Material Networks: The Tower, London, and the World in the Late Medieval and Tudor Period

This project will explore the interaction between London’s immigrant communities, the Crown, and the Tower of London in the Late Medieval and Tudor Period. High wages in the aftermath of the Black Death, and a burgeoning consumer economy made London a melting pot of people, skills, and increasingly global commodities. Many of these people, and skills, were excluded by the formal institutions of civic life, but consumers, not least the Crown, sought them out nonetheless. Looking at the lives of Londoners through the lens of their relationship with the Tower of London promises to open a broader perspective on the diverse lives lived in late medieval and Tudor London. The Crown, through the Tower of London and Royal Wardrobe, was one of the largest consumers of goods and services in London. As a result, this relationship offers a unique way to study the people producing and trading everyday commodities, which has been neglected in the scholarship of this period. Scholars have previously tended to focus on working lives through the records of institutions like guilds and are therefore constrained by the exclusionary perspectives of those privileged groups. Combining archival study of the expenditure of the royal household with digital humanities analysis of existing databases of Londoners and aliens makes it feasible to join the royal and civic sources for the first time. The Tower of London is often at the centre of this rich history, which exemplified the complicated relationship between the City and the Crown. It was not only a major consumer of goods and services provided by the City, an exit point for goods and people exported for royal enterprises (including warfare), and a place of arrival for many of London’s immigrants, but its officials were an important legal and commercial royal presence in the city. The Crown’s rich records offer a unique opportunity for seeing the diversity of global goods, and diverse suppliers and craftspeople supplying them in London during this period. Documents created in the Royal Household and Exchequer, which survive in archives including The National Archives, British Library, Society of Antiquaries, and many county archives, often show the surprising range of Londoners and everyday people supplying the Crown, from Flemish brewers to Greek jewellers. This project will compare data from these royal sources documenting goods and people for the first time with England’s Immigrants database (detailing the ‘Alien Subsidy’ poll tax on migrants) and the London Customs Accounts (c.1350-1560) to produce a digital prosopography of the lives of suppliers to the palace. The Tower of London is one of six palaces looked after by Historic Royal Palaces (HRP), an independent charity whose portfolio also includes Hampton Court Palace. The project offers HRP an exciting and timely opportunity to better understand the historic environments and context of the Tower, whilst supporting strategic ambitions to research and communicating diverse and untold stories to onsite and online audiences. This CDP project will give the student a unique combination of skills in pre-modern archival record study; digital humanities skills in data linkage and data management; and applied heritage and public history skills in telling the stories of those lives affected by the palaces. It will also provide the student with exceptional professional development opportunities, leading into a career in heritage, academia, and a range of other industries.