Prostitutes were not usually arrested in London during this period, while sodomy was an offence against morality rather than common law and so pursued in ecclesiastical courts.

Ruth Mazo Karras—who in the 1990s rediscovered the Rykener case in the City of London archives—sees it as illustrating the difficulties the law has in addressing things it cannot describe.

[2][note 2] City authorities tended not to prosecute individual sex workers, but focused on arresting the pimps and procuresses who lived off them.

The thirteenth-century philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas compared prostitution to a sewer controlling the flow of waste, saying that if one were to remove it, one would "fill the palace with foulness".

[12] Conversely, the limited number of such opportunities, says Vern Bullough, meant that male-to-female transvestism was effectively non-existent in public society.

[14] Hermaphroditism too had a legally recognised status; the thirteenth-century jurist Henry de Bracton, for example, had discussed it in his Laws and Customs of England,[15] and there was a strong tradition of fictionalising it.

The medieval historian Jeremy Goldberg has compared the Lübeck and Rykener cases: both involved "cross-dressing, dishonesty, the close association of priests with homosexual activity, and the eventual intervention of the city authorities".

[30] Rykener described the situation in some detail:[31] He further said that a certain Elizabeth Bronderer first dressed him in women's clothing; she also brought her daughter Alice to diverse men for the sake of lust, placing her with those men in their beds at night without light, making her leave early in the morning and showing them the said John Rykener dressed up in women's clothing, calling him Eleanor and saying that they had misbehaved with her.

John Roxeth, considering Brouderer's treatment of Rector Philip, has suggested that she used Rykener to blackmail men, although he does not extrapolate on the mechanics of her doing so.

[31] Rykener, asked where the idea for such work came from, said that "a certain Anna, the whore of a former servant of Sir Thomas Blount" had taught him to act as a woman,[note 17] and that Elizabeth Brouderer first dressed him so.

[21][note 18]Besides the encounter in question, Rykener spoke of having sex as a man "with many nuns", and as woman with an Essex rector, three Oxford scholars, four Franciscans, one Carmelite, three chaplains and many priests.

[49] Rykener's responses suggest that officialdom was particularly concerned with the moral question of adulterous married women and sexually active religieuses.

[5] Goldberg notes how the scribal clerks went to great trouble to record extraneous, background material that took place many miles outside that jurisdiction.

Perhaps Rykener was sufficiently different to warrant their notice, being after all "no poor young woman forced or tricked into selling her body in order to get by, the pawn of the pimp or procurer who controlled her, nor was he offering vaginal sex".

Goldberg suggests that the "staged and dramatic way" that the case is presented reflects its contrived nature and that the things that Rykener said were carefully chosen for transcription for the mayor's electoral purposes.

The Rykener case can thus be viewed as an object lesson in good self-governance: "malefactors are swiftly detected and promptly brought to answer for their misdeeds".

The city demonstrated, through Rykener, its ability to address "the frequent resort of, and consorting with, common harlots", which led to "many and divers affrays, broils, and dissensions".

Sodomy came under ecclesiastical jurisdiction, prostitution was a civic offence, and cases concerning priests were traditionally dealt with by church courts.

[88] Such was the unpopularity of the clergy, suggests Goldberg, that "courts would welcome the opportunity thus presented of showing up a man in holy orders", even if they were unable to prosecute him.

[90][55] Thomas's summary was noted only that an examination had taken place "of two men charged with immorality, of whom one implicated several persons, male and female, in religious orders".

[55] The case remained in obscurity until the mid-1990s, when the original manuscript records were discovered by Ruth Mazo Karras and David Lorenzo Boyd in the London Metropolitan Archives.

[93] The manuscript of Rykener's interrogation, according to one commentator, forms "apparently the only legal process document from late medieval England which deals with same-sex intercourse".

[97][note 25] The unusually full account contained in the London Plea and Memoranda Rolls of John Rykener's appearance before the mayor's court is both vivid and dramatic.

[note 26] While their story illustrates little of the true nature of courtly love—being a paradigm and mythical rather than reality[108]—Rykener's case tells much about the "marginal, transgressive" world of medieval sexuality.

[111] Another scholar has described the Rykener case as, with its "tangled language and arresting mix of frankness and ambiguity ... remain[ing] a mainstay of medieval, queer and gender studies ever since" Karras's discovery.

[52] Likewise, Cordelia Beattie considers that Rykener's ability to pass as a woman "in everyday life would have involved other gendered behaviour".

It was an unusual case with all the right (or wrong) ingredients for a ripping yarn—sex, money, cross-dressing, nuns—but even for all that, those involved might scarcely have believed the celebrity it would achieve six centuries later.

Goldberg considers that the mayor and aldermen were most concerned with Rykener as a trader, and as a false one at that: "a tradesperson who purports to be an embroideress and a barmaid, but actually sells sex. ...

[15] A fictionalised version of Rykener appears as a prominent character in Bruce Holsinger's 2014 historical novel, A Burnable Book, set in London in 1385.

[119] A puppet show intended to explore Rykener as transgender—"combining medieval studies, drama, and puppetry"[120]—called John–Eleanor debuted in 2011 and was performed at the Turku music festival in Finland the following year.