The Wealth of the Trades in Early Tudor London
Abstract
AbstractThe rapid expansion of the overseas trade in woollen cloth through London, the city's growing dominance of the import trade of both luxury manufactured goods and raw materials, its growth as a manufacturing centre, and its increase in population brought great prosperity to the merchants, and the companies to which they belonged. Through the tax records for London in the 1520s that identify the citizen's trade, the distribution of wealth by trade, and by ward can be analysed. The records that have survived for the preliminary assessment for the aborted Amicable Grant for 1525 are unique for the information they provide and because they are the only financial records for this tax that have survived anywhere in the country.