Beginning in October 2010, the ‘People, Property and Charity: the Clothworkers’ Company 1500-1750’ project, will provide the first detailed history of the benefactors, property acquisitions and other bequests of the Clothworkers’ Company in the City of London during the late medieval and early modern periods. Focusing specifically on the properties that came to the company through the bequests of several benefactors, the project aims to trace the company’s management of these properties and associated charities using the Company’s court orders, account books, bequest records, lease records, and benefactor wills.
Clothworkers' Hall, The Treswell Survey, 1622Clothworkers' Hall, The Treswell Survey, 1622Specific research questions relate to the company’s acquisition of the properties; their continual surveys and viewings of their lands; reparations undertaken by the company on these properties; their lease agreements relating to the properties; their financial transactions; and the charitable giving by the company from the rental incomes of these properties. Research outputs from the project will engage with wider academic debates relating to benefaction, acquisition and the management of properties and charities in the early modern period. The project will have three distinct web outputs, including biographies of c.33 benefactors, short property histories and a gazetteer (database) of information relating to the individual properties; as well as a number of published articles.