Volume 1

A survey of London / by John Stow; reprinted from the text of 1603, with introduction and notes by Charles Lethbridge Kingsford.

Stow, John

Date:: 1908

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: A survey of London / by John Stow; reprinted from the text of 1603, with introduction and notes by Charles Lethbridge Kingsford. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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$which was at the first collected of Languet and Cooper’s Epitome,^ but then much corrupted with oft reprinting, and therefore of Richard Grafton so contemned.^ To this request I granted, on condition that some one, which were better learned, might be joined with me, for that it was a study wherein I had never travailed.’ The required helper was found in William Baldwyn,^ parson of St. Michael at Paul’s Gate. But Baldwyn died before he had set hand to the work, and Stow at Marshe’s request went on alone until a successor could be obtained. ‘ After I had once begun I could not rest till the same was fully ended. Then I, of mine own mind, went to Grafton’s house, and shewed him my book, requiring him not to be offended with my doing, for I meant not to give any such occasion.’ Grafton professed gratitude for a long catalogue of his own errors, and they parted in good friendship. But when Stow’s Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles appeared, with the licence of the Stationers and authority of the Archbishop,^ Grafton began to chafe and think how to put his rival out of credit. Leaving his own Abridgement, he drew out of Stow’s Stimmary ‘ a book in sexto dedmo, which he entitled, A Mamiell of Ye Chronicles * A Chronicle of the World, begun by Thomas Languet [d. 1545), was completed by Thomas Cooper, afterwards bishop of Winchester, and published in 1549. It was often, as Stow says, reprinted, e.g. in 1559 by T. Marshe under the editorship of Robert Crowley (see ii. 339 below). Similar was A breviat Cronicle contaynynge all the hinges, &^c., first published by John Mitchell or Mychell, of Canterbury, in 1551, of which a later edition, published at London by Tottell in 1561, was long regarded as the first edition of Stow’s Summary. * In the Preface to his Abridgeme7it Grafton writes: ‘ Unto which travayle I was the rather provoked for that I saw used and occupied in every common person’s hands a certayne booke bearyng lyke title, wherein was lytle truth and lesse good order.’ ® No doubt William Baldwin, the chief contributor to the Mur or for Magistrates, and author of Beware the Cat{%te. ii. 275 below). His cure and the date of his death were otherwise unrecorded. The identification is helped by a note in Stow’s Metnoratida (cf. Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, p. 126), where he relates that when the Romish bishops were taken from the Tower for fear of the plague in Sept. 1563, certain ‘ prechers prechyd, as it was thought of many wysse men, verie sedyssyowsly, as Baldwyn at Powll’s Cross, wyshyng a galows set up in Smythefyld, and ye old byshops and other papestis to be hangyd thereon. Hymselfe dyed of ye plague the next weke aftar.’ William Baldwin’s writings show him to have been a violent Protestant. Thomas Marshe was printer of Baldwin’s works from 1559 onwards. ' See pp. li and Ixxxii below.$