¹ See, e.g., Feldman, David, Englishmen and Jews: Social Relations and Political Culture, 1840–1914 (New Haven, CT, 1994)Google Scholar; Burton, Antoinette M., At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late-Victorian Britain (Berkeley, 1997)Google Scholar; Boyce, D. G., “The Marginal Britons: the Irish,” in Englishness: Politics and Culture, 1880–1920, ed. Colls, Robert and Dodd, Philip (London, 1986), 230–53Google Scholar.

² For an examination of Englishness in Elizabethan literature, see Helgerson, Richard, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago, 1992)Google Scholar.

³ I will use the terms “alien” and “stranger” synonymously to refer to those from overseas, largely in accordance with early modern usage. The word “foreigner” applied to English people from beyond the City of London. However, I use it here in its modern sense. For more on the use of these terms, see Archer, Ian, The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London, Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History (Cambridge, 1991), 131CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Public Record Office, London, State Papers (PRO, SP) 15/42, no. 56, fol. 91v. When quoting from early modern sources, I have modernized all spelling and punctuation and have extended all abbreviations. Dates are in Old Style, with the exception that the year is taken to have begun on January 1. When a date from an original source is within quotation marks, however, I have not altered the beginning of the year.

⁵ The petitioners complained that “the merchant stranger is called to allow a rate and the dyer that is English born and denizen although reputed strangers is likewise to allow a rate so that the paying of these burdensome and grievous taxes do bring other inconveniences and discommodities with it and doth in a kind also a double tax” (PRO, SP 15/42, no. 56, fol. 91r).

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Calvin v. Smith, English Reports, ed. Renton, Alexander Wood et al. (London: Stevens & Sons, 1900–30) 77:377 (Court of King's Bench, 1608)Google Scholar; State Trials or a Collection of the Most Interesting Trials prior to the Revolution of 1688, ed. Phillipps, Samuel March (London: W. Walker, 1886), 2:559Google Scholar. Sir Edward Coke's report is included in 77 Eng. Rep. 377. Sir Francis Bacon's speech can be found in 2 State Tr. 559. See also Scouloudi, Irene, Returns of Strangers in the Metropolis 1593, 1627, 1635, 1639, Huguenot Society of London Quarto Series, vol. 57 (London, 1985), 1–2Google Scholar. For the text of Lord Ellesmere's ruling in this case, see Knafla, Louis A., Law and Politics in Jacobean England: The Tracts of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere (Cambridge, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ For attempts to introduce legislation against the children of strangers, see Pettegree, Andrew, Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth-Century London (Oxford, 1986), 289–91Google Scholar.

⁹ In particular, the 1351 statute of De Natis Ultra Mare provides a classic example of jus soli and jus sanguinis at work simultaneously within the same law (25 Edw. III Stat. 1; see Jones, J. Mervyn, British Nationality Law and Practice [Oxford, 1947], 66)Google Scholar. The law guaranteed the subjecthood of a child born out of England if the child's parents were themselves bound by allegiance to the English monarch (Price, Polly J., “Natural Law and Birthright Citizenship in Calvin's Case (1608),” Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 9, no. 73 [1997]: 77)Google Scholar. The statute thus propounded a mixture of the two forms of belonging, for it “permitted children to acquire subject status by birth according to descent” (Price, “Natural Law,” 77 n. 18). A child could not acquire Englishness by virtue of blood without the benefit of parents born under the allegiance of the English crown. For a summary of nationality law in England prior to the thirteenth century, see Parry, Clive, Nationality and Citizenship Laws of the Commonwealth and of the Republic of Ireland (London, 1957), 28–30Google Scholar. For an extended discussion of the importance of the medieval legal background in the making of Calvin's Case, see Price, “Natural Law.”

¹⁰ Yungblut, Laura Hunt, “Strangers Settled Here amongst Us”: Policies, Perceptions, and the Presence of Aliens in Elizabethan England (London, 1996), 105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ Cited in ibid. Yungblut quotes in the original spelling, which I have modernized.

