Chapter 3 Urban governance

Shrewsbury

Shrewsbury, the county town of Shropshire, is located some thirty miles from Ludlow – a similar distance to that between Ludlow and Worcester. In the late Middle Ages, particularly in the fourteenth century, Shrewsbury dominated the urban scene in Shropshire, with its key position on the River Severn encouraging prosperity through trade and production, particularly that of the wool trade.⁸ Ludlow and Shrewsbury were competitors as centres of the wool trade, but Ludlow never reached the same importance or level of wealth as the county town.⁹ Regular commercial and political interactions between the two centres were characteristic of their relationship, partially encouraged by the position of Ludlow on the main road between Shrewsbury and Hereford.¹⁰ We have already seen that there was regular expenditure on brethren of Shrewsbury by the guild stewards in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but was there any connection with the governance of the city?¹¹

A full picture is difficult to reconstruct due to the patterns of survival of both the guild and Shrewsbury town records. The governance of Shrewsbury developed over the course of the late Middle Ages. In 1398, twelve men were elected to assist two bailiffs in governing the town. By the mid-fifteenth century, this had expanded to a council of twelve aldermen and twenty-four common councillors to work alongside the bailiffs.¹² By the early sixteenth century, the corporation of Shrewsbury comprised twenty-four aldermen, forty-eight common councillors, a mayor, and two bailiffs.¹³ Each year, the bailiffs cast lots to select two men who were then in charge of selecting twenty-five electors. The electors in turn elected two new bailiffs and their deputies, two coroners, six assessors, two sub-bailiffs, and six auditors.¹⁴ The election records that survive contain the names of bailiffs, electors and those that held annual offices, rather than the aldermen and common councillors, but the twenty-five electors were presumably drawn from the common council.

Taking the election records for a decade (between 1497 and 1507), there were at least forty members of Shrewsbury civic elite who were involved with the Palmers in the early sixteenth century (see Table 3.1). At least one of the bailiffs was a Palmer for five of those years, and there were – at a minimum – seven Palmers each year who were either part of the electoral body or were elected to one of the offices of the government. In 1501, sixteen of the forty-five men involved in the selecting of corporation officers were either Palmers or would become one in the ensuing few years.¹⁵

It is difficult to gauge the continued involvement of Palmers in the annual electoral process and holding of offices such as auditor or coroner, given the absence of records. The office of bailiff is recorded, however, and a closer examination of Shrewsbury’s sixteenth-century governance indicates that the Palmers who enrolled in the first years of the 1500s continued to hold office: between 1521 and 1531, at least one Palmer held the office of bailiff for seven of those years. This was partly due to the dominance of three Palmers, Thomas Hosier, William Bayly and David Ireland, who held the office for three (Hosier) and two years (Bayly and Ireland) within that period.¹⁶

A small amount of information can be gleaned about aldermen: the corporation expected aldermen to reside within the town and readily removed those from the aldermanic bench who disobeyed.¹⁷ The Palmer Richard Lister, who was an alderman, was removed from his position in 1516 as he was no longer residing in Shrewsbury.¹⁸ Lister had worked his way through various offices within Shrewsbury’s government, acting as coroner, auditor and bailiff, then becoming a Palmer, and at that stage becoming an alderman.¹⁹

There was no clear pattern as to when these men joined the Ludlow guild. Twenty-two of the civic elite became Palmers after first being active in civic governance (fifty-five per cent). Most did so during the time in which they were frequently involved in the election of, or were indeed one of, the town’s officers. Roger Phillips was an elector in 1501, joined the Palmers in 1503 and acted as an elector in that same year, and then continued to be involved in civic government until at least 1512.²¹ For three men, their first year participating in the selecting of borough officials coincided with when they enrolled in the Palmers (seven-and-a-half per cent of the total known Palmers in civic governance).²² Of the remaining fifteen men, twelve of them joined the Palmers before assuming office (thirty per cent) and three are unable to be analysed due to the state of surviving records.²³ While guild membership was common across the civic elite, the absence of any clear correspondence with joining at particular times in their civic careers suggests that they joined primarily for social, trade and pious benefits. This stands in stark contrast to Worcester and Gloucester.

Worcester

In Worcester, the scarcity of extant records likewise precludes a full understanding of the membership overlap between the town’s government and the Palmers, but a partial picture can be reconstructed through an examination of the bailiffs of the town. A cursus honorum existed within medieval Worcester’s government, where the career of a civic office holder would follow a series of stages, ascending in seniority, based on the town’s dual-assembly system (see Figure 3.1).²⁴ The lower assembly, the so-called Forty-Eight, was elected from among the citizens of the town. Each year they chose from among their number a representative to take on the position of low chamberlain. The more senior, and select, council was that of the Twenty-Four. Generally, the low chamberlain would be promoted to this group when a position became available, provided also that he had served as steward of the Holy Trinity Guild.²⁵ The Twenty-Four were the primary authority within the town’s governance. Mirroring their junior counterparts, the Twenty-Four would annually elect a high chamberlain and the two officers would cooperate. Once an aspiring office holder had attained this position, it was then a fairly straightforward progression up the civic ladder. Within a year or two of their election, they would be eligible for the position of low bailiff, then to serve a first term as an alderman, followed by high bailiff, and, finally, a second term as alderman. Presumably the aldermen operated on a junior/senior basis, as with the offices of chamberlain and bailiff, although it was also possible to serve in one office on several occasions.²⁶

Within this system, the position of bailiff was one of great importance. With no mayoral office at this time, the bailiff was one of the most influential figures in medieval Worcester – even if it was not the most senior position. This is, for example, suggested by a surviving manuscript chronicle from Worcester, created in the first half of the sixteenth century, which arranges its narrative around the individuals who held the office of bailiff.²⁷ Such a sentiment is also reflected in modern writing on the town’s government, as Alan Dyer described the bailiffs as ‘the chief executive officers [who] were much the most important of the city dignitaries’.²⁸ This importance derived from the wide-ranging responsibilities they held, which included both legal and fiscal obligations.²⁹ By virtue of the importance of this office, a study of the bailiffs proves instructive; in all likelihood, anyone who was seriously civically minded would have held the lower of the two offices at least once. But it should also be noted that membership of the Twenty-Four was required before assuming office. Financial stability was surely a prerequisite for admission into this group – a payment of 16s 8d was the standard fee to take office, although this could be increased if the city needed extra income.³⁰ Moreover, for positions with single-year terms such as bailiff, the incumbent would need to be secure in their industry and their income for it to be practical and viable to cease their usual business activities and take on what was, effectively, a full-time responsibility. Bailiffs did not take a wage from the city per se, but instead were remunerated from the money they generated in that role.³¹

Yet, once again underlining the importance of the role and, indeed, its usefulness as a tool of study, the list of bailiffs in the chronicle identifies every holder of the office between 1483 and 1578, thereby providing us with an unbroken and readily accessible view of who occupied the role – something we do not have for the other offices or, indeed, either of the two councils. While using only one office to view the relationship between the Palmers and Worcester’s government does not provide a whole picture, the bailiffs nonetheless offer a valuable avenue through which we might understand the relationship of urban elite with outside organizations, due to their intimate and prominent place within town governance.

Comparing this list of bailiffs to the various iterations of the Palmers’ membership lists from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries allows us to make judgements about the role that the guild played in the cursus honorum outlined previously; if, indeed, it played a role at all. It is worth considering at what stage in their career a bailiff joined the guild. Between 1483 (the year the list of bailiffs commences) and 1537 (the last year a known Palmer can be identified in the office), eleven Palmers were either high or low bailiff in Worcester (see Table 3.2). Most of these men held both the high and low offices; exceptions to this trend (at least as far as we can see in the years in the list) are John Payne (high bailiff in 1490), John Hall (low bailiff in 1519), Stephen Collier (low bailiff in 1530) and, finally, John Williams (low bailiff in 1537).³² The latter three seem unlikely to have advanced to the higher position during their career, or perhaps died before they had the chance. The anomaly, John Payne, is likely to have held the lower office before the list starts in 1483, however Payne and Thomas Green (another early office holder as low bailiff in 1493) took that role before they began their membership payments – in 1507 and 1508 respectively. Overall, bailiffs consisted of three-and-a-half per cent of the known Palmers of Worcester.³³ The enrolment in the guild of eleven bailiffs out of a total of fifty-two individuals who held the office between these years clearly demonstrates that guild membership was not an essential part of the local cursus honorum, but this does not mean that we are unable to say anything about the role of the guild in a less official capacity.

