Urban politics and material culture at the end of the Middle Ages: the Coventry tapestry in St Mary's Hall

Liddy, C.D.

doi:10.1017/s0963926812000028

Urban politics and material culture at the end of the Middle Ages: the Coventry tapestry in St Mary's Hall

Liddy, C.D.

Authors

Professor Christian Liddy c.d.liddy@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

This article uses the evidence of the internal decoration and spatial hierarchy of an English town hall to explore the construction of urban oligarchy in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Urban historians have regarded this period as one of fundamental importance in the political history of pre-modern English towns. It is associated with the emergence of the ‘close corporation’, an oligarchic form of government which remained largely in place until the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. The article examines the iconography and historical context of a tapestry, custom-made for the town hall of Coventry around 1500, to present a different view of the character of urban political culture at the end of the Middle Ages.

Citation

Liddy, C. (2012). Urban politics and material culture at the end of the Middle Ages: the Coventry tapestry in St Mary's Hall. Urban History, 39(2), 203-224. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0963926812000028

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	May 1, 2012
Deposit Date	Apr 18, 2012
Publicly Available Date	Aug 3, 2012
Journal	Urban History
Print ISSN	0963-9268
Electronic ISSN	1469-8706
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	39
Issue	2
Pages	203-224
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1017/s0963926812000028

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Copyright Statement
© Copyright Cambridge University Press 2012. This paper has been published in a revised form subsequent to editorial input by Cambridge University Press in "Urban history" (39: 2 (2012) 203-224) http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=UHY