A Study on the Finance of London during the Restoration Period

尽管人们对近代早期伦敦的历史研究兴趣很高，但这座迅速发展的首都的财政问题却被历史学家们所忽视。本文试图从伦敦公司的融资问题入手，阐明近代早期伦敦复杂的城市化进程的一个侧面。本研究有两个目的。一是对主要存放在伦敦公司档案室的有关伦敦金融的原始手稿资料进行检索，并对原始手稿资料进行数据库处理;内侍账目的两个例子，1643/4年的City's Cash和1669/70年的Cash Book几乎完全转录和基于数据。该数据库将通过作者的主页向研究人员开放。另一个目的是分析和解释伦敦金融的长期演变，特别是从内战到复辟时期。从1840年代后半期到斯图亚特王朝早期，伦敦金融城商会处理的货币数量膨胀到了巨大的规模。金融的巨大膨胀与资本前所未有的经济、人口和空间扩张同时进行，部分原因是快速城市化给公司带来的成本增加。然而，解释伦敦金融膨胀原因的更为现实的因素是伦敦与王室关系的加强。虽然伦敦的财政状况在50年代后期似乎有所改善，但在复辟后又变得更糟。大火严重打击了伦敦商会的财政能力，但这并不是致命的打击，因为伦敦财政的恶化，其实质是伦敦作为中世纪市民共同体的法人与新生的现代资本的不相容。

Despite of heightened interest in the history of early modern London, financial problem of this rapidly growing capital has been rather neglected by the historians. This study intends to clarify one aspect of the complicate process of urbanization of early modern London, focusing on the finance of the corporation of London. This study has two purposes. One is to search the original manuscript materials concerning London's finance mainly deposited in the Records Office of the Corporation of London and make date base of them. Two examples of the chamberlain's accounts, City's Cash for 1643/4 and Cash Book for 1669/70 were almost completely transcripted and data-based. This data base is to open to researchers through the author's home page. Another purpose is to analyze and interpret the vicissitude of London's finance in the long run, especially from the Civil War to the Restoration periods. The amount of money the City's chamber dealt with swelled up to enormous size from the latter half of the Elizabethan to the Early Stuart periods. This great swelling of finance proceeded parallel to the unprecedented economic and demographic, and spatial, expansion of the capital and was partly due to the increased cost this rapid urbanization charged on the corporation. The more realistic factor that interpret the cause of the swelling of London's finance, however, was the intensification of the relation of London and the crown. Although the London's finance seemed to improve in the late fifties, it was getting worse again after the Restoration. The Great Fire hit hard the financial ability of London Chamber, but that was not fatal damage at all, because the financial deterioration of London resulted, in its essence, from the incompatibility of the corporation of London as a medieval citizen's community with the nascent modern capital.