Living and Dying in Late Medieval London

This storymaps is the result of a "Lab Class" held at the University of Michigan's History Department in the Fall of 2021. Lab classes are project-based courses, where faculty and students collaborate as investigators on long-term research projects that involve both curricular and extracurricular components. Projects are often developed in collaboration with community partners. The London Metropolitan Archive in London digitized Register 7 of the Commissary Court and our project was to learn what could be done with medieval wills. The results of the class' investigation are below.

There were four main courts used to probate wills in medieval London. The Prerogative Court of Canterbury, the Bishop of London’s Consistory Court, the Archdeacon's Court, and finally the Bishop of London’s Commissary Court. Which court a testator used depended on wealth, where one lived, if one owned property outside of London, and most of all convenience. The court with the largest number of surviving wills for London is the London Commissary Court, the focus of this project.

Wills probated in the Commissary Court were heard by the Bishop of London’s deputy. He was in charge of hearing the wills and then, if the executor wished, it and could afford it, had that will entered into the register of the court. Original wills were returned to the family after being proved and rarely survive. Registered versions are what generally survive. The Commissary Court has twelve surviving registers from before Reformation. They earliest register starts in 1374. The Commissary Deputy for Register 7, with the exception of a single will out of the wills we transcribed, was William Wylde. Unfortunately, beyond the name we have not found any information on him.

Wills served as the vehicle for how a testator transferred property and goods to their heirs. While the law largely dictated how real property, that is land would be transferred to heirs, there was some latitude in how movable goods were transferred. Each will would often (but not always) have two dates, when the testator wrote it, and when the will was proved in court. Most wills were written at the point of death, making the time between the writing of each will and the probate date brief. While the Church wished all Christians to leave a will, there was in reality a wealth threshold, and most testators choosing to have their wills probate in the Commissary Court were modest artisans and merchants.

For this project, we transcribed the wills of all the testators in two parishes: St. Sepulchre without Newgate and St. Magnus Martyr by the Bridge and all the Grocers wills. This was a total of 41 wills. While learning paleography, we we transcribed a few other wills, including this rare will from a single woman, Beatrice Elys.

Medieval people wrote wills to save their souls and distribute their material estates. Because wills survive in such large numbers for medieval England, historians use them quantitatively and qualitatively to learn about medieval religion, social systems, and economic life. Wills provide evidence for religious practices, because in the Middle Ages had religious traditions and expectations that were recorded in wills, such as funeral traditions, theological conventions, charity, and burial. Wills can also be used to explore family life, legal change, familial, social, and economic relationships. Although the law forbade married women from writing wills, widows and single women did, and historians can utilize their wills to shed light on their priorities and concerns. Wills can also be used to answer questions about economic relationships, occupations, and wealth. For further reading on wills see bibliography.

Parishes are the basic unit of public worship. Within the parish, Christians received the sacraments, learned their catechism, and paid their tithes. All Londoners were members of a parish, determined by where they lived. London had over one hundred parishes within the walls. The parish with the most surviving wills is St. Sepulchre without Newgate.

St. Sepulchre without Newgate lay just outside of the Newgate on the western side of London. It's location by one of London's gate, made the population diverse and fluid, as evident by the number of inns in the parish. Also in the parish was Newgate prison and St. Bartholmew's hospital. According to the  England's Immigrant Database , the area around St. Sepulchre was diverse. The Alien Subsidy of 1483 lists 104 immigrants in the area around the church, with a majority of them having Scottish (27%) and Teutonic (63%) origins. French, Hollander, and Gelderlander were the other origins represented. This data shows parishioners of St. Sepulchre belonged to a disparate community of differing backgrounds.

St. Sepulcher without Newgate was the largest parish within Register 7, containing a total of 23 wills. Within those wills, we found that the relationships between the Testators ranged from Family being the largest amount of people named (44%) followed by either Business or Community relations (33.5%), Clergy, usually in the form of Witnesses, Confessors, or named specifically as Parish Priests (10%), and finally Servants and Apprentices sitting at 8% and 4%, respectively.

The wills from Register 7 for St. Sepulcher tell us not only about the people within the parish, but also the church itself. It was physically a large parish and a large church. The wills provide evidence of how the church was laid out, side altars were in the church, and parish parish guilds or confraternities there were.

The church itself had a nave flanked by two aisles. One aisle ended with an altar dedicated to St. Mary and St. Stephen. Also in the church were altars dedicated to Corpus Christ, the apostles Peter and Paul, and St. Loi. Dividing the nave from the chancel was a rood screen with a loft. The church also had a south porch and a north door.

