Professor Matthew Davies MA, DPhil (Oxon), FRHistS

Professor of Urban History and Director of the CMH

Email: 
matthew.davies@sas.ac.uk
Phone: 
+44 (0)20 7862 8698
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Matthew has been Director of the Centre for Metropolitan History since 2002. For more about the activities of the Centre visit the CMH website.

He is currently a Pro-Dean of the School of Advanced Study, with responsiblity for a consortium comprising the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and the Institute of Philosophy.

Twitter: @mpdavies

Other positions held:

Research and publications

Matthew's research interests focus on the history of medieval and early modern London. He is particularly interested in questions relating to the roles of the guilds, known as 'livery companies', in connection with trade and production, regulation (economic as well as moral) and religious culture. His recent work has focused on the ways in which the guilds developed and articulated ideas about their own histories, from the medieval period up to the mid seventeenth century. He is also interested in the government of London, and the way in which causes were promoted by the city's representatives and through corporate and individual lobbying. He is working more broadly on questions to do with London's links with other towns and cities, and with the Crown. He is current writing a history of the city between 1300 and 1550, which will form part of a multi-volume history of London.. He directs and co-directs a number of research projects on the history of London, and teaches on the IHR's MA programmes. He is available to supervise graduate students working in many areas of late medieval and early modern history, and especially the history of London.

Current research projects

Previous research projects

Books

  • The London and Middlesex Hearth Tax of 1666 (ed. with V. Harding, J. Price and A. Wareham) (British Records Society Hearth Tax Series, IX, 2014)
  • London and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Derek Keene (ed. with James A. Galloway) (London, 2012)
  • London and the Kingdom: Essays in Honour of Caroline M. Barron (ed. with Andrew Prescott) (Donington, 2008)
  • People in Place: Families, Households and Housing in Early Modern London (with V. Harding, P. Baker, M. Merry, O. Myhill, G. Newton and R. Smith) (London, 2008)
  • The Religious Houses of London and Middlesex (ed. with Caroline M. Barron) (London, 2007)
  • The History of the Merchant Taylors' Company (with Ann Saunders) (Leeds: Maney, 2004)
  • The Merchant Taylors' Company of London: Court Minutes 1486-1493 (Stamford, 2000)

Chapters

  • ‘City and Suburbs: London 1400-1700’, in Evolução da Paisagem Urbana: Cidade e Periferia, ed. M. Do Carmo Ribiero and A. Sousa Melo (Braga, 2014), pp. 205-28
  • 'Crown, City and Guild in Late Medieval London', in London and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Derek Keene, ed. M. Davies and J.A. Galloway (London, 2012), pp. 241-61
  • '"Monuments of Honor": clerks, histories and heroes in the London livery companies',  in Parliament, Personalities and Power. Papers Presented to Linda S. Clark, ed. H. Kleineke (Woodbridge, 2011), pp. 145-65
  • 'Governors and Governed: the Practice of Power in the Merchant Taylors' Company', in Guilds, Society and Economy in London, 1450-1800, ed. I.A. Gadd and P. Wallis (CMH, London, 2001), pp. 67-83
  • 'Artisans, Guilds and Government in London', in Daily Life in the Late Middle Ages, ed. R.H. Britnell (Stroud, 1998), pp. 125-50
  • 'The Tailors of London: Corporate Charity in the Late-Medieval Town', in Crown, Government and People in the Fifteenth Century, ed. R.E. Archer (Stroud, 1995), pp. 161-90
  • ‘Dame Thomasine Percyvale, “The Maid of Week” (d.1512)’, in Medieval London Widows, 1300-1500, ed. C.M. Barron and A.F. Sutton (London, 1994), pp. 185-207

Articles

  • 'Lobbying Parliament: the London livery companies in the fifteenth century', Parliamentary History, XXIII (2004), pp.  136-48
  • 'Ellen Langwith, silkwoman of London' (with C.M. Barron), The Ricardian, XIII (2003), pp. 39-47

Forthcoming

  • ‘Staging the city: REED and the digital landscape of early modern London’, in Envisioning REED in the Digital Age, ed. J. Boyd and S-B. Maclean, New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies (forthcoming, 2015)

He has written the biographies of more than 150 medieval Members of Parliament, as well as a number of constituency surveys, for The History of Parliament: The Commons 1422-1504

Teaching and supervision

Current research students

  • Charlotte Berry, 'Margins and Marginality in Fifteenth-Century London'
  • Helen Draper, 'Mary Beale and her "paynting room" in London 1655 to 1699'
  • Laurie Lindey, 'The London furniture trade 1640-1720'
  • Dean Rowland, 'The reception and implementation of local and parliamentary legislation in England, 1422-c.1485'
  • Catherine Wright, 'Social and Cultural Connections between the English and Dutch, 1660-1720'

  • Xu Yang, 'Early Modern London and the Rules of Business: London Merchants and Institutions, c. 1500-1800'

Former research students