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AbstractGeographical Information Systems (GIS) are becoming increasingly popular in historical research, especially in urban contexts. However, digitizing historical sources in a way that can be mapped using the Cartesian co-ordinate systems of a GIS is often challenging, especially so in the case of records pre-dating centralized property registers or street numbering. This article explores how the vernacular spatial descriptions used in several case-studies of documents from late medieval and early modern London can be translated and geocoded into GIS compatible co-ordinates in a sympathetic way. Translating this data from a historical spatial paradigm into a modern one unlocks a whole range of new insights into spatial patterns, networks and relationships which would not have been feasible to construct using traditional methods

The economic geography of cities is often thought to have changed dramatically between the medieval and early modern eras. The medieval city is seen as having been strictly regulated, both in terms of markets, and in terms of space. The early modern city, by contrast, is associated not only with growth, but with the breakdown of rigid regulation by guilds and a new commercial outlook. However, empirical studies of the spatial organization of medieval cities have been limited, and quantitative surveys of urban economic geography have focused on the seventeenth century and later. This article analyses the spatial distribution of occupations in the City of London between the 1370s and the 1550s using a large probate dataset. It examines occupations that remained clustered or dispersed, but concentrates on the apparent breakdown in economic clustering among London's leading trades. Prosopographical analysis reveals that merchants and retailers became more specialized, but that this was accommodated within London's existing guild‐based occupational identities, which had become ossified. Rather than the end of the middle ages having marked a dramatic change from guild‐based spatial organisation, occupational clusters simply continued to evolve in line with the principles of locational economics throughout the period.

Medical practice in fifteenth-century England is often seen as suffering from the low status and unregulated practice of which Thomas Linacre later complained. Unlike in many European cities, the provision of physic was uncontrolled, and while urban guilds oversaw surgery as a manual art, no comprehensive system of medical organisation or regulation existed. However, in a remarkable episode of the 1420s, a group of university-trained physicians and elite surgeons associated with Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, briefly established just such a system. While their efforts initially secured approval for a national scheme, it was only in the City of London that they succeeded in implementing their plans. The detailed ordinances of the collegiate ?commonalty? they founded provide a unique insight into their attitudes. Drawing on continental models, they attempted to control all medicine within the city by establishing a hierarchy of practitioners, preventing illicit and incompetent practice, and offering treatment to even the poorest Londoners. Yet they failed to appreciate the vested interests of civic politics: achieving these aims meant curtailing the rights of the powerful Grocers and the Barbers, a fact made clear by their adjudication of a case involving two members of the Barbers? Company, and the Barbers? subsequent riposte?a mayoral petition that heralded the commonalty?s end. Its founder surgeons went on to revitalise their Surgeons? Fellowship, which continued independently of the Barbers until a merger in 1540; in contrast, the physicians withdrew from civic affairs, and physic remained entirely unregulated until episcopal licensing was instituted in 1511.

Medical practice in fifteenth-century England is often seen as suffering from the low status and unregulated practice of which Thomas Linacre later complained. Unlike in many European cities, the provision of physic was uncontrolled, and while urban guilds oversaw surgery as a manual art, no comprehensive system of medical organisation or regulation existed. However, in a remarkable episode of the 1420s, a group of university-trained physicians and elite surgeons associated with Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, briefly established just such a system. While their efforts initially secured approval for a national scheme, it was only in the City of London that they succeeded in implementing their plans. The detailed ordinances of the collegiate 'commonalty' they founded provide a unique insight into their attitudes. Drawing on continental models, they attempted to control all medicine within the city by establishing a hierarchy of practitioners, preventing illicit and incompetent practice, and offering treatment to even the poorest Londoners. Yet they failed to appreciate the vested interests of civic politics: achieving these aims meant curtailing the rights of the powerful Grocers and the Barbers, a fact made clear by their adjudication of a case involving two members of the Barbers' Company, and the Barbers' subsequent riposte—a mayoral petition that heralded the commonalty's end. Its founder surgeons went on to revitalise their Surgeons' Fellowship, which continued independently of the Barbers until a merger in 1540; in contrast, the physicians withdrew from civic affairs, and physic remained entirely unregulated until episcopal licensing was instituted in 1511. ; This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust awards 097782/Z/11/Z and 077548. ; This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Oxford University Press via http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cev261