Thomas Laurence, a weaver, who will was proven in March of 1487, requested burial in the middle aisle, before the Crucifix in the Rood Loft. (fos. 80-8v.)

Most of the medieval church has been destroyed, but the bell tower remains. Archaeological excavations reveal that there were burial grounds on the north south sides of the church.

The parish also boasted two parish guilds: the Fraternity of Our Lady and St. Stephen Protomartyr, the Fraternity of Corpus Christi. These fraternities likely supported the altars, by raising money to keep up the chapels and altars physically, but also to decorate them and celebrate their feast days. Testators in this parish typically gave to both groups, suggesting a broad and overlapping membership. In addition to altars, there were several devotional images with candles burning before them: one to St. Erasmus, one to St. Christopher, one before the Rood or Crucifix.

Robert Smyth, a baker, who wrote his will March 3, 1488 requested that he be buried in the church porch and then left a series of bequests that help us to see these parish devotions.

"I bequeath to the brotherhood of Our Lady and St. Stephen - 3s. 4d.

"I bequeath to the Rood Light - 8d."

"I bequeath to the brotherhood of Corpus Christi - 20s. 20d."

"I bequeath to the light of St. Erasmus - 12d."

"I bequeath to the light of St. Christopher - 12d." (fos. 117-117v)

The majority of the parishioners from St. Sepulchre's who left wills were men, but there were two women: Joan Flete (fos. 151v-152) and Margaret Portman (106-106v), who died a year after her husband John, whose will is also in register 7 (fos. 22-23). Also among those who left wills was the parish chaplain Richard Alderson, who died in November of 1488. (fos. 136-136v).

Among the 20 laymen leaving wills, 14 identified themselves as citizens of London. In general, they came from second-tier companies. There were two brewers, a butcher, a baker, and a tallowchandler. There was also an innholder, skinner, and weaver.

Because of the large number of wills that survive for this parish we can see relationships and social connections among the testators. Richard Higdon, a grocer left bequests to several people ranging from apprentices to tallow chandlers, showing something of his business relations. His other named beneficiaries were instead family members, members of the parish or neighborhood community, or perhaps friends. (fols. 65v-66)

Some people have been named in more than one will, showing us connections among the parishioners and the larger community. Upstanding members of the community might be asked to be witnesses or supervisors of a will, as was Robert Scarlett, who has also served a Warden of Barber Surgeons in 1472, and was Master of Barber Surgeons of London from 1488-1494. He was executor to William Fleet's will and was supervisor to his widow, Joan's will. Another upstanding member of the community was one Thomas Norsand, who was a Sheriff of London, and was asked to be the supervisor to William Kene’s will.     

The kinds of beneficiaries named by testators shows us who else lived in the parish. Most households had at least one servant and they were frequently remembered by their employers in their wills. Thirteen servants were named in the St. Sepulcher wills, with John Margaret Portman both making bequests to their servants Katherine Green and Joan King. One Richard Vernon (fo.54) even made a specific bequest to a former servant of his, John Lewes.

While this is a small sample of wills for one particular parish, it can be extrapolated through the frequency of bequests to guilds, church works, and to individuals both in trade and in personal life, that community connections could be strongly formed, whether in one particular parish or across a collection of people from different parishes.

Testators of St. Sepulchre had long-distance connections to other parts of England. Three parishioners identified a birthplace in their testaments, two of which were from outside of the London city walls. These instances provide evidence of immigration to the city amongst some of its parishioners, and at considerable distance. Anthony Ansty named Shropshire as his birthplace, which is 258 kms from London today (fo. 2). Thomas Laurence was born in Carryng, Sussex (fos. 80-80v). Four parishioners had other familial connections, ranging as far as Kingsland, Wales, 465 kms away from the city. 

The second parish we investigated is also a boarder parish, but the boarder this parish lay along was not the city's wall but the bridge.

The Parish St. Magnus the Martyr lay within London’s southern ward Bridge Within, which lies along the River Thames. Southwark was outside the municipality, making the London Bridge a frequent entry into the city. The ward would be well traveled by many and due to this. St. Magnus the Martyr served a relatively significant portion of the parishioners in Registry 7, and demonstrated a broad and dynamic social network.

 England’s Immigrants Database  suggests the area around St. Magnus housed few immigrants. The Alien Subsidy of 1483 had only 7 entries in the area near the church, 6 of Teutonic/Germanic origin (86%) and 1 Picard (14%). Being in the center of the city, this area was home to a more stable population than one on the outside, like we saw with St. Sepulchre.

