The Dutch Hatmakers of Late Medieval and Tudor London

with an edition of their bilingual Guild Ordinances
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-1-83765-080-4
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer Ltd.

Buch, Englisch, Band 6, 176 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 232 mm, Gewicht: 282 g

Reihe: Medieval and Renaissance Clothing and Textiles

At the end of the Middle Ages, a group of hatmakers from the Low Countries migrated across the North Sea to London. These men brought with them new skills and technologies, unknown to English artisans, becoming the first to manufacture brimmed felts hats in England. However, though their wares were immediately popular with English consumers, from courtiers to ordinary people, they faced an economic environment in London that restricted and sometimes completely disallowed the production and retail of their goods. In the early years of the sixteenth century, the hatmakers' desire to remain independent from regulation and governance by London civic guilds led to their formation of a craft association of their own. The Hatmakers' fraternity of St James operated for about a decade, until in 1511 the royal council mandated their amalgamation with and subordination to the powerful London Haberdashers' Company. In their short period of independence, the Hatmakers' guild wrote bilingual ordinances, in English and Dutch, regulating the craft of hatmaking in London. The small parchment booklet in which they wrote the ordinances, now housed in the London Guildhall Library, contains more than a simple list of craft rules: it reveals how these Dutch craftsmen negotiated their immigrant lives in both the specifics of their artisanal practice and the broader social and linguistic realities of their daily interactions.

This book, uniting historical and philological approaches, uncovers the remarkable lives and writings of these tradesmen, showing how they adapted to their new environment and reacted to the challenges they faced. It also presents a modern edition of the texts of the Hatmakers' guild book.

Open Access to this volume will be available under the Creative Commons License: CC BY-NC-ND

Autoren/Hrsg.

McSheffrey, Shannon

Putter, Ad

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftssektoren & Branchen Fertigungsindustrie Textilindustrie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Europäische Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

Part I: Study
1. Citizen Guilds, Stranger Artisans, and the Hat Trade in London, circa 1500
2. The Formation of the Hatmaker's Fraternity
3. The Hatmakers and the 1511 Agreement
4. The Manuscript
5. The Linguistic Interest of the Bilingual Ordinances

Conclusion

Part II: Texts
Editorial Conventions
The Bilingual Ordinances of the Hatmakers
The Agreement with the Haberdashers
The Oath of the Wardens of the Haberdashers

Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

McSheffrey, Shannon
Shannon McSheffrey is Professor of History at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. She has written five books and numerous articles and chapters on aspects of English society, culture, and politics between 1400 and 1550. She is currently at work on the Evil May Day anti-immigrant riot in London in 1517.

Putter, Ad
Ad Putter is Professor of Medieval English at the University of Bristol, UK, co-director of Bristol's Centre for Medieval Studies, and Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author and editor of numerous books, with a particular interest in Medieval Romance texts and the works of the Gawain poet. He is currently leading a research project on the literary heritage of Anglo-Dutch relations.