In the years for which we have this information, therefore, Palmers occupied at least one of the two positions for thirteen years (excluding Payne and Green). Indeed, in 1523 and 1525, both bailiffs were Palmers: William Sargeant as low bailiff and Richard Cam as high bailiff in 1523; and Walter Stone as low bailiff and John Colman as high bailiff in 1525. The 1520s saw the presence of the Palmers in the bailiff’s position with the most consistency: from 1519 to 1529, a Palmer almost always held at least one of the positions. The concentrated period of these officials is revealing of the involvement of the urban elite of Worcester with the Palmers. Little value can be attributed to the fact that none of Worcester’s bailiffs initiated payments to the Palmers before 1499 – only four years of records survive for the years between 1485 and 1489. The same is true for the period after 1510 (after which date there is only one surviving riding book, alongside receipts) and therefore the period in which Worcester bailiffs enrolled correlates with the surviving documentation. The prominence of guild membership among the bailiffs may very well have extended into the 1530s and 1540s, but identification of this is impossible, as the bailiffs most likely would have joined in the 1510s, given that the average gap between enrolment and the holding of office (excluding Payne and Green) was a little over eighteen-and-a-half years.³⁴

The office of low bailiff would have taken a considerable time to work towards, and so William Sargeant, who became bailiff in 1523, would have been at the earliest stages of his trade career when he joined the Palmers in 1503 – or may not have yet begun it.³⁵ He was not alone in this trend, as his colleagues and fellow brethren Richard Cam, John Colman, Richard Bilford, Walter Stone, Stephen Collier and John Williams all began payments for membership of the Palmers some twenty-plus years before reaching the highest stages of civic office in Worcester.³⁶ It would appear, therefore, that the Palmers’ Guild was an organisation for junior members of the hopeful elite in Worcestershire’s county town. In much the same way that Coventry’s Corpus Christi Guild provided a space for aspiring young men – albeit local – the Ludlow guild acted in a similar capacity for Worcester.³⁷ Of course, the key difference is that the guild was not based in the city, yet it is remarkable that the guild has consistent membership among the bailiffs of the town. While it cannot be ignored that people joined the Palmers’ Guild for multiple and overlapping reasons, the guild was respected enough to garner the initial enrolment of members from the future civic elite; indeed, the guild continued to maintain the interest of these bailiffs-to-come, who consistently paid off their membership fees well into the late 1510s, if not longer.³⁸ The key aspect of this sustained relationship with the Palmers was that of accessibility, afforded by the system of payment by a series of instalments, wherein individuals could contribute a chosen amount towards the full membership fee (6s 8d) annually, allowing flexibility to change the amount paid each year or pause payments without penalty. Some bailiffs, like William Sargeant, gave the same amount of money each year, consistently lowering the outstanding balance owed to the guild until his debt was cleared.³⁹ Others were more sporadic, demonstrating their fluctuating financial situations or personal interest, like Richard Cam’s initial payment of 20d, which was followed by payments between 12d and 20d, on and off, from 1503 to 1517.⁴⁰ The men in question, while they might one day attain a comfortable level of wealth, joined the Palmers at the beginning of their careers and, therefore, were less likely to have accumulated the necessary level of disposable income for membership of guilds that required the full fee upfront, in addition to an annual contribution. The Palmers’ system of fee payments provided flexibility, giving aspiring men the opportunity to join a prestigious guild, increase their status and reinforce ties with those of similar inclinations in Worcester – and possibly those from further afield.

Gloucester

The Palmers’ role in any village, town or city was never, of course, identical: the patterns of membership found in each place were not replicated to the exact degree elsewhere. Outside its religious context, the guild served differing social and political roles, and this observation is key to understanding its place in late medieval society. Yet comparisons nevertheless can be drawn in certain aspects, and the situation of the bailiwick in Worcester and the shrievalty of Gloucester is a notable example of guild membership occupying a similar role in two different towns. Gloucester’s town government was restructured when it was incorporated in 1483, thereby creating the office of mayor, who was assisted by a town clerk, two sheriffs, twelve aldermen, four stewards and a common council. Despite the increased number of offices and the associated rise in levels of participation from a wider base of citizenry, the town continued in much the same way as it had before, with the power of decision-making being limited to the same group of men.⁴¹ The twelve aldermen held their positions for the duration of their lives and subsequent vacancies were filled by those who already sat on the lower governmental councils.⁴² In the early sixteenth century, only half of those men who served as steward became a sheriff (with several years between the two positions), and then, once again, only half of that group of men became mayor, usually five or six years after holding office as sheriff.⁴³ It was at some point between the office of sheriff and mayor that an individual would be elected to the aldermanic bench but, due to the chance nature of mortality among the sitting aldermen, there was no set timeline for entrance.⁴⁴ Membership of the Palmers was, however, a prominent shared trait among this group of men in the sixteenth century.

The office of sheriff was the route to mayoral office and a position on the aldermanic bench, and therefore the key to the carefully guarded civic power of Gloucester. It is here that we find almost five per cent of the Gloucester Palmers – a comparable figure to that of Worcester’s bailiffs.⁴⁵ Between 1483, when the role of sheriff for Gloucester was created by a charter from Richard III, and 1540, nearing the end of the guild’s life, eleven members of the Palmers held the office of sheriff at least once (see Table 3.3).⁴⁶ Five Palmers held both the offices of sheriff and mayor, as well as holding one of the offices on multiple occasions.⁴⁷ A few even held both offices twice, such as John Semys, who was sheriff in 1520 and 1525, followed by mayor in 1528 and 1535.⁴⁸ Much like Worcester, these men were, for the most part, joining the Palmers’ Guild at least a decade before assuming high office.⁴⁹ The Palmers were clearly occupying a similar role in Gloucester as in Worcester, providing a space for men at the early stages of their civic office.

While twelve members are a small proportion of the Gloucester brethren, an examination of five of these men reveals the nature of membership. Thomas Osborn, John Rastell, John Semys, Henry Marmion, John Rawlens and Lewis ap Rice were all active members of civic life in the 1520s and 1530s. The six were aldermen at overlapping times and made up half of the twelve-man bench during 1532/3. In any given year in the decade between 1523 and 1533, between a quarter and a half of Gloucester’s top governing officers were members of the Ludlow guild. No study has been carried out to assess, in any detail, the role of the aldermen within Gloucester during the sixteenth century, although one important conclusion can be drawn: appointments were made based on wealth.⁵⁰ Aldermen Osborn, Rastell, Semys, Marmion, Rawlens and Lewis ap Rees, all of whom joined the Palmers in the first decade of the sixteenth century, had become some of the wealthiest men of Gloucester by the 1530s.⁵¹ Each man was a Palmer during the time he was working his way through the series of civic offices, acting as steward, sheriff and mayor before becoming an experienced advisor to his successors in each of those offices. The Ludlow guild was a common denominator among members of Gloucester’s government, acting as an additional enforcement of pre-existing networks while simultaneously providing connections between Gloucester’s inhabitants who were outside of the civic elite. Unlike the most prominent religious guild in Gloucester, that of the Holy Trinity, which drew its membership exclusively from the ruling elite, the Palmers provided these men with a network of individuals from a variety of differing occupations and trades.⁵² The Gloucester brethren included skinners, smiths, bakers, cooks, tanners, drapers, cardmakers, cobblers and mercers, while parish priests, canons, monks and vicars represented the ecclesiastical community of Gloucester.

Bristol

Similarities existed among the aldermen in nearby Bristol: in this case, seven aldermen were Palmers. Bristol aldermen held wide-ranging powers in governing the city, including holding a court with the mayor, acting as Justices of the Peace, and overseeing gaol delivery.⁵³ Given that the aldermen were key members of the civic elite, it is unsurprising to see a number of their members engaging in further localised communal activity – in this case, membership of the Palmers – outside of their civic roles. As in Gloucester, a large cross-section of Bristol society was accounted for in the Palmers’ membership lists, and so, for the aldermen, guild membership provided the opportunity to reaffirm their status as instruments of the community under the auspices of the social rhetoric provided by religious guilds.