There are ten wills from this parish in Register 7, including a couple Richard and Alice Wodelake, who died within a year of each other (fos. 55, 87-87v). Richard was a haberdasher. In his will he left a bequest to his unborn child, and given that Alice followed him shortly thereafter, she might have died in childbirth. Two other women left wills: Joan Enfield and Agnes Terre (fos. 9v-10; 153av). In general the men who left wills were from higher status companies. A goldsmith and a fishmonger left wills.

As the Fishmonger’s Hall was within a short distance of the church, we can expect to find fishmongers among the congregation. Joan Enfeld (fos. 9v-10) and John Murton (fo. 104) appeared as members of the trade, each of whom displayed vastly different values and customs. Notably, within the wills, colleagues and members of related trades were often beneficiaries, revealing the relevance of occupation in an individual’s personal life. While these people would frequently serve as beneficiaries and witnesses, the items commonly bequeathed remained as household goods and money.

Joan Enfeld was a widow of a fishmonger. As a widow, she could make a will. Enfeld would go on to name an apprentice as a beneficiary, signaling she would have gone on to continue her husband’s trade after his death. Wills like these can help provide insight into the private and public lives of women, who were relatively marginalized and silenced in the later Middle Ages.

John Murton had a comparatively short and direct will, though it still managed to reveal some norms of the period. Like many other bequests, John gave donations and tithes to his parish, followed by bequeathing several colored gowns to a couple men. Lastly, Murton left the residue of his goods to his wife and made her the executrix of his will, which was a common practice for men with surviving wives. While we may not be able to tell if John Murton was still of working age at his death, it is possible that his wife may have taken over his business as in the case of Joan Enfeld.

The wills also reveal information about the church itself. Though the medieval structure was destroyed in 1666 by The Great Fire of London, the nine wills we have from St. Magnus give us some indication of the church saints, altars, fraternity, and burial space. There was the high altar as well as an altar dedicated to the Fraternity of Our Lady and Saint Thomas the Martyr. Testator’s burial requests reveal that church encompassed a cloister and what Agnes Terre referred to as an “old churchyard” (fo. 153av).

The wills suggest that the church was much smaller than St. Sepulchre's. Testators only mention one other altar besides the High Altar. This altar, located in a chapel was dedicated to SS. Mary and Thomas Beckett. Supporting this chapel and altar was a fraternity, mentioned in several wills. Alice Wodelake left 3s. 4d. to sustain the altar and fraternity. (fos. 87-87v.)

An image of the church from the Copperplate map c. 1559 shows the church had a clock, and an external staircase in the tower.

The Bridge, had its own chapel also dedicated to St. Thomas Beckett, and earlier it had provided competition with the parish, as the parish sought a cut of the donations that visitors, pilgrims, and other travelers across the bridge gave on their way. After years of wrangling, the Bridge Chapel agreed to share the donations with the parish, and many of the parishioners of St. Magnus were also members of the fraternity of the St. Thomas on the Bridge.

The testaments suggest some parishioners had connections outside of London, but through bequest and residence. John Murton bequeathed 20 shillings to a church residing in Bexley, Kent in his will, suggesting some level of connection to that area. Robert Goldfynche stated in his will that he was residing in the village of St. Albans at the time of writing the testament. He also bequeathed 6 shillings and 8 d if he were to die there. While these examples make it hard to determine the strength of connections, they do show movement and a level of importance amongst parishioners to other parts of England.

There were a number of occupations found within Register 7, ranging from Brewer and Tailor to servants and widows who took over their husband's businesses. It was common to have their occupations listed in the will, for example: "I, John Portman, Citizen and Tailor..." fo.22v-23. Testators in the two parishes we looked at do not mention other members of their company in their wills. St. Sepulcre, however, did have more than one chaplain help with the cure of souls for such a large parish, but sub-communities of occupations are not obvious in the wills.  

Medieval London had 12 great companies that dominated much of the social, economic, and political atmosphere of London. Two of these 12 companies--the Grocers and the Mercers--were rivals for city-wide dominance for centuries. While being slightly less powerful than their main rival, the Grocers significantly contributed to the rich trade history of London.

The predecessors of the Grocers Company was the Guild of Pepperers. Founded in 1180 (and with some roots to the tenth and eleventh centuries) this guild dealt with setting the standards and quality of spices. Some members of the guild founded the Grocers Company in the 14th century.

