The London Bridge House, c.1209-1554: A Case of Civic Growth and Religious Transition in Late Medieval London

Abstract

Between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, the London Bridge House institution, which managed the constant upkeep of the sole stone bridge in the City of London, underwent extensive internal changes. It gradually transitioned from being a religious foundation, dedicated to the pious work of maintaining the bridge, to becoming a civic enterprise mostly under the auspices of the urban government. Previous scholarly work has situated the movement of society and institutions towards secularization, or profanation, to a large extent within the aftermath of the large-scale sixteenth-century religious reformations. This study complicates that perception by considering the transformations that occurred within the Bridge House in the preceding three centuries. It does this by analyzing long-term trends that emerge from the extensive Bridge House records, as well as surviving London wills. This includes the evolution of the role of the bridgewarden, trends in giving practices, and the changing place of the chapel within the Bridge House institution. This dissertation found that in each of these cases, records demonstrate that the place of religion and civic authority within the institution changed dramatically over time. Bridgewardens, who oversaw the Bridge House management, went from being clerical men who served for short periods of time in the thirteenth century to being wealthy Londoners, many of whom belonged to the City’s mercantile elite, who acted as long-term administrators for the term of their lives. London Bridge went from receiving many small monetary bequests from a broad swath of individuals, including men and women, as well as intergenerational pairs, to maintaining an expansive landed endowment, accompanied by occasional large-scale bequests from men holding high civic office. The format of bequests also changed, increasingly leaving property and money to the Mayor and Commonalty for the maintenance of the bridge, instead of to the Bridge House directly. These bequests ceased requesting the prayers of brothers and sisters praying for the benefactors of the bridge, who disappeared from the bridge records by the early fourteenth century. By the mid-fourteenth century, individuals who mentioned the bridge in their wills increasingly designated the Bridge House in a back-up administrative capacity to manage a chantry if the designated original legatees failed to fulfill their obligations. Meanwhile, the St Thomas Becket chapel on the bridge, the last vestige of the early religious foundation, gradually became more of an independent entity, having limited association with the Bridge House that it used to represent. These findings suggest that the place of religion within society, and within urban institutions in particular, was being renegotiated in significant ways during the later medieval period. They complicate existing scholarship that places the secularization, or profanation, of religious institutions in the aftermath of the religious reformations of the sixteenth century. The findings of this study suggest that urbanization and civic growth may have played key roles in changing the place of religion within society prior to the sixteenth century and raise questions about how this may have played out within other late medieval urban institutions.