London in the Later Middle Ages

Abstract

Abstract In the three hundred years covered by this study, the city of London, in partnership with its near neighbour the town of Westminster, developed as the economic, social, administrative, and political capital of the expanding English kingdom. This book charts the halting process whereby the Londoners struggled to forge viable systems of self-government under the ever-watchful eyes of the royal officials at Westminster. This book examines the symbiotic relationship between the Crown and the City, and charts the ways in which the Londoners created the wealth that made them so indispensable to the Crown. It was during these years that the Londoners developed the systems of self-government, welfare provision, and control of the urban environment which were to able to withstand the pressures of massive population expansion, endemic plague, and the extremes of poverty and wealth in the Tudor period. The remarkable survival of the city's own records makes it possible to trace, for the first time and in unexpected detail, the inner workings of civic politics and government over three hundred formative years.

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