Deviance and Power in Late Medieval London

by Frank Rexroth , Translated by Pamela Selwyn

• ISBN13: 9780521847308
• ISBN10: 0521847303
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-11-05
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

During the late Middle Ages the London ruling elite was increasingly influenced by the idea that a secret counter-society was operating in the city. Its members were suspected to be active mainly at night, to roam the city aimlessly and to be identifiable by three main characteristics: their latent, unmotivated and habitual penchant for violence, their sexual license and their disinclination to work. The rumours about this real and imagined 'milieu of the night' strongly influenced Londoners' perceptions of social relations within urban society. In wards, parishes, guilds and companies, people adapted their behaviour and gradually defined their own respectability in negative terms, in opposition to the new urban underworld”. The book sheds considerable new light on everyday life in late medieval London and its case study opens up wider debates about the relationship between morality and politics in Europe's cities in this period.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. vii
Acknowledgements	p. ix
List of abbreviations	p. x
Introduction	p. 1
John Carpenter observes his surroundings	p. 1
Poor and marginal people under the scrutiny of the municipal authorities: an overview of the literature	p. 7
Questions and methods	p. 16
Setting the spatial and temporal boundaries: sources and research on London history	p. 20
Changing patterns of thought in the fourteenth century	p. 25
The beginning of the Hundred Years War and the struggle against the nocturnal underworld	p. 27
Keeping peace in the city	p. 27
Patterns of thought and institutions	p. 51
Speaking of sturdy beggars: the Great Plague, labour law and changing patterns of thought	p. 68
Labour law in the London context	p. 68
Patterns of thought and institutions	p. 96
John of Northampton's morality campaign: stigmatisation, marginalisation and the legitimation crisis of the urban oligarchy	p. 126
The crisis of authority	p. 126
Patterns of thought and institutions	p. 157
Institutions on the frontiers of the fifteenth-century underworld	p. 189
Localising the underworld: the wardmotes as status degradation ceremonies	p. 191
Procedures in the wardmotes	p. 191
The subjects and techniques of complaints	p. 198
The authorities and ceremonial status degradation	p. 217
Rewarding the shamefaced poor: charity in the almshouse	p. 223
Between charity and social isolation: gilds, paupers and almshouses	p. 223
Almshouse foundations and their preferred clientele	p. 232
The memoria of the shamefaced poor and the exclusion of the shameless	p. 246
Preventing the expansion of the underworld: proclamations and punishments	p. 266
The authorities warn against an underworld career	p. 266
The underworld as a counter-world	p. 281
The authorities and their struggle for the interpretative monopoly	p. 291
Conclusion	p. 304
Transcription of important sources	p. 317
Bibliography	p. 361
Maps	p. 396
Index of personal names	p. 400
Index of places	p. 409
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