Was a tailor in Cornhill, but about his fortieth year devoted himself to antiquarian pursuits. His principal works are his “Summary of English Chronicles” (1561); “Annals, or a General Chronicle of England” (1580); and, most important of all, the “Survey of London and Westminster” (1598), an account of their history, antiquities, and government for six centuries. Stow also assisted in the continuation of Holinshed’s Chronicle, Speght’s Chaucer, &c.

  The memories of superstitious foundations, fables, and lies, foolishly STOWED together.

  I confess, I have heard him often accused, that (as learned Guicciardine is charged for telling magnarum rerum minutias) he reporteth res in se minutas, toys and trifles, being such a Smell-feast, that he cannot pass by Guild-hall, but his pen must tast of the good chear therein. However, this must be indulged to his education; so hard it is for a Citizen to write an History, but that the fur of his gown will be felt therein. Sure I am, our most elegant Historians who have wrote since his time (Sir Francis Bacon, Master Camden, &c.) though throwing away the basket, have taken the fruit; though not mentioning his name, making use of his endeavors. Let me adde of John Stow, that (however he kept tune) he kept time very well, no Author being more accurate in the notation thereof. Besides his “Chronicle of England,” he hath a large “Survey of London;” and I believe no City in Christendome, Rome alone excepted, hath so great a volume extant thereof.

  The honest historian Stowe.

  He well deserves to be remembered with honour…. He always protested, and we may take his honest word for it, that he never was swayed by favour or fear in any of his writings; but that he had impartially, to the best of his knowledge, delivered the truth. This good opinion the greatest of our later historians seem to have of him.

  He felt through life the enthusiasm of study; and seated in his monkish library, living with the dead more than with the living, he was still a student of taste: for Spenser the poet visited the library of Stowe; and the first good edition of Chaucer was made so chiefly by the labours of our author. Late in life, worn out with study and the cares of poverty, neglected by that proud metropolis of which he had been the historian, his good-humour did not desert him; for being afflicted with sharp pains in his aged feet, he observed that “his affliction lay in that part which formerly he had made so much use of.” Many a mile had he wandered and much had he expended, for those treasures of antiquities which had exhausted his fortune, and with which he had formed works of great public utility. It was in his eightieth year that Stowe at length received a public acknowledgment of his services, which will appear to us of a very extraordinary nature. He was so reduced in his circumstances that he petitioned James I. for a licence to collect alms for himself! “as a recompense for his labours and travel of forty-five years, in setting forth the Chronicles of England, and eight years taken up in the Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, towards his relief now in his old age; having left his former means of living, and only employing himself for the service and good of his country.” Letters-patent under the great seal were granted. After no penurious commendations of Stowe’s labours, he is permitted “to gather the benevolence of well-disposed people within this realm of England; to ask, gather, and take the alms of all our loving subjects.” These letters-patent were to be published by the clergy from their pulpits; they produced so little, that they were renewed for another twelvemonth: one entire parish in the city contributed seven shillings and sixpence! Such, then, was the patronage received by Stowe, to be a licensed beggar throughout the kingdom for one twelvemonth! Such was the public remuneration of a man who had been useful to his nation, but not to himself!

  As we come to the conclusion of the sixteenth century, and commence with the seventeenth, we are immediately struck with the venerable name of Stow, a laborious and honest man; content to state simple facts, without any enlarged views, and in a style the most unpretending imaginable. But there are those who rank him even above Holinshed and the contemporaneous Chroniclers. That he was a diligent and careful collector of facts, and far better acquainted with ms. authorities (even with some, of which all traces are now lost) than any writer of his day, may be unequivocally allowed.

  Stow and Grafton are said to have been jealous of each other’s credit; there can, however, be no doubt of the former’s superiority.

  England is indebted to him for the most elaborate coeval picture of the brilliant era of Elizabeth, and London for the traces of her growth during six centuries. He is the faithful chronicler of gaieties and gravities,—of whatever he conceived would interest his contemporaries and posterity.

  A man surrounded with old books, who loved the past and studied it incessantly, exposed himself to criticism of the crowd who, as Chaucer observed, “demen gladly to the badder end.” Two or three years after John Stow had begun to give his whole life to his chosen work, he was reported to Queen Elizabeth’s Council as “a suspicious person with many dangerous and superstitious books in his possession.” Edmund Grindal was then Bishop of London, by himself and through his chaplain one of the official licensers of books. They were days also of active search for “redusants,” who remained Roman Catholics outside the English Church as it had been by law established. Grindal ordered his chaplain and two others to make search in John Stow’s study and report on what they found there. John Strype tells us what the chaplain reported about Stow. “He had great collections of his own for the English chronicles, wherein he seemed to have bestowed much travail. They found also a great sort of old books printed; some fabulous, as of Sir Degorie, Triamour, &c., and a great parcel of old MS. chronicles, both in parchment and paper. And that besides he had miscellaneous tracts touching physic, surgery, and herbs; and also others, written in old English, in parchment. But another sort of books he had, more modern, of which the said searchers thought fit to take an inventory, as likely most to touch him; and they were books lately set forth in the realm or beyond sea in defence of Papistry, which books, as the chaplain said, declared him a great fautor of that religion.”

  When he set to work upon his Survey of London, in which the stores of knowledge he had accumulated for his Chronicles and Annals enabled him to place the history of the city in relation to the history of England, he produced a book which was beyond competition.