Remembering the Horsemen of Smithfield: Chivalric Nostalgia in John Stow’s Survey of London

Abstract

A Survey of London offers readers past and present an unrivalled insight into the history of early modern London. However, it is of hitherto unrecognised significance that the Survey draws on a pronounced horse culture and participates in the seventeenth-century revival of chivalric literature as a way of engaging with topographical change in the City. Drawing on early modern nostalgia studies, this article is the first to explore how the depiction of Smithfield’s horsemen evokes chivalric nostalgia. With the help of the memory studies concepts of synchronic and diachronic historical consciousness, I show how this chivalric nostalgia functions as a literary device that by harnessing the traditions of chivalric romance offers a way of challenging the impact of urbanisation on readerly memory. This approach reveals the importance of Smithfield’s horsemen in London’s rich civic history and that nostalgia is a strategy rather than a limiting force in the Survey.