Preface

Summary

The evidence explored in this volume of The Fifteenth Century comes in a refreshingly wide variety of guises. For the most part the sources are contemporary: medieval tombs bearing sculpted effigies or monumental brasses, paintings, coins (newly-minted in our period), even a livery collar still used by the Lord Mayor of London. Chief among them are, of course, the enormous range of documents preserved in The National Archives: records of the central law-courts and chancery, of the exchequer – arising from taxation and the collection of customs duties – and many miscellaneous survivals created to facilitate the administration of private and ecclesiastical estates. The last, records of estate administration, survive in profusion in other archives, too, which also contain registers and cartularies compiled for hospitals and notes and drawings produced by antiquaries and heralds. In addition, the fifteenth century is the earliest period to allow its historians to examine printed books – the first works coming off an English press, for which the mercer William Caxton was responsible. Evidence of an entirely different sort, derived from the contemporary sources but at one remove from them, emerges from data collected and analysed by historians themselves in the course of the past 150 years, providing an opportunity for a long-needed fresh look at their conclusions.

All these varieties of evidence are explored to good effect by the ten contributors to the volume. Their essays illustrate the three themes of the title: commemoration, administration and economy. With a starting-point of the will of Ralph, Lord Cromwell, and his wish to be commemorated in perpetuity at a new college founded at Tattershall, Simon Payling uses the evidence of lawsuits, chronicles, letters and financial accounts to interpret the validity of the claims of Cromwell’s heirs as set against the requirements of the testator, and appreciate the herculean task faced by his executors. The notebooks of heralds, a unique burial register and John Stow’s Survey of London help Christian Steer to identify prestigious occupants of tombs in the London parish church of St. James Garlickhithe, and to suggest reasons why this was the place chosen for their commemoration.