London: From the Walled City to New Towns

ARBITRARY BORDERS Political Boundaries in World History The Division of the Middle East The Treaty of Sèvres Northern ...

Author: Robert C. Cottrell | James I. Matray | George J. Mitchell

18 downloads 619 Views 1MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

ARBITRARY BORDERS Political Boundaries in World History The Division of the Middle East The Treaty of Sèvres

Northern Ireland and England The Troubles

The Great Wall of China The Green Line The Division of Palestine

The Iron Curtain The Cold War in Europe

The Mason–Dixon Line Vietnam: The 17th Parallel Korea: The 38th Parallel and the Demilitarized Zone The U.S.–Mexico Border The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

The Czech Republic: The Velvet Revolution Louisiana Territory South Africa: A State of Apartheid The Partition of British India London: From the Walled City to New Towns A South American Frontier: The Tri-Border Region

ARBITRARY BORDERS Political Boundaries in World History

London: From the Walled City to New Towns

Robert C. Cottrell Foreword by Senator

George J. Mitchell

Introduction by

James I. Matray California State University, Chico

FRONTIS This map of London by Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg shows an overview of London in 1752 rather than an accurate representation of the city today. London: From the Walled City to New Towns Copyright © 2006 by Infobase Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact: Chelsea House An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cottrell, Robert C., 1950London : walled city to new towns / Robert Cottrell. p. cm. — (Arbitrary borders) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7910-8684-4 1. London (England)—History—Juvenile literature. I. Title. II. Series. DA678.C66 2005 942.1—dc22 2005026237 Chelsea House books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can find Chelsea House on the World Wide Web at http://www.chelseahouse.com Text design by Takeshi Takahashi Cover design by Keith Trego Printed in the United States of America Bang EJB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper. All links, web addresses, and Internet search terms were checked and verified to be correct at the time of publication. Because of the dynamic nature of the web, some addresses and links may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid.

For Sue and Jordan

Contents Foreword by Senator George J. Mitchell

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

viii

Introduction by James I. Matray

xi

London under the Blitz

1

The Walled City

11

London from the Norman Conquest to the Magna Carta

22

Medieval London

32

London during the Tudor Dynasty

41

London in the Age of the Stuarts

52

Georgian London

64

Victorian London

75

Edwardian London and the House of Windsor

89

Postwar London and the New Towns

99

Chronology & Timeline

110

Notes

115

Bibliography

118

Further Reading

122

Index

123

Foreword Senator

George J. Mitchell

spent years working for peace in Northern Ireland and in the Middle East. I also made many visits to the Balkans during the long and violent conflict there. Each of the three areas is unique; so is each conflict. But there are also some similarities: in each, there are differences over religion, national identity, and territory. Deep religious differences that lead to murderous hostility are common in human history. Competing aspirations involving national identity are more recent occurrences, but often have been just as deadly. Territorial disputes—two or more people claiming the same land—are as old as humankind. Almost without exception, such disputes have been a factor in recent conflicts. It is impossible to calculate the extent to which the demand for land—as opposed to religion, national identity, or other factors—figures in the motivation of people caught up in conflict. In my experience it is a substantial factor that has played a role in each of the three conflicts mentioned above. In Northern Ireland and the Middle East, the location of the border was a major factor in igniting and sustaining the conflict. And it is memorialized in a dramatic and visible way: through the construction of large walls whose purpose is to physically separate the two communities. In Belfast, the capital and largest city in Northern Ireland, the so-called “Peace Line” cuts through the heart of the city, right across urban streets. Up to thirty feet high in places, topped with barbed wire in others, it is an ugly reminder of the duration and intensity of the conflict. In the Middle East, as I write these words, the government of Israel has embarked on a huge and controversial effort to construct a security fence roughly along the line that separates Israel from the West Bank.

I

FOREWORD

ix

Having served a tour of duty with the U.S. Army in Berlin, which was once the site of the best known of modern walls, I am skeptical of their long-term value, although they often serve short-term needs. But it cannot be said that such structures represent a new idea. Ancient China built the Great Wall to deter nomadic Mongol tribes from attacking its population. In much the same way, other early societies established boundaries and fortified them militarily to achieve the goal of self-protection. Borders always have separated people. Indeed, that is their purpose. This series of books examines the important and timely issue of the significance of arbitrary borders in history. Each volume focuses attention on a territorial division, but the analytical approach is more comprehensive. These studies describe arbitrary borders as places where people interact differently from the way they would if the boundary did not exist. This pattern is especially pronounced where there is no geographic reason for the boundary and no history recognizing its legitimacy. Even though many borders have been defined without legal precision, governments frequently have provided vigorous monitoring and military defense for them. This series will show how the migration of people and exchange of goods almost always work to undermine the separation that borders seek to maintain. The continuing evolution of a European community provides a contemporary example illustrating this point, most obviously with the adoption of a single currency. Moreover, even former Soviet bloc nations have eliminated barriers to economic and political integration. Globalization has emerged as one of the most powerful forces in international affairs during the twenty-first century. Not only have markets for the exchange of goods and services become genuinely worldwide, but instant communication and sharing of information have shattered old barriers separating people. Some scholars even argue that globalization has made the entire concept of a territorial nation-state irrelevant. Although the assertion is certainly premature and probably wrong, it highlights the importance of recognizing how borders often have reflected and affirmed the cultural, ethnic, or linguistic perimeters that define a people or a country. Since the Cold War ended, competition over resources or a variety of interests threaten boundaries more than ever, resulting in contentious

x

FOREWORD

interaction, conflict, adaptation, and intermixture. How people define their borders is also a factor in determining how events develop in the surrounding region. This series will provide detailed descriptions of selected arbitrary borders in history with the objective of providing insights on how artificial boundaries separating people will influence international affairs during the next century.

Senator George J. Mitchell September 2005

Introduction James I. Matray California State University, Chico

T

hroughout history, borders have separated people. Scholars have devoted considerable attention to assessing the significance and impact of territorial boundaries on the course of human history, explaining how they often have been sources of controversy and conflict. In the modern age, the rise of nation-states in Europe created the need for governments to negotiate treaties to confirm boundary lines that periodically changed as a consequence of wars and revolutions. European expansion in the nineteenth century imposed new borders on Africa and Asia. Many native peoples viewed these boundaries as arbitrary and, after independence, continued to contest their legitimacy. At the end of both world wars in the twentieth century, world leaders drew artificial and impermanent lines separating assorted people around the globe. Borders certainly are among the most important factors that have influenced the development of world affairs. Chelsea House Publishers decided to publish a collection of books looking at arbitrary borders in history in response to the revival of the nuclear crisis in North Korea in October 2002. Recent tensions on the Korean peninsula are a direct consequence of Korea’s partition at the 38th parallel at the end of World War II. Other nations in human history have suffered because of similar artificial divisions that have been the result of either international or domestic factors and often a combination of both. In the case of Korea, the United States and the Soviet Union decided in August 1945 to divide the country into two zones of military occupation ostensibly to facilitate the surrender of Japanese forces. However, a political contest was then underway inside Korea to determine the future of the nation after forty years of Japanese colonial rule. The Cold War then created two Koreas with sharply contrasting political, social, and economic systems that symbolized an ideo-

