London in the Time of the Stuarts

The first dish that was brought up to table on Easter day was a red herring riding away on horseback, _i.e._ a herring ordered by the cook something after the likeness of a man...

The history of Charles shows, if we consider nothing more than his dealings with the City of London, a wrongheadedness which is most amazing. It is true that two at least of the...

There is, perhaps, no time in the history of Great Britain of deeper interest and importance than that which witnessed the restoration and, later, the final expulsion of the Stu...

The Plague of 1603, which is said to have swept away 30,578 persons, is one of the four great plagues of London of the seventeenth century. Historians, in their desire to accoun...

James found the City, after a hundred years of Tudor rule, reduced to an admirable condition of submission and loyalty. He was proclaimed in the City and by the City, the citize...

In this chapter I have collected certain notes which may illustrate such points in City government as differentiate the seventeenth century from that which preceded and that whi...

The chapter on trade under the Stuarts may be introduced by certain extracts from a paper written by Sir Walter Raleigh early in the seventeenth century. It was called “Observat...

The City entered upon a war which was to linger on for eight years, in the firm conviction that it would be finished in a few months. The men who went out to fight expected to b...

If, as some hold, the cause of the long-continued Plague, which lasted, with intervals of rest, from the middle of the sixteenth century to 1665, was nothing but the accumulated...

Let us turn to London rebuilt after the Fire. The City now began to grow outside the walls with determination; it was found impossible to stop its expansion any longer. London s...

The reign began with an assurance that the established government, that of Church and State, would be respected and maintained. The King, however, showed what he understood by t...

I proceed to quote four accounts of the Fire from eye-witnesses. Between them one arrives at a very fair understanding of the magnitude of the disaster, the horrors of the Fire,...

In considering the manners and customs of London during the seventeenth century we are met with the difficulty that a long civil war, followed by a visitation of Plague and a dr...

In the following chapter will be found certain notes on crime and criminals. There is little difference between the crimes of the Elizabethan and those of the Stuart period. I h...

dedication with the blood of 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep—surely there is here a superfluity of ciphers—and after a great feast, the people went away blessing the King. One wou...

At the Coronation Banquet the Lord Mayor, the Aldermen, and the members of the twelve principal companies attended as butler and assistants. The City plate was also lent for the...

“Man, I dare challenge thee to throw the sledge, To iumpe or leape ouer a ditch or hedge, To wrestle, play at stooleball, or to runne, To pitch the barre, or to shoote off a gun...

On December 8, 1660, a great change was effected at the theatre. For the first time, to the exasperation of the Puritans, a woman’s part was taken by a woman. The place was the...

Foremost among the superstitious beliefs of the century was that of witchcraft. It became, indeed, more actively mischievous and more real in the minds of the people on account...

The welcome with which Charles was received amounted to frenzy. Bonfires were made all over the City; up went the maypoles again; the church bells rang; the mob paraded rumps of...

In the year 1608 the first steps were taken towards the settlement of Ulster by English and Scotch emigrants—a measure whose wisdom was shown eighty years later, when the grands...

The sixteenth century was full of plague and pestilence. In Elizabeth’s reign there was plague in 1563, in 1569, in 1574, in 1581, in 1592, and in 1603. Preventive ordinances we...

After the execution of the King, the Commons, by an Act, abolished Monarchy and erected a Commonwealth in its place. Orders were sent to the Mayor and Sheriffs requiring them to...

On the homely subject of washing an excellent little paper may be found in Chambers’s _Book of Days_. What were the “things” put out for the lavender or laundress? The common pe...

Let us consider the religious side of London in the first half of the seventeenth century. It was not so much the abolition of the Mass and all that went with it, not so much th...

There is nothing picturesque and very little that is important in the history of London during the reign of Queen Anne. An address to the new Queen, a public reception of Her Ma...

The seventeenth century witnessed the invention of the stage coach, and therefore the improvement of the roads. The horse litter was still used in the first half of the century....

The places of resort in this century, and especially in the reign of Charles the Second, reveal the existence of a new class: that of the fashionable class, the people who live...

After the Restoration the religious condition of the City was greatly modified. First the Church of England was enormously stronger than it had been in any part of Charles the F...

There is a somewhat dreary allegory of a voyage called “The Floating Island, or a New Discovery relating the Strange Adventure on a late Voyage from Lambethana to Villa Franca,...

In 1679 the Lord Mayor issued a Proclamation in favour of religion, morality, and cleanliness which ought to have converted and convinced a whole City. It did not, because sinne...

There was very little difference between the London of Elizabeth and the London of Charles II. I briefly quote a contemporary. The following humorous description was written by...

At weddings wheat was scattered on the head of the bride; scarves, gloves, and ribbons of the bride’s colours were presented to the bridesmen; at the church the company carried...