Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T11:23:44.476Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Even discussions of modern times deal little with landlords and tenants. For the rare yet highly important practical theorizing about them, partly in an historical context (Edinburgh, 1875–1975), see McCrone, D. and Elliott, B., Property and Power in a City: The Sociological Significance of Landlordism (Basingstoke, 1989), esp. 1–21 and 32–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Allen, J. and McDowell, L., Landlords and Property: Social Relations in the Private Rented Sector (Cambridge, 1989), 45–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Baer, W.C., ‘Stuart London's standard of living: re-examining the Settlement of Tithes 1638 for rents, income, and poverty’, Economic History Review, 6 (2010), 612–37Google Scholar; Blackmar, Elizabeth, Manhattan for Rent, 1785–1850 (Ithaca, NY, 1989), 2Google Scholar.

3 Allen and McDowell, Landlords and Property, 45–8; McCrone and Elliott, Property and Power in a City.

4 Meriton, G., Land-lords Law: A Treatise Very Fit for the Perusal both of Land-lord and Tenants (London, 1697)Google Scholar; Keene, D., ‘Landlords, the property market and urban development in medieval England’, in Eliassen, F.-E. and Ersland, G.A. (eds.), Power, Profit and Urban Land (Aldershot, 1996), 93–119, at 98–100Google Scholar; D. Keene, ‘A new study of London before the great fire’, Urban History Yearbook (1984), 11–21, at 17; Jones, P.E. (ed.), The Fire Court: Calendar to the Judgments and Decrees of the Court of Judicature Appointed to Determine Differences between Landlords and Tenants as to Rebuilding after the Great Fire, 2 vols. (London, 1966–70), vol. I, v–viGoogle Scholar. See also Harding, V., ‘Space, property, and propriety in urban England’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 32 (2002), 549–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 [By the Privy Council, for Regulation of the City of Westminster] Wyllyam Cecill, Knight, High Stewarde of the Citie . . . 12 March, 156[4], Short Title Catalogue (STC) 16704.9; Acts of the Privy Council, 1598, 435–6; A Decree of Starre-Chamber Concerning Inmates and Divided Tenements in London or Three miles about (14 Feb. 1637), STC 7756.

6 Hughes, P.L. and Larkin, J.F. (eds.), Tudor Royal Proclamations, 3 vols. (New Haven, 1964–69)Google Scholar; Larkin, J.F. and Hughes, P.L. (eds.), Stuart Royal Proclamations, vol. I (Oxford, 1973)Google Scholar; Larkin, J.F. (ed.), Stuart Royal Proclamations, vol. II (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar.

7 Baer, W.C., ‘The institution of residential investment in seventeenth-century London’, Business History Review, 76 (2000), 515–51, at 535–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hayton, D.J., Registered Land (London, 1973), 8–10Google Scholar; Sheppard, F., Belcher, V. and Cottrell, P., ‘The Middlesex and Yorkshire deed registries and the study of building fluctuations’, London Journal, 5 (1974), 176–217, at 176CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also McCrone and Elliott, Property and Power in a City, 45.

8 See McCrone and Elliott, Property and Power in a City, for an exception.

9 For invoking law courts, see Leybourn, W., The City and Country Purchaser and Builder in Two Books, by S. P. Gent., the Second Edition Much Enlarged (London, 1680), 10–11Google Scholar. See also, Meriton, Land-lords Law, and Brooks, C., ‘Professions, ideology and the middling sort in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century’, in Barry, J. and Brooks, C. (eds.), The Middling Sort of People (New York, 1994), 113–40, at 131CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Wrigley, E.A., ’A simple model of London's importance in changing English society and economy 1650–1750’, in Abrams, P. and Wrigley, E.A. (eds.), Towns in Societies: Essays in Economic History and Historical Sociology (Cambridge, 1978), 215–43, at 215–18Google Scholar.

11 City Mercury (‘Published [Gratis] Every Monday for the Promoting of Trade’), 13 Mar. 1693. Other advertisements pertained to a large piece of enclosed ground near the church in upper Shadwell with sheds and ‘very fit for a carpenters yard’; and at Bromley near Bow a new large brick house with garden, stable and coach house was to be let (no rent amount suggested in either case).

12 Jones (ed.), Fire Court, vol. I, v.

13 Keene, D., ‘The property market in English towns A. D. 1100–1600’, in Vigueur, J.-C. M. (ed.), D'une ville à l'autre: structures matérielles et organization de l'éspace dans les villes européenes (XIIIe–XVIe siècle) (Rome, 1989), 201–26Google Scholar; Smith, A., An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (New York, 1937)Google Scholar, Chapter X, Part I, 117–18. For an early version of such tables, see Clay, T., Briefe, Easie, and Necessary Tables for the Valuation of Leases, Annuties and Purchases, either in Present or Reversion . . . [London] 1622, STC 2nd edn 5372Google Scholar.

