Early modern London was a cosmopolitan place. The capital’s inexorable growth in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was fueled largely by immigration, not just from England and Wales but also from Scotland, Ireland, and parts of continental Europe. It has been calculated that in 1570 one in twenty Londoners were native Europeans, a proportion not reached again until Huguenot immigration a century later. French and Dutch churches were established in the capital as early as 1550. Further contacts with the wider world derived from London’s function as the center of England’s booming international trade. Since London housed the seat of government at Westminster and the Royal Court, it was also home to foreign ambassadors, many of whom had their own chapels, servants, distinctive dress, and languages. How did Londoners react to such diversity and difference? In this fine study Jacob Selwood provides some suggestive answers.

His book focuses almost solely on economic and occupational differences as revealed in the records of London’s gilds and companies and those of its civic rulers. He tells a largely unedifying story of exclusivity, protectionism, and stereotyping. There are five substantive chapters. The first provides a useful survey of foreign immigration into London. Many newcomers, of course, were European protestant refugees who clustered in particular trades, notably the cloth industry, and tended to settle in relatively poor wards of the city or in the suburbs. Throughout the period civic officials were reluctant to admit these strangers—and their children and grandchildren—to the freedom of the city, despite pressure to do so from the crown and privy council. Selwood’s second chapter concentrates on the economic arguments deployed against foreigners. Although some gild hierarchies favored assimilation rather than exclusion, the commonality of companies such as the Weavers’ saw foreign-born craftsmen as liable to undercut locals, infringe gild monopolies, and break apprenticeship rules. Merchant strangers were accused of draining the kingdom of bullion and owing their ultimate loyalty to their country of origin. Strikingly, Selwood finds that similar charges were applied regardless of nationality or religion. Chapter 3 shows how the civic authorities, throughout the period, defined strangers by descent rather than by birth. In so doing, they effectively ignored Calvin’s Case (1608), which laid down that those born in England were subjects of the English king. London’s rulers clashed repeatedly with a crown that preferred more inclusive, pro-immigration policies. Despite civic hostility, the author notes that many immigrants and their descendants were, notwithstanding, assimilated successfully into London’s economy and society. His fourth chapter looks at Jewish immigration and tells a familiar story. As usual, the “City tended to respond to difference as a threat, while the Crown embraced it as an opportunity” (158). The small Jewish community, readmitted by Cromwell in 1656, faced economic restrictions, stereotyping, and opportunistic attack. Calls from London’s leaders to expel the Jews, however, fell on deaf ears. Chapter 5 tells the story of the Islamic world as viewed by Londoners. Since there were few Muslims resident in London, this is really a story about how Londoners responded to the plight of the thousands of protestant captives held in North Africa. On the whole, particularly at the parish level, Londoners gave generously to help out such people, although some civic leaders resisted attempts to help out captives who were merely protestant, as opposed to English by descent. The author notes, however, that “the very heterogeneity of England’s metropolis also ensured a measure of practical tolerance, even generosity” (187). The author concludes by highlighting the conflicting visions of difference possessed by the crown and the City. He argues that efforts to enforce traditional rules and maximize revenues rather than “deliberate efforts to articulate a narrow vision of Englishness” (191) lay at the root of the City’s more restricted notions of belonging.

This is a book of faultless scholarship that contains a definitive discussion of diversity and difference albeit within a relatively narrow framework. Broader perspectives could have been taken. Much of the discussion concentrates on that part of London under the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor. Many immigrants, however, settled in those parts of London where citizenship and its privileges had little value. The civic records used here, too, tell us little about the daily interactions between Londoners and foreign immigrants, and there is nothing about the processes whereby foreigners and their descendants were assimilated into the native population. It would have been useful, too, to be told something about their English language acquisition and, for that matter, how much foreign language teaching took place in the capital. Some treatment of Scottish and Irish newcomers would also have been worthwhile. Such points, however, do nothing to detract from the real achievement represented by Selwood’s study. His book should serve as a solid springboard for further investigation of this topic.