xii

INTRODUCTION

logical split among the Korean people. Borders separate people, but rarely prevent their economic, political, social, and cultural interaction. But in Korea, an artificial border has existed since 1945 as a nearly impenetrable barrier precluding meaningful contact between two portions of the same population. Ultimately, two authentic Koreas emerged, exposing how an arbitrary boundary can create circumstances resulting even in the permanent division of a homogeneous people in a historically united land. Korea’s experience in dealing with artificial division may well be unique, but it is not without historical parallels. The first group of books in this series on arbitrary boundaries provided description and analysis of the division of the Middle East after World War I, the Iron Curtain in Central Europe during the Cold War, the United States-Mexico Border, the 17th parallel in Vietnam, and the Mason-Dixon Line. Three authors in a second set of studies addressed the Great Wall in China, the Green Line in Israel, and the 38th parallel and demilitarized zone in Korea. Four other volumes described how discord over artificial borders in the Louisiana Territory, Northern Ireland, Czechoslovakia, and South Africa provide insights about fundamental disputes focusing on sovereignty, religion, and ethnicity. Six books now complete the series. Three authors explore the role of arbitrary boundaries in shaping the history of the city of London, the partition of British India, and the Tri-Border Region in Latin America. Finally, there are studies examining Britain’s dispute with Spain over Gibraltar, Modern China, and the splintering of Yugoslavia after the end of the Cold War. Admittedly, there are many significant differences between these boundaries, but these books will strive to cover as many common themes as possible. In so doing, each will help readers conceptualize how complex factors such as colonialism, culture, and economics determine the nature of contact between people along these borders. Although globalization has emerged as a powerful force working against the creation and maintenance of lines separating people, boundaries likely will endure as factors having a persistent influence on world events. This series of books will provide insights about the impact of arbitrary borders on human history and how such borders continue to shape the modern world. James I. Matray Chico, California September 2005

1 London under the Blitz

2

LONDON: FROM THE WALLED CITY TO NEW TOWNS

lmost uniquely, London has long been a city dramatically affected by borders, many arbitrarily drawn, designed to protect it from outside pressures. Nevertheless, even its existence on an island nation separated from the European continent in no way shielded London from repeated invasions during its first 2,000 years of existence. The building of a wall that encircled the city in early Roman times failed to prevent attempts to overrun it, while the advent of new technologies threatened its existence during the twentieth century. London’s present standing as perhaps the world’s foremost international metropolis, coupled with the dissolving of various arbitrary borders, again makes the city vulnerable to the possibility of a catastrophic attack. The events of July, 2005, in which bombs tore through subway trains and a double-decker bus, demonstrated how readily terrorists could strike at Great Britain’s greatest city. To date, the Blitz conducted by the German Luftwaffe during World War II remains the most perilous event in London’s history and a prime example of Adolf Hitler’s attempt to override nationally orchestrated arbitrary boundaries. That aerial assault began in the summer of 1940, continuing until the following spring. Throughout the remainder of the war, German planes intermittently dropped bombs on London, resulting in the destruction of much of the city, the evacuation of more than 600,000 women and children, and the death of about 30,000 residents. Over three-quarters of London’s houses were struck, with both the East End and the City of London (the main financial district) particularly hard hit. Encouraged by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, London, like Great Britain in general, remained steadfast in supporting the war effort against Hitler’s Nazi Germany. On May 10, 1940, Churchill entered Buckingham Palace, where he was asked to form a new government to replace the one headed by Neville Chamberlain, the architect of a disastrous policy of appeasement. That had resulted in an initial carving-up of Czechoslovakia and then the effective destruction of that Central European state’s boundaries, which emboldened Hitler

A


The relentless bombardment of London by the German Luftwaffe from the summer of 1940 to the spring of 1941 struck three-quarters of the residences in London. In September 1940, these children were left sitting by the remains of their home in the East End of London.

to form a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union in late August 1939. After the announcement of that agreement, Germany and the Soviet Union began making incursions against Eastern European nations. Germany’s invasion of Poland led to Great Britain’s declaration of war, something Churchill strongly supported. Initially, the so-called “Phony War” ensued, in which Germany refrained from further action, and the Allies did likewise. Then, relying on the Blitzkrieg or “lightning war,” Germany swept through much of Central and Western Europe, heading into Denmark and Norway in April 1940 and into Holland in early May. In a speech delivered on May 13 before the House of Commons, located in Westminster, the center of the British

3

4


government situated outside the City of London, Churchill declared, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” He pledged to seek “victory—victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror; victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”1 On June 4, Churchill again spoke to the British Parliament, promising that his nation would remain unrelenting: “We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.” He continued, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”2 Churchill recognized the dangers inherent in Hitler’s determination to recast Europe’s arbitrary boundaries. Two weeks later, following the collapse of France, Churchill addressed Parliament one more time, underscoring how crucial the impending Battle of Britain would be. “Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization,” the British prime minister insisted, along with “our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our empire.” Hitler recognized that “he must break us in this island or lose the war,” Churchill affirmed. “If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands,” the prime minister declared. “But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.” Churchill concluded, “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’” 3 The Battle of Britain, which largely revolved around Germany’s attempt to break the will of the British people, did indeed prove to be “their finest hour.” Included within that fight was the Battle of London, which, Telford Taylor reported, proved


to be “the pivotal event of the war.”4 Stationed in the Cabinet War Rooms, well below King Charles Street and Whitehall Palace, Churchill devised most of England’s wartime strategy and delivered many memorable addresses. His continued presence in the nation’s capital undoubtedly reassured its remaining inhabitants, while emboldening his countrymen to keep waging the fight against Germany. Eventually, Germany sent pilotless V1 bombers to further pummel London, in another attempt to break the spirit of the British. In the end, Churchill and his fellow Londoners held on, despite enduring tremendous deprivation and great suffering. In doing so, they maintained a longstanding tradition through which the residents of England’s leading metropolis encountered countless traumas, including devastating fires, plagues, and invasions, which frequently resulted in the reshaping of arbitrary barriers ranging from walls to fortifications. Moreover, as A.N. Wilson offered, “Whether or not it was Britain’s finest hour, it was certainly London’s.”5 As the threat of war loomed larger in the latter stages of the 1930s, predictions abounded about its impact on Great Britain’s leading city. The philosopher Bertrand Russell suggested that London “will be one vast raving bedlam, the hospitals will be stormed, traffic will cease, the homeless will shriek for help, the city will be a pandemonium.” Russell foresaw an “avalanche of terror,” leading to London’s being “levelled to the ground on the outbreak of war.” Once England declared war against Germany, Londoners witnessed 89,000 children and pregnant women join in a mass evacuation. Hoping to create impregnable arbitrary barriers, the Army and the Home Guard established defense perimeters, with two ringing the city by way of “anti-tank lines with deep trenches, pillboxes and roadblocks.”6 One defense line covered London’s suburbs, while the inner shield went to the Thames River in the south. Royal Marines, complete with machine guns and other pillboxes, stood ready to defend Whitehall itself. Plans existed to airlift Prime Minister Churchill and the royal family, if the need arose. During the period of the “Phony War,” England had prepared

