John Stow

John Stow (also Stowe; 1524/25 – 5 April 1605) was an English historian and antiquarian, best known for his Survey of London (1598; second edition 1603).

John Stow was born in about 1525 in the City parish of St Michael, Cornhill, then at the heart of London's metropolis. His father, Thomas Stow, was a tallow chandler. Thomas Stow is recorded as paying rent of 6s 8d per year for the family dwelling, and as a youth Stow would fetch milk every morning from a farm on the land nearby to the east owned by the Minoresses of the Convent of St. Clare.

Stow did not take up his father's trade of tallow chandlery, instead becoming an apprentice, and in 1547 a freeman, of the Merchant Taylors' Company, by which stage he had set up business in premises close to Aldgate Well, close to Leadenhall Street and Fenchurch Street.

In about 1560 he started upon his major work, the Survey of London. His antiquarian interests attracted suspicion from the ecclesiastical authorities as a person "with many dangerous and superstitious books in his possession", and in February 1569 his house was searched. An inventory was made of all the books at his home, especially those "in defence of papistry", but he was able to satisfy his interrogators as to the soundness of his Protestantism. A second attempt to incriminate him was made in 1570 also without success.

In about 1570 he moved to the parish of St Andrew Undershaft in the Ward of Lime Street, where he lived in comfortable surroundings until his death in 1605.

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