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For the “Re-edification of Townes”: The Rebuilding Statutes of Henry VIII*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Robert Tittler
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Extract

The several statutes passed between 1534 and 1544 devoted to the rebuilding of decayed urban housing, collectively known as the Rebuilding Statutes, have been drawn upon in at least two scholarly debates about English government and economic life in the sixteenth century. First, in his discussion of Thomas Cromwell and the Henrician government's efforts to respond to economic and social problems, Professor (now Sir) Geoffrey Elton identified these statutes as important examples of central government initiative. Elton traced the inception of these acts to complaints about the state of housing brought by individuals at court and by the M.P.s of several individual towns. He saw the legislation itself as an example of the central government empowering individual towns to attend to the economic reality of decayed houses in their midst, and found it “an interesting precedent for local and private acts procedures (sic) of later days.” For Elton, then, the Rebuilding Statutes offered evidence of central government initiative in setting economic policy, a view intended to support his more general thesis about the primacy of the 1530s as a “revolutionary” point in the development English governing institutions. The same observation may be taken in support of Elton's later concept that Parliament, along with other central institutions, formed a “point of contact” with such particular and local interests as the towns listed in these statutes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , Winter 1990 , pp. 591 - 605
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1990

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Footnotes

*

I am indebted to Dr. David Dean for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

References

1 Elton, G. R., Reform and Renewal, Thomas Cromwell and the Common Weal (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 106–109Google Scholar. Elton's attention may have been drawn to these statutes by Lehmberg, Stanford E., who had noted them, albeit without much extended analysis, in The Reformation Parliament, 1529–1536 (New York, 1970), pp. 212, 233–34Google Scholar. Lehmberg, noted them again in his later work, The Later Parliaments of Henry VIII (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 105, 155, 197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See especially Elton, , The Tudor Revolution in Government, Administrative Changes in the Reign of Henry VIII (Cambridge, 1953)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; England Under the Tudors (1955; 2nd ed., 1974); “Tudor Government: the Points of Contact. I. Parliament,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5th ser., 24 (1974): 183–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Tudor Government: the Points of Contact. II. The Council,” T.R.H.S. 5th ser., 25 (1975): 195–211Google Scholar; and “Tudor Government: the Points of Contact. III. The Court,” T.R.H.S., 5th ser., 26 (1976): 211–228.Google Scholar

3 Phythian-Adams, Charles, “Urban Decay in Late Medieval England,” in Abrams, Philip and Wrigley, E. A., eds., Towns in Societies, Essays in Economic History and Historical Sociology (Cambridge, 1978) p. 178Google Scholar; Desolation of a City, Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1979) pp. 197–98Google Scholar; Piatt, Colin, The Late Medieval Town (1976), p. 182.Google Scholar

4 Platt, , English Medieval Town, p. 182.Google Scholar

5 Dyer, Alan, “Growth and Decay in English Towns, 1500–1700,” Urban History Yearbook (1979), pp. 62–3Google Scholar; Bridbury, A. R., “English Provincial Towns in the Later Middle Ages,” Economic History Review 2nd ser., 34, 1 (February 1981): 1–24 esp. 23–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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7 4 Hen. VII, c. 19.

8 Hatcher, John, Plague, Population and the English Economy, 1348–1530 (1977), pp. 63–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Phythian-Adams, Charles, Desolation of a City, pp. 34–35Google Scholar; Dyer, Christopher, Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society: the Estates of the Bishopric of Worcester, 680–1540 (Cambridge, 1980) pp. 288–305Google Scholar; McIntosh, Majorie K., Autonomy and Community, the Royal Manor of Havering, 1200–1500 (Cambridge, 1986) chap. 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Graves, Michael A. R., The Tudor Parliaments (1985), pp. 53–54Google Scholar. I am indebted to Dr. David Dean for this reference.

10 Francis Bacon, sitting for Southampton, introduced such an act as late as the 1597–98 Parliament. Simonds d'Ewes, “Journals of Parliaments During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth,” British Library, Harleian MS. 75, fols. 112v-3r, 153r and 160r, as cited in Dean, David, “Bills and Acts, 1584–1601” (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1984), read with the author's kind permission.Google Scholar

11 An interesting problem is raised by the bill's identification of the Great Norwich fire as taking place “twenty-six years ago,” which would place it in 1508. The fire is known from a variety of independent sources to have taken place in 1507. Assuming no error either in arithmetic or local memory, this could suggest that the bill had been drawn up a full year before the meeting of Parliament (which met during November and December of 1534) in anxious expectation of relief resulting from such a session: a sure sign of the urgent nature of the required remedy. This impression is confirmed in William Hudson and Tingey, J. C., eds., The Records of the City of Norwich, 2 vols. (Norwich, 1906, 1910), 2: 71Google Scholar. The Norwich fire is said to have destroyed 718 dwellings, or housing for at least three thousand people, making it unlikely that local leaders would have forgotten or mistaken its date. See Jones, E. L., Porter, S. and Turner, M., “A Gazetteer of English Urban Fire Disasters, 1500–1900,” Historical Geography Research Series no. 13 (August, 1984), Table 3.Google Scholar

12 Hudson, and Tingey, , Records of Norwich, 1:72, et passim.Google Scholar

13 Bateson, , ed., Borough Customs, 2 vols. (Seiden Society, 1904, 1906) 1: 278.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., p. 278.