5

6


for an onslaught that failed to arrive. In late 1939, London experienced a blackout, along with wartime restrictions and shortages, but soon theaters and cinemas reopened and many evacuees returned to the city. Still found in London were sandbags in doorways, air-raid shelters, muted lighting, and high-flying balloons, intended to prevent daytime raids. The government handed out gas masks and encouraged the setting up of domestic bomb shelters in home gardens, passing out 2.25 million Anderson shelters. By the spring of 1940, London had a new look, with a large number of refugees having escaped from German-held territory. With the Nazi blitzkrieg in effect, various governments-in-exile appeared in the city. Then, on Saturday, September 7, 1940, the aerial bombardment of London and the violation of its arbitrary boundaries began, as hundreds of Luftwaffe bombers assaulted the city, dropping incendiary devices, hour after hour, day after day, for two-and-a-half months, as a prelude to an anticipated German invasion. During the first two days alone, more than 800 people perished. The Luftwaffe began by targeting the East End and the docks, but eventually struck at Central London and Buckingham Palace. In a radio broadcast on September 23, 1940, King George VI demonstrated his faith in the resiliency of the British capital and its residents: “It is not the walls that make the city, but the people who live within them. The walls of London may be battered, but the spirit of the Londoner stands resolute and undismayed.”7 This proved to be so in the face of tremendous dislocations, with communications disrupted, streets made impassable, railway lines crippled, power and water supplies shut off, sewers erupting, and thousands of homes pulverized. The London County Council and voluntary agencies helped to feed the hungry, and, along with the army, repaired damaged housing units. Londoners popularized the notion of “business as usual” being carried out in the face of tremendous obstacles. Although government officials discouraged the use of the Underground subway system, hoping to employ it for soldiers, the wounded, and those leaving the city, common citizens


7

Families fled their homes at the sound of the air raid sirens and stayed on the tracks and in the stations of the Underground. More than 175,000 people camped out in the tubes during the heaviest part of the bombing and many remained there until the all-clear signal was given.

turned to the tubes and stations for shelter. Within days after the bombing runs started, more than 175,000 people, many now homeless, camped out in the tubes. On October 15, 1940, one bomb hit the Balham Tube Station, burying 65 people alive. The steadfastness of Londoners, however, helped to quash the German invasion plans, although the bombings continued. On December 8 alone, 3,000 incendiary bombs fell on London. Shortly after Christmas, bombers zeroed in on the City of London, resulting in scores of fires and causing great damage in the commercial center, with churches, banks, and houses destroyed. St. Paul’s was hit, but the majestic cathedral was saved, symbolizing the dogged determination of Great Britain and London. As the London Times indicated, “The dome seemed to ride the sea of fire like a great ship.”8 Not everyone performed

8


admirably, with the communists engaging in an anti-war campaign, looting proving to be a common phenomenon, and black marketeering becoming plentiful, especially for clothing and food. Increasingly, the German air force opted to pummel provincial cities like Coventry, but again focused on London in the spring of 1941. On May 10, the great city once more experienced a fierce bombing campaign, leading to the death of more than 1,400 civilians, waves of fires, and damage to the House of Commons, Westminster Abbey, and the Tower of London, among other historic sites. By this point, almost 20,000 tons of bombs had fallen on London, about 20,000 people had died, and around 25,000 more had suffered non-lethal injuries. Although Hitler hoped that the aerial assaults would break the spirit of Londoners, they rallied around their feisty prime minister. The bombing raids soon lightened, as Germany prepared to attack the Soviet Union, which resulted in a shift in perspective by the British Communist Party. London continued to participate in Great Britain’s overall war effort, with armaments being produced and women making up a good deal of the work force. As had occurred during World War I, women entered industrial plants as men joined the military. Indeed, some 80 percent of married women did so, thanks to the establishment of more nurseries for their young children. A kind of social leveling, pertaining to class boundaries of an arbitrary nature, occurred, as Muriel Spark noted in her novel, The Girls of Slender Means: “All the nice people were poor; at least, that was a general axiom, the best of the rich being poor in spirit.”9 Writing at the time, the novelist J.B. Priestley contended that “this war … has to be fought as a citizen’s war,” resulting in Great Britain’s “being bombed and burned into democracy.”10 In early 1944, the “Little Blitz” hit London, involving a series of heavy raids in which larger bombs poured forth. By late March, Churchill warned that “new forms of attack” might be coming. “The hour of our greatest effort and action is approaching,” he asserted.11 On June 13, London encountered the first


strikes by V-1s, so-called “doodlebugs” or pilotless planes, which flew out of German bases in Northern France at 400 miles per hour, packed with 2,000 pounds of explosives. The author Evelyn Waugh wrote, “It was as impersonal as a plague, as though the city were infected with enormous, venomous insects.”12 Altogether, 8,000 V-1s struck at London, where they blew up on impact, killing more than 6,000 people, injuring nearly three times that many, and damaging over a million houses, nearly half of those in the metropolitan area. Royal Air Force fighters, anti-aircraft artillery, and balloons managed to knock out more than half of the V-1s headed for London, but their explosive punch wreaked tremendous havoc during an 80day period. A million people departed from London, but a massive housing shortage still ensued. At the same time, entire districts appeared to be vacated. Still more terrifying were the V2s—45-foot-long, 14-ton ballistic missiles. The V-2s carried the same amount of explosives as the V-1s but hurtled through the air at 3,000 miles per hour. The ferocity of the V-2s finally threatened to demoralize Londoners. Nevertheless, London and its inhabitants acquired a reputation for steeled resistance. As Richard Titmuss reflected, London, that is, the people of London, symbolised to many onlookers the spirit and strength of resistance. It may not have merited greatness, it may not have borne its trials with greater fortitude than any other bombed city of Western civilisation, but greatness, an uncomfortable greatness, was thrust upon it during the winter of 1940–1. Most Londoners were probably quite unaware of the fact.13

The announcement of Germany’s unconditional surrender on May 7, 1945, resulted in massive rejoicing in London, with large crowds gathering, appropriately enough, at St. Paul’s Cathedral and throughout central London. The lengthy Battle of London helped to prevent Germany from holding sway over Great Britain. It involved the city’s ultimately successful attempt to stave off the imperialistic designs of

9

10


the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. The German Führer sought to remake the arbitrary borders of Europe. His Third Reich, along with various allies like fascist Italy, intended to reign supreme across the continent and throughout the British Isles. Hitler’s determination was ideologically rooted in his belief in the despotism, militarism, anti-Semitism, anti-communism, and imperialism that characterized his rule. Led by Winston Churchill, Great Britain and its greatest city waged a spirited defense that allowed the Allied Powers (led by the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain), to defeat the Axis states (Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and militarist Japan). The victory ensured that radical right-wing forces would not prevail on a global scale as World War II wound to a close.

