underlined Lon- says cover relatively long time spans; others focus on pardon’s importance as a centre of conspicuous consump- ticular moments and critical junctures. The first volume
tion and as an engine of economic growth. Such recogni- consists of specially commissioned contributions while
tion underpins both these books. Neither of them claims the second derives from a conference held at the Folger
to be a complete history of London in these centuries Library in 1995. Both volumes are extremely well edited
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and in each case the editors are also contributors themselves. Material London is profusely illustrated but, alas,
for the most part the photographs are not reproduced
very satisfactorily.
the male-dominated Common Law. Faramerz Dabhoiwala re-evaluates female promiscuity in the city as something other than criminal behaviour. Casual, untransgressive, part-time prostitution provided much needed
supplementary income and could be a bargaining counter
Londinopolis offers twelve essays arranged in four with patrons and employers to help husbands towards
sections, roughly equal in length but in no particular sepromotion and career advancement. Samuel Pepys’s fequence; the final part dealing with aspects of material
male coterie provides some good examples here. In the
culture and consumption might logically have come ear- last of the four sections Ian Archer, Michael Berlin, and
lier, addressing as it does the fundamental necessities of Tim Wales deal with aspects of polis and police. Archer
food and water supply and their increasingly commer- wrestles with big questions about whether there was a
cialized provision. Sara Pennell and Mark Jenner, the coherent political culture in early modern London, sometwo contributors who handle these subjects, offer esthing more than a complex chemistry involving xenosays of great originality and distinction and help fill real
phobia, anti-popery, manipulations of the memory of
gaps in our knowledge of early modern London. More Queen Elizabeth I, and responses to the nearby royal
has been written by previous historians about London’s court. Berlin writes insightfully on parish oligarchies and
raw food supplies–by Fisher and others–than about vict- select vestries, church seating arrangements, and on the
ualling and eating habits. Jenner’s essay covers far more local politics of church rituals such as those practiced anground than the technology of water supply and striking
nually on rogation days.
and costly speculative ventures such as the New River.
Politics and competing jurisdictions are brought into foMaterial London, much the longer of the two books
cus, as are the “moral economy” of water supply and under review, with seventeen essays and a hundred exthe social consequences of innovation. Three essays–by tra pages, shares many of the same index listings as
Margaret Pelling, Paul Griffiths, and Jeremy Boulton– Londinopolis. Its title, however, accurately proclaims its
explore “Senses of Space and Place.” The first consid- chief center of interest, and its interdisciplinary agenda
ers the ways in which a number of factors such as com- brings additional topics, other approaches and different
muting, migration, wet nursing, and disease promoted methodologies into play. Gender and migration feature
a greater degree of internal mobility in London and its here no less than in the first book but subjects such as
environs. Griffiths, in the second, looks at the chang- fashion, drama, and the theatre loom large; the plays
ing economic and social tone of Cheapside in the first of Ben Jonson provide a much-used window on to early
half of the seventeenth century and at (largely unsuc- modern London for many of the contributors to this volcessful) attempts by the Goldsmiths’ Company and the ume. Material London is certainly more disparate in its
Crown to reverse the trend. Boulton, rounding off this contents than the first book and the editor deserves high
section, looks closely at St. Martin in the Fields in the praise for her skillful introduction and section prefaces
century and a quarter after 1600, and shows how rich and which go far beyond “unpacking” the three words of the
poor were mingled there in this rapidly growing fashion- book’s title and clearly demonstrate her firm grasp of the
able parish. The more grandees came to settle there the whole field and the inter-relationships of its component
more servants and other providers they needed. Poor re- parts. The individual chapters, however, in some cases
lief was a visible issue of some importance but, by and make only empty gestures towards contextualizing their
large, it was not the social elite who ran the affairs of the particular topics which remain largely unconnected and
parish and confronted its problems and casualties; the self-contained. They also display a great deal of repetitime-consuming tasks of local government were left to tion and there is too little cross referencing. All the esthe substantial tradesmen residing in St. Martin’s.
says explore the material dimension of their chosen subjects and in that sense exhibit their belonging to this volThree more essays are concerned with gender and
ume. In some cases, however, London itself is much less
sexuality. That by Laura Gowing examines the close,
central than in others, almost incidental in fact to the parcomplex relations between gender and space, especially ticular topic under discussion. Not all contributors are
in the ambiguities of privacy for women. Margaret Hunt in agreement about the significance to be attached to “c.
looks at marital rights from the woman’s point of view 1600” as some kind of dividing line in London’s evolution
and at the ways in which widows especially engaged and standing.
in marriage litigation, availing themselves of the more
“friendly” ecclesiastical courts and Equity rather than
The essays are very varied in nature. Some take a
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synoptic overview while others use the microscope to
focus minutely on the specifics of a particular moment.
At one end of the spectrum we have Derek Keene spanning widely on “Material London in time and space”
and at the other Peter Blayney in a fascinating contribution looks at the jurisdictional conflicts between City
and church which lay behind the bitter and deceitful contest over John Day’s projected bookshop in St. Paul’s
churchyard in the 1570s. Boundary disputes of other
kinds–all relating to adjacent properties, sometimes with
shared facilities–provide the subject matter for the editor’s own first-rate contribution. John Schofield’s essay, utilizing recent archaeological work in the city and
the contemporary surveys of Ralph Treswell, complements Blayney and Orlin by offering a clear account of
the topography and buildings of the early modern capital. Ian Archer uses a discussion of the Jacobean opening of the New Exchange as a springboard for a wider
consideration of changing patterns of consumption and
the moral issues to which they gave rise. Joan Thirsk
brings to bear a lifetime’s research into the diversity of
the English provinces to show the essentially dialectical
relationship between London and the regions. London,
she makes very clear, was not simply the sole dynamo
of change in the country but was itself very frequently
on the receiving end of new initiatives and experimentation that originated elsewhere. (Alice Friedman’s essay
on the two-way relationships between London and Wollaton, Nottinghamshire provides a useful case study of
some of these processes.) Patricia Fumerton takes a fresh
look at London’s vagrancy problem while, directing her
gaze towards London’s elite, Linda Livy Peck has much
that is very original to say about new building, buying,
and collecting in the first two decades of the seventeenth
century. David Harris Sacks combines a consideration of
three big issues–materialism and the market economy,
the calculus or urban growth, and the metropolis and the
archipelago–with an unlikely pairing of re-examinations
of Will Kemp’s morris dance from London to Norwich
in 1600 and the Earl of Essex’s revolt the following year.
Andrew Gurr returns to his familiar hunting ground of
the Globe theatre, a subject in which he almost owns a
freehold. Jean Howard interrogates the play Westward
Ho to unpack what it can say to today’s social historians and literary critics about women, foreigners, and the
regulation of urban space.
Though they overlap at times with each other these
two books are sufficiently different to be genuinely complementary. Nor do they simply go over ground already
satisfactorily covered in previous publications. Neither
volume aims at comprehensive coverage; each of these
books is self-evidently eclectic. And there are noticeable gaps. Given the purposes behind these two collections it is not in the least surprising that the coverage is principally secular in nature. Religion, even in its
socio-economic extensions, does not occupy much space
here, despite being part of London’s importance and the
changing fabric of London life.
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Citation: R. C. Richardson. Review of Griffiths, Paul; Jenner, Mark S R, eds., Londinopolis: Essays in the Cultural
and Social History of Early Modern London and Orlin, Lena Cowen, ed., Material London c. 1600. H-Albion, H-Net
Reviews. August, 2001.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=5398
Copyright © 2001 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for
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