¹² It should also be noted that, despite the 1351 statute of De Natis Ultra Mare (see n. 9 above), the Elizabethan Parliament passed numerous naturalization bills for the children of English people born abroad. See, e.g., 18 Eliz. c. 26, “An Act that the Lady Jana Sibilla wife to the Lord Graye of Wilton born beyond the sea, may be deemed and reputed as mere English” (Statutes of the Realm, vol. 4, pt. 1, xxxiv); 18 Eliz. c. 35, “An other Act that certain persons born beyond the sea may be deemed and reputed as mere English. … Touching her Majesty's faithful subjects in Antwerp married with strangers to have their children naturalized” (Statutes of the Realm, vol. 4, pt. 1, xxxiv); see also 23 Eliz. (1580–81; Statutes of the Realm, vol. 4, pt. 1, xxxv); 31 Eliz. (1588–89), “An Act for the naturalizing of Joyce the daughter of Raufe Elkyn, gent. and wife of Richard Lambert merchant born beyond the seas” (Statutes of the Realm, vol. 4, pt. 1, xli); 35 Eliz. c. 21 (Statutes of the Realm, vol. 4, pt. 1, xliii); 35 Eliz. 27 (Statutes of the Realm, vol. 4, pt. 1, xliv); 39 Eliz. c. 34 (Statutes of the Realm, vol. 4, pt. 1, xlix).

¹³ Cited in Yungblut, Strangers, 105.

¹⁴ According to Yungblut, this occurred “after pressure from the Privy Council and a number of other influential individuals” (Yungblut, Strangers, 106). However, Pettegree notes simply that “the city companies were instructed to put … [the bill] into effect” the year after its passage and does not mention that it was rescinded (Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities, 289). I can find no reference to the Common Council's bill in the volumes of the Acts of the Privy Council for the years immediately following its passage (Acts of the Privy Council, 1571–75; 1575–77), nor in the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic (CSP Dom.), 1574–77 (CSP Dom., Eliz. I, vol. 1 [1547–80]).

¹⁵ Journals of the House of Commons, vol. 1, 118. The first reading of the bill was on 24 January 1581, with the second on 25 January. On 3 February a new version was introduced after discussion in committee. This was read twice the next day and “ordered to be ingrossed.” On 7 February it was read again and, “after many arguments,” sent to committee for amendment. On 17 February it was “once more read with the former amendments, and other amendments now presently inserted” and finally passed by the Commons “after many arguments first had and made” (Journal of the House of Commons, vol. 1, 118–23, 127).

¹⁶ Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities, 290.

¹⁷ Scouloudi, Returns, 2. Indeed, a previous effort in this direction had been made in February 1576, when Parliament heard a “Bill touching children being born in England, their parents being strangers” (Journal of the House of Commons, vol. 1, 107). No further details are given in the Commons’ Journals, but according to Pettegree this “sought to force strangers’ children born in England to pay the alien rate of subsidy.” It died on second reading (Pettegree, Strangers, 290).

¹⁸ Scouloudi, Returns, 2. Andrew Pettegree has pointed to the failure of such legislation as a sign that strangers had “powerful protectors,” as well as an indication of the general reluctance of the government to engage in legal innovation in the name of popular prejudice (Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities, 290). In theory, status as denizen entered the recipient into a bond of allegiance with the monarch. However, unlike outright naturalization, denization did not grant all of the rights of subjecthood. A foreign-born denizen remained an alien by birth and thus was still prohibited from inheriting lands, as well as from bequeathing land to children born prior to the date of denization. Denizens did have the right to initiate lawsuits and to escape paying customs duties as aliens (although, as we will see, this remained a point of conflict in London). Denizen status, unlike naturalization, came directly from the crown, although at times lord chancellors were also given discretion to make grants of denization (Page, William, Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization for Aliens in England, 1509–1603, Huguenot Society of London Quarto Series, vol. 8 [Lymington, 1893], i-iiGoogle Scholar; Yungblut, Strangers, 78; Scouloudi, Returns, 3–4).

¹⁹ Or, more precisely, “if Richard Smith, and Nicholas Smith unjustly, and without judgment, did disseise Rob. Calvin, gent. of his freehold in … Haggard, otherwise Haggerton, otherwise Aggerston, in the parish of St. Leonard in Shoreditch” (77 Eng. Rep. 378). The case began in King's Bench, with a simultaneous suit in Chancery. The final decision was reached in the Court of Exchequer Chamber (Jones, British Nationality, 30). For the case itself, see 77 Eng. Rep. 377; 2 State Tr. 559. The report of Sir Edward Coke is included in 77 Eng. Rep. 377. Sir Francis Bacon's speech can be found in 2 State Tr. 559.

