ABSTRACT
In the late summer of 1640 it seems that Thomas Totney abandoned his goldsmith shop in St. Katherine Creechurch, never to return.1 He went to Little Shelford, where he appears to have spent much of that spring and summer, perhaps to help gather in the crops on the rather modest farm he had inherited from his father. An artisan needed maybe a decade and a fair amount of good fortune to establish the clientele, contacts and trust necessary for a successful trading enterprise in early modern London. Totney had been a shopkeeper for more than six years. During that time his business would have faced tough competition from aliens, goldsmiths whose work was not accountable to the London company. In addition, he would have had to contend with fine West Indian silver flooding the market. He had also bound three apprentices, none of whom were to complete their terms of service (one, his brother-in-law Phillip Kett, departed for Dublin).2 When the City’s economy haemorrhaged Totney’s shop may have been an early casualty of the depression. The political and financial fallout from the first Bishops’ War of 1639, the decay of inland trade, the withdrawal of foreign investment and the seizure of money from the Mint to aid the King’s cause may have precipitated the final crisis. The ‘great scarcity’ of money forced the usurers to call in their loans, fracturing London’s credit networks.3 Perhaps the need to pay kin, friends and neighbours long-standing debts (probably borrowed interest free) impoverished Totney, giving him few reasons to remain in the City. Civil strife in the body politic may, like fire from heaven, have rained down on his little world.