2 The Walled City

12


hanks to archaeological discoveries, some resulting from the Blitz, more is now known about ancient London and the arbitrary barriers long associated with it. Much about the city’s origins, however, remains uncertain and subject to speculation, conjecture, or legend. Nevertheless, historians can determine, with reasonable certainty, the general nature of developments in early southern England. Before Roman explorations, towns did not exist across the English landscape. Historian John Morris stated unequivocally, “Before Rome there was no London.”14 On his arrival at the Thames River in 54 B.C., Julius Caesar did discover “a natural stronghold of the surrounding forest and swamps, into which large numbers of both cattle and men had already flocked.” The people of the region, Caesar noted, deemed it a town, but he saw it as “no more than a central rallying-point from hostile incursion, formed of some inaccessible piece of woodland that has been fortified by a high rampart and ditch.”15 In other words, the natural terrain formed arbitrary geographical barriers, but efforts had yet to be undertaken to shape that territory more systematically. The Romans called the town they established Londinium, while others point to the city’s prehistoric origins. Peter Ackroyd, author of a sweeping encyclopedic exploration of London, indicated that the region had “been continually occupied for at least fifteen thousand years,” with much earlier patterns of dwelling and hunting dating back 500,000 years.16 People appeared to be drawn early to the Thames River, associating it with spirituality and divinity. Along the northern sector of the river arose two hills, filled with gravel and earth, through which the river flowed. A kind of stronghold emerged, which acquired the name of London, perhaps derived from ancient Celtic or medieval Welsh. Some point to King Lud, who supposedly ruled during the century when the Romans swept into England, crediting him with shaping London’s city and rebuilding its crumbling walls. The site where London arose appeared sheltered, with twin hills, a natural plateau, woods, marshes, and the Thames and

T

The Walled City

13

From its earliest origins the site where London arose was sheltered by twin hills, a natural plateau, and the Thames and Fleet rivers. People were drawn to the Thames (shown here in a print from a later century), associating it with spirituality and divinity.

Fleet rivers. By the time the Romans arrived, “an elaborate, rich and well-organised tribal civilisation” could be found.17 The region around the Thames was noted for commerce and industry before the initial Roman invasion. John Morris, however, indicated that London “was built in the midst of a dark untamed forest, in a region hitherto uninhabited, save by riverside farmers, scattered thinly along the banks of the Thames and the Lea.” Furthermore, “it was neither a fortress nor a garrison town.” Concerns about establishing road networks for soldiers, imperial officials, and administrators resulted in the construction of the city “at the lowest practicable crossing point of the Thames.”18 Tribes around London accepted Roman hegemony, but a more concerted campaign, led by Aulus Plautius, began to occur around A.D. 43, during the reign of Emperor Claudius. Cassius

14


Dio, a Roman senator and consular army commander, wrote that “the British did not attack, but fled to the forests and marshlands, hoping to wear the Romans down.”19 Plautius instructed his troops to build a bridge, British chiefs agreed to pay duties on trade products, and Claudius ordered the construction of a fort along the Thames. Within a few years, Roman troops had conquered much of southern Britain, laying out a frontier that included London. Shortly after the establishment of the Roman city, a terrible fire destroyed the buildings. Then, in A.D. 60, Queen Boudicca, who headed East Anglican tribes, ravaged the city, leading to a mass exodus that was followed by a massacre of tens of thousands of people. The Romans eventually struck back, quashing the rebellion and wreaking vengeance on the rebels. London soon experienced a period of tremendous growth, with the construction of a large forum, a governor’s palace, a fort, an amphitheater, public bathhouses, and a wooden bridge across the Thames. Another devastating fire, demonstrating nature’s ability to obliterate manmade arbitrary borders, tore through London between A.D. 120 and 130, close to the time when Roman Emperor Publius Aelius Hadrian visited Britain. The fire evidently left the bridge unscathed, but, along with several military clashes involving North Wales and Southern Scotland, it ushered in a decline in the fortunes of Roman London, which experienced a sharp decrease in population and commercial production. Perhaps an epidemic, another recurrent problem for the city, helped to bring about such demographic and economic changes. Notwithstanding London’s difficulties, the Romans continued to incorporate new lands and extend the area’s infrastructure, by expanding the harbor and building a “great defensive landward wall” or arbitrary barrier around the city.20 By the early fourth century, Londoners lived in a walled area spanning about 330 acres, nearly three to four times larger than early second-century London; initially, the Romans failed to build a riverside wall, relying on the Thames for purposes of defense.

The Walled City

The wall stood some 2 miles in length, with a base that was 6- to 9-feet thick and a maximum height of 21 feet. This construction feat, Ralph Merrifield stated, amounted to “the greatest public work ever undertaken by the Romans in London.”21 John Morris contended that “the wall chose the shortest line it could,” but “demanded a colossal effort” that nevertheless “included no more unoccupied land than it must, and excluded some, notably the northern part of the industrial area by the upper Walbrook.” Still, its Roman planners “founded a city and gave it the means to grow,” beyond the arbitrary boundaries enclosed within the wall.22 Initially, the gates Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Newgate, and Ludgate could be found where important roads coursed into London, while bastions, towers, and a fort eventually strengthened the wall, much of which stood until the middle of the eighteenth century. The Aldersgate appeared during the late stages of Roman occupation, while Cripplegate eventually provided an opening to the fort. The building of the wall was in keeping with Roman practices throughout the empire; the Romans believed in the greater protection that such a walled area afforded town residents. It ensured that London possessed “the appearance of a fortress.”23 Inside the wall, great expanses of territory remained unoccupied or served as pasture land, while temples and large houses appeared near the river. The wall would markedly influence the development of London. As Francis Sheppard recorded, “For over fourteen centuries it provided the City’s principal defence against attack.” In contrast to other major European cities, the wall’s major enclosure, with its arbitrary boundaries, did not expand throughout the Middle Ages and its general direction remained unaltered. Indeed, for nearly two millennia it maintained “a powerful influence over the street layout and topography of the City.”24 With the passage of time, the wall was “continually … rebuilt,” Peter Ackroyd wrote, “as if the integrity and identity of the city itself depended upon the survival of this ancient stone fabric.” Moreover, once the wall was demolished, it “still lived” with “its

15

16


stone sides … incorporated into churches or other public buildings.”25 At its zenith, Roman London probably had a diverse population of 25,000 to 30,000, becoming one of the largest cities in the empire’s northern sector. Briefly near the end of the third century, London served, in effect, as “the capital of a virtually independent state” during the reign of Marcus Aurelius Mausaeus Carausius, the self-proclaimed emperor of Britain, when Roman rule temporarily slackened.26 During the final century of Roman control, the British Isles suffered assaults from Picts, Scots, Saxons, Germanic pirates, and Visigoths. In 410, Britain appealed to Emperor Honorius for assistance against Gothic invaders, but he responded that the island must protect itself. Thus, the imperial protection that the Romans had afforded London and the British Isles in general came to an end. London increasingly stood as a somewhat isolated enclave; trade, already reduced during the final stages of Roman rule, further declined. In 457, Britons from Kent fled to London, trying to evade the Saxon chieftain Hengist, but for the next 150 years or so, or at least a paucity of documents and archaeological evidence seems to suggest, the city remained largely a backwater station. During the middle of the sixth century, London did apparently accede to Saxon rule. At the end of the sixth century, St. Augustine arrived in an effort to baptize German settlers, and Pope Gregory the Great named London a Catholic diocese. The city’s first bishop, Mellitus, oversaw the construction of the original cathedral church of St. Paul. In 650, East Saxons officially accepted Christianity and began to establish more churches. About 100 years later, the center of government of the city, which was now known as Lundenwic (or London port) and was stationed beyond and westward of the walled acreage, came to be located on a western hill. Francis Sheppard pointed out that the “concentration of secular authority” at that site “has continued to the present time.”27 In addition, the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History (from the 730s) referred to London as a “market-place for many peoples.”28 As Christopher Brooke

