Deviance and Power in Late Medieval London (review)

Frank Rexroth’s study of the marginals and the underworld of medieval London was first published in German as Das Mileu der Nacht: Obrigkeit und Ranggruppen im Spämittelalterlichen London (Göttingen, 1999). The book is a very important one and deserving of a translation to make it more generally available to an English-speaking audience. The change of title is an improvement, because it places the emphasis on the author’s thesis that by defining deviants, the governing elite increased their own power. The book is divided into two parts that rest somewhat uneasily with each other. The first part is a chronological consideration of the changing mentality of medieval London civic ideas and official thinking starting with the Hundred Years War and culminating with the major moral legislation of John of Northampton at the end of the fourteenth century. The second part of the book deals more directly with the underworld itself, taken largely from the few surviving courts of the aldermen. These courts, Rexroth argues, strengthened the hand of the aldermen and helped to define the expected behavior of citizens of London. These records, however, are sporadically preserved and leave some doubt about their effectiveness in supporting the author’s thesis.

Rexroth argues in the first section that London authorities, struggling with keeping peace in the city, focused on differentiating the insiders (the elites) from the other, the good from the bad. The program of marginalizing segments of the population started with Jews and lepers, but then moved on to include prostitutes and sturdy beggars. Foreigners, particularly Italians and Flemish, and new arrivals from the countryside were regarded with suspicion and sometimes became the object of deadly riots. The Hundred Years War brought new levels of xenophobia and anxiety about keeping order. The next crises, the plague of 1348 and subsequent outbreaks of the disease, brought new alarms. The king, Parliament, and London’s elite became alarmed at the increased mobility of the surviving population who sought higher wages. The old order seemed to have become unmoored. The immediate reaction was to try to freeze prices and wages at the 1347 level. Enforcement was difficult, but it gave renewed possibilities for London’s mayor and aldermen to crack down on the vagrants and new immigrants to the city. The Revolt of 1381 gave impetus to more refined definitions of “the other” and more public humiliations of offenders such as the pillory.

As reflected in the original title of the book, Rexroth argues that the marginalized groups functioned after dark, but his argument contains contrary threads. He argues that London authorities not only wanted to marginalize people but also wanted to strive for moral purity and transparency of the city laws and ordinances. To this end, they also passed ordinances about butchering, street cleaning, and other aspects of the daily running of the city. But these activities were not all conducted at night, and the offenders were not marginals. The fault of Rexroth’s argument lies in his attempt to weave into his argument all the information available on London’s records. In the process he loses the thread of the argument and stretches the patience of the reader with superfluous data.

For a scholar interested in the detail of London peacekeeping, Rexroth’s book is a great contribution. For readers who would like to learn about the medieval underworld, however, the attempt to tie virtually everything that happened to his thesis obscures the author’s main points.