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Urban politics and material culture at the end of the Middle Ages: the Coventry tapestry in St Mary's Hall

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2012

CHRISTIAN D. LIDDY
CHRISTIAN D. LIDDY*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Durham, 43 North Bailey, Durham, DH1 3EX, UK
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Abstract:

This article uses the evidence of the internal decoration and spatial hierarchy of an English town hall to explore the construction of urban oligarchy in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Urban historians have regarded this period as one of fundamental importance in the political history of pre-modern English towns. It is associated with the emergence of the ‘close corporation’, an oligarchic form of government which remained largely in place until the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. The article examines the iconography and historical context of a tapestry, custom-made for the town hall of Coventry around 1500, to present a different view of the character of urban political culture at the end of the Middle Ages.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , May 2012 , pp. 203 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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89 I would like to thank my student, Harriet Eales, for this point. The assize regulated the weight of bread, according to the price of grain.

90 Coventry Leet Book, ed. Harris, 544–5, 567–9.

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