Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T00:56:37.696Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The social context of the parish church in early modern Westminster

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

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

Extract

In 1613 the learned divine Dr Andrew Willet remarked on the number of London churches that had recently been rebuilt, commenting that ‘generally all of them have beene more Beautified and adorned in the space of twenty or thirty yeeres than in an hundred yeeres before’. It is somewhat surprising, then, that the subject of church building in Jacobean London has attracted little attention. Yet the detailed examination of such building provides special insight into the way parishioners viewed themselves and their community.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History Yearbook , Volume 18 , May 1991 , pp. 20 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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

Notes

1 I would like to thank Vanessa Harding, Lynn Hulse and Anthony Milton for their comments on an earlier version of this article.Google Scholar Willet, Andrew, Synopsis Papismi (1634 edition), 1224. Churches singled out include St Martin-in-the-Fields, St Clement Danes, St Anne Blackfriars, St Olave, Silver Street and St Mary Mounthaw.Google Scholar

2 Finlay, Roger, Population and Metropolis: The Demography of London 1580–1650 (1981);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Finlay, Roger and Shearer, Beatrice, ‘Population growth and suburban expansion’, in London 1500–1700: The Making of the Metropolis, ed. Beier, A.L. and Finlay, R. (1986);Google Scholar Power, M.J., ‘The east and west in early modern London’, in Wealth and Power in Tudor England, ed. Ives, E.W., Knecht, R.J. and Scarisbrick, J.J. (1978)Google Scholar

3 Slack, Paul, ‘Metropolitan government in crisis: the response to plague’, in Beier and Finlay, London 1500–1700, 62–3.Google Scholar

4 Stone, Lawrence, The Crisis of the Aristocracy (1965), 384–98;Google Scholar Smuts, Malcolm, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in England (1987), 53–8, 64–7.Google Scholar

5 See Merritt, J.F., ‘Religion, government and society in early modern Westminster, c. 1525–1625’ (unpublished University of London Ph.D. thesis, 1991).Google Scholar

6 PRO, STAC8/101/19.Google Scholar

7 Westminster Public Library (WPL), F2, vol.I, f. 88.Google Scholar

8 WPL, F2, vol.I, f. 114;Google Scholar Colvin, H.M. (ed.), The History of the King's Works (1982), vol. IV, pt. 2, 324. For more on the role of King's Works employees as builders and local office-holders see Merritt, ‘Religion, government and society’, chapters 4 and 5.Google Scholar

9 WPL, F2, vol. I, f. 114.Google Scholar

10 WPL, F2, vol. I, ff. 92, 115.Google Scholar

11 PRO, STAC8/101/19;Google Scholar Hasler, P. (ed.), The House of Commons 1558–1600 (1981), s.n. George Coppyn. For more on Coppin and Dobbinson see Merritt, ‘Religion, government and society’, chapter 4.Google Scholar

12 PRO, STAC8/101/19; for Oldisworth see Hasler, House of Commons, s.n. Arnold Oldisworth; for Spilman seeGoogle Scholar Patho, C. (ed.), ‘The household papers of Henry Percy, Ninth Earl of Northumberland’, Camden Society, 3rd series, vol. 103 (1962), 73, 74, 168;Google Scholar HMC Hatfield, pt. 15, 174–5, 388; pt. 21, 327, 366; pt. 24, 28.Google Scholar

13 PRO, STAC8/101/19.Google Scholar

14 PRO, STAC8/101/19.Google Scholar

15 For example, WPL, WCB 1, ff. 39, 44, 65.Google Scholar

16 Cf. Boulton, J., Neighbourhood and Society: A London Suburb in the Seventeenth Century (1987), 107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 WPL, F2001, ff.47A, 51A; F2, vol. I, ff. 102–4; Westminster Abbey Muniments (WAM) 57269.Google Scholar

18 PRO, STAC8/101/19.Google Scholar

19 PRO, STAC8/101/19..Google Scholar

20 PRO, STAC8/101/19..Google Scholar

21 WPL, F2001, ff. 85A, 100v.Google Scholar

22 PRO, STAC8/101/19.Google Scholar

23 PRO, STAC8/101/19, italics mine.Google Scholar

24 PRO, STAC8/101/19.Google Scholar

25 WPL, F3, ff. 13, 23; Dobbinson died in 1622 and Coppin in 1620,Google Scholar Kitto, J.V. (ed.), The Register of St Martin-in-the-Fields, 1619–1636 (1936), 173, 157.Google Scholar

