¹ It is first explored in the works of Maurice Halbwachs (1877–1945); especially Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris, 1952; 1st pub. 1925)Google Scholar, and La mémoires collective (Paris, 1950)Google Scholar trans, as On Collective Memory (ed. Douglas, M., 1950)Google Scholar; The Collective Memory, ed. and trans. Ditter, F.J. and Ditter, V.Y. (New York, 1980)Google Scholar and most recently by Coser, L.A. (Chicago, 1992).Google Scholar

² From Halbwachs, , La topographie legendaire des évangiles (Paris, 1971)Google Scholar as translated and cited by Schwartz, B., ‘The social context of commemoration, a study in collective memory’, Social Forces, 61, 2 (1982), 375.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁸ Barry, J., ‘Provincial town culture, 1640–1780: urbane or civic?’, in Pittock, J.H. and Wear, A. (eds), Interpretation and Cultural History (New York, 1991), 198–234CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The views of those who have emphasized cultural appropriation are summarized on pp. 205–9.

⁹ Manley, , Literature and Culture in Early Modern London, 15and passim.Google Scholar

¹⁰ This has been termed ‘counter-memory’ by Michel Foucault, and is discussed in Davis, N.Z. and Starn, R. (eds), Memory and Counter-Memory, a special issue of the journal Representations, 26 (Spring 1989), 2–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ Duffy, E., The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (London and New Haven, 1992), 327Google Scholar. The following three paragraphs derive from ibid., 327–37, with quoted passages noted as appropriate.

¹² Ibid., 334.

¹³ Ibid., 161–3 and 335.

¹⁴ See particularly Phythian-Adams, C., ‘Ceremony and the citizen’, esp. 80.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Nora, P., Les lieux de mémoire, 7 vols (Paris, 1984–1996)Google Scholar. For a short summary of Nora's use of the term, see his essay ‘Between memory and history’, Representations, 26 (Spring 1989), 7–25.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Maidstone Borough Archives, Kent County Archives, MS. FA FAc/9 Bundle 2. It is possible that the word ‘ancient’ refers to a banner, but syntax and the lack of other contemporary evidence for provincial town banners make this an unlikely interpretation.

¹⁷ For the use of artefacts and other material objects as mnemonic devices, see esp. Radley, A., ‘Artifact, memory and a sense of the past’, in Middleton, D. and Edwards, D. (eds), Collective Memory (London and New York, 1990), 46–59.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Jewitt, L. and Hope, W.H. St John, The Corporate Plate and Insignia of Office of the Cities and Towns of England and Wales, 2 vols (London, 1895), I, Ixiii–Ixxxix.Google Scholar

¹⁹ This and the following paragraph is largely based on ibid., xviii–xl.

²⁰ Deposition of Walter Hamon, Serjeant to the Mayor, in the case of Countess and Earl of Pembroke v. Inhabitants of Shaftesbury, PRO, E.134/18, James I, East. I.

²¹ Davies, C.S. (ed.), A History of Macclesfield (Manchester, 1961), frontispiece.Google Scholar

²² Rosen, A., ‘Economic and social aspects of the City of Winchester, 1520–1670’ (University of Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1975), 229Google Scholar; BL Harleian MS 1944, fol. 92r. See also Mayor and Bailiffs of Carmarthan v. Devereux et al., PRO, STAC 2/Bundle 17/271, esp. the plaintiff's bill.

²³ Anderson, J.J. (ed.), Records of Early English Drama (REED), Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Toronto and Manchester, 1982), 10Google Scholar; Johnston, A. and Rogerson, M. (eds), REED, York (Toronto, 1979), 155, 194–8, 554, 583, 586, 588–9, 599Google Scholar; Galloway, D. (ed.), REED, Norwich (Toronto and London, 1984), 252Google Scholar. The infinitely grander and more complex ceremony surrounding a royal entry into London is recounted in Smuts, R.M., ‘Public ceremony and royal charisma, the English royal entry into London, 1485–1642’, in Beier, A.L., Cannadine, D. and Rosenheim, J. (eds), The First Modern Society: Essays in History in Honour of Lawrence Stone (Cambridge, 1989), 65–93Google Scholar, and Manley, , Literature and Culture in Early Modern London, ch. 5.Google Scholar

²⁴ BL, Add. MS 8937, fol. la.

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³⁰ The following draws upon my essay entitled ‘Civic portraiture and political culture in English provincial towns, c. 1560–1640’, under editorial consideration, and on the census of English civic portraits from provincial towns to the year 1640 identified as Appendix I in that study. Though most civic portraits have not been reproduced in published form, samples of some of the most polished of the genre may be seen (re: Norwich portraits) in Moore, A. (ed.), Family and Friends, a Regional Survey of British Portraiture (London, 1992), plates 1–22Google Scholar, and one of the cruder and more typical in Frith, Brian, Twelve Portraits of Gloucester Benefactors (Gloucester, 1972), cover illus.Google Scholar

³¹ Robert Jannys, John Marsham, and Augustine Steward, all mayors and leading citizens of Norwich, died in 1530, 1532 and 1570 respectively. Yet all were painted (perhaps from earlier drawings) in the early seventeenth century. Bury St Edmunds did not acquire a portrait of its late fifteenth-century benefactor Jankyn Smith until 1616. Nicholas Thorne, Mayor of Bristol in 1545, was first painted in 1624. The double portrait of John and Joan Cooke, Mayor and Mayoress of Gloucester of c. 1600, came as much as sixty years after their deaths.