15 Ibid., p. 279.

16 See also, for example, the deeds of property let in Dartmouth, Devon in these years: Devon Record Office MSS. 61296 (1522–23), 61303 (1533), 61306 (1536), etc. See also examples in Guildford, Surrey, as recorded in Dance, E. M., ed., Guildford Borough Records (London, 1958) p. 42Google Scholar; and in Southampton, Merson, A. L., ed., The Third Book of Remembrance of Southampton, 1514–1602, vol. 1 (1952), pp. 28–29Google Scholar, item 106; vol. 2, 1540–1573 (London, 1955) items 160, 170, etc.

17 Merson, , The Third Book of Remembrance, 1: 57–58Google Scholar, item 130 (1542) and 62, item 158 (1539).

18 Twemlow, J. A., ed., Liverpool Town Books…1550–1802, 2 vols. (Liverpool, 1918, 1935) 1: 11 n. 1Google Scholar. Twemlow has interpreted this by-law as having been based on the authority of 32 Hen. VIII, cc. 18 and 19.

19 Plait, Colin, The English Medieval Town, p. 182Google Scholar; Lehmberg, Stanford E., The Reformation of Cathedrals, Cathedrals in English Society, 1485–1603 (Princeton, 1988) pp. 172–76.Google Scholar

20 Raine, A., ed., York Civic Records, 3 (Yorkshire Archeological Society Record Series, 106, 1942), p. 139.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., p. 146.

22 Adnitt, H. W., “The Orders of the Corporation of Shrewsbury, 1511–1735,” Shropshire Archeological and Natural History Society Transactions, 11 (1888): 157.Google Scholar

23 Rutledge, Paul, ed., Great Yarmouth Assembly Minutes, 1538–1545 (Norfolk Record Society, vol. 39, 1970), p. 31.Google Scholar

24 House of Lords Journal, vol. 1, pp. 140, 143 (2) and 162.Google Scholar

25 Noted in Bridbury, , “English Provincial Towns,” p. 11Google Scholar for the late Medieval period, and Phythian-Adams, , Desolation of a City, pp. 47-48, 250–52 and 262, etc.Google Scholar

26 Tittler, Robert, “The Incorporation of Boroughs, 1540–1558,” History 62, 204 (February 1977): 24–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 James, F. R., ed., “Copy of a Deed by Richard Phelips, dated 1535,” Transactions of the Woolhope Field Naturalist's Club (1938 for 1935) pp. 100–04.Google Scholar

28 The widely recognized tendency of vagrants and other poor migrants to flock to towns is summarized in Beier, A. L., Masterless Men, The Vagrancy Problem in England, 1560–1640 (London, 1985), pp. 73–76Google Scholar, and the pressure placed by such newcomers on the housing supply of towns is treated briefly in Slack, Paul, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1988), pp. 67–68 and 81–82.Google Scholar

29 See note 8 above.

30 22 Hen. VIII, c. 12 and 27 Hen. VIII, c. 25. See also Elton, G. R., “An Early Tudor Poor Law,” Economic History Review second ser., 6 (1953): 55–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Slack, , Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England, pp. 118–19.Google Scholar

31 Hoskins, W. G., “The Rebuilding of Rural England, 1570–1640,” Past and Present 4 (November 1953): 44–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in idem, Provincial England… (London, 1963), pp. 131–48. For affirmation of the general pattern of building, if not the precise chronology, which Hoskins described, see Machin, R., “The Great Rebuilding: a Reassessment,” Past and Present 77 (November 1977): 33–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Additional evidence may be found in the volumes edited by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner in the monumental “Buildings of England” series as well as in the labors and published volumes of the Historical Monuments Commission. See also Piatt, , English Medieval Town, p. 183Google Scholar; Dyer, Alan, The City of Worcester in the Sixteenth Century (Leicester, 1973), pp. 161–64Google Scholar; Parker, Vanessa, The Making of King's Lynn, Secular Buildings from the Eleventh to the Seventeenth Century (London, 1971), pp. 157–68Google Scholar; Boulton, Jeremy, Neighbourhood and Society, A London Suburb in the Seventeenth Century, (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 170–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Merson, , Third Book of Remembrance 2: 1, item 160.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., p. 110, item 283.

34 Harris, Mary Dormer, ed., The Coventry Leet Book, 2 vols. (Early English Text Society, 1907–1913), 2: 764–66.Google Scholar

35 Liskeard Borough Records, Cornwall Record Office MS. B/Liskeard/35.

36 Dyer, Alan D., The City of Worcester in the Sixteenth Century (Leicester, 1973), p. 163.Google Scholar

37 Hedon Borough Records, Humberside Record Office MS. DDHE/26, fols. 131v–132r.

38 Salisbury Ledger Book, 1571–1640, Wiltshire Record Office MS. G23/1/3, fol. 62v.

39 Cited in Palliser, D. M., “Civic Mentality and the Environment in Tudor York,” Northern History 18 (1982): 97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Maldon Borough Records, Essex Record Office MS. D/B3/1/3, fols., 263v and 264r.

41 See note 31 above.