Rebuilding St Andrew Undershaft: A Study in Executorial Discretion in Early Tudor London

Abstract

Using a case study of the early sixteenth-century rebuilding of the London parish church of St Andrew Undershaft, this article focuses on the hitherto unrecognised role played by the executors of London mercantile testators in pre-Reformation church building. Drawing on the rare sets of extant accounts kept by executors in the course of their duties (which would once have been ubiquitous), the details of several ecclesiastical rebuilding projects can be revised, including that of St Andrew’s. It will be argued that this realisation possesses important implications for our understanding of late medieval ecclesiastical building projects, and that executors—sometimes acting on the instruction of the testator but also (more significantly) on their discretion—should be considered a profoundly influential force in shaping the infrastructure of the pre-Reformation City.