1 Ormrod et al.,
Immigrant England, pp. 102–10; W. Mark Ormrod and Jonathan Mackman, ‘Resident Aliens in Later Medieval England: Sources, Contexts, Debates’, in
Resident Aliens in Later Medieval England, ed. Nicola McDonald, W. Mark Ormrod, and Craig Taylor (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 1–32; Matthew Davies, ‘Aliens, Crafts and Guilds in Late Medieval London’, in
Medieval Londoners: Essays to Mark the Eightieth Birthday of Caroline M. Barron, ed. Elizabeth A. New and Christian Steer (London: University of London Press, 2019), p. 119; W. Mark Ormrod, ‘England’s Immigrants, 1330–1550: Aliens in Later Medieval and Early Tudor England’,
Journal of British Studies 59 (2020), 245–63.
» 2 Ormrod et al.,
Immigrant England; Lien Bich Luu, ‘Alien Communities in Transition, 1570–1640’, in
Immigrants in Tudor and Early Stuart England, ed. Nigel Goose and Lien Bich Luu (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), pp. 192–210.
» 3 Ormrod and Mackman, ‘Resident Aliens’, pp. 26–27.
» 4 Davies, ‘Aliens’, pp. 125–26.
» 5 Francesco Guidi-Bruscoli and Jessica Lutkin, ‘Perception, Identity and Culture: The Italian Communities in Fifteenth-Century London and Southampton Revisited’, in
Resident Aliens in Later Medieval England, ed. Nicola McDonald, W. Mark Ormrod, and Craig Taylor (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 89–104, 96; M. E. Bratchel, ‘Regulation and Group-Consciousness in the Later History of London’s Italian Merchant Colonies’,
Journal of European Economic History 9 (1980), 585–610, 593; Charlotte Berry, ‘Guilds, Immigration, and Immigrant Economic Organization: Alien Goldsmiths in London, 1480–1540’,
Journal of British Studies 60 (2021), 534–62.
» 6 Caroline M. Barron
, London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People 1200–1500 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 204–16; Christian D. Liddy,
Contesting the City: The Politics of Citizenship in English Towns, 1250–1530 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Maarten Prak,
Citizens without Nations: Urban Citizenship in Europe and the World, c.1000–1789 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 83–115.
» 7 See LMA, COL/CC/01/01/002, Journal 2, fol. 90r (‘Concessum est quod nullus alienigenus admittatur in libertatem Ciuitatis nisi de ligencia domini Regis’); see also COL/CC/01/01/004, Journal 4, fol. 19v (3 March 1446); Ormrod, Lambert, and Mackman,
Immigrant England, p. 40; Bart Lambert, ‘Citizenry and Nationality: The Participation of Immigrants in Urban Politics in Later Medieval England’,
History Workshop Journal 90 (2020), 52–73; Miri Rubin,
Cities of Strangers: Making Lives in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 16–18, 46–49; Stephanie R. Hovland, ‘Apprenticeship in Later Medieval London (c.1300–c.1530)’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of London, 2006), pp. 63–71; Matthew P. Davies, ‘The Tailors of London and Their Guild, c.1300–1500’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Oxford, 1994), pp. 183–84. Ki’chang Kim notes that the importance of being born under the king’s dominion as the basis of subjecthood (rather than, for instance, oath-taking) was shifting in this period: Ki-ch’ang Kim,
Aliens in Medieval Law: The Origins of Modern Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), esp. pp. 4–5, 57–59, 103–25, 147–75.
» 8 Matthew Davies, ‘Citizens and “Foreyns”: Crafts, Guilds and Regulation in Late Medieval London’, in
Between Regulation and Freedom: Work and Manufactures in European Cities, 14th–18th Centuries, ed. A. Caracausi, Matthew Davies, and L. Mocarelli (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2018), pp. 1–21. Many others who lived in the City and its environs were also non-citizens, including aristocrats, gentlemen, clergy, lawyers, and crown functionaries; the status of citizen was fully identified with guild membership and so normally available only to the merchants and artisans who comprised those guilds.
» 9 On denizen status, see Ormrod et al.,
Immigrant England, pp. 24–29; Andrew Pettegree,
Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth-Century London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 15–16. For admissions, see a streak of grants of the freedom to strangers in 1473: LMA, COL/CC/01/01/008, Journal 8, folios 56r–66r. An example of denizen status as an apparent prerequisite for the grant of citizenship is the tailor John Bettes, who was granted denizen status in April 1493 and was then made free of the city through the Tailors’ guild in July 1493.
CPR 1485–94, 490; Matthew P. Davies, ed.,
The Merchant Taylors’ Company of London: Court Minutes 1486–1493 (Stamford: Richard III and Yorkist History Trust in assoc. with Paul Watkins, 2000), pp. 256–57, 261.
» 10 Davies, ‘Tailors of London’, pp. 183–84.
» 11 GL, CLC/L/SE/C/005/MS 30719/001; Hovland, ‘Apprenticeship’, pp. 63–71.
» 12 Laura Hunt Yungblut,
Strangers Settled Here amongst Us: Policies, Perceptions, and the Presence of Aliens in Elizabethan England (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 36–37.
» 13 Charles Welch, ed.,
Register of Freemen of the City of London in the Reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI (London: London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, 1908); Steve Rappaport,
Worlds Within Worlds: Structures of Life in Sixteenth-Century London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 77–81.
