London's prominence in late medieval and early modern England was largely a result of the success of its merchants. Their personal achievements led them into civic office and effective, although at times tense, relations with the Crown. Such political influence helped them to secure rights in both domestic and foreign markets, which in turn made some of them very wealthy. Their rise to power was a product of ambition and fierce conflict with their rivals. Anne Sutton tells the story of how one group of merchants, the mercers, built London's premier livery company, how they made many positive contributions to society, and how their institution came to suffer somewhat from the incredible success of some of its members.

The rise of the Mercers’ Company took place in an international context. Silk, a principal component of early mercery wares, was produced in foreign lands and found its way to London through complex international commercial networks. Crucial developments in the trade took place in the fairs and urban centers across northwest Europe. In England, this compounded the advantages that London mercers already had because their home on the Thames was an established center for international trade and was in close proximity to the Court, a principal consumer of luxury goods. London-based mercers therefore could force provincial mercers to come to them rather than travel to fairs in search of customers. Similarly, by the early fifteenth century London mercers were able to broaden their trade by gaining ascendancy over other English overseas merchants in bringing English wool to the Low Countries and exchanging it for linen. This, in turn, gave them the necessary clout to force foreign linen producers to conform to a standard size for their cloths. In order to help her readers appreciate the intricacies of this development, Sutton offers an extensive review of the political conditions in both England and the Low Countries with which the mercers had to cope. There were challenges, most notably from traders from Italian cities, and Sutton discusses in detail the murderous lengths to which some members would go to eliminate such competitors.

A main theme of the book is the evolution of the mercer's identity. The trade's origins lay in small-scale craft production and retail distribution. Women were important participants in the household economy of the early mercer, spinning silk or making fine cloth. Neighborhood played a key role in the emergence of a distinct mercer identity, and, over time, certain London parishes became strongly identified with the trade. For many mercers, their company and their parish were the main sources of community, each of which buttressed the family. Such attachments expressed themselves in mercers’ wills. Given the considerable wealth that many company members achieved, they became important benefactors of schools, almshouses, and chantries in their places of birth as well as in London. In this way, the wealth of London mercers, drawn in part from national as well as metropolitan markets, recirculated throughout England in the form of charitable bequests. The exemplar was Richard Whittington, whom Sutton understandably labels “the greatest mercer of them all” (121), and, at the time of his death in 1423, the company was at the start of its fifteenth-century golden age. Sutton suggests that the company, like other prominent London guilds, came to suffer somewhat as its wealthiest members formed an inner circle. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the character of the company had evolved to the point that “the working mercer and his silkwoman wife—the ideal mercery unit—had been forgotten” (443).

While thoroughly describing key institutional developments, Sutton reminds her reader of the external events that influenced the company's development. These ranged from foreign wars that upset international trade, to the City's sometimes turbulent relations with the Crown, to social developments such as the growth of London. Two such events seemed especially significant in this regard. The Black Death struck England just as the company was growing in strength and developing clear distinctions among company members. Sutton suggests that the timing of the company's decision to create a livery, a rank of well-established mercers who paid an entrance fine and took on additional expenses for purchasing the gown to be worn during ceremonial occasions, may have struck some members as ironic: “A hundred and three men paid their first 6s 8d on 22 June 1348, and only two months later the Black Death arrived in the south of England; by November the plague was in London” (96). A second example of the intrusion of external events came in the sixteenth century, when the Reformation had the potential to tear the company apart. The company's members represented the full range of personal beliefs in the period. The strong ties between mercers and the Low Countries meant that company members were well aware of the reform movement on the Continent, and several of them became committed advocates for change. At the same time, many within the company held to their traditional beliefs. Thomas More was a member of the company but that did not prevent him from examining some of the advocates of religious reform among the mercers, although Sutton notes that “it is perhaps remarkable that none of the mercer evangelicals suffered death during More's campaigns” (383). She also offers a detailed account of the ways in which the loss of chantries and other commemorative forms tied to the traditional faith affected the social life of the company.

By 1578, Sutton's ending point, the company had been transformed from an aggressive mercantile machine into an institution largely concerned with the management of charities. This terminus prevents her from bringing her considerable expertise to bear on arguments among early modern specialists such as Robert Brenner and Richard Grassby about the role of overseas merchants in national politics. That minor quibble aside, Sutton engages throughout the book with issues of current interest to academic historians. Still, this is by no means a typical historical monograph. Sutton has for more than two decades produced a steady stream of academic articles about the mercers. This book is, therefore, the culmination of a sustained and highly ambitious research program; it has the look and feel of a magnum opus. It has five appendixes: the company's ordinances of 1376; a selection of biographical sketches of thirty-five company benefactors; a list of company wardens to 1578; the orders for the election of company wardens; and a list of mercers who were London mayors to 1578. It also has a twenty-seven-page bibliography and, perhaps most amazingly, a seventy-five-page index, which in itself will be an invaluable resource for scholars. Specialists in the history of late medieval and early modern London as well as those interested in national and international trade and politics will learn a great deal from Sutton's marvelous book.