26 Finlay and Shearer, ‘Population growth and suburban expansion’, 45, 49, 52–3. Parish officials estimated that the population of St Martin's tripled between 1603 and 1625, a figure borne out by calculations based on the parish registers, CSPD 1625. 1626, 525 (vol. XLVI).Google Scholar

27 WAM 57269; for example, WPL, F224.Google Scholar

28 Boulton, Jeremy, ‘The limits of formal religion: the administration of holy communion in late Elizabethan and early Stuart London’, London Journal, 10 (1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 PRO, STAC8/101/19; WAM 57269.Google Scholar

30 WPL, F2, vol.I, f. 28.Google Scholar

31 WPL, F2, vol. I, ff. 40–1.Google Scholar

32 WPL, F2001, f. 136A.Google Scholar

33 WPL, F2, vol. I, f. 61.Google Scholar

34 WPL, F2001, f. 56. For the connection between social status and place of burial, seeGoogle Scholar Harding, Vanessa ‘“And one more may be laid there”: the location of burials in early modern London’, London Journal, 14, no. 2, (1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 WPL, F2, vol. I, f. 131; WPL, F2, vol. II, f. 234; F2001, ff. 132A, 126.Google Scholar

36 WPL, E2, vol. I, f. 179.Google Scholar

37 WPL, F2001, ff.117A, 151, 155A. Presumably the Earl received satisfaction. As of April 1622, however, the parish was still attempting to recover a £14 annuity from the Earl which had been bequeathed to the parish by his father,Google Scholar Robert, 1st Earl of Salisbury, WPL, F2001, f. 156.Google Scholar

38 WPL, F2001, f. 107.Google Scholar

39 Summerson, John (ed.), ‘The book of John Thorpe’, Walpole Society, XL (1966), 10.Google Scholar

40 WPL, F2001, f. 107.Google Scholar

41 Rosser, Gervase, Medieval Westminster 1200–1540 (1989), 263–71.Google Scholar

42 WPL, Churchwardens' Accounts (CWA), St M.W., 1571–72, n.f.Google Scholar

43 WPL, E2413, pt. 2, ff. 1–2v.Google Scholar

44 WPL, E2413, pt. 2, f.2.Google Scholar

45 WPL, E2413, pt. 2.Google Scholar

46 Archer, Ian, ‘Governors and governed in late sixteenth-century London, c. 1560–1603: studies in the achievement of stability’ (unpublished Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1988), 237.Google Scholar

47 WPL, CWA, St M.W., 1595–96, f. 18.Google Scholar

48 WPL, E2413, pt. 2, f.lv.Google Scholar

49 Merritt, , ‘Religion, government and society’, chapter 3.Google Scholar

50 WPL, E2413, pt. 2, f. 10v. Plague rates are among those specifically mentioned.Google Scholar

51 HMC Hatfield, pt. 9, 14–15; pt. 15, 189–90;Google Scholar Smith, A. Hassell, ‘Militia rates and militia statutes 1558–1603’, in The English Commonwealth 1547–1640, ed. P. Clark, A.G.R. Smith and N. Tyacke (1979), 99, 102–5. Comparing the scale of poverty in the two parishes is difficult. Population density and attendant poverty would seem to have been greater in St Margaret's, see Merritt, ‘Religion, government and society’, chapter 6.Google Scholar

52 Merritt, ‘Religion, government and society’, chapter 4; Rosser, Medieval Westminster, 133–43, 234–5, 363.Google Scholar

53 Merritt, ‘Religion, government and society’, chapter 3. This Act envisaged that ‘merchauntes, Artificers, or Persons usinge anye Trade of buyinge or selling’ would serve as burgesses - not gentlemen, 27 Eliz. c. 31. Exchequer officials from gentry families had occasionally served in St Margaret's parochial government since medieval times, but their royal employment meant they were full time residents with many local ties.Google Scholar

54 WPL, E2413, pt. 1, ff.7–8; CWA, St M.W., 1596–97, f. 10; Peculiar Court of Westminster, 482 Elsam.Google Scholar