Arnold Fitzthedmar

Arnold Fitzthedmar (born Aug. 9, 1201, London—died before Feb. 10, 1275) was a London alderman and merchant who compiled a chronicle of the mayors and sheriffs of London, 1188–1274.

He was the son of German parents from Bremen and Cologne, who had become London citizens (his father’s name was Thedmar). He was well educated and connected by marriage with several wealthy London families, and he inherited great wealth and standing in the city. He became an alderman but in February 1258, with many others, was convicted of fraud, amerced, and banned from office; in November 1259 he was declared innocent and reinstated.

At first critical of Henry III’s misrule and sympathetic toward the baronial reformers of 1258–59, he was alienated when they allied in June 1263 with the “popular” mayor Thomas FitzThomas and the middle-class revolutionaries. These, with mob support, overthrew the merchant oligarchy that had monopolized power in London. Fitzthedmar probably was implicated in the Royalist plot to trap Simon de Montfort at Southwark in December 1263 and was one of 40 leading citizens who were saved from execution by the arrival, on the morning of their trial, of the news of the victory of Edward (later Edward I) at Evesham (August 1265). As one of the delegation that went, under safe-conduct, to negotiate with Edward at Windsor in October 1265, he was imprisoned for a few days.

As custodian of the city muniments from 1270, he compiled, in the miscellaneous De antiquis legibus liber, in addition to an account of his own ancestry and birth, the invaluable Chronicle of the Mayors and Sheriffs of London, 1188–1274, the chief authority on the government and politics of London after 1239 and on London’s relations with the crown and with the baronial reformers.