The Walled City

King Alfred the Great of Wessex recognized the strategic importance of London, restoring and expanding the Roman walls built earlier and turning it into a fortified garrison town.

noted, London and the Thames River, from the seventh to the tenth centuries, “lay on a frontier.”29 This demonstrated a change in circumstances for the city, which remained a leading commercial center, albeit in truncated fashion, for Saxons even after the end of Roman dominion. By the final stages of the eighth century, Norsemen or Vikings began conducting raids on the British Isles. Similar to other Saxon trading centers, portions of Lundenwic possessed no defensive

17

18


walls and proved vulnerable to such assaults. In 842, the Vikings attacked the city, returning nine years later with a larger force, which burned Lundenwic to the ground. In 872, the Vikings swept into the city, occupying newly built houses, with Mercia, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom that had absorbed Lundenwic, unable to withstand the Viking advance. As the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded, King Alfred the Great of Wessex, in 886, led the Saxon population in liberating the city from Danish control. As Steen Eiler Rasmussen indicated, Alfred recognized both the strategic importance of London, which came to be known as Lundenburg (walled city), and the need for arbitrary borders. Rasmussen wrote: “To protect the south of England against the Danes, he fixed the boundaries of their territory so that it went right up to London without including it.” Alfred made the fortified city “the great gate of his kingdom.” Alfred restored and expanded the Roman walls, turning London into “a fortified garrison town” or frontier community. Moreover, London came to serve “the interests of the King by maintaining its own independence.”30 A settlement or fortification existed to the south of the bridge, in the area comprising present-day Southwark, probably featuring earthworks or bulwarks rather than stonewalls. In contrast to other European municipalities like Paris or Cologne, the City of London remained contained within its walls, but London’s growing wealth ensured that development occurred outside the old fortifications. For its part, London became an expansive city, with a series of townships arising beyond the walls. Alfred and his successors awarded grants of land inside and outside the walled city, fostering redevelopment. Alfred’s reign over London helped to set the stage for political unification in England, which would take more than a century to complete. While London did not stand as the official capital of the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex, it “was situated at the hub of the prevailing frontier system,” where those kingdoms met the Vikings’ Danelaw, which included pre-eminence in East Anglia and the eastern Midlands.31 Such an unparalleled strategic location, regarding England and the continent, led Saxon and

The Walled City

Danish rulers to vie for control of London. A series of Scandinavian assaults occurred again at the close of the tenth century, but Londoners, who also had to contend with a massive fire that engulfed the cathedral church of St. Paul’s in 961, an outbreak of the plague, and another wrenching fire in 982, repelled such attacks. Through it all, London remained a prosperous port community, where international traders gathered, and it held 20 wards, which featured aldermen and colonies of foreign merchants.

LONDON’S WALL Demonstrating a determination to construct an arbitrary barrier of a physical cast, the Romans built a defensive wall around Londinium, the port town on the Thames River. Laid out in the latter stages of the second century, the wall had several gates—Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, and Aldgate—leading to important Roman roads, which in turn linked Londinium with other Roman towns. Made up largely of Kentish rag stone, the wall enclosed about 330 acres, spanned 2 miles in length, was 6- to 9feet wide, and reached a height of 21 feet. After the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the early fifth century, the wall continued as a fortification for over 1,000 years. Just beyond Ludgate, London’s first suburbs began to appear in an area referred to as the “Liberties.” During the Middle Ages, more gates and forts were added to the wall, with references to a Temple Bar made on a patent roll in 1293. At that point, the Temple Bar was probably merely a chain set between wooden posts, but by the middle of the next century, a gate and a prison had been built at the site. Christopher Wren later reconstructed and enlarged the Temple Bar. Only the Temple Bar remained of the old gates to the City of London by the end of the eighteenth century; the other gates were pulled down to allow traffic to flow more easily in and out of the City. Sizable sections of the wall were incorporated into other buildings. The Temple Bar remained in place until 1878, maintaining something of a physical separation or arbitrary border between London and Westminster. Currently, only a few fragments of the wall remain intact, including pieces at the Museum of London, the Barbican Estate, and the Tower Hill Tube Station.

19

20


In 1013, the Danish King Swein initiated the last in his series of attacks against London. The earlier ones had been thwarted, but this time Swein forced Londoners to submit to him and compelled the English king Ethelred the Unready to flee to the continent. Swein died in early 1014, with his son Canute assuming power. Aided by Olaf, the future king of Norway, Ethelred tore down portions of the bridge (resulting in the song “London Bridge Is Falling Down”), took control of Southwark, and swept into London. After Ethelred’s death in 1016, Canute narrowly bested his rival, the Saxon Edmund, at the battle of Ashington, close to the Essex coastline. After Edmund’s death, Canute, who now controlled all of England, made London, with a population around 10,000 to 12,000 people, the nation’s capital and it thrived during his tenure. Edward the Confessor, son of Ethelred, ended Danish rule in 1042. During Edward’s reign, London and the surrounding environs became a leading ecclesiastical center. Edward established an abbey and palace at the remote island of Thorney, situated 1.5 miles from the walled city. There at Westminster, Edward moved his court, seeking to establish some distance from the sometimes-volatile population of London. From this point on, new arbitrary borders of a geographical nature were drawn, in which the City of London remained a commercial center, with Jewish bankers as well as trading colonies containing Danes, Dutchmen, Italians, or Germans, while Westminster served as the seat of justice and administration. During the first 1,000 years or so of its existence, London experienced Roman rule, Saxon dominance, and repeated assaults by Scandinavian tribes. Roman London became a walled city, as imperial officials believed that the artificial boundaries afforded by walls would better protect it against possible invaders. Although impressive, the wall actually ensured that the City of London, contained within its physical barriers, would remain limited in size. London’s mounting importance, however, first within the Roman Empire, then for the English nation and the continent, resulted in growth outside the walls, with

The Walled City

outlying towns appearing. Becoming the center of English government, London witnessed a physical separation of political and economic powers, or devising of arbitrary borders, in the final stages of Saxon rule, through the establishment of Westminster Abbey.