14 Jones, P.E. and Judges, A.V., ‘London population in the late seventeenth century’, Economic History Review, 6 (1935), 45–63, at 53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baer, W.C., ‘Housing for the lesser sort in Stuart London: findings from certificates and returns of divided houses’, London Journal, 33, 1 (2008), 61–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spence, C., London in the 1690s: A Social Atlas (London, 2000), 92–4, 101–2Google Scholar; [By the Privy Council, for regulation of the City of Westminster]; Hughes and Larkin (eds.), Tudor Royal Proclamations; Larkin and Hughes (eds.), Stuart Royal Proclamations, vol. I; Larkin (ed.), Stuart Royal Proclamations, vol. II.

15 Keene, D., ‘Growth, modernization and control: the transformation of London's landscape, c. 1500–1760’, in Clark, P. and Gillespie, R. (eds.), Two Capitals: London and Dublin 1500–1840 (Oxford, 2001), 7–37Google Scholar; Cannadine, D., Lords and Landlords: The Aristocracy and the Towns 1774–1967 (Leicester, 1980), 391–401Google Scholar.

16 Baer, ‘Institution of residential estate development’, 547; Earle, P., The Making of the English Middle Class (Berkeley, 1989), 148, 153–7Google Scholar.

17 Baer, ‘Stuart London's standard of living’; Keene, ‘Landlords’, 93–119; Baer, ‘Institution of residential investment’, 519–20; Keene, ‘The property market’, 201–26; Reddaway, T.F., Rebuilding of London after the Great Fire (London, 1951), 74–6Google Scholar; and Keene, D., Survey of Medieval Winchester (Oxford, 1985), 230Google Scholar; Keene, ‘Landlords’, 107 Figure 6.3.

18 Baer, ‘Stuart London's standard of living’; Baer, ‘Institution of residential investment’, 541–3; Boulton, J., Neighbourhood and Society (Cambridge, 1987), 85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Phillipes, H., The Purchasers Pattern (London, 1654), 10–12Google Scholar.

19 Earle, Making of the English Middle Class, 120–3.

20 Baer, W.C., ‘Housing the poor and mechanick class in seventeenth-century London’, London Journal, 25 (2000), 13–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Phillipes, H., The Purchasers Pattern, 3rd edn (London, 1656), 20Google Scholar.

21 Landlords prefer timely cash flows, it becoming clear sooner, with less money at stake, when a tenant is in arrears. For later periods, see McCrone and Elliott, Property and Power in a City, 25–32, but the circumstances and principles must have been the same in early modern times. Of some 479 cases before the Fire Court after London's great fire, while 32% had lease durations of 21 years, about 50% were for a longer period. Baer, ‘Institution of residential investment’, 538.

22 J. Barry, ‘Introduction’, in Barry and Brooks (eds.), The Middling Sort of People, 1–27, at 9.

23 Schlatter, R., Private Property: The History of an Idea (New York, 1973), 124–50Google Scholar; and McCrone and Elliot, Property and Power in a City, 1–25, 35–41, 160–88. See also McIlwain, C.H., The Growth of Political Thought in the West (New York, 1932)Google Scholar.

24 [By the Privy Council, for Regulation of the City of Westminster].

25 Acts of Privy Council, 1586–87, 310, 356; Merchant Taylors in Rappaport, S., Worlds within Worlds: Structures of Life in Sixteenth-Century London (Cambridge, 1989), 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Howes’ second, J. ‘Famyliar and frendly discourse dialogue wyse’, 1587, in Tawney, R.H. and Power, E. (eds.), Tudor Economic Documents, 3 vols. (London, 1924), vol. I, 421–43, at 427Google Scholar.

27 Howes’ second ‘Famyliar and frendly discourse’, 427–8.

28 Ibid., 427.

29 A. Cowper-Coles, ‘“A placed much clogged and pestered with carts”: Hartshorne Lane and Angel Court, c. 1614 – c. 1720’, London Topographical Record, 149 (1995), 152.

30 Grassby, R., The English Gentleman in Trade (Oxford, 1994), 90–3Google Scholar; Jones, D.W., ‘London merchants and the crisis of the late 1690s’, in Clark, P. and Slack, P. (eds.), Crisis and Order in English Towns 1500–1700 (London, 1972), 311–55, at 336–7Google Scholar; Earle, Making of the English Middle Class, 152–3, and Appendix B, 405–8; Keene, ‘Landlords’, 104–5; Phillipes, The Purchasers Pattern, 3rd edn, 42–3; Primatt, S., The City and Country Purchaser & Builder (London, 1669), 34Google Scholar. See also Stone, L., Family and Fortune (Oxford, 1973), 92–114Google Scholar, and Stone, L., The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965), 357–63Google Scholar.

