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Portraiture, precedence and politics amongst the London liveries c. 1540–1640

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2008

ROBERT TITTLER
ROBERT TITTLER*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Concordia University, 7141 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, H4B 1R6
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Abstract

Portraiture has accurately been identified as one of the many harmony-inducing, commemorative devices employed in the celebratory culture of the London liveries in the century after the Reformation. But a closer examination of the developing tradition of livery company portraiture shows its use to be considerably more complex, and sometimes more divisive, than previously recognized.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , December 2008 , pp. 349 - 362
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

1 Archer, I., ‘On the arts and acts of memorialization in early modern London’, in Merritt, J.F. (ed.), Imagining Early Modern London, Perceptions & Portrayals of the City from Stow to Strype, 1598–1720 (Cambridge, 2001), 89–116.Google Scholar

2 Landmark contributions to this consensus include Phythian-Adams, C., ‘Ceremony and the citizen: the communal year at Coventry, 1540–1550’, in Clark, P. and Slack, P. (eds.), Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500–1700 (London, 1972), 57–85Google Scholar; James, M., ‘Ritual, drama and social body in the late medieval English town’, Past and Present, 98 (Feb. 1983), 3–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; M. Berlin, ‘Civic ceremony in early modern London’, Urban History Yearbook (1986), 17–25; McRee, B., ‘Religious gilds and the regulation of behaviour in late medieval towns’, in Rosenthal, J.T. and Richmond, C. (eds.), People, Politics and Community (Gloucester, 1987), 108–22Google Scholar; Brigden, S., ‘Religion and social obligation in early sixteenth-century London’, Past and Present, 103 (May, 1984), 67–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cressy, D., Bonfires and Bells, National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989)Google Scholar; Archer, I., The Pursuit of Stability, Social Relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge, 1991), especially 116–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Tittler, R., The Reformation and the Towns in England, Politics and Political Culture, c. 1540–1640 (Oxford, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially Part IV.

3 Stone, L., The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965), 712Google Scholar.

4 Tittler, R., The Face of the City. Civic Portraiture and Civic Identity in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2007), especially 3–5, 11, 14–15Google Scholar.

5 On the crisis of the 1590s, see Bindoff, S.T., Tudor England (Harmondsworth, 1950), ch. 9Google Scholar; Guy, J. (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Introduction and ch. 9; Clark, P. (ed.), The European Crisis of the 1590s, Essays in Comparative History (London, 1995)Google Scholar.

6 The phrase, and the context for it, is Clark and Slack's in Crisis and Order, 22.

7 The fullest and most nuanced discussion of this remains Archer, Pursuit of Stability, passim and especially 32–9.

8 Tittler, The Face of the City, Appendix B, ‘The cost of civic portraits’, 187.

9 Bindoff, Tudor England, ch. 9; Tittler, The Face of the City, 54–7.

10 The phrase is Pierre Nora's, in ‘Between memory and history: Les lieux de mémoire’, Representations, 26 (Spring 1989), 7–25.

11 Wardens' Accounts, Grocers' Company, Guildhall Library MSS 11571/6, fol. 205v, 11571/10, fol. 44, 11571/8, fol. 706r; 11671/10, fols. 410v and 458r, and 498v; 11571/12, fol. 459r.

12 SirPrideaux, W.S., Memorials of the Goldsmiths' Company, 2 vols. (London, 1896), vol. I, 129Google Scholar.

13 Johnson, A.H., The History of the Worshipful Company of Drapers of London, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1914–22), vol. III, 77 n. 2Google Scholar.

14 Merchant Taylors' Company Masters' and Wardens' Account Book no. 9, Guildhall Library MS 34048/9, unpaginated accounts for 1606–07, and Tittler, ‘Three portraits by John de Critz for the Merchant Taylors' Company’, Burlington Magazine, 147 (July 2005), 491–4.

15 Guildhall Library MS 7147/1, p. 98, and Welch, C., History of the Cutlers' Company of London and of the Minor Cutlery Crafts, 2 vols. (London, 1916–23), vol. II, 125Google Scholar.

16 Tittler, The Face of the City, 113–37.

17 Merchant Taylors' Company, Masters' and Wardens' Account Book, no. 9, Guildhall Library MS 343048/9, microfilm no. 915; accounts for 1606–07.

