ABSTRACT
Self-taught in the methods and practices of historical inquiry, John Stow was one of the leading antiquarians of sixteenth-century England, a close associate of Image result for William Lambarde and William Camdenas well as a member of the relatively elite Society of Antiquaries begun by Archbishop Parker. Stow's summaries are even more specifically introduced through a prefatorial rhetoric that casts them in terms directly relevant to the values and actions of an urban readership. In Stow's case, the adoption of the perambulation as an historiographic mode enabled him to make London his central historiographic subject. By the twelfth century, two sociopolitical developments were already influencing the development of a European chronicle tradition, and these would become even more pronounced during the early modern period. Stow's specific formal choice, his insertion of charitable contents within a chronicle summary context, not only addresses relevant social and perhaps personal issues but also performs a highly specific historio-graphic function.