21

3 London from the Norman Conquest to the Magna Carta


n the last half of the eleventh century, London and the whole of England experienced the first of a series of dynastic changes that would occur over the course of the next 400 years, leading to the transformation of arbitrary borders involving imperial rule, constitutional governance, and religious spheres. The Saxon Dynasty in England and London ended in 1066, with the ascendancy to the throne of William I of Normandy. During William’s reign, construction of the Tower of London began, while the building of Westminster Hall took place shortly after his death. Near the end of Norman dominance in England, London experienced another searing fire, which destroyed the cathedral church of St. Paul’s, among many other buildings. In 1154, the more extended dynasty of the Plantagenets began. During their rule, London experienced its first election of a mayor, the grant of a royal charter, the crescendo of events leading up to the signing of the Magna Carta, and the establishment of law courts at Westminster. After the death of Edward the Confessor in January 1066, the English national assembly, the Witan, selected Earl Harold to succeed him. However, William, the duke of Normandy, insisting that Edward had promised the crown to him, invaded England with a force of 10,000 men, defeating Harold at the Battle of Hastings. Anticipating a difficult siege of London, William advanced to Southwark, which he burned, and then ravaged the countryside across the Thames at Wallingford. Guy, bishop of Amiens, indicated that London, “a great city … richer in treasure than the rest of the kingdom,” was “protected on the left side by walls, on the right side by the river,” and thus “neither fears enemies nor dreads being taken by storm.” William settled in at Westminster palace, where his men

I

built siege-engines and made moles and the iron horns of battering-rams for the destruction of the city; then he thundered forth menaces and threatened war and vengeance, swearing that, given time, he would destroy the walls, raze the bastions to the ground, and bring down the proud tower in rubble.32

23

24


THE TOWER OF LONDON In 1078, William the Conqueror ordered Gundulph, bishop of Rochester, to build the White Tower at the eastern sector of the wall, largely to ward off a potential attack from Londoners, rather than one emanating from outside the City. Ninety-two feet tall, with walls as thick as fifteen feet, the Tower was made of stone, not wood, unlike earlier forts there. While William intended the Tower to serve as a royal residence, he also built another castle at Windsor, a day’s march from the City. Residents of London viewed the Tower with displeasure, perhaps because it was tied to the crown. Richard I demanded that a moat be carved out around the Tower’s surrounding wall and filled with water from the Thames. The Tower eventually included a royal menagerie, which was added sometime during the thirteenth century. Under Henry III and Edward I, an inner wall containing 13 towers and an outer wall with five more were built. Along with the bridge, the Tower “was an integral part of the defences of London and of the whole realm, a barrier to ship-borne invasion up the river and a fortified gateway,” Francis Sheppard wrote.* The Tower acquired an unsavory reputation, because of its service as a prison and its existence as the scene of infamous executions. In 1282, hundreds of Jews, charged with violating the crown’s treasury, were held at the Tower, after passing through the gateway known as Traitor’s Gate. A series of luminaries shared that fate, including David, king of the Scots; King John of France; and Richard II, during the fourteenth century; the Little Princes, Edward V and Richard of York, in the 1480s, when they were slain in the Bloody Tower; Sir Thomas More, for over a year before his murder in mid1535; Anne Boleyn, executed the very next year; Sir Walter Raleigh, after the death of Queen Elizabeth; Guy Fawkes in 1605; and Roger Casement, who was taken into custody after Ireland’s Easter Rising during World War I. Wellknown figures were often publicly executed on Tower Hill, while nobles sometimes suffered beheadings on Tower Green, privately located within the complex. For five centuries, beginning in 1300, the Tower held the Royal Mint. At various points, it also contained the Royal Observatory, stood as the Royal Jewel House, acted as a bank, and included the Royal Armouries collection. During the early nineteenth century, the menagerie, complete with animals, was opened to the public. Along with Westminster Abbey, Kew Gardens, and Maritime Greenwich, the Tower is a World Heritage site. * Francis Sheppard, London: A History, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 77.


25

William the Conqueror surrounded London with a series of fortresses to discourage other invaders and to maintain control of London. This map of London’s tower areas includes the White Tower (e), which was constructed by William to serve as an impregnable fortress of the Crown. Today, the White Tower is part of the Tower of London.

William’s actions and threats induced the Witan to offer him the throne, and his coronation ensued at Westminster on Christmas Day in 1066. William the Conqueror promised to afford his newest subjects the justice granted to his subjects in Normandy. Before William’s reign, the City of London, at least during times of peace, retained considerable independence from outside rule. This had been so throughout the tenure of the Saxons and the Danes, although Canute’s government resided there and English kings were buried in the city’s cathedral. William granted the City of London a charter, declaring that its burghers (merchants), whether French or English, “both be worthy of all the rights of which ye both were worthy in King Edward’s day.

26


And I will that every child be his father’s heir after his father’s day. And I will not suffer that any man offer you any wrong.”33 At the same time, William initiated construction of the White Tower (which today is part of the Tower of London) at the city’s border, to serve as “the impregnable and threatening fortress of the Crown.”34 William felt compelled to surround the city with a series of fortresses or arbitrary borders to discourage other invaders and to maintain control of London itself. Indeed, “certain strongholds were made in the town against the fickleness of the vast and fierce populace.”35 London now stood as the wealthiest town in England, and its seasoned army helped to make its residents conscious of their rights. Outside the city, William built another castle, at Windsor, while his fellow Normans turned Westminster into their stronghold. His son and successor, William II, expanded the Palace of Westminster, recasting it in stone. As Roy Porter wrote, “Early Norman London remained essentially the walled city of the Anglo-Saxons.”36 A series of crippling fires, between 1077 and 1136, required major renovations. Both the cathedral church of St. Paul’s and London Bridge suffered terrible fire damage, eventually leading to the decision to rebuild those structures with stone. A new law required that roofs be made of tile or slate and that the bottom stories of new homes be constructed of stone. After the death of Henry I, who succeeded William II and ruled from 1100 to 1135, London was again involved in a series of dynastic battles. Londoners welcomed Stephen, the count of Blois and Henry’s nephew, proclaiming him king, to the chagrin of the Empress Matilda, Henry’s daughter. Captured during the Battle of Lincoln in 1141, Stephen soon regained the throne, to the delight of Londoners who disliked Matilda’s attempts to weaken the city’s power and confiscate funds from wealthy residents. The Plantagenet Dynasty began with the reign of Henry II, which lasted from 1154 to 1189 and resulted in a new relationship—which amounted to an arbitrary border of a kind— between the crown and London. Henry delivered a grant to the


city’s inhabitants, affirming “all their liberties and free customs which they had in the time of Henry my grandfather,” although royal sheriffs possessed considerable authority.37 Surprisingly, Londoners appeared little affected by the controversies surrounding Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury, whom Henry had assassinated in 1170 for challenging royal prerogatives. Overall, everyday existence in London remained difficult for the vast majority of its residents. Nevertheless, the monk William fitz Stephen, writing in the latter stages of the twelfth century, declared that London was among “the noble cities of the world … blest in the wholesomeness of its air, in its reverence for the Christian faith, in the strength of its bulwarks, the nature of its situation, the honour of its citizens, and the chastity of its matrons. It is likewise most merry in its sports and fruitful of noble men.” Fitz Stephen wrote that the city had 13 great monastic houses, along with more than 100 parochial churches. London also featured thriving mills, numerous market vendors, many wine shops, and a “public cook-shop.” Encircling this bounty was the Palatine Citadel on the east; a pair of castles on the western flank, where “a great wall and high” could be found, along with seven double gates and towers on the northern side; and the Thames River to the south. Outside the walled city could be found “the Royal Palace”; “the gardens of the citizens that dwell in the suburbs,” which contained “spacious and fair” trees; pasture lands and flat meadows; “a great forest”; rich cornfields; and “most excellent wells.” Londoners themselves, fitz Stephen wrote, “are everywhere regarded as illustrious and renowned beyond those of all other cities for the elegance of their fine manners, raiment and table.” The city’s “only plagues,” fitz Stephen suggested, were “the immoderate drinking of fools and the frequency of fires.”38 Fitz Stephen also pointed to other recreational activities that Londoners engaged in, especially in the evenings or on Sunday afternoons. Boys who attended schools like St. Paul’s or Stratford at Bow “bring fighting cocks to their master, and the whole

