The Town Finances of Elizabethan Ipswich Select Treasurers’ and Chamberlains’ Accounts

The treasurers’ and chamberlains’ accounts of Elizabethan Ipswich are a detailed record of the annual income and expenditure of the town’s ruling body during one of the most fascinating periods of its history. A major source for any detailed study of the Suffolk borough at a time when it was among the country’s ten richest provincial towns, the entries selected from the accounts not only shed light on sixteenth-century urban administration but also provide vivid insights into the social and economic life of the period: the equipping of soldiers, ducking of scolds, and performances of town minstrels and itinerant players. JOHN WEBB was formerly Principal Lecturer in History at Portsmouth Polytechnic.