²⁰ As Marianne Constable has noted, however, at least one earlier case did implicitly articulate the subjecthood of Scots. In 1571 “W. D.,” a Scot accused of raping a seven-year-old girl, demanded a jury composed of a mixture of aliens and subjects (a right to which strangers had long been entitled). The justices rejected his request on several grounds, including the contention that “a Scot was never here accounted an alien, but rather a subject.” However, this assertion did not gain the force of legal precedent (Constable, Marianne, The Law of the Other: The Mixed Jury and Changing Conceptions of Citizenship, Law, and Knowledge [Chicago, 1994], 110–11)Google Scholar.

²¹ Scouloudi, Returns, 1; Statt, Daniel, Foreigners and Englishmen: The Controversy over Immigration and Population, 1660–1760 (Newark, NJ, 1995), 32–33Google Scholar.

²² The Digest: Annotated British, Commonwealth and European Cases, vol. 11, pt. 2 (London, 1971–93), 558.

²³ The implications of Calvin's Case are far-reaching and apply to many areas of English law. These include the inability to lose one's status as a natural-born subject (Digest, vol. 7, pt. 2, 8), the rights of aliens to acquire and hold goods within the realm (Digest, vol. 7, pt. 2, 25), the king's power to grant denizen status at will (Digest, vol. 7, pt. 2, 33), and the nature and rights of the peerage (Digest, vol. 37, pt. 1, 3).

²⁴ Indeed, there seems to have been very little legal conflict over this point for the rest of the seventeenth century. The use of the case as precedent, as well as any challenges to its implications, centered upon the issue of the rights of people born abroad of at least one English parent to inherit lands within the realm. These cases revolved around the question of jus sanguinis as used in the 1351 statute of De Natis Ultra Mare: belonging on the basis of descent had not gone away, but it did appear in law only in relation to the children of English men and women born in foreign realms. In 1627 R. v. Eaton affirmed the right of the foreign-born child of only one English parent to inherit. Bacon v. Bacon (1641) combined jus sanguinis with an emphasis upon the importance of allegiance, by arguing that a child born abroad of an English merchant could inherit although the mother was an alien and the merchant father, at the time of birth, was deceased. In this case the right to inherit stemmed from the fact that the wife remained “sub poteste viri, and quasi under the Allegiance of our King.” Collingwood v. Pace (1664) addressed the inheritance of the earl of Holderness, a case that dealt with questions of the Scots antenati and the implications for inheritance of the precise wording of acts of naturalization (Parry, Nationality and Citizenship, 43–45). Many cases beyond the scope of this study have also cited Calvin v. Smith. See, e.g., Low v. Routledge (1865; Digest, vol. 7, pt. 2, 25); Rodriguez v. Speyer (1918; Digest, vol. 7, pt. 2, 25); Campbell v. Hall (1774; Digest, vol. 8, pt. 2, 392); Ruding v. Smith (1821; Digest, vol. 8, pt. 2, 392); Lyons Corpn. v. East India Co. (1836; Digest, vol. 8, pt. 2, 392); China Navigation Co. v. Attorney-General (1932; Digest, vol. 11, pt. 2, 559); Brunswick v. King of Hanover (1844; Digest, vol. 37, pt. 1, 3).

²⁵ Such subjecthood was granted, according to Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke, by ligeantia naturalis, “nature or birthright.” This was, according to Coke, one of four kinds of possible allegiance. The other three were ligeantia acquisitia (by acquisition, such as denization), ligeantia localis (“when an alien that is in amity cometh to England he is within the King's protection; therefore, so long as he is here, he oweth unto the King a local obedience or ligeance”), and legal obedience (“because the municipal laws of this realm have prescribed the order and form of it”). (Sir Edward Coke, 77 Eng. Rep. 383; also cited in Jones, British Nationality, 34.)

²⁶ Irene Scouloudi concludes that “strangers were admitted to the freedom of the City … although not as a corollary to membership of a City company” (Scouloudi, Returns, 12). For nonstrangers, however, admission to freedom of the city after completing an apprenticeship was routine (Rappaport, Steve, Worlds within Worlds: Structures of Life in Sixteenth-Century London, Cambridge Studies in Population, Economy, and Society in Past Time, no. 7 [Cambridge, 1989], 291)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁷ In 1524 the Court of Common Council had ruled that no person could acquire freedom by redemption unless born under the sovereignty of the king. The Dugdale manuscript of the 1593 “Returns of Strangers” lists 3,930 strangers, describing seventy individuals as “free denizens” (the term generally indicating a stranger free of the city and not necessarily implying status as a denizen of the realm). See Scouloudi, Returns, 9–13, 74.