In addition to the seven aldermen, another twenty-three members of Bristol’s civic elite in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century were Palmers, primarily those who began their civic careers after 1500 (Table 3.4). For the purposes of this study, the civic elite of Bristol have been taken to include the chamberlains, bailiffs, sheriffs, mayors, aldermen and MPs. Of these, the shrievalty was the office most commonly held by members of the guild. Between 1500 and 1510, with the exception of 1502/3, one of the two sheriffs was always a Palmer.⁵⁵ In 1507/8, both sheriffs – Simon Gerveys and John Edwards – were Palmers. This trend was somewhat less pronounced in the following two decades, with Palmers in the shrievalty for a total of five and four years respectively. The sheriffs were among the most visible officers within the burgess community of the town, maintaining peace and stability within the city walls, and managing the city’s gaol and the monthly court. The importance of the office to Bristol’s governance is attested in the vivid depiction of the first ever sheriff (after the city was granted county status in 1373) in Robert Ricart’s fifteenth-century text, The Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar. Flanked by two lower offices of civic serjeants (visually depicted as smaller men), Bristol’s sheriff wears the red robes of his office and raises his hand to suggest his authority.⁵⁶ The mayor of Bristol (whose induction ceremony was also depicted in Ricart’s Kalendar) likewise held a multiplicity of roles, and acted as the king’s representative in the city, a Justice of the Peace and Justice of Gaol delivery, while simultaneously holding his own court, supervising the city’s trades and administering justice within the Bristol Staple Court.⁵⁷ An office with an increasing role in civic politics in the early Tudor period, and respected by the community of Bristol, the mayor presided at common council meetings and meetings of the aldermen.⁵⁸ Eight of Bristol’s mayors between 1487 and 1542 were Palmers, three of them holding office twice.⁵⁹ Membership of the Palmers, from as early as 1487, was therefore a shared experience of Bristol’s highest civic elite. The frequency with which sheriffs were Palmers in the 1510s aligns with heightened levels of membership of the guild within Bristol. The Palmers had, since the fourteenth century, drawn small numbers from Bristol into the fraternity, but membership rose in 1501 and, thenceforth, the city remained a strong centre of guild membership throughout the sixteenth century (Maps 0.3–0.11): there was an increase of fifty per cent of membership from Bristol between the 1485–9 registers of admission and the 1505–7 registers.⁶⁰

The increase in elite brethren from Bristol displays a similar regard to the importance of guild membership, at a certain time in the elite life cycle, as seen in Gloucester and Worcester. But there are, naturally, differences resulting from circumstances unique to Bristol. After 1499, the structure of civic government within Bristol changed. The most junior office of the elite, that of the bailiff, was removed, resulting in the youngest members of the common council turning to the office of sheriff instead.⁶¹ After 1499 a number of people became sheriff early on in their career: Robert Elyot and John Drewis may have been as young as twenty-one when they first took up their posts.⁶² The tendency to hold civic office earlier in Bristol than in other cities explains some aspects of the trends of membership identified above. Unlike in Gloucester and Worcester (and Coventry, as will be discussed shortly), where individuals often joined the Palmers some ten to twenty years before assuming a position among the upper ranks of the governing elite, the majority of men in Bristol joined the guild much closer in time to assuming the office of sheriff – especially during the first two decades of the sixteenth century, when most became sheriff within ten years of joining the guild. Despite the closer temporal relationship between civic office and guild membership in Bristol than other cities, the Palmers were likewise providing an opportunity for members of the elite to expand their religious and social activities. Members of the elite, such as John Bagot, gifted chalices to the Palmers, while annual social gatherings, evinced by the guild’s regular expenditure on victuals, took place in Bristol annually for brethren.⁶³

Coventry

Coventry, the fifth location under investigation here, was an active centre of guild membership. Fifty-four members of the town’s civic elite enrolled in the Palmers between 1499 and 1515 (Table 3.5). For Coventry, like Bristol, the relatively high involvement of the civic elite in the fraternity can be more fully constructed than for Worcester, Gloucester and Shrewsbury, due to a healthy survival of city records. The Coventry Leet Book, which records a range of individuals who participated in urban governance, including on the leet jury and in the offices of warden of the leet, chamberlain, bailiff, sheriff and mayor, is the primary source utilised here. The average time between enrolment in the Palmers and the first role within civic government was just over ten years. The difference here, which must be acknowledged, is that a higher number of the civic elite joined the Palmers after they had already held office. These were the minority, but their enrolment shifts the demographic dynamic of Coventry’s members, being a mix of experienced and aspiring civic officers. For Coventry members, therefore, the guild provided a different arena for socialisation from that of the local Holy Trinity and Corpus Christi fraternities, which were predisposed to young and veteran civic officers respectively.

The civic elite of Coventry by no means limited themselves to the guild at Ludlow or even those that operated within the city. Understandably, in geographic terms, the elite of Coventry frequently graced the annual admission registers of Stratford’s guild of the Holy Cross. For the Stratford guild, 1497/8 saw the enrolment of John Hadden, former bailiff and future mayor, who joined the Palmers in the following decade.⁶⁵ In 1506/7, Julian Nethermyll and Richard Kemsey, soon-to-be wardens of the leet, joined the Holy Cross.⁶⁶ They were joined later by their fellow civic officials Thomas Banwell and Henry Wall.⁶⁷ All had joined the Palmers previously – Nethermyll in 1502/3, Kemsey and Banwell in 1505/6 and Wall in 1506/7.⁶⁸ It is clear from these examples that the proximity of these men in their professional and social lives influenced their decision to join not one but two external guilds. If anything, this fact simply underscores that membership to prestigious national or regional guilds was part of a common culture among the civic elite of some of late medieval England’s urban centres.

What is particularly striking about this extramural guild membership is that Coventry was undergoing an economic crisis in the early sixteenth century; although there were interludes of prosperity over the second half of the fifteenth century, 1500 to 1518 was generally a period of increasing decline, with an acute deterioration from 1518 to 1525.⁶⁹ Financially, the city was labouring to maintain the commercial success of previous centuries. The struggling cloth trade, exacerbated by a national trade depression more generally, and high food prices were significant contributors to the trouble the once-flourishing city found itself in.⁷⁰ But in the midst of the citywide slump and a downturn in wealth on an individual basis, some of Coventry’s inhabitants continued to pay their membership fees to the Palmers. While there was a small drop in paying members overall (likely due to changing financial circumstances, fluctuating interest in the guild and, of course, death), it remains that even when the city was at its lowest point in the 1520s, the contingent of Palmers from Coventry continued to pay their membership dues. Henry Wall, a capper, diligently contributed every year from his initial sign-up in 1505 until 1521, when he completed the full fee for himself and his wife.⁷¹ Even drapers, despite particularly acute difficulties within their trade, remained financially dedicated to the Palmers.⁷² Thomas Banwell and Maurice Giwart, both drapers, paid annually throughout the 1520s.⁷³ By observing the Coventry Palmers as a whole throughout the crisis period in the 1510s and 1520s, it is possible to suggest who prioritised membership payments, or at least who could still afford to do so. The civic elite overwhelmingly demonstrated a higher trend of continued payments when compared to Coventry members more generally: seventy-one per cent of the elite continued paying in the 1510s and/or 1520s while only eleven per cent of the remaining Coventry Palmers did so.⁷⁴ This significant drop in payments among the latter group can be accounted for by the fact that the guild did not penalise breaks in or even the ceasing of payments, instead allowing the freedom to resume at the inclination of the individual. Naturally, the former group consisted of those men who were wealthy enough to have the financial freedom to spend their money on membership. Yet they, too, were struggling; as demonstrated by the fact there was a shortage of merchants, a traditionally dominant group among the elite, to take civic offices.⁷⁵ Offices were refused by individuals based on financial circumstances, like Roger a Lee, who rejected the chamberlainship in 1508.⁷⁶ It is of significance, then, that the civic elite were continuing to invest in the Palmers’ Guild with no pressure from Ludlow to do so.⁷⁷ The Palmers were evidently a priority, even in times of economic uncertainty.

