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Living in Tudor Windsor: the Records of the Sixteenth-Century Town

Edited by David Lewis

Windsor’s documentary archive, which dated from the late twelfth century, was destroyed in the late seventeenth century, and in consequence the town’s history before this date was thought irrecoverably lost. New archival research, however, has uncovered previously neglected material which allows a significant portion of this ‘lost’ history to be recovered, information that supports the detailed introduction in this volume. For the first time, the town’s turbulent existence between c. 1510-60 is revealed, supported by transcriptions of the town’s most significant historic source material, including detail about the widely overlooked but important Windsor castle water conduit.

This volume traces the town’s transition from its medieval existence to that of the early modern period, when it flowered as an internationally recognised centre of pilgrimage, prematurely cut short by the religious changes of the Reformation. The reorientation of the borough’s economy in this period forms the template for its present-day existence. Although of much interest to local historians, this volume retains value for a much wider readership: students of the Tudor period curious about the outworking of national policy in a local context, ecclesiastical historians, London historians, tourists interested the town’s past and students of ‘Tudor’ society, more generally. The numerous references to local people, places and street-names adds colour and interest unavailable from any other local publication, and provides a unique and extensive source for family historians.