Festschriften are a rare breed of book these days, so it was with great pleasure that I agreed to write a review of Medieval Londoners, the second such venture in honor of Caroline Barron. (The first was London and the Kingdom: Essays in Honour of Caroline M. Barron (2008), edited by Matthew Davies and Andrew Prescott.) Barron is easily the foremost historian of medieval London, whose wide-ranging interests and impact are justly celebrated in this collection of fourteen essays edited by Elizabeth new and Christian Steer. The essays range from broad and contextual to specific and detailed, and in the process they highlight the great wealth of London's archives that Barron so successfully deployed in her own scholarship.

The fourteen essays are organized into three sections. The five essays in the first section, “Londoners in the City,” discuss different contexts and institutions that that shaped the lives of medieval Londoners. Vanessa Harding provides a helpful demographic overview of the London family in 1500, arguing that much of what we know for 1700, when historians argue the family was in crisis, was already in play, even though London was less crowded. Justin Colson's portrait of a single pub, the Star Inn on Bridge Street, demonstrates how networks of trade, sociability, neighborhood, and law connected rich merchants to the “small people,” a term Barron borrowed from Thomas Usk, a fourteenth-century scrivener. Julia Boffy analyzes Huntington Library MS HM 140, a compilation of texts long associated with London. Containing some unique texts and some familiar ones, the compiler drew together themes of mercantilism and piety that long interested London readers. Martha Carlin continues the look at Londoner's literary practices by analyzing the Book of the Hartshorn in Southwark, a text assembled by one Thomas D, servant of William Waynflete, bishop of Winchester. It is a collection of legal briefs that recounted a lengthy property dispute. Carlin shows that archival work and paleography were part of legal expertise, and Thomas D deployed both to fight the case. In the final essay in this section, Charlotte Berry returns to the question of London's little people, with her deft analysis of how reputation and mobility were intertwined, but noting also that context made information situational.

The four essays in the second section, “The Lure of London,” take up London as a destination and marketplace for products and people. Matthew Davies analyzes immigrant participation in London's economy through their membership on craft guilds. The two essays by John Bolton and Matthew Payne look at Italian archives for what they show us about London's involvement in the wider world. Bolton gleans what he can of the career of William Styfford a citizen scrivener and notary imperial, that is, someone trained in Roman law and working for the Holy Roman Emperor. Payne looks at the Bardi ledgers for what they reveal about the importation of printed books prior to the development of England's own printing industry. In the last essay in this section, Anne Sutton's profiles Nicholas Alwyn, mayor of London. His well-documented career in both London and Lincolnshire records shows that London's immigrants could retain deep affection and ties to their birthplaces.

The final section, “Londoners Remembered,” reflects the large quantity of diverse documentation that Londoners created to fund charitable activities to remember the souls of the dead. Building and maintaining the London Bridge was a serious undertaking and a major focus of charity. John McEwan looks at the bridge's earliest records to trace its shift from an independent charitable trust to civic control. Stephen Freeth and John Schofield combine the archival records of St. Botolph Billingstate with the archaeology of the parish. Combined, they reveal a great deal about this church's expansion over the Middle Ages and one of its primary benefactors, John Reynewell, whose skeleton is tentatively identified as part of the archaeological work on the building. Julian Luxford provides a detailed analysis of Joan FitzLewes's unusual will, which survives in the original, with her own signature, rather than as a register copy. She wrote it in advance of joining the Franciscan nuns in their convent outside Aldgate, and it provides rare information about the Minories through FitzLewes's donation of land. Steer's article continues on the theme of Londoners’ interest in the Franciscans with a look at how Londoners supported Grey Friars through testamentary bequests for memorial masses, the foundation of chantries, and even burial in the church. Steer argues that interest in Grey Friars increased after 1450 as donation became possible through cash payments rather than land. In the final essay, Clive Burgess reflects on Caroline Barron's scholarly influence through her scholarship and teaching. Two topics owe much to her work: the study of London's relationship with the crown in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the “golden age of women” debate The first argued that London needs to be seen as a major political player in the kingdom's affairs. The second, ignited by Barron's assertion that women's status improved after the Black Death, has been challenged by several historians on the legitimate grounds that Barron did not address patriarchy or misogyny as systematic and institutionalized social conventions. Burgess argues that as a result, this issue has become standard historiographical fare in undergraduate classes on the Middle Ages.

Many of these essays are accompanied by appendices that either reproduce the data or the text that inspired the article. This adds to this volume's interest. As with all essay collections, some are stronger than others, and some cast their nets wider, speaking to the larger issues of urban history, while others drill down into the nitty-gritty of London's rich source material. But together they are engaging reading, and speak to the important place that Caroline Barron holds in medieval London's historiography.