Carisbrooke Library in 1890. Stow's authorised text is to be found alone in the edition of 1603. After his death the work was liberally revised and altered. An enlarged edition by Anthony Munday appeared in 1618, and by Munday, Henry or Humphry Dyson, and others in 1633. Strype re-edited and expanded it in 1720 (2 vols. fol.), and again in 1754. John Mottley [q. v.], published an edition in 1734, under the pseudonym of Robert Seymour.
Stow's reputation grew steadily in his closing years. He was of lively temperament, and his society was sought by men of letters. Henry Holland, in his ‘Monumenta Sancti Pauli’ (1614), called Stow ‘the merry old man.’ But he was always pecuniarily embarrassed; his expenses always exceeded his income, and his researches were pursued under many difficulties. ‘He could never ride, but travelled on foote unto divers cathedral churches and other chiefe places of the land to search records’ ({sc|Howes}}). He told Manningham the diarist, when they met on 17 Dec. 1602, that he ‘made no gains by his travails’ (Diary). He bore his poverty cheerfully. Ben Jonson related that when he and Stow were walking alone together, they happened to meet two crippled beggars, and Stow ‘asked them what they would have to take him to their order’ (Jonson, Conversations with Drummond, Shakespeare Soc.) He long depended for much of his subsistence on charity. As early as 1579 the Merchant Taylors' Company seems to have allowed him a pension of 4l. a year, which Robert Dowe, a master of the company, liberally supplemented. At Dowe's suggestion the company increased Stow's pension by 2l. in 1600. From money left by Dowe at his death to the company, Stow after 1602 received an annual sum of 5l. 2s. in addition to his old pension. On 5 July 1592 he acknowledged his obligation to the company by presenting a copy of his ‘Annales.’ Camden is said to have allowed Stow an annuity of 8l. in exchange for a copy in Stow's autograph of Leland's ‘Itinerary.’ But his pecuniary difficulties grew with his years and were at length brought to the notice of the government. On 8 March 1603–4 letters patent were issued authorising Stow and his deputies to ‘collect voluntary contributions and kind gratuities.’ He was described as ‘a very aged and worthy member of our city of London, who had for forty-five years to his great charge and with neglect of his ordinary means of maintenance, for the general good as well of posterity as of the present age, compiled and published divers necessary books and chronicles.’ An epitome of the letters patent was circulated in print. A copy survives in Harleian MS. 367, f. 10. Apparently Stow set up basins for alms in the streets, but the citizens were chary of contributions. In 1605 William Warner, in a new edition of his ‘Albion's England,’ illustrated the neglect of literary merit by the story of Stow's poverty.
He died on 6 April 1605, and was buried in the church of St. Andrew Undershaft in Leadenhall Street, where Elizabeth, his widow, erected to his memory a monument in terra-cotta. The effigy, which still survives, was formerly coloured. He is represented as seated in a chair and reading. Besides the sculptured portrait on the tomb, a contemporary engraving of Stow was prepared for his ‘Survey’ (ed. 1603). The original painting belonged to Serjeant Fleetwood (cf. Manningham Diary). Most extant copies of the ‘Survey’ lack the portrait. It is reproduced in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ 1837, i. 48. The inscription on the engraving entitles Stow ‘Antiquarius Angliæ.’ His friend Howes described him as ‘tall of stature, leane of body and face, his eyes small and crystalline, of a pleasant and cheerful countenance.’
Stow was the most accurate and businesslike of English annalists or chroniclers of the sixteenth century. ‘He always protested never to have written anything either for malice, fear, or favour, nor to seek his own particular gain or vainglory, and that his only pains and care was to write truth’ (Howes). Sir Roger Lestrange is reported by Hearne to have said ‘that it was always a wonder to him that the very best that had penn'd our history in English should be a poor taylour, honest John Stow’ (Robert of Gloucester, ed. Hearne, p. lxi). Hearne described Stow as an ‘honest and knowing man,’ ‘but an indifferent scholar’ (Letters from the Bodleian, i. 288, ii. 98).
Much reluctance was shown by Stow's friends in preparing any of his numerous manuscripts for publication after his death (cf. Strype, Cranmer, vol. i. p. xvii). But Edmund Howes [q. v.] at length revised his ‘Annales,’ and Munday his ‘Survey of London.’ In his ‘Annales’ (ed. 1592, p. 1295) Stow wrote that he had a larger volume, ‘An History of this Island,’ ready for the press. In 1605, a few days before his death, he asked the reader of his ‘Annales’ to encourage him to publish or to leave to posterity a far larger volume. He had long since laboured at it, he wrote, at the request and command of Archbishop Parker, but the archbishop's death and the issue of Holinshed's ‘Chronicle’ had led to delay in the publication. Howes in