²⁸ See n. 49 below for a definition of these duties.

²⁹ Corporation of London Record Office, Repertories of the Court of Aldermen (CLRO, Rep.), 21, fol. 310v.

³⁰ The entry begins, “Whereas at a Common Counsell held the 26th day of October in the 16th year of the reign of our late sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth, it was enacted that from thenceforth no citizen of this city of what quality soever he were should take as apprentice any person whose father being not the child of an Englishman born was not or should not be born within the Queen's dominions or whose father had been was or should be of the allegiance of any foreigne prince or state” (CLRO, Rep. 30, fol. 50r).

³¹ Ibid.

³² CLRO, Rep. 39, fol. 78v. As Valerie Pearl notes, the lord mayor “had the right to grant three redemptions for the freedom of the City, and even the Lady Mayoress had the right to grant one of these privileges” (Pearl, Valerie, London and the Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution: City Government and National Politics, 1625–43 [London, 1961], 63)Google Scholar. Citizenship by redemption was a fairly common way for aliens to achieve freedom of the city, at least in the late sixteenth century. However, this came with the payment of hefty fees to both the city and a guild (see Rappaport, Worlds within Worlds, 291–94).

³³ CLRO, Rep. 39, fol. 78v.

³⁴ Ibid.

³⁵ Ibid.

³⁶ CLRO, Rep. 47, fol. 256r. See below for more on these duties.

³⁷ CLRO, Rep. 47, fol. 256r–256v.

³⁸ CLRO, Rep. 47, fol. 256r.

³⁹ CLRO, Remembrancia, vol. 8, fol. 53v.

⁴⁰ PRO, Privy Council Registers (PC) 2/42, 556.

⁴¹ CLRO, Remembrancia, vol. 8, fol. 54r. Whether the elder Therry really had gained freedom of the city, and if so under what circumstances, is not known. It is also not clear whether the timing of birth was actually a factor in patrimony. Rappaport describes freedom as a birthright “of Londoners born to freemen,” implying at least that one's father should be a citizen when one was born (Rappaport, Worlds within Worlds, 24).

⁴² CLRO, Remembrancia, vol. 8, fol. 54r.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ Rappaport, Worlds within Worlds, 291.

⁴⁵ CLRO, Rep. 47, fol. 256r–256v.

⁴⁶ CLRO, Rep. 30, fol. 50r.

⁴⁷ CLRO, Rep. 39, fol. 78v.

⁴⁸ Rappaport notes that entry into the freedom of the city took place on the “same day or usually no more than a few days later” as the ceremony that granted guild membership, following completion of an apprenticeship (Rappaport, Worlds within Worlds, 23–24). Of around thirty-four thousand men who became free of the city between the 1530s and the 1600s, 87 percent did so via apprenticeship. A further 9 percent received freedom by patrimony, and 4 percent by redemption (Rappaport, Worlds within Worlds, 291).

⁴⁹ “Package” was a charge levied by the city for the packing of strangers’ goods for export, “scavage” a charge for the weighing of strangers’ merchandise brought to the port, while “bailage” was “the duty paid for the surveying and delivery of goods brought by stranger merchants by land or sea for export through the Thames by way of London.” According to Scouloudi, scavage also applied to any denizen “whose father was an alien born without the allegiance of the King” (Scouloudi, Returns, 30). The Oxford English Dictionary, meanwhile, defines package as “the privilege formerly held by the City of London of packing cloth and other goods exported by aliens or denizens”; scavage as a “toll formerly levied by the mayor, sheriff, or corporation of London and other towns on merchant strangers, on goods offered for sale within their precincts”; and bailage as “duty upon delivery of goods” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., s.vv. “package,” “scavage,” “bailage”). Early Tudor statutes dictated that denizens were to pay the same customs rates as strangers (Scouloudi, Returns, 29). However, according to Yungblut, denization conferred the right to “avoid the special customs duties paid by aliens” (Yungblut, Strangers, 78; no further information is given). See Scouloudi, Returns, 29–30, for more on the logistics of collecting these duties. Aliens, including denizens, also paid double the English rate for the lay subsidy (Scouloudi, Returns, 17).

