Place, Petitioning, and Welfare in Seventeenth-Century Suburban London

Abstract

Petitions were everywhere in early modern England. The recent AHRC-funded ‘The Power of Petitioning in Seventeenth-Century England’ project has significantly advanced our understanding of petitioning culture in Britain during this period. There has been limited analysis of petitioning practices in London though, certainly before the 1690s. This includes petitions related to the plague and the poor, intersecting social issues resulting from the capital’s rapid growth. This article uses petitions to illuminate the broader social issues in suburban London, where most of the population growth was accommodated, especially how authority worked. It speaks to the growing petitioning scholarship and the history of metropolitan development.