Civic Catholicism in provincial towns

Membership of the Ludlow guild performed a service for the civic elite in Worcester, Gloucester, Bristol, Shrewsbury and Coventry, which, while taking slightly different iterations and possessing different meanings for each location, retained some fundamental implications in all areas. One area that has not yet been discussed, but was evidently of prime importance, was the role membership of religious guilds played in expressions of civic religiosity more generally. Such institutional and co-ordinated expressions of piety in late medieval towns have been highlighted by Clive Burgess.⁷⁸ For example, the mayors and their fellow civic officers were in tune with the rhythms of the devotional year in Bristol, consistently engaging in the supervision and maintenance of perpetual chantries within the town walls. According to Burgess, the importance of the mayor’s actions in this regard was such that it contributed to the spiritual cohesion of the town. The mayor and ‘his brethren’ were a regular presence in every parish, attending services for patronal feast days, the obits of their predecessors, and more general celebrations, thereby demonstrating the extent to which the civic elite, as an institution, was involved with the religious side of urban life. One particular effect of the attendance of the elite at parochial events was the demonstration of ‘their respect for good fellowship’ with parishioners more widely – a phenomenon that Burgess identified as being an important aspect of ‘civic Catholicism’.⁷⁹ The intermingling of the civic elite and the wider community in an ecclesiastical setting encouraged regular ‘contact between different registers among the laity, encouraging camaraderie’.⁸⁰ This could take place, for example, with regards to elite attendance at prominent social events in the parish’s annual calendar.

However, the ‘respect for good fellowship’ shown by the elite was not confined to the parish. Religious fraternities were prominent arenas for the flexing of communal relations – but Bristol did not possess a major fraternity like its urban counterparts of York, Coventry or Norwich. Instead, smaller, more intimate, guilds were a significant part of the religious fabric of Bristol, with Burgess raising the possibility of a close association between the civic elite and the Assumption fraternity based on Bristol Bridge.⁸¹ With this in mind, membership of the Palmers, who were intensely inter-parochial, with members from across every parish in Bristol (and indeed other cities), offered a different avenue for the manifestation of civic Catholicism in an urban setting. The Palmers were not just an elite phenomenon in Bristol; they formed a comparatively ‘catholic’ group (in the literal sense), encompassing members engaged in multiple occupations and holding different social statuses.

Membership of the Palmers may have served another purpose for the urban elite across late medieval cities. It was part of a larger movement to reinforce elite claims to authority. Civic government was increasingly controlled by a group of elite members, part of the ‘close corporation’, the rise of which historians debate in relation to both the medieval and early modern period.⁸² Yet, as Christian Liddy argued, the long-term success of the urban oligarchy did not equate to stability and the idea of the close corporation has therefore been thrown into question.⁸³ In Coventry, the contesting of decisions made by urban officers was a regular occurrence, leaving the urban elite to negotiate economic, social and religious tensions as a result. One product of these stumbling blocks was the strengthening of relations between ecclesiastical authority and the civic elite in a bid to impose order on the city.⁸⁴ The close relationship between lay religious fraternities in Coventry – primarily the Holy Trinity Guild but also the Corpus Christi Guild – speaks to the importance of religion as a reinforcement of the good rule and political right of civic authorities. Overt expressions of this connection, such as the Coventry Holy Trinity tapestry, as discussed by Liddy, possessed benefits for both parties involved. The appropriation of religious authority to complement the actions of civic officers was a trait of late medieval English urban centres.⁸⁵

The Palmers were, therefore, another component of the religious repertoire of the elite. Joining the local leading fraternity, and other local fraternities, brought immediate and visible advantages in a social and religious sense. Guilds fashioned a distinct social identity for their brethren, and the regularity of fraternity processions through urban space demonstrated the participation, inclusion (and exclusion) of brethren for all to see.⁸⁶ In a society with a widespread focus on the accumulation of spiritual capital, especially underscored by the public nature of many religious acts, membership of multiple fraternities amounted to a certain declaration of wealth and religious prestige. In Coventry, membership of the Corpus Christi Guild was an expectation incumbent upon young elite citizens, and membership of the Holy Trinity was occupied by those advanced in their civic careers. Membership of external guilds went above the established norm: it was an additional sign to the community of individual wealth, prestige and piety. Layers of additional reinforcement were characteristic of the civic oligarchy and the ‘great’ fraternities of late medieval England were an outlet for further demonstration of the devout behaviour expected of the elite. The Coventry tapestry offered a view of the elite as ‘staunchly orthodox’.⁸⁷ Membership of the Palmers (and other large guilds) offered the opportunity for civic governors to present themselves in a similar manner. The public nature of the steward’s annual visits, the establishment of a permanent, local representative of the Ludlow guild in Coventry (the solester) and the usual display of guild livery worked together to advertise those who were members of the guild.⁸⁸ The public nature of guild membership promoted and projected the religious vigour of the civic elite.

Another similarity between guild membership and the Coventry tapestry is worth highlighting: the tapestry overtly advertised the close relationship of the guild and town council to the king and, in turn, heavenly authority.⁸⁹ Membership of the Palmers worked in a similar manner – albeit with a more subtle note. Through the Palmers, a connection to the Crown, especially the regional authority of the prince or princess of Wales, was established beyond the existing structures of royal government (see Chapter 4).⁹⁰ The Council of the Marches had taken an active interest in Coventry since its establishment under the household of Edward, prince of Wales (oldest son and heir of Edward IV) in Ludlow in the 1470s; Coventry was known as the ‘Prince’s Chamber’ and had a special connection to the Prince of Wales.⁹¹ Communication, often relating to justice, continued to flow from the Prince of Wales and his council to the city under both Arthur and Henry Tudor’s tenures as Prince of Wales.⁹² Urban midland centres were dedicated to maintaining a cordial relationship with the royal authority in the Welsh Marches, as evidenced by Stratford’s policy towards the Council in the late fifteenth century. Stratford’s guild was, in essence, a surrogate government for a town that did not possess the right to self-government and therefore its actions were representative of the town ‘government’ in so far as there was one.⁹³ After the fall of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, and the subsequent transfer of his lands into royal hands in 1478/9, there was a move from Stratford’s government to ingratiate themselves with those around Edward IV’s son, namely the Council of the Marches. That year, the Stratford guild sent a representative to Shrewsbury to gift membership upon the prince and the leading figures on the council: Lord Rivers, uncle to the prince of Wales, and John Alcock, Bishop of Worcester.⁹⁴ The power, and importance, of the Council of the Marches in the fifteenth century was therefore clearly recognised by the ruling elite of Stratford. Membership of a guild offered a distinct opportunity to cement political relations with regional governing structures. The Palmers, with the councillors and princes numbering among their brethren, offered the same opportunity to all the towns from which the guild drew its membership, and perhaps especially to those in which the guild played an important role in civic life. Like the Coventry tapestry, therefore, membership was also a public declaration of a relationship with the royal family.⁹⁵

Reading and London

So far these case studies have been focussed on regions in which membership of the Palmers was numerically strong, but they also had brethren further afield and it pays to briefly consider their experience with urban government. In the early sixteenth century, over a hundred inhabitants of Reading (Berkshire) joined the Palmers. Unlike the other urban centres discussed, however, the governance of the town was not solely in the hands of its civic elite. The political elite (in the form of the merchant guild) was subordinate to the abbey, who held extensive lordship rights over the town. The merchant guild was important but was integrated into governance rather than being the sole custodian of it: responsibility for the town’s infrastructure was split between the abbey and guild, while administration of justice remained largely with the abbey.⁹⁶ Then the role of the Palmers’ Guild in urban setting governance is therefore harder to decipher. Some of the guild merchant were members: Richard Cleche (Head Burgess), William Melvin (Head Burgess) and John Cox (Secondary Burgess).⁹⁷ With the exception of three men, the remaining nine joined the Palmers after their first appearance in the local guild merchant.⁹⁸ William White I, as one example among many, was active within the guild merchant by 1495 and did not engage in membership of the Palmers until 1503/4.⁹⁹ Others that were active in urban politics before becoming Palmers included Richard Cleche, John Wilcox, Nicholas Hyde, John Cox, William Melvin and William Lendal I. There is no clear pattern of Reading’s political elite joining the Palmers at a particular time in their careers, which must have been influenced by the lack of established cursus honorum within Reading’s own urban governance.¹⁰⁰

The presence of Reading’s other governors, the abbey and its brethren in the records of the Ludlow guild is intriguing. Membership of the Palmers among religious houses was common by the turn of the sixteenth century, with almost every order represented from houses across Wales and England (with the exception of the north-east of England). Yet in towns like Abingdon, Bury St Edmunds and Reading, these monks and superiors were also the urban lords. Hugh Faringdon, abbot, and seven of his brethren from the abbey at Reading joined the Palmers. In doing so, both sides of urban governance were represented within the guild.¹⁰¹

London offers another chance to explore the uses of guild membership in civic governance. It is notable that the London Palmers were not from the very highest echelons of civic elite. There were, of course, a few exceptions, like Thomas Pageter (mayor 1530) or Robert Chertsey (alderman 1545–51). George Monoux, well known for his charitable establishment of a school and almshouses in Walthamstow, had joined the Palmers while involved in Bristol’s government in the 1490s, and went on to become mayor of London (1514). In the second tier of civic government, common councillors Simon Rice (1530) and Robert Baxter (1536) had both joined the Palmers decades earlier.¹⁰² Overwhelmingly, however, London Palmers were not aldermen, sheriffs or mayors: those who were are a fraction of the overall London membership, which numbered over 400 new recruits in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century.¹⁰³ The membership patterns of the Palmers’ Guild in the early sixteenth century does not point to guild membership playing any role in the cursus honorum: these Londoners were diverse in occupation, social status and parish.