31 Boulton, Neighbourhood and Society, 202; Spence, London in the 1690s, 103–6.

32 Keene, ‘Landlords’, 97–9, 109.

33 T.C. Dale (ed.), ‘Returns of divided houses in City of London 1637’ (1 Jun. 1937), typescript (microfilm, the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints, Dec. 1965), 191–203, 204–14, 215–23.

34 Earle, Making of the English Middle Class, 405–8 Appendix B.

35 Monteage, S., Debtor and Creditor Made Easy: Or a Short Instruction for the Attaining the Right Use of Accompts, after the Best Method Used by Merchants. The Fourth Edition, Corrected and Amended to which is Added Instructions of Rent-Gatherers Accompts (London, 1708)Google Scholar; Earle, Making of the English Middle Class, 48–9.

36 Baer, ‘Institution of residential investment’.

37 Allen and McDowell, Landlords and Property, 49–58.

38 Porter, S., The Great Fire of London (Stroud, 1996), 70Google Scholar; my analysis of cases in Jones, Fire Court, both volumes.

39 Jones, Fire Court, vol. II, iii.

40 D. Keene and P. Earle, Metropolitan London in the 1690s: Four Shillings in the Pound Aid 1693/4 for the City of London, the City of Westminster and Metropolitan Middlesex, dataset ESRC (grant no. R000232527), Centre for Metropolitan History, London 1991–92; and Spence, London in the 1690s; D. Keene, ‘A guide to the dataset four shillings in the pound aid 1693/4 for the city of London, the city of Westminster, and metropolitan Middlesex’, in Keene and Earle, Metropolitan London in the 1690s, 5, 6 and 7.

41 Power, M.J., ‘East and west in early-modern London’, in Ives, E.E., Knecht, R.J., and Scarisbrick, J.J. (eds.), Wealth and Power in Tudor England (London, 1978), 167–85Google Scholar; Merritt, J.F., The Social World of Early Modern Westminster: Abbey, Court and Community, 1525–1640 (Manchester, 2005)Google Scholar; Spence, London in the 1690s, see, e.g., 46, 50, 55–6, 69, 71, 123, 160–1; Smuts, R. Malcolm, ‘The court and its neighborhood: royal policy and urban growth in the early Stuart West End’, Journal of British Studies, 30 (1991), 117–49, at 117–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Spence, London in the 1690s, 68 Table 4.2, and 69 Figure 4.3.

43 Keene and Earle, Metropolitan London in the 1690s (computer file). Some data ambiguity required interpretation and judgment. I am solely responsible for any errors.

44 State Papers (SP) (Charles I) 16/305/87, 16/345/92, 16/355/348, 16/370/80 and 16/408/139.

45 Keene, ‘Property market in English towns’, 212, 220, 223; Pooley, C.G., ‘Patterns on the ground: urban form, residential structure and the social construction of space’, in Daunton, M. J. (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. III (Cambridge, 2000), 429–65, at 444–5Google Scholar.

46 Spence, London in the 1690s, 103–6.

47 Baer, ‘Institution of residential investment’. But see McCrone and Elliott, Property and Power in a City, 126–59, for a more nuanced view in modern times, some of which may have applied in the seventeenth century.

48 Spence, London in the 1690s, 104 Table 4.11; Erickson, A.L., Women and Property in Early Modern England (London, 1993)Google Scholar; SP 16/408/139 (late 1638).

49 Power, ‘East and west in early-modern London’, 181 Table 3, showed 4.9% vacancy in the east end, 1.6% in the West End, and 1.2% in St Margaret Westminster in 1664.

50 Spence, London in the 1690s, 63 Figure 4.1, 57–60, esp. 59 Figure 3.9.

51 Keene and Earle, Metropolitan London in the 1690s (computer file), 8.

52 Keene, ‘A guide to the dataset’, 5; Jones, ‘London merchants and the crisis of the late 1690s’, 336. See Keene, ‘Landlords’, 103–5.

53 Spence, London in the 1690s, 65 Table 4.1; Harding, V., ‘Population of London 1550–1700: review of the published evidence’, London Journal, 15 (1990), 111–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 112 Table 1, Col. 7.

54 Rodger, R., Housing in Urban Britain 1780–1914 (Cambridge, 1995), 10Google Scholar; Pooley, ‘Patterns on the ground’, 444–5; Davidoff, L. and Hall, C., Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (Chicago, 1987), 357Google Scholar.

55 Rutledge, E., ‘Landlords and tenants: housing and the rented property market in early fourteenth-century Norwich’, Urban History, 22 (1995), 7–24, at 7, 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Boulton, Neighbourhood and Society, 86–7; Spence, London in the 1690s, 103.

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.