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Full Description
During the late Middle Ages the London ruling elite was increasingly influenced by the idea that a secret counter-society was operating in the city. Its members were suspected to be active mainly at night, to roam the city aimlessly and to be identifiable by three main characteristics: their latent, unmotivated and habitual penchant for violence, their sexual license and their disinclination to work. The rumours about this real and imagined 'milieu of the night' strongly influenced Londoners' perceptions of social relations within urban society. In wards, parishes, guilds and companies, people adapted their behaviour and gradually defined their own respectability in negative terms, in opposition to the new 'urban underworld'. The book sheds considerable new light on everyday life in late medieval London and its case study opens up wider debates about the relationship between morality and politics in Europe's cities in this period.
Contents
1. Introduction; Part I. Changing Patterns of Thought in the Fourteenth Century: 2. The beginning of the Hundred Years War and the struggle against the nocturnal underworld; 3. Speaking of sturdy beggars: the Great Plague, labour law and changing patterns of thought; 4. John of Northampton's morality campaign: stigmatisation, marginalisation and the legitimation crisis of the urban oligarchy; Part II. Institutions on the Frontiers of the Fifteenth-Century Underworld: 5. Localising the underworld: the wardmotes as status degradation ceremonies; 6. Rewarding the shamefaced poor: charity in the almshouse; 7. Preventing the expansion of the underworld: proclamations and punishments; 8. Conclusion.
