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The Church Records of St Andrew Hubbard Eastcheap, c1450-c1570
Edited by CLIVE BURGESS, 1999 London, London Record Society, 1999
xxxvii + 321 pp, L20 ISBN 0 090095233 2
This volume's principal objective was to publish the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century churchwardens' accounts of a small and relatively obscure intramural parish, St Andrew Hubbard, thereby providing the first publication of a series of London parish accounts for over 60 years. These accounts have survived in two manuscript volumes on a grand total of 317 folios and they contain a virtually unbroken series for the years 1454-1621. The worst gap in the records is the absence of accounts for 1513 and 1514, and there are 'rogue' accounts for 1515-23 which depart from the previously established format and resemble first drafts of accounts rather than sifted and standardised final versions. Although the second manuscript volume of the accounts extends to 1621, an editorial decision was made to halt the transcript at 1570 and to use the remaining space in the publication (85 pages) to provide transcripts of contemporary parishioners' wills derived from both the Prerogative Court of Canterbury and the Commissary Court. However, it is made clear that the main focus is on churchwardens' accounts and the wills' claim for attention is secondary.
The editor of the volume, Clive Burgess, is able to draw upon...