Fraternities within the City of London already boasted strong and enduring links with the civic elite, or with particular livery companies. Some companies established fraternities to sit alongside their Company, such as the Merchant Taylors’ fraternity of St John the Baptist, which admitted individuals from outside the craft, from local London inhabitants to prominent gentry families, nobility and those who ruled – Henry V, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and Henry VII.¹⁰⁴ The Skinners’ Company supported a fraternity dedicated to Corpus Christi, which also attracted non-company members, including the nobility (such as Cecily, Duchess of York, Elizabeth Woodville, Margaret of Anjou, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and Anne Neville).¹⁰⁵ The Skinners’ liverymen regularly became aldermen and also hosted the mayor and other officials at their annual Corpus Christi feast in the Company’s Hall, which provided a consistent opportunity to reinforce links between the fraternity and government of the City.¹⁰⁶ Other companies also turned to fraternities to accrue the social, spiritual and political capital that accompanied membership: the Waxchandlers and Mercers were involved with the Jesus Guild at St Paul’s Cathedral, which welcomed civic elite and had associations with the Tudor royal family.¹⁰⁷ In short, when the Palmers’ Guild was reaching its height of potential use for urban elites outside of Ludlow in the early sixteenth century, Londoners already had multiple avenues through which they could pursue their combined religious, social and civic-minded inclinations. If membership of the City’s government was not a determining factor in membership, we can nevertheless trace a couple of potential influences: the first is craft association, and the second is the relationship between master and apprentice.

Of London’s many livery companies, only the Mercers were prominent among the membership of the Ludlow guild. Between 1505 and 1507, there was a sudden rise in interest in the Palmers’ Guild among mercers. Eighteen began their membership payments over the course of these two years, which accounts for just under half of the company’s total (thirty-eight) within the Palmers’ Guild, and is by far the most chronologically concentrated example of the large-scale enrolment among any London company.¹⁰⁸ The Mercers’ Company did not have an especial connection with the Palmers – thirty-eight was a small number of Company members – but the concentrated nature of the membership may indicate a relative swelling of enthusiasm for the guild among certain sectors of the Company. Compared with the other national guilds, a higher number of mercers joined the Palmers in a more concentrated period of time, as well as possessing a sustained relationship over a longer period, so far as the surviving sources show. Only nineteen London mercers joined Holy Trinity, Coventry, in a whole century between 1340 and 1450, while ten joined Holy Cross, Stratford, between 1439 and 1480.¹⁰⁹ This comparison almost certainly places the Palmers’ Guild as the pre-eminent national fraternity among London mercers, with just two years yielding a similar uptake of membership compared to over a hundred years for the Coventry guild.

It is worth reflecting then, albeit briefly, on the timing of this rise in guild membership among the Mercers’ Company. In 1506/7, John Colet, dean of St Paul’s, reformed the Jesus Guild and became its rector.¹¹⁰ With his reforming and ‘re-energizing’ hand, members of the Mercers’ Company became visible and active in the governance and activities of the Jesus Guild. In this new phase, one of the first wardens (of which there were two annually elected) was the mercer William Bromwell, with other mercers holding the post throughout the remainder of the guild’s existence. Mercers individually contributed a significant number of bequests to the guild, while the Company itself paid £10 annually to remember two of its deceased members – one being John Stile, who was also a member of the Palmers’ Guild – which was an association that began immediately after the reformation of the Jesus Guild under Colet.¹¹¹ Colet was connected to the Mercers’ Company through his father’s previous position as warden and Colet himself would join the Company shortly after the re-foundation of the Jesus Guild.¹¹² The extent of his encouragement of the Mercers’ involvement in the Jesus Guild has been debated without resolution, but the influence of his hand in encouraging Mercers should be considered.¹¹³ Regardless of the extent of Colet’s personal encouragement of the Mercers’ Company, their involvement in the Jesus Guild in 1506/7 came during and immediately after the enthusiasm for joining the Palmers’ Guild. The Mercers were – informally – demonstrating an enthusiasm for joining prestigious, large, fraternities in that first decade of the sixteenth century.

Both masters and apprentices of the Mercers’ Company were regular members of the Palmers in the first decade of the sixteenth century. For example, John Stile (noted earlier) began payments for membership in 1501/2; he died in 1505, his will being proved in October of that year.¹¹⁴ Among a multitude of bequests, he left five marks to each of his four apprentices, and, in the records of the Palmers for 1505/6, three of these (Robert Chertsey, John Hardyng and Thomas Crispe) followed the example of their deceased master in enrolling in the guild.¹¹⁵ Chertsey and Crispe both gained freedom of the City in 1506, upon the completion of their apprenticeships – notably both described in the guild documents not as apprentices but as mercers in their own right.¹¹⁶ It might be concluded that, buoyed with a cash legacy and having attained a new stage in their careers, Stile’s ex-apprentices sought to entrench their status through the respectable medium of guild membership. But, on the other hand, some apprentices were not so far advanced in their career when they joined the Palmers: Humphrey Packington, apprenticed to the Mercer Thomas Middlemore, began his membership fees in 1503 as a ‘serviens with M[aste]r Medlemor in Ironmonger Lane’, and did not gain his freedom until 1516.¹¹⁷ Middlemore himself followed his apprentice’s footsteps in 1505, suggesting that in this instance Packington influenced his master.¹¹⁸ Humphrey Packington’s brother, Robert, joined the Palmers at the same time as his sibling (no doubt a family affair in part, which frequently accounts for membership more generally) and likewise may have encouraged the enrolment of his master, Simon Rice, in 1505, along with one of Rice’s other apprentices, John Brawing.¹¹⁹

Although there are similar patterns of apprentice–master influences in other urban centres, it appears to be the most prevalent in London, with eight clear cases compared to two or three in each of the other towns. The contrast is indicative of the nature of Palmers’ Guild membership in London, where guild membership did not play a role in progressing through the chain of civic governance. Other factors can be found to influence membership, primarily through households, given that apprentices often lived with their master, and the actions of members can be seen to directly influence others within the household. In London, the civic elite already had distinct channels of civic Catholicism through three areas: livery companies with their own well-established political, social and religious functions (some had their own religious guild attached to the craft); a surrogate elite fraternity for the mayor and aldermen based around the chapel in the Guildhall complex; and the prestigious national fraternity of the Jesus Guild, based in St Paul’s Cathedral.¹²⁰ The convergence of these three channels of social, religious and political activity left little space for membership of the Palmers’ Guild to occupy a particular civic function. Instead it must be inferred that membership among London’s artisans and merchants was due to smaller scale, personal concerns.

Conclusion

Both Reading and London appear to fall outside the patterns witnessed in Worcester, Gloucester, Bristol and Coventry: geography, then, dictated the presence of guild membership within the sphere of urban politics. For the towns of Worcester, Gloucester, Coventry, Shrewsbury and Bristol the Palmers undeniably formed an important – albeit varying – part of the experience of the civic elite. While precise manifestations and patterns of membership differed, the guild nevertheless was pervasive enough that it provided a common bond among the men who worked together in governing their towns. For those in the early stages of their careers, the guild’s system of payment by instalments provided the means to join a fraternity that potentially offered a whole range of connections and networks; it could be argued, moreover, that as this resulted in a disproportionate number of young men joining the guild, means that membership was both long-lasting (in many cases, more so than local prestigious guilds which encouraged senior membership) and ingrained. Town governments were also likely to have encouraged membership of the guild among their number because it provided them with several important benefits. Association with religious institutions was a visible manifestation of the religious aspects of good governance, demonstrating the piety and reputation of a town’s governing class. The Palmers’ particularly, however, also presented the opportunity to foster further links with those of lower status in the urban hierarchy, who joined the guild in force in all five locations, and thus became an integral element of ‘civic Catholicism’. Finally, it was undoubtedly the unique position of the Palmers in Ludlow, and the close links with the Council of the Marches and the households of successive Princes of Wales, that encouraged membership as a means of gaining yet another route of access to royal power and, potentially, patronage. The guild was a source of networks and patronage, especially within the regional circumstances of the Welsh Marches and Midlands, wherein the urban centres under consideration lay. The circumstances of their location were informed by the historical tensions created by the Anglo-Welsh border. As such, the Council of the Marches and any Princes or Princesses of Wales, acting as proxy for the King were the arbiters of justice and the source of patronage for the region, and this might be posited as one of the influences on the decision of the urban elites in joining the guild.