» 14 Pettegree,
Foreign Protestant Communities, 288–93; Yungblut,
Strangers, pp. 76, 105;
Lien Bich Luu, ‘Natural-Born versus Stranger-Born Subjects: Aliens and Their Status in Elizabethan London’, in
Immigrants in Tudor and Early Stuart England, ed. Nigel Goose and Lien Bich Luu (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), pp. 58–60; Jacob Selwood,
Diversity and Difference in Early Modern London (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 1, 15–18, 87–127.
» 15 London, Goldsmiths’ Hall, Wardens Accounts and Court Minutes [WACM], Book 4C, pp. 71–72; see also p. 41 for a similar bid the year before though less clarity that it had been supported by the guild.
» 16 London, Goldsmiths’ Hall, WACM A2, p. 491; Berry, ‘Guilds’. See also below regarding the stranger weavers in 1497.
» 17 Davies, ‘Aliens’, pp. 137–38; Berry, ‘Guilds’. An example of confusion caused by changing customs regarding the admission of immigrants to the freedom can be seen in the case of James Van Zant, alias James Bracy, a tailor born in Utrecht, who was granted London citizenship in 1473 and died by 1506; in 1517 the court of the mayor and alderman were evidently confused that his orphan daughter could be a ward of the City (a privilege of citizens) as both he and she seemed to them to be Dutch. LMA, COL/CC/01/01/008, Journal 8, fol. 66r; COL/CC/01/01/010, Journal 10, folios 360v–361r; COL/CC/01/01/011, Journal 11, fol. 36r; COL/AD/01/012, Letter Book M, fol. 144r; COL/AD/01/013, Letter Book N, fol. 35v; LMA, COL/CA/01/01/003, Repertory 3, fol. 134r; Bolton,
Alien Communities, p. 64.
» 18 A. H. Johnson,
The History of the Worshipful Company of the Drapers of London, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914), I, 275–76; Pamela Nightingale,
A Medieval Mercantile Community: The Grocers’ Company and the Politics and Trade of London, 1000–1485 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 359–63, 392–95, 504–5; Anne F. Sutton,
The Mercery of London: Trade, Goods and People, 1130–1578 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 114–18.
» 19 Relatively few of these guilds have records surviving from the early sixteenth century; for those with surviving records we have found nothing about strangers as members of any kind in the Brewers’ Company (GL, MS 5442/2); the Skinners’ Company (GL, MSS 30727/2; 30719/1); the Coopers’ Company (GL, MS 5614A). The Coopers did record quarterage they collected from ‘forens’, non-citizen English workers.
» 20 3 Edw. IV c. 4, 5; 17 Edw. IV c. 1;
SR, II, 396–402, 452–61; similar exemptions were made in the labour statutes of the 1520s (14 and 15 Hen. VIII c. 2; 21 Hen. VIII c. 16;
SR, III, 208–9, 297–98). The only statute governing alien labour in this period that does not exempt the precinct of St Martin le Grand, a significant centre for alien shoemaking and other leather work, is 1 Ric. III c. 9,
SR, II, 489–93. See Shannon McSheffrey,
Seeking Sanctuary: Crime, Mercy, and Politics in English Courts, 1400–1550 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 112–39; Lien Bich Luu, ‘Aliens and Their Impact on the Goldsmiths’ Craft in London in the Sixteenth Century’, in
Goldsmiths, Silversmiths, and Bankers: Innovation and the Transfer of Skill, 1550 to 1750, ed. David Mitchell (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1995), pp. 44–49; Rappaport,
Worlds, pp. 45–47.
» 21 Davies, ‘Tailors of London’, esp. pp. 99–102, 167–71, 187, 208–9.
» 23 Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin,
Crafting Identities: Artisan Culture in London, c.1550–1640 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021), pp. 8–19; see also Lien Bich Luu,
Immigrants and the Industries of London, 1500–1700 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 226–27.
» 24 Bart Lambert and Milan Pajic, ‘Immigration and the Common Profit: Native Cloth Workers, Flemish Exiles, and Royal Policy in Fourteenth-Century London’,
Journal of British Studies 55 (2016), 633–57; Frances Consitt,
The London Weavers’ Company, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), I, 33–60, 180–91.
» 25 LMA, COL/AD/01/010, Letter Book K, fol. 193v; Consitt,
London Weavers’ Company, I, 198–200.
» 26 LMA, COL/CC/01/01/010, Journal 10, folios 105v, 113r–115r; COL/CA/01/01/001, Repertory 1, fol. 29v; Consitt,
London Weavers’ Company, I, 33–60; 130; 223–26.
» 27 Consitt,
London Weavers’ Company, I, 91.
» 28 They were found guilty of having ‘falsly and subtilly presentid’ the stranger-born weaver to the chamberlain for admission to citizenship, ‘expresly contrary’ to the oaths they had sworn as citizens themselves. LMA, COL/CA/01/01/001, Repertory 1, fol. 128v.
» 29 This is what Consitt implies, though she does not state this explicitly.
London Weavers’ Company, I, 130.
» 30 Shannon McSheffrey, ‘Stranger Artisans and the London Sanctuary of St Martin Le Grand in the Reign of Henry VIII’,
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 43 (2013), 545–71.
» 31 Of the more than 500 residents of the precinct of St Martin le Grand traced for the period 1500–1550, none were hatmakers or cappers. Spreadsheet available here: Shannon McSheffrey, ‘Research: Residents of St Martin Le Grand’ <https://shannonmcsheffrey.wordpress.com/research/>.
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