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Abstract
A Survey of London offers readers past and present an unrivalled insight into the history of early modern London. However, it is of hitherto unrecognised significance that the Survey draws on a pronounced horse culture and participates in the seventeenth-century revival of chivalric literature as a way of engaging with topographical change in the City. Drawing on early modern nostalgia studies, this article is the first to explore how the depiction of Smithfield’s horsemen evokes chivalric nostalgia. With the help of the memory studies concepts of synchronic and diachronic historical consciousness, I show how this chivalric nostalgia functions as a literary device that by harnessing the traditions of chivalric romance offers a way of challenging the impact of urbanisation on readerly memory. This approach reveals the importance of Smithfield’s horsemen in London’s rich civic history and that nostalgia is a strategy rather than a limiting force in the Survey.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Professor Tracey Hill, Dr Tamsin Badcoe, and Professor Ian Gadd for their encouragement and invaluable help in preparing this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 John Stow, ‘Epistle Dedicatory’, in A Survey of London: Reprinted from the Text of 1603, ed. C. L. Kingsford (Oxford: Clarendon, 1908), xcvii–xcviii, in British History Online <https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/survey-of-london-stow/1603> [accessed 28 December 2022].
2 Karen Raber and Treva J. Tucker, ‘Introduction’, in The Culture of the Horse: Status, Discipline, and Identity in the Early Modern World, ed. Karen Raber and Treva J. Tucker (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 4.
3 Ian Archer detects Stow’s nostalgia for his pre-Reformation youth in the privileging of bygone Catholic communality over Protestant charity and piety. Ian Archer, ‘The Nostalgia of John Stow’, in The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre and Politics in London, 1576–1649, ed. David L. Smith, Richard Strier, and David Bevington (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 17–35. Julia Merritt argues that misgivings about the Reformation did not lead Stow to turn a blind eye to Protestant achievements across the board. Nonetheless, she regards the Survey as an example of ‘nostalgic antiquarianism’ due to the Catholic leanings of Stow’s materials. J. F. Merritt, ‘The Reshaping of Stow’s Survey: Munday, Strype, and the Protestant City’, in Imagining Early Modern London: Perceptions and Portrayals of the City from Stow to Strype, 1598–1720, ed. J. F. Merritt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 52–88.
4 Survey (1603), 20–52.
5 Susanna Forrest, The Age of the Horse: An Equine Journey through Human History (London: Atlantic Books, 2016), 10.
6 Raber and Tucker, ‘Introduction’, 2.
7 ‘Chivalry’, in Oxford English Dictionary (2022).
8 Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 2.
9 Keen, Chivalry, 7.
10 Forrest, Age of the Horse, 88.
11 Keen, Chivalry, 115; Andrew G. Miller, ‘“Tails” of Masculinity: Knights, Clerics and the Mutilation of Horses in Medieval England’, Speculum, 88.4 (2013), 961.
12 Louis B. Wright names Munday, Richard Johnson, and Samuel Rowlands among others as examples of writers who adapted medieval romance to suit the tastes and preoccupations of their citizen readers. Since Wright’s seminal work, William Hunt, Susan Harlan, and Harriet Phillips have all noted that chivalric literature enjoyed a new lease of life in early modern culture by broadening its appeal to a widening range of social groups. See: Louis B. Wright, Middle Class Culture in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935); William Hunt, ‘Civic Chivalry and the English Civil War’, in The Transmission of Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. Anthony Grafton and Ann Blair (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 204–237; Susan Harlan, Memories of War in Early Modern England: Armor and Militant Nostalgia in Marlowe, Sidney, and Shakespeare (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); and Harriet Phillips, Nostalgia in Print and Performance, 1510–1613: Merry Worlds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
13 Barbara Fuchs, Romance (London: Routledge, 2004), 8.
14 Fuchs, Romance, 7.
15 Survey (1603), 20–52.
16 Andrew Gordon, Writing Early Modern London: Memory, Text and Community (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 133.
17 Survey (1603), 79–91.
18 Survey (1603), 79–91.
19 Gervase Markham, Markhams Faithfull Farrier (London, 1631), 15–16. My emphasis.
20 Erica Fudge, ‘Farmyard Choreographies’, in Renaissance Posthumanism, ed. Joseph Campana and Scott Maisano (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016), 147.
21 Fudge, ‘Farmyard Choreographies’, 147.
22 Anthony Munday, The First Book of Amadis of Gaule (London, [1590]), 39.
23 Richard C. McCoy, The Rites of Knighthood: The Literature and Politics of Elizabethan Chivalry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 26.