While the association between civic governments and local guilds has frequently (and rightly) been emphasised, the evidence from the Palmers’ Guild reveals a further, important, dimension to urban life. The occurrence of men across urban centres consistently enrolling in a national guild at early stages in their civic political careers reveals an underappreciated element of medieval politics. Across towns and cities, for those wishing to engage in governance, membership of a national guild presented an opportunity that was partially, but not wholly, voluntary – for the fact that the Palmers rarely occupied the same mandatory role in local cursus honorum as other town guilds (such as the Corpus Christi and Holy Trinity guilds in Coventry) meant that membership was never wholesale among a town’s government. This in itself suggests that those who did join were taking advantage of an opportunity as a means of furthering their connections within the town above and beyond what was necessary, although it may well have been encouraged or even expected for the most ambitious.

The urban elite were not the only members of the Palmers’ Guild in their respective locations. The nature of the Palmers, such as it was with thousands of members, meant that the guild provided a place to reinforce and strengthen existing social and political relationships among the urban elite, as well as with those whom the elite bore responsibility for governing. The framework of lay religion – by which guilds were arguably the most prolific element – presented civic officials with the chance to associate themselves with heavenly authority, their governing councils, and their individual and collective actions within the urban environment.

There are, then, a number of ways that guild membership was utilised by the urban population, and the networks created and reinforced by membership were important to the status and functions of both communities. Guilds were, quite naturally, shaped by those within them and so their purposes and composition were manipulated to suit an individual or group’s social preoccupations. If anything, the possibility for the guild to possess variations in meaning for different groups simultaneously (as well as overlapping concerns) is a powerful indication of the fluidity of purpose of England’s national fraternities. Through an examination of urban elites, it is clear that the Palmers’ Guild transcended immediately apparent designations: it defies the traditionally held view that guild membership was frequently inherently localised in focus. Over this, membership had a profound importance in politics: a clear contrast to the view that urban government was insular.

Notes

1. 1.  For example, Worcester: Alan Dyer, Worcester in the Sixteenth Century (Leicester, 1973). Guilds as a ‘surrogate town council’ can be seen in Westminster and Stratford: Gervase Rosser, Medieval Westminster: 1200–1540 (Oxford, 1989), 285–93. In Boston, the guild of Our Lady – a national guild akin to Ludlow – had a corporate organization feel, providing an opportunity for the town’s inhabitants with inclinations in that regard: S.H. Rigby, ‘Boston and Grimsby in the Middle Ages: An Administrative Contrast’, Journal of Medieval History, 10 (1984), 61–2.

2. 2.  Ben R. McRee, ‘Religious Gilds and Civic Order: The Case of Norwich in the Late Middle Ages’, Speculum, 67, no. 1 (January 1992), 91; Dyer, Worcester, 190.

3. 3.  Dyer, Worcester, 190.

4. 4.  There were, of course, exceptions to the ‘normal’ course of the civic elite. For the life cycle of the Coventry elite, see Charles Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1979), 125–6.

5. 5.  Rachael Harkes, ‘Joining a Fraternity in Late Medieval England: The Case of the Palmers’ Guild of Ludlow, c. 1250–1551’ (PhD diss., University of Durham, 2021), chapter 1.

6. 6.  There are numerous examples, but a few further ones are noted here. In York, the Corpus Christi guild was the unofficial route to power: David Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power: Religious Gilds in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridge, 2000), 181. Even when a city was governed by ecclesiastical authorities, guilds could hold an important role in representing the collective interests of the urban elite, as the guild of Corpus Christi did in Durham: Margaret Harvey, Lay Religious Life in Late Medieval Durham (Woodbridge, 2006), 160.

7. 7.  For example, Peter Fleming, ‘Conflict and Urban Government in Later Medieval England: St Augustine’s Abbey and Bristol’, Urban History, 27, no. 3 (December 2000), 325–43; for an articulate overview of how historians have approached office holding, power, and governance of medieval cities, alongside suggestions for complicating our view of urban elite, see Justin Colson, ‘Reassessing Power and Governance in Late Medieval Cities: Institutions and the Cursus Honorum’, in New Approaches to Governance and Rule in Urban Europe Since 1500, ed. Simon Gunn and Tom Hulme (New York, 2020), 25–44.

8. 8.  W.A. Champion, ‘Markets and Fairs’, draft entry of Victoria County History of Shropshire, vol. 6, part 2, (2012), 2–19, http://www.vchshropshire.org/_Shrewsbury_2/3_2_Markets%20and%20Fairs.pdf.

9. 9.  Michael Faraday, Ludlow, 1085–1660: A Social, Economic and Political History (Chichester, 1991), 48, 116–8.

10. 10.  Faraday, Ludlow, 133.

11. 11.  See the section ‘Building Solidarity’, Chapter 1.

12. 12.  W.G.D. Fletcher, ‘Municipal Records of Shrewsbury’, Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, 21, no. 1 (1898), 149.

13. 13.  C.H. Drinkwater, ‘Two Shrewsbury Gild Merchant Rolls of the 16th century (1501 to 1510)’, Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, 5, no. 1 (1905), 105.

14. 14.  As clearly illustrated in the election records contained within Assembly Book no. 1: SA: 3365/67.

15. 15.  Richard Hill, John Forster, Richard Aleyn, Thomas Broughton, Thomas ap Jenkyn, Henry Hopley, Roger Phillips, Walter Wetnell, Hugh Manning, David Baker, John Mongomery, John Barbour, William Hochekes, William Hosier, Richard Phillips and David Ireland. SA: 3365/67, f. 30.

16. 16.  Thomas Hosier: 1521, 1525, 1529. William Bayly: 1523, 1527. David Ireland: 1524, 1528. The other Palmer who was bailiff in that period was Richard Brickdale (1530).

17. 17.  For examples in 1516 and 1517 see H.W. Adnitt, ‘Orders of the Corporation of Shrewsbury’, Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, 11, no. 2 (1888), 154.

18. 18.  Lister joined the Palmers in 1508/9. He can be found contributing towards his membership in 1512/13: SA: LB/5/3/40, f. 62v.

19. 19.  SA: 3365/67, ff. 30r, 30v, 31v. For his removal see the transcription provided in Adnitt, ‘Orders of the Corporation of Shrewsbury’, 154.

20. 20.  This was either through their own membership or the membership of their wives. The patterns of female enrolment should be examined systematically in the future. Select examples used throughout this book demonstrate a pattern of wives joining a few years after their husbands but a complete analysis of all married couples’ entrances into the guild might prove to be a fruitful avenue through which to explore gendered experiences of guild membership. All enrolment can be found in SA: LB/5/3/2–10; LB/5/3/40; LB/5/1/2–4. Their involvement in civic government can be found in Assembly Book no 1. SA: 3365/67, ff. 29v–31v.

21. 21.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 13r. In 1512, he was present at the signing of an agreement between the corporation of the city and the abbot and convent of St Peter: SA: 3365/67, f. 70v.

22. 22.  Thomas Hosier, William Bayly and Richard Aspley. SA: LB/5/3/2; LB/5/3/5; LB/5/3/6.

23. 23.  It has not been possible to identify the year of entry for three men: Walter Wetnell, David Baker and William Hosier.

24. 24.  Dyer, Worcester, 200.

25. 25.  This requirement was reciprocal, as ex-bailiffs would often be appointed masters of the guild. Dyer, Worcester, 190.

26. 26.  As did Robert Yowle, who served as bailiff on four occasions between 1546 and 1559. Diarmaid MacCulloch and Pat Hughes, ‘A Bailiff’s List and Chronicle from Worcester’, Antiquaries Journal, 75 (September 1995), 237.