⁵⁰ CLRO, Rep. 20, fol. 210v.

⁵¹ CLRO, Rep. 23, fol. 479r, fols. 557v–558r (also cited in Scouloudi, Returns, 31). The “common packer” was responsible for setting the rates of package and, at times, scavage (Scouloudi, Returns, 31), as well as being “charged with the packing or supervision of the packing of exported goods liable to custom” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., s.v. “packer”).

⁵² Wright complained of ongoing recalcitrance on the part of strangers in 1614. In 1615 strangers in turn complained of unjust demands by the packer for payment of scavage, to little avail. Richard Wright was replaced by Lionel Wright as packer in August 1617, a situation that did little to ameliorate tension. Over the next two years, merchant strangers argued with Wright over the correct rates of taxation. He died in September 1619, although disputes over the dues he assessed continued for five more years (Scouloudi, Returns, 31). Mysteriously, given that Richard Wright already seems to have held the position, CSP Dom. lists a December 1604 letter to the lord mayor of London (the author not noted) appointing “Rich. and Rob. Wright … joint packers of woolen cloths, &c., and porters of strangers’ goods, in and out of the port of London” (CSP Dom., James I, vol. 8 [1603–10], 179).

⁵³ PRO, PC 2/42, 346. This entry is repeated almost verbatim in the city's records (CLRO, Remembrancia, vol. 7, fols. 97r–98r).

⁵⁴ PRO, PC 2/42, 375.

⁵⁵ Ibid.

⁵⁶ PRO, PC 2/42, 376.

⁵⁷ The committee had been ordered to examine the tables “the 16th of March last” (PRO, PC 2/46, 146). However, CSP Dom. contains an almost identical order to “peruse the city's tables of package, scavage, balliage, and portage” dated February 19, 1636. There is also a February 21 entry for the city's table of fees (CSP Dom., Charles I, vol. 9 [1635–36], 241, 247).

⁵⁸ PRO, PC 2/46, 146.

⁵⁹ Ibid.

⁶⁰ PRO, PC 2/42, 375.

⁶¹ The financial desperation of the crown was particularly acute by the mid-1620s and especially following the denial by Parliament of funds for war on the Continent in 1626. Richard Cust has argued that the polarization caused by measures such as the forced loan (a resulting attempt to raise money without parliamentary consent) ensured that the middle ground had all but disappeared by 1641 (Cust, Richard, The Forced Loan and English Politics [Oxford, 1987])Google Scholar. See also chap. 3 of Sharpe, Kevin, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, CT, 1992)Google Scholar. Sharpe argues that Charles I was not, in fact, as heavy-handed as many have supposed and that measures to raise revenue such as ship money were surprisingly successful.

⁶² CLRO, Remembrancia, vol. 1, fol. 277v. Hartford may have been referring to the Common Council's 1574 legislation, although this denied strangers’ sons access to apprenticeship rather than to freedom of the city.

⁶³ CLRO, Remembrancia, vol. 3, fol. 187r.

⁶⁴ CLRO, Remembrancia, vol. 3, fol. 189r.

⁶⁵ CLRO, Remembrancia, vol. 3, fols. 189r–190r.

⁶⁶ PRO, PC 2/38, 182.

⁶⁷ Ibid. Courten's services included four loans to the crown between 1613 and 1628, including one of 13,500 pounds. However, he died 146,300 pounds in debt following the failure of a Far Eastern venture (Scouloudi, Returns, 24). CSP Dom. lists a “Privy Seal sent down to be drawn up at the Signet” to Sir William Courten for three thousand pounds (CSP Dom., Charles I, vol. 3 [1628–29], 253); see ibid., 354, for a “Docquet of grant” to Courten, though no further details are listed.

⁶⁸ PRO, PC 2/38, 182.

⁶⁹ In 1633 Courten's “total landed estate was valued at … 6,500 [pounds] per annum” (Scouloudi, Returns, 24).

⁷⁰ PRO, PC 2/38, 182. In 1636 Courten was involved in a trading venture in North Africa and, along with a number of other merchants from England, faced accusations of provoking the emperor of Morocco by trading with prohibited areas. Within this North African context, Courten's Englishness went unchallenged. See PRO, PC 2/45, 478–79.