24 Caroline M. Barron, ‘Chivalry, Pageantry and Merchant Culture in Medieval London’, in Medieval London: Collected Papers by Caroline M. Barron, ed. Martha Carlin and Joel T. Rosenthal (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2017), 489.
25 Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 12.
26 Daniel Woolf, The Social Circulation of the Past: English Historical Culture, 1500–1730 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Patrick Collinson, ‘John Stow and Nostalgic Antiquarianism’, in Imagining Early Modern London: Perceptions and Portrayals of the City from Stow to Strype, 1598–1720, ed. J. F. Merritt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 27–51; Archer, ‘The Nostalgia of John Stow’, 17–35.
27 Lawrence Manley, ‘Of Sites and Rites’, in The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre and Politics in London, 1576–1649, ed. David L. Smith, Richard Strier, and David Bevington (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 35–54; Gordon, Writing Early Modern London; Oliver Harris, ‘Stow and the Contemporary Antiquarian Network’, in John Stow (1525–1605) and the Making of the English Past, ed. Ian Gadd and Alexandra Gillespie (London: The British Library, 2004), 27–35.
28 Kristine Johanson, ‘On the Possibility of Early Modern Nostalgias’, Parergon, 33.2 (2016), 4.
29 Rachel Ramsay, ‘The Language of Urbanization in John Stow’s Survey of London’, Philological Quarterly, 85.3–4 (2006), 260; Survey (1603), 19–20.
30 Judith Pollmann, Memory in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 73.
31 William K. Hall, ‘A Topography of Time: Historical Narration in John Stow’s Survey of London’, Studies in Philology, 86.1 (1991), 4.
32 Survey (1603), xcvii–xcviii.
33 Alan Young, Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments (London: Philip George, 1987), 32.
34 Survey (1603), 97–124.
35 Hall, ‘A Topography of Time’, 5.
36 Survey (1603), 20–52.
37 Young, Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments, 18.
38 Keen writes that Arthurian romances offered the ‘first heroes of the Middle Ages to be renowned specifically as horsemen, as model cavaliers’. Keen, Chivalry, 41. For the centrality of the rider-horse relationship to early modern chivalric literature, see the chapter on Lodovico Ariostos’s Orlando Furioso (1516) in: Bruce Thomas Boehrer, Animal Characters: Nonhuman Beings in Early Modern Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 28–73.
39 Survey (1603), 20–52.
40 Marina Viallon, ‘An Autopsy of Renaissance Equestrianism: The Materials, Making and Use of a ca. 1535 War Saddle from the Musee des Beaux Artes of Rennes’, in The Horse in Premodern European Culture, ed. Anastasija Ropa and Timothy Dawson (Berlin: Medieval Institute Publications/De Gruyter, 2020), 193.
41 Survey (1603), 20–52.
42 Survey (1603), 20–52.
43 Survey (1603), 20–52.
44 Fudge, ‘Farmyard Choreographies’, 147; Survey (1603), 20–52.
45 Keen, Chivalry, 205; Gabriel Heaton, Writing and Reading Royal Entertainments: From George Gascoigne to Ben Jonson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 49.
46 Young, Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments, 14–15.
47 Heaton, Writing and Reading Royal Entertainments, 57.
48 George Chapman, Ben Jonson, and John Marston, Eastward Ho, ed. Richard W. Van Fossen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 5.1.36–47.
49 Chapman, Jonson, and Marston, Eastward Ho, 5.1.36–47.
50 Survey (1603), 20–52.
51 Hugh Alley’s Caveat: Markets of London in 1598, ed. Ian Archer, Caroline M. Barron, and Vanessa Harding (London: London Topographical Society, 1988), 6, 94.
52 Survey (1603), 79–91.
53 John Stow, The Survey of London containing the Original, Increase, Modern Estate and Government of that City, ed. Anthony Munday, Humphrey Dyson, and others (London, 1633), 712.
54 Keen, Chivalry, 25.
55 Survey (1603), 79–91.
56 Survey (1603), 79–91.
57 Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, ed. Carroll Storrs Alden (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1904), 2.3.8–12.
58 Thomas Overbury, ‘An Arrant Horse-Courser’, in Sir Thomas Overburie His Wife with New Elegies upon His (Now Knowne) Untimely Death (London, 1616).
