John Stow

His antiquarian interests attracted suspicion from the ecclesiastical authorities as a person "with many dangerous and superstitious books in his possession", and in February 1569 his house was searched.

[5] In about 1570 he moved to the parish of St Andrew Undershaft in the Ward of Lime Street, where he lived in comfortable surroundings until his death in 1605.

[5] From 1579 he was in receipt of a pension of £4 per annum from the Merchant Taylors' Company; and in 1590 he petitioned the Court of Aldermen for admission to the Freedom of the City of London, in order to reduce his expenses.

[12] In about the 1590s, William Camden commissioned Stow to transcribe six autograph notebooks of John Leland in exchange for a life annuity of £8: this was probably (in part) a charitable gesture towards an old but impoverished friend.

[18] In March 1604 King James I authorised Stow and his associates to collect "amongst our loving subjects their voluntary contributions and 'kind gratuities'", and himself began "the largesse for the example of others".

He later developed this into the still more substantial The Annales of England, of which editions appeared in 1592, 1601, and 1605 – the last being continued to 26 March 1605, or within ten days of Stow's own death.

The Chronicle written before that nothing is perfect the first time, and that it is incident to mankinde to erre and slip sometimes, but the point of fanta[s]tical fooles to preserve and continue in their errors."

He announced this as "ready to the presse" in 1592, but it proved too ambitious to be commercially viable, and he was unable to find a printer prepared to publish it.

This was a work of chorography: a detailed ward-by-ward topographical and historical tour of the city, providing a unique account of its buildings, social conditions and customs.

[24] Some in Lambeth Palace Library (MS 306) were published in 1880 by the Camden Society, edited by James Gairdner, as Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, with Historical Memoranda by John Stowe the Antiquary, and Contemporary Notes of Occurrences written by him.

[25][26] Stow's widow commissioned a mural monument to him in St Andrew Undershaft, made of Derbyshire marble and alabaster.

[31][32] In acknowledgement of Stow's continuing reputation as the founding father of London history, the quill held by his effigy has been periodically renewed.

The renewal is mentioned as taking place "annually" in 1828;[33] and, although the custom may later have fallen into abeyance, it was revived following the monument's restoration by the Merchant Taylors' Company in 1905.