Health and hygiene in early-modern Norwich: account rolls of the Great Hospital, Norwich, 1549-50 and 1570-71

摘要

The documents published in this volume form part of the extraordinarily rich archive of the Norwich city records preserved in Norfolk Record Office. Norwich was the most wealthy and populous of sixteenth-century English provincial towns, a situation which brought challenges as well as advantages to its governing elite. A tradition of creativity in response to these challenges emerged in its late-medieval and Tudor civic governance, a notable and innovatory example of administrative action being the census of Norwich's poor inhabitants in 1570. This very welcome new publication by the Norfolk Record Society permits us some illuminating glimpses of Norwich civic institutions at work in the second half of the sixteenth century. This was a period during which insistent pressures arising from population growth, inflation and, too often, underemployment, falling real standards of living and poverty amongst the general population both provoked anxiety and concern amongst the governing classes in England and fuelled their fear of popular disorder. There is currently a lively interest amongst scholars in the topic of early modern English urban governance and culture. The present volume is a worthy addition to the scholarly literature and will be a stimulus for further work.