The Grocers Company was an integral establishment in defining Medieval London as a trade destination. In addition to setting spice standards, the Grocers were responsible for the King's Beam, which weighed the bulk of merchandise they traded. For several centuries the Grocers were the 2nd most influential Company in London, topped only by their rival Mercers.

Grocers constitute one of the more common occupations represented in the Commissary Court wills. In Register 7 there were nine, which includes an apprentice grocer John Cardemaker (fo. 87v-88).

With all companies, entry usually started with an apprenticeship. In Register 7 there is a Grocer's Apprentice will. John Cardemaker wrote a lengthy two-folio will, bequeathing monetary gifts to his relatives and friends. Although he leaves £5 to his master and another to his master's wife, he does not name him. Due to the large amount of money he is able to leave, he seems to have come from a wealthy family. This is further supported by the fact that he gives out more specific money gifts to individuals than any of the other grocers, with most of his gifts being gifts in pounds while most of the other 8 Grocers' gifts being gifts in shillings.

In Register 7 while there is only 1 Grocer Apprentice will among the other 8 Grocer wills there is mention of 5 other Grocer Apprentices. Two of them--William Sowthworth and Thomas Warner--are directly related to their masters; in both cases their masters are their cousins. The other 3--William Appulton, Robert Blenkynsop, and John Thomas Stevyn--seem to have no familial relations with their masters. Regardless of familial association the fact that they all received larger proportions in money and items than compared to most other individuals and groups of people that received gifts from the Grocers suggests that relationships between the Grocers and their Apprentices was strong.

The Grocer wills we have in Register 7 show them to have been modestly successful grocers, as none of them appear to have served in company offices. None of them show up in the  Medieval Londoners Database . Even though these eight grocers all die within the same time frame, there is not overlap in names mentioned in their wills, suggesting they had separate networks and communities, despite being in the same company.

While there is little overlap in names mentioned in their wills, there are similar specific names throughout their wills. Two of the Grocers have a wife named Agnes; two different Grocers have a sister-in-law named Agnes; . However, despite these name similarities, there seems to be little (if any) overlap between the people in the Grocers lives. As most of them attended different parishes, this makes sense.

Thomas Chamber who died in 1488, declares in his will that he was born in Blunham, Bedfordshire. (fos. 127-127v.) Other grocers also have familial connections beyond London. Rauf Southworth had family connections in Middlewhich, Cheshire, up in the north of England (fos. 32v-33).

The Grocers Company was a very influential organization that strongly shaped Medieval London's social, economic, and political atmosphere. They appear to write wills during times of economic change, regardless if the change is for the better or worse for the Grocers. Overall they provided many jobs, influenced political leaders, and helped establish London as a trading capital throughout the medieval world.

Many bequests were household items, what historians and archaeologists refer to as material culture. Material culture is the study of everyday objects and how they were made and used. Medieval material culture gives historians insight into the medieval home. After the plague, as late medieval London became a conumser society with readily available cheap manufactured goods, late medieval Londoners increasingly understood their households as homes in a manner similar to our understanding today. People began to identify with their possessions, attaching sentimental meaning and fungible value. We can see this through their wills, because medieval testators left important belongings to their children or family members. By studying what kinds of household goods testators bequeathed, we can understand ideas about lineage, family, and power, as well as details about how households and daily life operated.

Among the wills of Register 7 that we transcribed, we tracked all of the bequests that the testators made. We found that in general, women bequeathed more household goods, and men bequeathed money instead. This makes sense, because men usually died before their wives, so they could leave the household to their widow; on the other hand, married women could not make wills, and so the women who did make wills were widows, who were taking apart their household when they died. Testators left money and goods to their parish, their family and their friends and business associates. Many family members received household goods that had monetary or sentimental value. Testators also gave goods to the young people in thier lives: apprentices, nieces, nephews, sons and daughters to help set them up for the future. Daughters received almost entirely money for their dowries, and executors (who were often family members) received a small sum for their labor.

Archer, Rowena E. and B.E. Ferme. “Testamentary Procedure with Special Reference to the Executrix,” Reading Medieval Studies 15 (1989), 3-34.

Arkell, Tom. “The Probate Process.” In When Death Do Us Part: Understanding and Interpreting the Probate Records of Early Modern England edited by Tom Arkell, Nesta Evans, and Nigel Goose, 3-13. Oxford: Leopard’s Head Press, 2000.