⁷¹ CLRO, Remembrancia, vol. 7, fol. 50r. This was probably not Etgher's first attempt to assert his Englishness. In 1621 one David Otgeer, together with an Abraham des Deuxvilles, complained to the Exchequer that he had been assessed for that year's subsidy as both a native and a stranger. As English born (and with a 1592 certificate of baptism from the Dutch Church to prove it), Otgeer asserted his right to be taxed as a native. Strangers—even denizens—were liable for the lay subsidy at a double rate (Scouloudi, Returns, 17). Charles I made an exception to this rule for a group of Burgundian merchants who petitioned the crown claiming exemption under an “ancient treaty with the House of Burgundy” (CSP Dom., Charles I, vol. 7 [1634–35], 451–52).

⁷² CLRO, Remembrancia, vol. 7, fol. 50r.

⁷³ Ibid.

⁷⁴ For proposed general naturalization in the 1660s, see Statt, Foreigners and Englishmen, 60–61. The first successful bill of general naturalization was 7 Ann c. 5, repealed 10 Ann c. 5 (Parry, Nationality and Citizenship, 65).

⁷⁵ Valerie Pearl has contended that the London government fell into the hands of the Parliamentary party only in 1642 and until then was evenly divided (Pearl, London, 276–77). More recently, Robert Brenner has argued for the importance of a split within London's mercantile elite in the emerging polarization between Parliament and crown. The Company of Merchant Adventurers and the Levant merchants sided with the crown in order to protect their monopolies, while smaller merchants and aristocratic projectors with hot Protestant tendencies became increasingly allied with Parliament. By the 1640s this latter group dominated London's mercantile elite. While underwriting parliamentary power, London's merchants relied on support from an increasingly radical London artisan class. The resulting religious polarization ultimately led to a moderate Presbyterian reaction (see Brenner, Robert, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London's Overseas Traders, 1550–1653 [Princeton, NJ, 1993])Google Scholar. Most striking for the purposes of this article is how little any of this is reflected in discussions concerning aliens and their offspring.

⁷⁶ CLRO, Rep. 57, pt. 2, fol. 16v.

⁷⁷ Permission could include an explicit license by Parliament, outright denization, or naturalization (both of which had been moot for the postnati since Calvin's Case). See “An Act to prohibit all commerce and traffique between England and Scotland, and enjoyning the departure of Scots, out of the Commonwealth,” Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, vol. 2 (London, 1911), 406–9Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ “An Ordinance for uniting Scotland into one Commonwealth with England,” Acts and Ordinances, vol. 2, 871–75Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ See, e.g., PRO, SP 25/70, 15; CSP Dom., Commonwealth, vol. 6 (1653–54), 6.

⁸⁰ PRO, SP 25/76, 367. The council, responding to complaints by French and Dutch Protestants, had previously ordered Parliament to take “into consideration” the existing statutes against strangers so “that all or so many of them may be repealed as the Parliament shall think fit” (PRO, SP 25/70, 383). This prompted a visit on 11 January 1654 from a delegation representing “the Mayor, Aldermen and Commonality of London,” offering “diverse reasons” against “an order of the late Council … for stay of proceedings against strangers” (PRO, SP 25/75, 47). The Council of State replied with the November 1655 letter to the civic authorities.

⁸¹ CLRO, Common Council Journals (CC Jour.), 41, fol. 154v.

⁸² Ibid.

⁸³ Ibid.

⁸⁴ Ibid.

⁸⁵ CLRO, CC Jour., 41, fol. 157r. This was, presumably, a private naturalization bill. I can find no evidence for a general naturalization bill for the 1650s. The Commons did consent to a number of naturalization bills for specific individuals between the dates of these two petitions (27 March to 13 June 1657), although none are listed in the Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum. Two bills were seen on 9 June 1657, e.g., “An act for naturalizing Martha Deane, and others” and “An act for naturalizing Lewis Du Moulin, Doctor of Physic, and others” (Journals of the House of Commons, vol. 7, 552). As Clive Parry notes, all bills of naturalization in the seventeenth century “applied only to restricted classes of persons” (e.g., the Act of 1663, for certain cloth workers, and the Act of 1677, for the children of certain Royalists born abroad). The first general naturalization bill was the “Act of Anne” (7 Ann c. 5, repealed 10 Ann c. 5), which granted effective naturalization to any person taking the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, accepting the royal succession, and taking the sacraments (Parry, Nationality and Citizenship, 49, 65).

⁸⁶ CLRO, CC Jour. 41, fol. 156v.

⁸⁷ CLRO, CC Jour. 41, fol. 157r.

