As part of the series Microhistories, Gary Gibbs sets out to “show how a basically conservative institution [the parish] responded to and operated within the momentous cultural metamorphoses” (1) of late medieval and Tudor London. Three parishes have excellent source survival—Saint Michael Cornhill, Saint Stephen Coleman Street, and Saint Peter Westcheap—while the two others illustrate pre-Reformation culture (Allhallows London Wall) and mid-century factionalism (Saint Botolph Aldgate). While Gibbs writes that the Reformation is not the principal focus of his book, it is a significant background theme.

The chapter “Saint Peter Westcheap” demonstrates persuasively that local facts in a parish resonate with broader cultural patterns and historical themes, to paraphrase from Gibbs's introduction. The goldsmiths, a formidable social and occupational group, shape worship and parochial life. Through the geographic location of the parish, they are adjacent to and central participants in the civic rituals of Cheapside. As Gibbs does elsewhere in his book, he shows us receipts and expenditures of the late medieval and early Tudor period and discusses the rewards and challenges of working with churchwardens’ accounts and other surviving records of parish life and finances. Similarly, he identifies some of the key leaders among the goldsmiths in the management of the parish and fills out “mini-biographies” (172) with other company or civic records. His section of the chapter on parish saints stands out for his careful analysis of the identification of saints with the goldsmiths and their church. Saints Dunstan and Nicholas are associated with gold, and Gibbs demonstrates their further association with helping poor women to amass dowries. From there, he explains how the female saints within the church are also associated with gold and with helping poor women to marry. Saints Katherine, Barbara, and Sitha precede an analysis of how paternalism reshaped the representations of virgin martyrs.

The analysis of female saints and virgin martyrs points to a broader strength of Gibbs's book. He illuminates the participation of women, whether maids, wives, or widows, in the devotional and social lives of their parishes. The parish of Saint Stephen Coleman Street had a Lady Altar that appealed to unmarried women, and ritual coats for adorning the Virgin. Not many London churchwardens noted such coats, calling “attention to a unique aspect of pre-Reformation local religion” (95). Gibbs combs lists of benefactions and subsidies for women's contributions, such as for building a new aisle in Allhallows London Wall or for Hock Day festivities and collections organized by women in the same parish. The revival of Hock Day in Saint Botolph Aldgate in 1554, however, points out the difficulty in studying “religious culture” and the “social dimension of religion” (3), without writing a study of the Reformation of the parishes. As Gibbs writes, the meaning of Hock Day across decades “may be fluid and open to local variation” (46). The sales of pre-Reformation church fabric, inventories of old items, purchases of new books, and requirements for worship pepper the sources used by Gibbs, as he outlines in the discussion of Saint Michael Cornhill, a parish with extensive churchwardens’ accounts and vestry minutes. This parish built chambers in its churchyard in the mid-sixteenth century to generate income. Gibbs mentions widows, and while outside his focus in these microhistories, such ventures often supported poor, aged widows as well as poor infants and children.

Gibbs, in the conclusion, reiterates his focus on the local elite, whether the fabulously wealthy Lady Lisle, the goldsmith Shaa, or the possible Presbyterians Dorcas Eccleston Martin and her husband, Richard. These prominent individuals “exercised some latitude to appropriate and shape the universal faith.” The parishes represent “local societies,” with “unique economies and cultures,” as this microhistorical study shows (169). Inhabitants also crossed neighborhoods, and their kin and associates occupied different parishes, perhaps explaining why the widow of a goldsmith, Lady Read, donated coals across multiple parishes in 1521. Gibbs brings vibrant parishes and active, even opinionated individuals into close-up, and invites us to draw back as well to see a city in the midst of significant changes.