27

28


forenoon is given up to boyish sport.” After dinner, youths, scholars, and workers separately participated in “the much-frequented game of ball,” watched by elderly members of the community, fathers, and wealthy citizens. On Sundays, crowds gathered for horse races or war games, while on special occasions, participants engaged in “naval tourneys,”“leaping, archery and wrestling,” javelin throwing, and sword-fighting. In addition, there was “the dance of maidens.” During wintertime, bullbaiting proved popular, along with skating on Moorfields, the great marsh. In the dense forest, town residents also “delight in taking their sport with birds of the air, merlins and falcons and the like, and with dogs that wage warfare in the woods,” fitz Stephen wrote.39 During the same period that fitz Stephen chronicled, the city acquired a still greater reputation for independence. This particularly occurred as Richard I, who ascended to the throne in 1189, undertook a religious crusade through Europe and the Middle East. Richard received his coronation that September, on the same day that Jews in London were immolated in a “holocaust” involving mass slaughter, Richard of Devizes stated.40 While Richard was conducting his campaign outside England, his brother John tried to take over the kingdom in 1191, a possibility Londoners supported provided that John recognize the city’s self-governing nature and its commune or sworn association of leading citizens. The following year saw Henry fitz Ailwin appointed by the city’s aldermen, who headed wards and possessed considerable power of their own, as the first mayor of London. In 1193, a city resident supposedly proclaimed that Londoners owed their allegiance only to the mayor. Less affluent residents, led by William fitz Osbert, took up arms against the city government in 1196, claiming that tax burdens unfairly fell heavily on the poor. Soon after his capture, fitz Osbert, along with several other rebels, was hanged at Smithfield. Three years later, John finally became ruler of England, after Richard suffered a fatal wound while attacking the castle at Chalus during a campaign to retain control of Normandy. John


soon granted London two significant charters, the first of which affirmed the charter delivered by his father, Henry II. The other allowed residents of London to select their own sheriffs. In return, the city was to grant John 3,000 marks, a considerable sum that remained unpaid for four years. In 1206, John instructed London’s barons to elect 24 members to a committee that would examine how taxes were collected, thus hearkening back to the complaint that triggered the revolt ten years earlier. This order displeased many nobles, who were already concerned about John’s expensive campaign to recover territories in northern France, in Maine, Anjou, and Normandy—lands claimed by the English crown that John had recently lost. Among the disgruntled nobles were Robert fitz Walter of Essex, who owned Baynard’s Castle in London, and Geoffrey de Mandeville, the earl of Gloucester and Essex. In 1212, the same year that the longtime mayor of London, fitz Ailwin, died and a devastating fire swept through Southwark and onto the bridge, King John burned down Baynard’s Castle, in retaliation for fitz Walter’s plotting against the crown. John faced more opposition in 1214 when he departed for the continent to wage war more directly. His ensuing defeat further emboldened his opponents. In early 1215, John met with several barons in London, who demanded that arbitrary boundaries involving royal powers be confirmed. They insisted that King John adhere to laws articulated by Edward the Confessor, as well as various measures and a charter attributed to Henry I. On May 9, in an effort to placate Londoners, John issued a charter to the city, allowing residents to elect a mayor annually and affirming their liberties. John’s actions failed to placate either Londoners or nobles. An armed battle appeared likely, as barons, headed by fitz Walter, marched unopposed into London, which they fortified. Forced to negotiate, John agreed to the Great Charter or Magna Carta on June 15, 1215, at Runnymede. Containing 63 clauses, the document limited the power of the king. It declared that “the English Church shall be free, and shall have her whole rights and her liberties inviolable.” The Magna Carta “granted to all the Freemen

29

30


The Magna Carta, or Great Charter, was signed by King John of Runnymede, laying the basis for political and personal liberty. John was forced to negotiate and accept this document that limited the power of the king.

of our Kingdom, for us and our heirs for ever, all the underwritten Liberties, to be enjoyed and held by them and by their heirs, from us and from our heirs.” The document also underscored that “the City of London should have all its ancient liberties, and its free customs, as well by land as by water.”41 Acting at the behest of King John, the papacy condemned the


charter, resulting in the Barons’ War. Angered, the barons offered Louis, dauphin of France, the English crown. Louis arrived in England in May 1216, but John’s death in October and the subsequent reaffirmation of the Magna Carta by the regent of John’s young son Henry III staved off a prolonged civil war. Defeated at Lincoln, Louis withdrew to France in late 1217, solidifying Henry’s rule, which lasted until 1272. During his lengthy reign, law courts were established at Westminster and battles with London continued. Under Norman rulers and the first of the Plantagenets, London continued to acquire a certain unique status within the English nation, which was affirmed through a series of charters and declarations. Those pronouncements established arbitrary borders in which London was allowed to acquire a certain degree of autonomy. The degree of independence, however, depended on the stature of English rulers, with the strongest monarchs determined to shape policies affecting England’s greatest city and the weakest, particularly King John, compelled to accede to baronial influences. The Magna Carta resulted from an epochal clash between John and a group of English nobles, culminating in the king’s acknowledgment that his powers were limited, as was his ability to establish arbitrary boundaries regarding both the church and leading lay figures.

