ABSTRACT
One of the most daunting aspects of studying a Tudor or Stuart community is the realization that one's picture of it must remain forever fragmentary and incomplete. York was a large city of between 8000 and 12 000 people, with an occupational structure and a story of economic decay and recovery which seem to have been much more typical of large Tudor towns and cities than has sometimes been allowed, and an attempt to understand the collective mentality of its citizens will, it is hoped, contribute to our growing understanding of sixteenth-century life. The mental framework of York citizens is embodied in the Corpus Christi plays, which started with the Creation and ended with a vividly-depicted Last Judgment. The citizens possessed not only a dim but real memory of the city's Roman greatness, but a firm belief in a pre-Roman history which they derived from Geoffrey of Monmouth.
