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Landlords and tenants in London, 1550–1700

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2011

WILLIAM C. BAER
WILLIAM C. BAER*
Affiliation:
School of Policy, Planning, and Development, Los Angeles, California, CA 90089, USA
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Abstract:

Historians have largely ignored the tens of thousands of landlords, and hundreds of thousands of tenants in early modern London. Society was not organized to readily reveal their relation and magnitudes, so the issue must be approached from a variety of directions. Modern stereotypes of both were well formulated by that period, despite the intricacy in and frequent dual role of landlord and tenant played by the same persons. Property holdings were dispersed among a variety landlords, so tenants faced no stranglehold over dwellings, while landlords in the main used rental holdings to supplement their basic incomes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , August 2011 , pp. 234 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

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57 I am grateful to anonymous reviewers for this point.

58 Baer, ‘Stuart London's standard of living’. Once freehold gets widely distributed, even wealthy persons or institutions cannot always overcome the inevitable freeholder holdouts in assembling land. State powers of compulsory purchase are required.