⁸⁸ Instead the aldermen ordered that a delegation be sent to the protector to “represent the said inconveniences,” although the result is not known (CLRO, Rep. 66, fol. 33r).

⁸⁹ CLRO, CC Jour. 41, fols. 238v–239v. Statt cites similar arguments against naturalization made in print during the same year, such as Reasons Humbly Offered to the Parliament by the Free-Born Merchants of England; To the Right Honourable the Commons in Parliament Assembled: the Humble Petition of the Native Merchants of England; The Great Evil of Naturalizing Aliens Discovered by the City's Reply to the Aliens’ Petition (cited in Statt, Foreigners and Englishmen, 58–60, 233 nn. 66, 67, 68). These denounced the 1657 naturalizations and raised points almost identical to the city's objections of that year and the petition of 1660.

⁹⁰ 14 Car. II c. 11 (Statutes of the Realm, vol. 5, 393–400).

⁹¹ 15 Car. II c. 15. Cited in Parry, Nationality and Citizenship, 47.

⁹² Statt, Foreigners and Englishmen, 60–61. Statt notes that the introduction of this bill prompted future Chief Justice Hale to pen the manuscript Sundry Considerations against a General Naturalization of Aliens (Statt, Foreigners and Englishmen, 60–61). However, no reference to a bill for general naturalization appears in the Journals of the House of Commons for 1664 (Old or New Style). There are multiple references to a number of bills naturalizing specific individuals. Legislation to naturalize one Dame Catherine Sayer provides a typical example. The bill, snowball-like, gathered more names during its various readings throughout the year before being sent to the Lords. The Lords sent it back to the Commons, requesting that two more names be added. See Journals of the House of Commons, vol. 8, 545, 557, 558, 563, 564.

⁹³ CLRO, Remembrancia, vol. 9, fols. 42v–43r.

⁹⁴ CLRO, Remembrancia, vol. 9, fol. 43v.

⁹⁵ These included a June 1672 call by the crown for Dutch immigration (PRO, PC 2/63, 259); for examples of intervention on behalf of strangers, see PRO, PC 2/63, 342–43, 389.

⁹⁶ See Ward, Joseph Patrick, Metropolitan Communities: Trade Guilds, Identity and Trade in Early Modern London (Stanford, CA, 1997), esp. chap. 6Google Scholar, “Economic Competition and Politics in the Weavers’ Company.”

⁹⁷ PRO, PC 2/62, 168. I have yet to find any examples of this kind that were direct responses to the increased immigration of French Huguenots resulting from the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

⁹⁸ CLRO, MISC MSS 42/2, bundle, pages unnumbered. Which court this document refers to is unclear. Based on previous cases of this nature, the packer's petition was probably heard in the Court of Aldermen. Pierce first received his grant for the collection of package, scavage, bailage, and portage “within the city and liberties of London” on 10 December 1684 for seven years at the annual rent of 1,200 pounds (CSP Dom., Charles II, vol. 27 [May 1684–February 1685], 245).

⁹⁹ Statt, Foreigners and Englishmen, 223.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid. Statt has identified Pierce as the “sponsor and protagonist” of a series of anti-immigrant tracts in the last two decades of the seventeenth century (ibid., 96–98).

¹⁰¹ 7 Ann c. 5, repealed 10 Ann c. 5 (Statt, Foreigners and Englishmen, 35; Parry, Nationality and Citizenship, 65).

¹⁰² Statt, Foreigners and Englishmen, 224.

¹⁰³ A brief and summary narrative of the many mischiefs and inconveniencies in former times as well as of late years, occasioned by naturalizing of aliens (London, 1690)Google Scholar; also discussed in Statt, Foreigners and Englishmen, 97.

¹⁰⁴ CLRO, Remembrancia, vol. 7, fol. 50r.

¹⁰⁵ Weinstein, Rosemary, “The Making of a Lord Mayor, Sir John Leman (1544–1632): The Integration of a Stranger Family,” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London 24, no. 4 (1986): 322Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁶ Ibid., 316.

¹⁰⁷ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. “Delaune, Gideon.”

¹⁰⁸ See, e.g., Joseph Ward's examination of the Weaver's Company, where the overall position of aliens was relatively strong. Despite this, as noted above, aliens’ children faced continued restrictions within the guild, and disputes with strangers were ongoing (Ward, Metropolitan Communities, chap. 6).