18 Grocers' Company, Wardens' Accounts, Guildhall Library MS 11571/10, annual inventory of 1611–12, fol. 44v.

19 Prideaux, Memorials of the Goldsmiths' Company, vol. I, 129; inventory of the company hall, 1639, Guildhall MS 4329A, fol. A (this page, paginated by letters and not numbers, has been written upside down and it begins at the back of the volume moving towards the front); Colvin, H. et al. , A History of the King's Works, 6 vols. (London, 1963–82), vol. III, 101 and 133Google Scholar.

20 Alford, B.W.F. and Barker, T.C., A History of the Carpenters' Company (London, 1968), 225Google Scholar; Carpenters' Company Memorandum Book, Inventory of 1639, Guildhall Library MS 4329A, fol. A.

21 A widely shared perception, but perhaps most succinctly and successfully articulated in Thomas, K., ‘Art and iconoclasm in early modern England’, in Fincham, K. and Lake, P. (eds.), Religious Politics in Post-Reformation England: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Tyacke (Woodbridge, 2006), 22–6Google Scholar.

22 The Company paid five pounds for the portrait of White, and another five pounds together for ‘making the princes picture all anewe in the kings chamber and for Mr Dow his picture in a faier frame’. Both were substantial sums for panel paintings at that time. Merchant Taylors' Company, Masters' and Wardens' Accounts, Book no. 9, Guildhall MS 34048/9, unpaginated accounts for 1606/07; Tittler, The Face of the City, Appendix B, ‘The cost of civic portraits, 1500–1640’, 187–8.

23 Tittler, R., ‘Three portraits by John de Critz for the Merchant Taylors' Company’, Burlington Magazine, 142 (July 2005), 492Google Scholar.

24 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vide Lee, Sir Henry.

25 R. Ormerod and M. Rogers (eds.), Dictionary of British Portraiture, 4 vols. (London, 1979–81), vide Middleton, dating this portrait to 1628; Prideaux, Memorials of the Goldsmiths' Company, vol. I, 136 and 159, dating this to 1631.

26 Fry, F.M. (ed.), A Historical Catalogue of the Pictures, Herse-Cloths and Tapestry at Merchant Taylors' Hall (London, 1907), 89–91 and plate 36Google Scholar; Court Records, Merchant Taylors' Company, Guildhall Library MS 34010/9, fol. 91v.

27 Nicholl, J., Some Account of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers (London, 1851), 473Google Scholar.

28 Ironmongers' Company, Freemen's Registers and Inventories, Guildhall Library MS 16988/5, 7; Nicholl, Some Account, 473; Anon., A Glance at the Pictures in the Hall of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers (1847), unpaginated.

29 Ironmongers Company, Freemens' Registers and Inventories, Guildhall Library MS 16,988/5, 7 (6 Aug. 1635).

30 Alford and Barker, History of the Carpenters' Company, 225–7.

31 Grocers' Company, Wardens' Accounts, 1566–67, Guildhall Library MS 11,571/6, fol. 44v and (for 1611–12), 11,571/10, fols. 42v–44v. See also references to repairing a banner of the former London lord mayor and Goldsmith Sir Martin Bowes by that Company in 1577 and 1606, and the extensive expenditure for banners and streamers by the Saddlers' Company to celebrate the accession of James I in 1603. Prideaux, Goldsmiths' Company, vol. I, 82 and 107, and Saddlers' Company, Wardens' Accounts, Guildhall Library MS 5384, fol. 59r.

32 Cited in Fry, Catalogue of Pictures, 67–9, from Court Minutes of the Merchant Taylors' Company, now available as Guildhall Library microfilm, 328/7, fols. 244–6.

33 Harkness, D.E., The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (London and New Haven, CT, 2007), 32–3Google Scholar, citing Guildhall MS 9171/20ff, fols. 251–3. I am grateful to Deborah Harkness for bringing this to my attention.

34 See Archer, Pursuit of Stability, 108–9.

35 A fuller discussion of these definitions may be found in Tittler, The Face of the City, 93 n. 70.

36 Young, S., Annals of the Barber Surgeons of London (London, 1890), 508Google Scholar.

37 It is unclear whether De Critz ever completed this commission. Young, Annals of the Barber Surgeons, 508.

38 Ibid., 509.

39 Ibid., 509–10.

40 Englefield, W.A.D., The History of the Painter-Stainers Company of London (London, 1923)Google Scholar, Addenda, vii.