27. 27.  The chronicle is analysed and transcribed in MacCulloch and Hughes, ‘A Bailiff’s List and Chronicle from Worcester’, 235–53.

28. 28.  Dyer, Worcester, 198.

29. 29.  Dyer, Worcester, 198–9.

30. 30.  Dyer, Worcester, 196.

31. 31.  Dyer, Worcester, 198.

32. 32.  MacCulloch and Hughes, ‘A Bailiff’s List and Chronicle from Worcester’, 241–3.

33. 33.  Specifically, 3.559 per cent: 11 entries out of 309 recorded Palmers in Worcester.

34. 34.  Some new members for 1510 to 1517 can be found in the clerk’s receipt book for that period, but it is by no means complete: SA: LB/5/3/40.

35. 35.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 71r.

36. 36.  Richard Cam (SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 140r), John Colman (SA: LB/5/3/9, f. 45r), Richard Bilford (SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 70v), Walter Stone (SA: LB/5/3/40, f. 24r), Stefan Collier (SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 71r) and John Williams (SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 69v).

37. 37.  Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City, 119.

38. 38.  For example, see the entry of Richard Cam and his wife, who paid off his membership debt between 1503 and 1517. SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 140r.

39. 39.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 71r.

40. 40.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 140r.

41. 41.  Richard Holt, ‘Gloucester: An English Provincial Town During the Later Middle Ages’ (PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 1987), 204.

42. 42.  Holt, ‘An English Provincial Town’, 204.

43. 43.  Holt, ‘An English Provincial Town’, 195.

44. 44.  Holt, ‘An English Provincial Town’, 195; ‘Gloucester: Aldermen, 1483–1835’, in A History of the County of Gloucester, vol. 4, The City of Gloucester, ed. N.M. Herbert (London, 1988), 374–81, British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol4/pp374–381.

45. 45.  Specifically, 4.669 per cent: 12 out of 257 entries for Gloucester.

46. 46.  John Poole, mayor in 1486, was a Palmer but is not included in this number as he was not sheriff in the three years between the incorporation and his term as mayor: S. Rudder, The History and Antiquities of Gloucester, Including the Civil and Military Affairs of That Ancient City; with a Particular Account of the Cathedral Church and All Other Public Establishments, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time (Cirencester, 1781), 141.

47. 47.  These men were Thomas Osborn (SA: LB/5/3/40, f. 21r), John Rastell (SA: LB/5/1/3, m. 3), John Semys (SA: LB/5/3/40, f. 20v), Henry Marmion (SA: LB/5/3/9, f. 47r; LB/5/1/4, m. 4), William Michel (SA: LB/5/3/10, f. 40r); Rudder, The History and Antiquities of Gloucester, 141–4.

48. 48.  Rudder, The History and Antiquities of Gloucester, 143; SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 61r.

49. 49.  The average number of years between membership and civic office in Gloucester was twelve.

50. 50.  There is a brief discussion in Holt, ‘An English Provincial Town’, 204.

51. 51.  Marmion was one of the wealthiest men in England, and Rastell, his brother-in-law, appears to have been considerably wealthy at the time of his death. Their familial relationship (through the marriage of Marmion’s sister to Rastell) may have provided additional pressure on Marmion’s enrolment to join the guild: he joined two years after Rastell. TNA: PROB/11/29/78 (Marmion); PROB/11/25/100 (Rastell).

52. 52.  Holt, ‘An English Provincial Town’, 194.

53. 53.  James Lee, ‘Political Communication in Early Tudor England: the Bristol elite, Urban Community and the Crown, c. 1471 – c.1553’ (PhD diss., University of the West of England, 2006), 34, 219–20.

54. 54.  These men held several offices in Bristol, making it unwieldy to list all of their offices here. They can, instead, be found in the following sources: The Maire of Bristowe Is Kalendar, ed. L. Toulmin Smith, Camden Society, new series, 5 (1872) and Lee, ‘Political Communication’, appendices.

55. 55.  Hugh Elyot, Thomas Pernaunt, Robert Thorne, William Jeffreys, John Harris, Simon Gervys, John Edwards, John Matthews and John Wilkyns: Lee, ‘Political Communication’, appendices.

56. 56.  Robert Ricart, The Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar. Bristol Record Society, ed. Peter Fleming (Bristol, 2015), 54–5.

57. 57.  Lee, ‘Political Communication’, 231.

58. 58.  Lee, ‘Political Communication’, 232–4.

59. 59.  John Drewis, Richard Tonell, John Wilkyns, John Reep and John Edwards. Those who held the office twice were: John Esterfield, John Vaughan and Richard Abingdon. SA: LB/5/3/2–9; Lee, ‘Political Communication’, appendices.

60. 60.  SA: LB/5/1/2; LB/5/1/3.

61. 61.  Lee, ‘Political Communication’, 240.

62. 62.  Lee, ‘Political Communication’, 243.

63. 63.  SA: LB/5/3/36, f. 17v. (Bagot’s chalice in the guild inventory); LB/5/1/4, m. 6 (Bagot’s membership); LB/5/3/40 (example of expenditure on victuals for Bristol members). The annual gathering of brethren in Bristol, and elsewhere, is discussed in detail in Chapter 1.

64. 64.  Like the case of Bristol, these men held a multiplicity of civic offices, which can be found in Mary Dormer Harris, ed., The Coventry Leet Book: Or Mayor’s Register Containing the Records of the City Court Leet, 2 vols. (London, 1907).

65. 65.  Mairi Macdonald, ed., The Register of the Guild of the Holy Cross, St Mary and St John the Baptist, Stratford-upon-Avon (Stratford-upon-Avon, 2007), 370; SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 28r.

66. 66.  They both held other offices: Kemsey was a member of the jury leet throughout the 1510s. Nethermyll became sheriff, bailiff and mayor. Dormer Harris, Coventry Leet Book, i; Macdonald, Register of the Guild of the Holy Cross, 393.

67. 67.  Macdonald, Register of the Guild of the Holy Cross, 414, 422.

68. 68.  SA: LB/5/3/4, f. 14v (Nethermyll); LB/5/3/7, f. 28v (Kemsey), f. 30r (Banwell); LB/5/3/2, f. 38r (Wall).

69. 69.  Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City, esp. chapters 2 and 3. This claim is contested by Donald Leech, who argues that the whole city was not in decline but, instead, certain wards and trades demonstrate varying levels of both decay and success: Donald Leech, ‘Stability and Change at the End of the Middle Ages: Coventry, 1450–1525’, Midland History, 34, no. 1 (2009), 1–21.

70. 70.  Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City, 51.

71. 71.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 38r.

72. 72.  This financial strain was, in part, caused by changing policies towards country cloth. John Hadden’s bequest of £100 for annual cash loans for individual drapers demonstrates the need of the cash-strapped drapers. Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City, 48, 51; TNA: PROB 11/19/241.

73. 73.  SA: LB/5/3/7, ff. 30r–v.

74. 74.  Thirty-nine out of 55 civic elite and 43 out of 396 for general membership.

75. 75.  Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City, 47.

76. 76.  Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City, 47.

77. 77.  As discussed in the Introduction, the Palmers did not inflict an additional charge on members for missed payments.

78. 78.  Clive Burgess, ‘ “According to His Wise Discretion”: Civic Catholicism in Fifteenth-Century Bristol – and Beyond’, Historical Research, 92, no. 257 (2019), 479–99.

79. 79.  Burgess, ‘Civic Catholicism’, 485. Further discussion on civic Catholicism can be found in the forthcoming collection of unpublished essays written by the late Professor Burgess.

80. 80.  Burgess, ‘Civic Catholicism’, 485. Shannon McSheffrey has a different view of ‘civic Catholicism’, mainly how civic elite adopted religious reasoning in order to control behaviour among the population. Shannon McSheffrey, ‘Jurors, Respectable Masculinity and Christian Morality: A Comment on Marjorie McIntosh’s Controlling Misbehavior’, Journal of British Studies, 37, no. 3 (1998), 276–7.

81. 81.  Burgess, ‘Civic Catholicism’, 488; Clive Burgess, The Right Ordering of Souls: The Parish of All Saints’ Bristol on the Eve of the Reformation (Woodbridge, 2018), 104, 256.

