Contesting the city : the politics of citizenship in English towns, 1250-1530 / Christian D. Liddy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Liddy, Christian D. (Christian Drummond), 1973- author.

Series:

Oxford studies in medieval European history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Citizenship--England--History--To 1500.

Citizenship.

City and town life--England--History--To 1500.

City and town life.

History.

England.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xvi, 254 pages : illustrations (black and white), maps (black and white) ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2017.

Summary:

The political narrative of late medieval English towns is often reduced to the story of the gradual intensification of oligarchy, in which power was exercised and projected by an ever smaller ruling group over an increasingly subservient urban population. 'Contesting the City' takes its inspiration not from English historiography, but from a more dynamic continental scholarship on towns in the southern Low Countries, Germany, and France. Its premise is that scholarly debate about urban oligarchy has obscured contemporary debate about urban citizenship. It identifies from the records of English towns a tradition of urban citizenship, which did not draw upon the intellectual legacy of classical models of the 'citizen'. This was a vernacular citizenship, which was not peculiar to England, but which was present elsewhere in late medieval Europe. It was a citizenship that was defined and created through action. There were multiple, and divergent, ideas about citizenship, which encouraged townspeople to make demands, to assert rights, and to resist authority. This volume exploits the rich archival sources of the five major towns in England - Bristol, Coventry, London, Norwich, and York - in order to present a new picture of town government and urban politics over three centuries. The power of urban governors was much more precarious than historians have imagined. Urban oligarchy could never prevail - whether ideologically or in practice - when there was never a single, fixed meaning of the citizen.

Contents:

1 Introduction 1

Oligarchy 3

Conflict 7

Citizenship 12

The Five Towns 17

2 Citizenship and Citizens 20

The Freeman's Oath 25

Access to Urban Citizenship 44

3 Space: Boundaries 51

Encroachments on the Street 57

Ecclesiastical Precincts 66

Enclosure of Common Lands 73

4 Civic Time: Elections 86

Mayoral Elections 94

Rituals of Inauguration 109

The Repeated Invention of Tradition 121

5 Communication: Sound and Sight 125

Public Opinion 130

Official Communication 142

Secrecy and Publicity 153

6 Written Constitutions: Text and Object 165

The Commons 171

Urban Constitutions 183

7 Conclusion 206

The 'Close Corporation' 210.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780198705208

0198705204

OCLC:

1003254261