The Government of London: the formative phase, 1300–1500

Abstract

This article discusses four significant changes in the way that London was governed between 1300 and 1500: the transfer of the control of entry to the citizenship from the wards to the city companies; the development of a new legislative body, the Court of Common Council with over a hundred elected members and the absolute control over taxation in the City; and the regulation of the elections, and tenure, both of the powerful ward aldermen and of the mayor himself. It is argued that the systems put in place for governing London between 1300 and 1500 were altered very little in the ensuing five hundred years. The changes that are now proposed by Parliament, and by the Corporation itself, return, sometimes in unexpected ways, to the issues that faced the reformers in the late medieval period.