82. 82.  There is significant variation among historians as to what period witnessed the ‘rise of oligarchy’. Dobson and Kowaleski argue for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; McIntosh and Lee for Henry VIII’s reign; and Tittler for the late sixteenth century. Barrie Dobson, ‘General Survey 1300–1450’, in Cambridge Urban History of Britain, 600–1540, ed. D.M. Palliser (Cambridge, 2000), 280; Maryanne Kowaleski, ‘The Commercial Dominance of a Medieval Provincial Oligarchy: Exeter in the Late Fourteenth Century’, Mediaeval Studies, 46 (1984), 355–84; Marjorie McIntosh, Autonomy and Community: The Royal Manor of Havering, 1200–1500 (Cambridge, 1986), 249; James Lee, ‘Urban Policy and Urban Political Culture’, Historical Research, 82, no. 217 (August 2009), 506; Robert Tittler, The Reformation and the Towns in England: Politics and Political Culture, c. 1540–1640 (Oxford, 1998), 145–6.

83. 83.  Christian D. Liddy, ‘Urban Politics and Material Culture at the End of the Middle Ages: The Coventry Tapestry in St Mary’s Hall’, Urban History, 39, no. 2 (May 2012), 203–24.

84. 84.  Liddy, ‘Urban Politics and Material Culture’, 221.

85. 85.  For a similar case in Bristol see Clive Burgess, ‘ “A Repertory for Reinforcement”: Configuring Catholicism in Fifteenth-Century Bristol’, in Of Mice and Men: Image, Belief and Regulation in Late Medieval England, ed. L. Clark (Woodbridge, 2005), 99–122.

86. 86.  Ben R. McRee, ‘Unity or Division? The Social Meaning of Guild Ceremony in Urban Communities’, in City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe, ed. B.A. Hanawalt and K.L. Reyerson (Minneapolis, 1994), 190–1.

87. 87.  McRee, ‘Unity or Division?’, 222.

88. 88.  For further discussion on this, see Chapter 1.

89. 89.  Liddy, ‘Urban Politics and Material Culture’, 216.

90. 90.  The royal aspect of the Palmers’ Guild is most clearly illustrated in the enrolment of Princess Katherine of Aragon and Prince Henry, the future Henry VIII. SA: LB/5/3/3, f. 34r; LB/5/3/4, f. 31v. See also Chapter 4.

91. 91.  Mary Dormer Harris, ‘Unpublished Documents Relating to Town Life in Coventry’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 3 (1920), 104; Ralph A. Griffiths, ‘Wales and the Marches’, in Fifteenth-Century England, 1399–1509: Studies in Politics and Society, ed. S.B. Chrimes, Charles D. Ross and Ralph A. Griffiths (Manchester, 1972), 161.

92. 92.  Dormer Harris, ‘Town Life in Coventry’, 104–5.

93. 93.  ‘The Borough of Stratford-upon-Avon: Borough’, in A History of the County of Warwick, vol. 3, Barlichway Hundred, ed. Philip Styles (London, 1945), 247–58.

94. 94.  Christine Carpenter pointed out that the bishop was regarded as the king’s man in this instance, and it was in this capacity that he was receiving membership, not in his role as a bishop. Christine Carpenter, ‘Town and Country: The Stratford Guild and Political Networks of Fifteenth-Century Warwickshire’, in The History of an English Borough: Stratford-upon-Avon 1196–1996, ed. Robert Bearman (Stroud, 1997), 69–70.

95. 95.  The close relationship between the Crown, the Council of the Marches, and the Palmers’ Guild is explored in detail in Chapter 4.

96. 96.  Joe Chick, Urban Society and Monastic Lordship in Reading, 1350–1600 (Woodbridge, 2022), 44–5.

97. 97.  Others include William White I, Nicholas Kent, William Haselwood, John Pownsar, Richard Eve, John Wilcox, Nicholas Hyde, Thomas Nevell, William Jonson, Robert Elwold, John Darline, Simon Lane, William Lendal I, Thomas Dawson I, John Andrew, Richard Birch, Robert Best, Christian Nicholas, William Justice I and David Williams. My thanks to Joe Chick for sharing the names of burgesses of the merchant guild in advance of the publication of Urban Society and Monastic Lordship.

98. 98.  The exceptions were William Justice I, Richard Birch and David Williams.

99. 99.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 59r. For his role as an office holder within Reading’s guild see Chick, Urban Society and Monastic Lordship, 77.

100. 100.  The detailed analysis undertaken by Chick demonstrates that there were any number of routes that individuals took to reach high office: Chick, Urban Society and Monastic Lordship in Reading, 62.

101. 101.  One servant of the abbey also joined. Membership from the abbey can be found in LB/5/3/2–10.

102. 102.  For Pageter and Chertsey, see: SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 117v; LB/5/3/7, f. 77v; Rice joined in 1505 and Baxter in 1511: LB/5/3/7, f. 78v; LB/5/3/40, f. 43r. Others include Robert Packington, who became a Palmer in 1503 and a common councillor in 1535: LB/5/3/5, f. 81r. For a list of common councillors in the sixteenth century see David Hickman, ‘The Religious Allegiance of London’s Ruling Elite, 1520–1603’ (PhD diss., University College London, 1995), appendix 1.

103. 103.  It is possible that the increasing refusal to hold civic office in the early sixteenth century could factor into this. Simon Rice, a Palmer, was approached to be sheriff in 1526 and refused: Anne F. Sutton, The Mercery of London: Trade, Goods and People, 1130–1578 (Abingdon, 2005), 477.

104. 104.  Matthew Davies, The History of the Merchant Taylors’ Company (London, 2022), chapter 2.

105. 105.  Maggie Bolton, ‘City, Cult, and Company: The Skinners’ Procession and Corpus Christi Celebrations in Later Medieval London’, London Journal, 48, no. 3 (November 2023), 216.

106. 106.  Bolton, ‘City, Cult, and Company’, 218, 227.

107. 107.  Elizabeth A. New, Records of the Jesus Guild in St Paul’s Cathedral, c. 1450–1550: An Edition of Oxford, Bodleian MS Tanner 221, and Associated Material, London Record Society, vol. 56 (Woodbridge, 2022), 13–14.

108. 108.  SA: LB/5/3/7, ff. 77v, 78r; LB/5/1/3, mm. 1–4; LB/5/1/4, m. 1.

109. 109.  Sutton, Mercery of London, 194.

110. 110.  The 1506 ordinances can be found in New, Records of the Jesus Guild, 51–62.

111. 111.  For William Browmell’s involvement in the Jesus Guild see New, Records of the Jesus Guild, 275. The annual payment to the Jesus Guild by the Mercers to pray for the souls of Whomas Wyndout and John Stile was initially agreed for a period of 100 years but this was later reduced. New, Records of the Jesus Guild, 65.

112. 112.  He joined in 1508/9. New, Records of the Jesus Guild, 14; Jonathan Arnold, Dean John Colet of St Paul’s: Humanism and Reform in Early Tudor England (London, 2007), 88–90.

113. 113.  Sutton stated that Colet may have encouraged mercers to join the Jesus Guild, although she did not agree with New’s suggestion of the Mercer’s using the guild as their fraternity. Arnold, meanwhile, argues that reforming the Jesus Guild was part of a larger reform programme undertaken by Colet in the sixteenth century. Sutton, Mercery of London, 381–3; Elizabeth A. New, ‘The Cult of the Holy name of Jesus in late medieval England, with special reference to the fraternity in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, c. 1450-1558’ (PhD diss., Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, 1999), 122–3; Arnold, Dean John Colet, 89–92.

114. 114.  SA: LB/5/3/3, f. 32r; TNA: PROB 11/14/715; New, Records of the Jesus Guild, 65.

115. 115.  Robert Chertsey (also noted above as an alderman) is also spelled ‘Chartsey’. SA: LB/5/3/7, ff. 77v, 78r; LB/5/1/3, m. 1.

116. 116.  ‘Records of London’s Livery Companies Online: Apprentices and Freemen, 1400–1900’, https://londonroll.org/event/?company=mrc&event_id=MCEW2293; https://londonroll.org/event/?company=mrc&event_id=MCMM1128. The Palmers describe Chertsey as ‘serviens’ of Stile, even though he was already dead: SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 77v.

117. 117.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 81r; ‘Records of London’s Livery Companies Online: Apprentices and Freemen, 1400–1900’, https://londonroll.org/event/?company=mrc&event_id=MCMM2207.

118. 118.  SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 78v.

119. 119.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 81r; LB/5/3/7, f. 78v; LB/5/1/3, m. 1.

120. 120.  New, Records of the Jesus Guild.