59 Gervase Markham, Cavelarice, or The English Horseman Contayning All the Arte of Horse-Manship (London, 1607), 9.
60 Peter Edwards, Horse and Man in Early Modern England (London: Continuum Books, 2007), 15.
61 Charlie Taverner, ‘Moral Marketplaces: Regulating the Food Markets of Late Elizabethan and Early Stuart London’, Urban History, 48.4 (2021), 611.
62 Survey (1633), 711.
63 Survey (1603), 79–91.
64 Survey (1603), 79–91.
65 Edwards, Horse and Man, 49.
66 Survey (1633), 711.
67 Survey (1603), 79–91.
68 Survey (1603), 79–91.
69 Survey (1633), 711–712.
70 See: Boehrer’s ‘Horse-Sense and Chivalry’, 30–41.
71 See: Gordon, Writing Early Modern London, on the treatment of water pollution in the Survey; and Ramsay, ‘The Language of Urbanization’, on violations of building regulations. For overpopulation and housing problems, see: Vanessa Harding, ‘City, Capital and Metropolis: The Changing Shape of Seventeenth-Century London’, in Imagining Early Modern London: Perceptions and Portrayals of the City from Stow to Strype, 1598–1720, ed. J. F. Merritt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 117–143.
72 Survey (1603), 20–52.
73 Survey (1603), 11–19.
74 Survey (1603), 11–19.
75 Survey (1603), 11–19; ‘decayed’, in Oxford English Dictionary (2022).
76 London Metropolitan Archives, City Lands Estates, Smithfield Pond 1601/2 Jan 29, CLA/008/EM/02/01/001/055r/06; Smithfield Pond 1602 Jun 18, CLA/008/EM/02/01/001/060v/05.
77 Survey (1603), xcvii–xcviii.
78 ‘Special Inquest into Purprestures: January 1246 (nos 348–486)’, in The London Eyre of 1244, ed. Helena M. Chew and Martin Weinbaum (London: 1970), 136–153.
79 ‘Tumbril’, in Oxford English Dictionary (2022).
80 Survey (1603), 11–19.
81 Survey (1603), 11–19.
82 Survey (1603), 20–52.
83 E. A. Webb, ‘The Founder: To 1123’, in The Records of St. Bartholomew’s Priory and St. Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield: Volume 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921), 37–55.
84 Survey (1603), 20–52.
85 Survey (1603), 20–52.
86 Alfred Marks, Tyburn Tree: Its History and Annals (Glasgow: Good Press, 2019), 38.
87 Survey (1603), 69–91; Una McIlvenna, ‘The Power of Music: The Significance of Contrafactum in Execution Ballads’, Past and Present, no. 229 (2015), 57; Marks, Tyburn Tree, 7.
88 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Penguin Books, 2020), 58.
89 Keen, Chivalry, 98.
90 Survey (1603), 20–52.
91 Survey (1603), 20–52.
92 Survey (1603), 20–52.
93 Janette Dillon, ‘Clerkenwell and Smithfield as a Neglected Home of London Theater’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 71.1 (2008), 125.
94 Miller, ‘“Tails” of Masculinity’, 980.
95 Miller, ‘“Tails” of Masculinity’, 980.
96 Marks, Tyburn Tree, 30.
97 Marks, Tyburn Tree, 31; Dillon, ‘Clerkenwell and Smithfield’, 122.
98 Survey (1603), 250–258.
99 Survey (1603), 44–71.
100 Derek Keene, ‘William fitz Osbert (d. 1196)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/9621; R. R. Davies, ‘Mortimer, Roger, first earl of March (1287–1330)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2008), doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/19354.
101 Keene, ‘William fitz Osbert’; Davies, ‘Mortimer, Roger’.
102 Hall, ‘A Topography of Time’, 2.
103 Hall, ‘A Topography of Time’, 12.
104 Survey (1603), 20–52.
105 Philip Schwyzer, ‘“Late” Losses and the Temporality of Early Modern Nostalgia’, Parergon, 33.2 (2016), 98. My emphasis.
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Kerstin Grunwald-Hope
Kerstin Grunwald-Hope is a PhD candidate at Bath Spa University and the University of Bristol. Her research investigates nostalgia for horse-related practices such as tournaments, executions, and Smithfield horse market in John Stow’s A Survey of London as an important historical and socio-cultural engagement with the Reformation and early modern urbanisation. Her thesis is funded through the Arts and Humanities Research Council and is titled ‘“A notable Shew of Horses”: Equine Encounters in A Survey of London’.