page_title: Letter-Books of the City of London
section_title: Content
hierarchical_section_title: Letter-Books of the City of London / Content
caption_attribution_description: English: Two pages of Book I of the Letter-Books of the City of London, written during the period 1399-1421 AD, showing entries in English, French, and Latin, on display at the London Metropolitan Archives.
context_page_description: The Letter-Books of the City of London are a series of fifty folio volumes in vellum containing entries of the matters of in which the City of London was interested or concerned, beginning in 1275 and concluding in 1509. The volumes are part of the collection of the City of London Records Office, and are kept in the London Metropolitan Archives.
  The volumes derive their name from being lettered from A to Z and again from AA to ZZ. Besides being known by distinctive letters, the earlier Letter-Books originally bore other titles, derived from the comparative size of each volume and the original colour of its binding. Letter-Book A is referred to as the "Lesser Black Book"; Letter-Book B as the "Black Book"; Letter-Book C as the "Greater Black Book"; Letter-Book D as the "Red Book"; and Letter-Book E as the "White Book" or "New White Book of Writs and Memoranda".
context_section_description: The books, written in scores of varying hands, are not in strict chronological sequence, but speak in detail of the business habits of Chamberlains of the City of London and Common Clerks in the times of the Plantagenets, and contain entries in English, French, and Latin. The lack of sequence in many entries is probably due to rough copies of the memoranda, or "remembrances," being kept in hand at times for a month or two together, or even longer, and then entered in the volumes without much regard to the chronological order of the facts they recorded. Also, at least in some cases, two sets of entries were being made in different parts of the volume at the same period; in the instance of the earliest letter books, no less than three of them were in use for receiving entries of memoranda for several years in common. The irregular, and at times haphazard, manner in which entries have been made in (at least) the first two Letter-Books, and their overlapping each other in point of chronology, may also be accounted for by each clerk having been in the habit of keeping in his own custody the books or calendars upon which he happened to be engaged for the time being.
  The earlier volumes contain, amongst other things, the chief, if not the only existing, record of the proceedings of the Court of Common Council and Court of Aldermen prior to the fifteenth century, when they were first entered in separate volumes, known respectively as Journals and Repertories. The later volumes contain much that is also entered in the Journals and Repertories, but the concluding volumes of the series are almost wholly devoted to orphanage matters.
  Letter-Books A and B are chiefly concerned with recognizances of debts. These recognizances have their value as illustrating the commercial intercourse of the citizens of London with Gascony and Spain in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, more especially in connection with wine and leather; the names of those sworn as "correctors" (coretaru), or licensed brokers, of those commodities, appear on the first page of Letter-Book A. Another prominent feature of both these books is the record of the Assize of Bread, as set from time to time by the municipal authorities; although also irregularly kept, with little respect paid to chronological order. The recognizances in Letter-Book A terminate in 1294, and are immediately followed by a series of deeds extending from 1281 to 1293. The remainder of the volume is occupied by miscellaneous matters and additions of a later date, inserted wherever space permitted.
  The value of these earlier records was fully realised by Andrew Horn, the well-known jurist and sometime Chamberlain of the City, and John Carpenter, the City's famous Town Clerk. Both Horn and Carpenter drew largely upon these volumes for their own respective compilations of City customs and ordinances, the Liber Horn and the Liber Albus, the first book of English Common Law. Later on these books of "Remembrances", as they were sometimes called, were used by the chroniclers Robert Fabyan, John Stow, and others.
caption: Two pages of Book I, on display at the London Metropolitan Archives.
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