Late medieval churchwardens’ accounts--where they exist--offer unparalleled insight into the inner workings of parish churches and their spiritual, social, and economic roles in their given communities. Of course, as is often the case with localized records, such accounts can also cause headaches for those who have neither the time nor the will to grapple with extensive idiosyncrasies. On both accounts, then, we are indebted to Drs. Gary G. Gibbs and Valerie A. Hitchman for wrangling one set of these unwieldy records into an elegant, highly useable volume that more than earns its place on the shelf of any historian of late medieval England.
The accounts on which this volume focuses pertain to St. Botolph without Aldersgate, a sizeable London parish situated on the western fringes of the city, just outside the city walls. As Gibbs and Hitchman suggest (5), the churchwardens’ records hint at the sociodemographic makeup of the parish, whose parishioners constituted a diverse cross-section of society, from lawyers and brewers to aliens and the poor men and women accounted for here through the charitable donations of candles at their burials. While the lives of parishioners are not the explicit subject of these accounts, the churchwardens nevertheless offer tantalizing snippets of stories that remain just out of reach: that of the nameless pan maker, for instance, who paid for lights and candlesticks for the burials of his wife, son, and daughter in rapid succession between 1468 and 1470 (54), or that of the “strange [i.e. alien and/or unknown] woman that dyed besyd the bell at Bartylmewes gate” (63) during that same period.
What the accounts lack in depth, however, they make up for in breadth: even a brief skim of the thirty-odd years of documentation reveals the comings-and-goings of St. Botolph without Aldersgate’s parishioners as they worked, worshipped, grieved, conducted business, participated in fraternities, and received reprimands--all through the nexus of their parish church. Gibbs and Hitchman’s excellent introduction picks up on these particulars and fleshes them out, providing necessary context for the records as well as helpful lenses through which the churchwardens’ reporting might be parsed. Clearly delineated discussions expand upon almost all topics broached even cursorily in the accounts, from those concerning the parishioners (churchwardens, workmen and craftsmen, clerks, etc.) and their social orbit (fraternities, company halls and brewhouses) to the fabric of the church (organs, vestments, altar, churchyard, etc.), and its spiritual and financial business (funerals, mortuary endowments, obits, etc.). The editors have augmented these sections with prosopographical sketches of figures who feature prominently in the records or who merited notice, such as members of the Dorkyng family who served for years as the church’s chosen chandlers (21). They continue this work with the inclusion of contextual footnotes throughout the edition that elucidate small details not captured by the broader scope of the prefatory material. This research, impressive in its thoroughness within the confines of an introduction, breathes life into the ancient parish and the records themselves.
With their combined expertise on English parishes, Gibbs and Hitchman surely found light work in constructing the history of St. Botolph without Aldersgate for the introduction. It is only in the separate preface that any evidence of the aforementioned headaches surfaces. The editors set themselves the admirable but formidable “guiding principle” of “render[ing] the transcription as close to the original document as possible” (x). In practice, this meant reproducing everything--miscellaneous lists found on the protective covers, redactions, additions in later hands--so that using the edition might best approximate interacting with the rolls themselves. As they articulate their editorial decisions in the preface, they lay out the textual features that caused them “a never-ending degree of consternation” (x) in following this principle, including non-standard Latin abbreviations interspersing the Middle English, scribal flourishes and geometric designs (some serving organizational purposes) and haphazard pluralization. With these challenges transparently acknowledged, the editors’ success in rising to them deserves further laurels. The system they devised, which makes use of superscripts, expansions and translations in footnotes, and simple graphic placeholders for abstract embellishments, is both effective in conveying the features of the original rolls and highly readable in its execution.
While Gibbs and Hitchman painstakingly expound most of their editorial practices, there are a few choices that lack explanations and therefore remain puzzling. The commitment to reproducing the double-f (“ff”) in lower-case instead of the capital it usually represents is somewhat jarring, particularly in the introductory material where surnames are consistently capitalized save for those whose names start with an “f” (e.g. “both John ffrend and Alan Johnson appear to stand apart...” [13]). The serrated line or “zig-zag” that runs purposefully through an entry from Roll 10 (142) also eludes confident interpretation: does it represent a redaction of the entire entry, otherwise represented in the text by straight lines striking out words or phrases? Is it meant to designate a joining of two membranes? The text is unclear. There are also no indications of where the individual membranes of each roll begin and end, although it is entirely possible that the membranes are not numbered in the original documents. These observations are minor bugaboos in an edition that feels as faithful to the original as possible, but that also makes an exerted effort to demystify peculiarities for its readers.
One of the triumphs of this edition is its accessibility to seasoned scholars and students alike, an objective that the editors quietly hint at in their breakdown of medieval English currency values for “students unfamiliar with Old English money” (xv). This effort is compounded by the inclusion of Latin translations and occasional footnotes glossing both the Middle English and references to technical or obsolete terms. The latter, while more helpful than not, are also sporadic and not always intuitive: some easily recognizable words receive attention (e.g., “paun” glossed as “pan” in a list of kitchen items), while others that have no obvious modern English equivalent (e.g., “popyns”) are overlooked. There is likewise some inconsistency in defining key terms: for instance, “ferme,” a type of leasehold, has an accompanying note, while “quit rent,” another type of leasehold, does not. A glossary might have been a neater solution, although admittedly a more difficult one due to the variations in spelling across the text. Indeed, most of the minuscule slip-ups--and they truly are negligible--occur in the footnotes and not the body of the text itself, with one typo of “latter” hand for “later” hand” shifting the note’s meaning and numerous repetitions of definitions, sometimes on the same page and then again elsewhere (e.g., “amercement,” “sol’”). A the same time, the notes are a testament to the editors’ dedication to leaving very few stones unturned: they track down references to obscure materials and building techniques, provide asides about the state of the manuscripts, and offer alternative possibilities to palaeographical quandaries, ultimately ensuring the records made available by the edition might not just be read--the basic task of transcription--but also understood as fulsomely as possible. Any repetitions or handholding must therefore be forgiven as the product of ample sensitivity to the potential needs of readers.
The index is succinct and largely focused on the named individuals peppering the text. Activities and materials pertaining to the church (repairs, ornaments, vestments, bells, etc.) can be found under the entry for “London St Botolph without Aldersgate,” while places are similarly categorized under umbrella terms (inns and brewhouses, London churches and parishes, etc.). This lends a sense of order to the index, but in the case of the place names does not necessarily facilitate navigability unless you know what category to seek out. One omission is street names, which would have helped interested parties locate the numerous tenements from which St. Botolph without Aldersgate derived income. A section on these parish properties would not have been amiss in the introduction, as much space in the records is dedicated to property maintenance and rent collection. One’s curiosity, for instance, cannot help but be piqued by the property referred to as the “church house,” which appears to have been a money-pit requiring frequent attention.
Together, Gibbs and Hitchman have produced a volume that surpasses its own goals: not only is it a meticulous and faithful rendering of these important parochial records, but it also draws back the curtain on everyday life in a late medieval city for historians of all levels to peer at. While this edition covers the first 20 rolls, carrying St. Botolph without Aldersgate from 1466 through to the end of the fifteenth century and the traditional terminus of the Middle Ages in England, one can hope that the editors might undertake a similar project to see the churchwardens’ records out of the sixteenth century--after a well-deserved rest and a few ibuprofen, of course.