Surviving sixteenth-century English merchants’ records are vanishingly rare, so a new edition of an individual's working notebook is of great interest to historians of London, and indeed of Antwerp. Sir Thomas Kytson, mercer, former alderman and sheriff of London, died on 11 September 1540 at his country estate at Hengrave, Suffolk. Other records of his life were sparse: his will was drawn up on the day he died and, unsurprisingly, it is short and to the point at a mere seven lines of text with another three and a half lines which record the names of his witnesses. He left everything to his widow Margaret, and it is, frankly, boring. But the survival of a remarkable ‘boke of remembraunce’ reveals that this Tudor businessman was far from boring and was, in fact, one of the richest merchants of the City of London (ranked seventh wealthiest in 1535 when he was assessed at 4,000 marks). The editor of this text has brought his transcription together to form the latest text to be published by the London Record Society.

The manuscript which forms the ‘Boke’ comprises over 400 pages and provides a chronological account for the period 1529 and 1540. It was written by Kytson's clerks with an occasional scrawled entry added by their master. The entries can be divided into four sections: the purchase of cloth from Somerset, Wilshire, Gloucestershire, Cheshire, Lancashire, Kent and Hampshire and also (occasionally) tin from the West Country; lists which recorded each fardel of cloth exported to the Low Countries by ship, which were named, together with the identity of their masters, the port, type of cloth, the quantity and the name of the clothier who supplied it; sales of goods imported, such as woad, sugar, spices, fabrics, copper and occasionally body armour; and finally what can best be described as memoranda which records goods delivered to Kytson, his wife and their friends. There are also a number of entries which recompense merchants at the four marts at Antwerp and Bergen-op-Zoom who bought faulty cloth.

The largest type of export was unfinished broadcloth (Table 1) which was brought to London by representatives of local clothiers. From the text, we see that Kytson hedged his bets against the dangers of the high seas and of piracy and sent the cloth in different ships to the marts, which began on Maundy Thursday and also at Pentecost, later in the summer to St Bavo's Fair (held after the Feast of the Assumption) and finally the Koudmarkt, which started on the Thursday before All Hallows Eve. The names of the ships, masters, departure port and mart (and year) are summarized in Appendix 3. Imports are not recorded, and it is assumed that these were recorded in a separate (and now lost) ledger. However, a list of sales – summarized in Table 2 – reveals the variety of goods imported to England from which, so the ‘Boke’ suggests, Kytson enjoyed a 25 per cent profit. It is of little surprise to read in the introduction that this astute merchant invested his profits in real estate with properties in Dorset, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Somerset, Suffolk and within the city of London. He bought the estate at Hengrave in 1531 and thereafter set about rebuilding the hall.

This edition also contains two other manuscripts. One is the account of the Sinxten mart made by Kytson's nephew Thomas Washington, who acted as his factor in Antwerp in 1536, which consists of a small book of twenty-six pages. This is published in Appendix 1. The second was written by Kytson's clerks between 1512 and 1539 and is comparable in size to the ‘Boke’. It duplicates the material in the ‘Boke’ but occasionally provides information which supplements the edition. This is interposed using a smaller typeface and indented. The text of the ‘Boke’ is a complicated one and the editor has done his best to fulfil one of his objectives and to make the material accessible to a wider readership. Yet the methodology and abbreviations used are likely to present some challenges to this readership. It is, for example, not a good idea to retain the ‘idiosyncrasies of spelling’ and to present the same word with different spellings in the text (especially with places). The reference to the code used by Kytson to purchase goods is also unclear: are we presented with a converted sum or do we need to do the calculations? It is likely that some readers will find aspects of the methodology unclear and this important section could have been better presented and explained.

Much can be gleaned from this volume and it will be a welcome addition to anyone interested in London during the time of the Reformation as well as economic and social historians. It is clear from his ‘boke of remembrauce’ that Sir Thomas Kytson was a shrewd merchant who managed a successful career during a time of great instability. There is nothing in his will to suggest this, yet his ledger book not only reveals a man with an eye for a good deal but also explains the mechanics of trade during a particularly turbulent decade.