³² See, the portrait of Giles Tooker of Salisbury, clutching the charter he did so much to obtain for the borough, reprinted in Haskins, C., Salisbury Corporation Pictures and Plate, 2 (Salisbury, 1910; 1st pub. 1888), 9–12.Google Scholar

³³ Lowenthal, , The Past is a Foreign Country, xxiii.Google Scholar

³⁴ On this trend generally, and on the role of lawyers themselves in sustaining it, see esp. Brooks, C.W., Pettifoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth: The ‘Lower Branch’ of the Legal Profession in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986), chs 3–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁵ See esp. Dyer, A., ‘English town chronicles’, Local Historian, XII (1976–1977), 285–95Google Scholar, and Clark, P., ‘Visions of the community, antiquarians and the English city before 1800’, in Fraser, D. and Sutcliffe, A. (eds), The Pursuit of Urban History (London, 1983) esp. 105–13Google Scholar. On the question of who read such chronicles, see esp. Patterson, , Reading Holinshed's Chronicles, ch. 1.Google Scholar

³⁶ Some of the best of these include Lambarde, William, Perambulation of Kent (2nd ed., 1596, STC no. 15176)Google Scholar; Erdeswicke, Sampson, Survey of Staffordshire (c. 1593; London, 1723)Google Scholar; Carew, Richard, Survey of Cornwall (1602; ed. F.E. Halliday, 1953)Google Scholar; Risdon, Tristram, The Chorographicall Description … of Devon (c. 1635; London, 1910)Google Scholar; and Gerard, Thomas, The Particular Description of … Somerset (c. 1632; ed. Bates, E.H., Somerset Record Society, 15, 1900)Google Scholar; and of course the most famous and perhaps best of them all, Stow's, JohnSurvey of London (1598 and 1603)Google Scholar, of which the best modern edition is by Kingsford, C.L. (1908).Google Scholar

³⁷ The neglect of unpublished town histories of this and subsequent periods is common amongst nearly all who have written of the genre. Notable exceptions include Barry, ‘Provincial town culture’ for the subsequent period, and Daniel Woolf, whose work in progress, The Origins of English Historical Thought, promises to be the definitive treatment.

³⁸ Vowell, Johnalias Hooker, The Cittie of Excester … (c. 1575ff., 3 vols, Devon and Cornwall Record Society, 1919–1947)Google Scholar; Manship, Henry, The History of Great Yarmouth (c. 1612–1619, ed. Palmer, Charles John, Great Yarmouth, 1854)Google Scholar; Rogers, David, ‘The breviary of Chester history’, partly transcribed in Clopper, L. (ed.), REED, Chester (Toronto, 1979), 232–54.Google Scholar

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⁴⁰ Barry, , ‘Provincial town culture’Google Scholar. See also Sweet, R., ‘The production of urban histories in eighteenth-century England’, Urban History, 23, 2 (1996), 171–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar and idem, The Writing of Urban Histories in Eighteenth Century England (Oxford, 1997).Google Scholar

⁴¹ Mills, A.D., ‘Chester ceremonial, re-creation and recreation in the English medieval Town’, Urban History Yearbook, 18 (1991), 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacCaffrey, W.T., Exeter, 1540–1640 (Cambridge, Mass., 1975; 1st pub. 1958), 272–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hasler, P.W. (ed.), The House of Commons, 1558–1603, 3 vols (London, 1981), II, 333–5Google Scholar; Martin, G.H., ‘The origin of borough records’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, 2 (1960–1964), 152.Google Scholar

⁴² The point is made especially well in Patterson, Reading Holinshed's Chronicles, ch. 12.

⁴³ Wallingford Borough Archives, Berkshire Record Office MS. W/AC1/1/1.

⁴⁴ Underdown, D., Fire From Heaven, Life in an English Country Town in the Seventeenth Century (London and New Haven, 1992), 51Google Scholar. More on Whiteway's historical writing is summarized in Patterson, , Reading Holinshed's Chronicles, 269–71Google Scholar, and see, also, William Whiteway of Dorchester, His Diary, 1618–1635 (Dorset Record Society, 12, 1991)Google Scholar. Another, still unpublished but very full effort of this type is known, from the name of its donor, as ‘Dr Taylor's History’ of Shrewsbury, written between the late 1570s and 1603 and located in the Library of Shrewsbury School. Though its earlier sections derive from printed national histories (including Stow's Annals) which were well known at the time, those sections dealing with the author's lifetime are obviously drawn from personal recollections, oral testimony and local records. My thanks to James Lawson, Librarian of Shrewsbury School, for his help with this volume.

⁴⁵ Cited in Martin, G.H., ‘The publication of borough records’, Archives, 8, 36 (1966), 200.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ The process is described in the ultimate report of the committee, chaired by Manship. A copy may be found in BL, Add. MS 23,737, ‘A copy of a catalogue of charters of Great Yarmouth…’.

⁴⁷ For a recent discussion of which, see Sweet, , ‘The production of urban histories in eighteenth-century England’, 171–88.Google Scholar

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⁵¹ Daniel Woolf's much more exhaustive study of the issue has yielded a map of the towns producing urban chronicles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to be published in his forthcoming The Origins of Modern Historical Culture. No less than thirty locations are indicated. My thanks to him for sharing this information with me.

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