Beattie, Cordelia. “Married Women’s Wills: Probate, Property and Piety in Later Medieval England.” Law and History Review 37, no.1 (2019): 29-60.

Benadusi, Giovanna. “Investing the Riches of the Poor: Servant Women and their Last Wills.” American Historical Review, 109 (2004): 805-826.

Burgess, Clive. "Late Medieval Wills and Pious Conventions: Testamentary Evidence Reconsidered." In Profit, Piety and the Professions edited by Michael Hicks, 14-33. Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1990. 

----------. “London Parishes in Times of Change: St. Andrew Hubbard, Eastcheap, c. 1450-1570.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 53. (2002): 38-64.

Camp, Anthony J. Wills and their Whereabouts, 4th ed. London: privately printed, 1974.

French, Katherine L. “’I Leave My Best Gown as a Vestment’: Women’s Spiritual Interests in the Late Medieval English Parish.” Magistra, 4. (1998): 57-77.

---------. “Loving Friends: Surviving Widowhood in Late Medieval Westminster.” Gender and History 22, no. 1 (2010): 21-37.

----------. “Well-Behaved Women Can Make History: Women’s Friendships in Late Medieval Westminster.” In Writing Women’s Lives, edited by Charlotte Newman Goldy and Amy Livingstone, 247-66. NY: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2012.

Goose, Nigel and Nesta Evans. “Wills as an Historical Source.” In When Death Do Us Part: Understanding and Interpreting the Probate Records of Early Modern England edited by Tom Arkell, Nesta Evans, and Nigel Goose, 38-71. Oxford: Leopard’s Head Press, 2000.

Lewis, Katherine J. “Women, Testamentary Discourse and Life-Writing in Later Medieval England.” In Medieval Women and the Law edited by Noël James Menuge, 77-104. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000.

Daniell, Christopher. Death and Burial in Medieval England, 1066-1550. London; Routledge, 1997.

French, Katherine. Good Women of the Parish: Gender and Religion after the Black Death. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.

Gibbs, Gary G. Five Parishes in Late Medieval and Tudor London: Communities and Reforms. London: Routledge, 2019.

Miles, A. and D. Walker, "Pre-Fire Burial Ground of St. Sepulchre without Newgate," London Archaeologist 14 (2017): 328-35.

Harding, Vanessa. "Burial Choice and Burial Location in Later Medieval London." In Death and Towns: Urban Responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100-1600, edited by Steven Bassett, 119-35.

Schofield, John, "Medieval Church in the City of London: The Archaeological Evidence," in The Parish in English Life: 1400-1600, eds. Katherine L. French, Gary G. Gibbs, and Beat A. Kümin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 35-55.

Barron, Caroline M. London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People, 1200-1500. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Colson, Justin. “Commerce, Clusters, and Community: A Re-Evaluation of the Occupational Geography of London, c. 1400–c. 1550.” The Economic History Review 69, no. 1 (2016): 104–30.

Hanawalt, Barbara. Ceremony and Civility: Civic Culture in Late Medieval London. NY: Oxford University Press, 2017.

McSheffrey, Shannon. “Men and Masculinity in Late Medieval London Civic Culture: Governance, Patriarchy, and Reputation.” In Conflicting Identities: Men in the Middle Ages edited by Jacqueline Murray, 243-78. New York: Garland Press, 1999.

Nightingale, Pamela. A Medieval Mercantile Community: The Grocers’ Company and the Politics and Trade of London: 1000-1485. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

Ormrod, W. Mark, Bart Lambert, and Jonathan Mackman. Immigrant England, 1300-1550. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018.

Rexroth, Frank. Deviance and Power in Late Medieval London. Translated by Pamela Selwyn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007.

Egan, Geoff. The Medieval Household: Medieval Finds from Excavations in London, edited by Geoff Egan, London: The Museum of London, 1998.

French, Katherine. “Material Culture of Childbirth in Late Medieval London and its Suburbs.” Journal of Women’s History 28, no. 2 (2016): 126-48.

----------. Household Goods and Good Households in Late Medieval London: Consumption and Domesticity after the Plague. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021).

McSheffrey, Shannon. “Place, Space, and Situation: Public and Private in the Making of Marriage in Late-Medieval London.” Speculum 79, no. 4 (2004): 960-90.

Rees Jones, Sarah et al. “The Later Medieval English Urban Household.” History Compass 5:1 (2007): 112-158.  

Medieval Londoner Database-Fordham University

Layers of London

Agas Map

England's Immigrants