31

4 Medieval London

Medieval London

t the height of the Middle Ages, London experienced both growth and setbacks, periods of peace and times of extended warfare. The reign of the Plantagenets continued until the very end of the fourteenth century, when the House of Lancaster became dominant, although the House of York would supplant it after the War of the Roses. The House of Tudor, beginning with the reign of Henry VII in 1485, superseded York’s pre-eminence. Throughout this period, London endured arbitrary boundaries of an imperial, cultural, social, intellectual, and even biological cast. The city saw dynasties rise and fall, banished Jews, suffered the Black Death, endured a Peasants’ Revolt, and had its first printing press (set up by William Caxton). The crown’s eventual acceptance of both the London commune and the Magna Carta confirmed London’s unique status in England. Still, London hardly proved secure against the whims of powerful monarchs. During the reigns of Henry III (1216–1272) and Edward I (1272–1307), an ongoing battle occurred regarding London’s privileges, as the crown tried to maintain arbitrary borders that restricted the realm’s largest and wealthiest city. Henry strove to diminish those rights, while Edward remained determined to obliterate them altogether. Nevertheless, Henry and Edward, like their successors, depended on the resources of England’s major city, whose leading members often demanded something in return for those resources, particularly financial ones. At different points, Henry suspended the city’s liberties, restoring them after fines were paid, while Edward pointed to popular unrest to justify taking control of the city, placing his warden in charge during 1285 and not allowing Londoners to choose their mayor again until 1298. In spite of the seemingly never-ending struggle with royal authority, however, London increasingly became recognized as England’s capital. Under Henry, the Tower was turned into a great citadel, while Westminster’s church was rebuilt. Ever more prosperous London also served as the seat of centralized government. Greater complexity characterized the English government, with the emergence of three powerful departments: the

A

33

34


Exchequer, which collected revenue; the Chancery, where control of the Great Seal remained; and the Wardrobe, which held the Privy Seal and the monarch’s personal finances. More and more, government operations in general were conducted in London. To adhere to the Magna Carta, law courts appeared in Westminster with only lay lawyers allowed in secular courts. Although monarchs, albeit reluctantly, recognized London’s economic and political power, problems abounded in the midst of the city’s growing prominence. Long attractive to foreign traders, London claimed a group of Jewish financiers (perhaps first welcomed by William the Conqueror), who congregated on “Jews’ Street” or Old Jewry. Having endured the massacre that occurred on the day Richard I received his coronation, Jews remained mere resident aliens who lacked legal rights, requiring royal protection. After Italian bankers arrived in England, Edward prohibited Jews from engaging in money lending, then had hundreds executed and their possessions seized. Eventually, Edward demanded that all Jews in England suffer imprisonment, before allowing their release on payment of a large ransom. In 1290, Edward went a step further, ordering Jews to leave England. At the beginning of Edward II’s reign in 1307, the Knights Templars, a military order that was founded to shield pilgrims during the crusades and had established its headquarters in London in the early twelfth century, also experienced persecution at the hands of the crown. During his reign (1307–1327), Edward II conducted his own battle with Londoners, one that effectively doomed him. Popular pressure compelled him to deliver a charter to London in 1319, which greatly increased the ability of its residents to control city governance, the courts, and public officials. In 1321, Edward basically eradicated the liberties that Londoners had come to expect, driving them to support his overthrow, which was followed by his execution in 1327 and was spurred on by his wife Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer. The two conspirators ensured that London received grants that effectively confirmed the residents’ longstanding rights and that added Southwark and

Medieval London

control over markets located within seven miles of the city. The grants, Francis Sheppard asserted, “virtually ended London’s long struggle with the Crown for royal recognition of the City’s unique degree of autonomy within the kingdom.”42 A battle with Edward III took place in 1329, resulting in the brief imprisonment of London’s mayor and sheriffs, while heavy-handed tax policies, orchestrated by John of Gaunt, uncle of young Richard II, caused city dwellers to pay much higher taxes from 1377 to 1381. Still, a series of charters in the fourteenth century ensured that London’s top officials and common citizens acquired the right to amend the city’s constitution. THE PLAGUE AND REVOLT

Londoners continued to endure trying times during that same period, with many suffering from destitution and dwelling in squalid, often unsanitary domiciles, as bishops and nobles resided in magnificent town houses in London. Charity was required for many city residents, with the crown, the nobility, the church, and the guilds, formed by craftsmen, doling out assistance to the hungry and indigent. Everyday existence nevertheless remained difficult for many, with houses packed close together, thus lacking ventilation and light, the streets filthy, and the water impure. Violence seemed pervasive, with fights frequently breaking out between apprentices and craftsmen or riots erupting, resulting in a considerable loss of life. Conditions worsened dramatically in late 1348 when the Black Death or bubonic plague swept through London, starting in the city’s southwestern sector, having been carried by rats on ships from the continent. Within two years, half of London’s population of 80,000 perished, with hundreds of bodies dumped into pits in West Smithfield on a daily basis. After the plague, labor shortages challenged arbitrary borders involving gender relations, with women acquiring unprecedented opportunities and privileges. A woman married to a freeman was entitled to rent a shop, engage in commercial practices, and employ apprentices, while a widow who did not

35

36


remarry could make use of her married house and income, as well as a large portion of her husband’s personal property. Unsettling conditions, as exemplified by the plague and war, led a growing number of Londoners to support the ideas of John Wycliffe, a lecturer at Oxford who castigated the Roman Catholic Church’s great wealth and power. His followers, eventually called Lollards, condemned clerical celibacy, the granting of indulgences (involving payments to the church that supposedly absolved individuals of sins), and pilgrimages. Wycliffe’s teachings reportedly helped bring about a social eruption that briefly threatened King Richard II. Continued labor shortfalls resulted in tensions between the nobility and commoners, who were ultimately saddled with increased tax burdens. A seemingly inevitable eruption, the socalled Peasants’ Revolt, occurred on June 13, 1381, when rebels from Kent, evidently influenced by Wycliffe and infuriated by a new poll tax designed to finance war against France, headed across London Bridge into the City, as other disgruntled figures from Essex did also. As palaces were sacked, Richard took refuge in the Tower, which was soon beset by rebels. The king escaped injury, having ridden away the next day to speak to the men from Kent, but the archbishop of Canterbury, various ministers of the crown, and around 150 others were beheaded. On June 15, Richard met with the Kent contingent, headed by Wat Tyler, Jack Ball, and the itinerant priest Jack Straw, at Smithfield. During the gathering, Mayor William Walworth tore Tyler from his horse and murdered him. The boy king informed the rebels, “Be still, I am your King, your leader and your chief.”43 Eleven years later, Richard, never having become fully reconciled with the capital city, took control of the London government, suspending its liberties and moving the courts to York, until Londoners paid a large fine to obtain a royal pardon. When Henry of Lancaster expelled and imprisoned Richard in 1399, London’s residents certainly expressed no sorrow. During this period, the mercer (dealer in cloth) Dick Whittington, son of a landowner from Gloucestershire and a

Medieval London

Dick Whittington served as mayor of London for four terms, from 1397 to 1419. Whittington’s support for a library at Guildhall reflected the increasing literacy of people in the fifteenth century and the need to provide access to learning beyond the barriers to literacy posed by the Catholic Church.

former alderman and sheriff, served as mayor of London, a post he held for four terms from 1397 to 1419. Whittington, in partial return for authorization to export wool without having to pay customs duties, lent large sums of money to Richard II and Henry IV (he also recast arbitrary linguistic barriers by becoming

37

38


“the first English king since the eleventh century who returned to English as his native speech”44). Whittington, who died in 1423, bequeathed funds for an almshouse to provide lodging for the poor, a college to train priests, a library, a public lavatory, the rebuilding of both Newgate Prison and St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and Guildhall, which was initiated by London’s guilds as a city center. Whittington’s support for a library at Guildhall demonstrated the concern of important Londoners for intellectual pursuits, including some that challenged arbitrary barriers on literacy established by the Catholic Church. By the fifteenth century, a large number of men were literate, with many versed in Latin, while several women were also able to read and write. Most children in London received their initial training at home or in small church-run schools, with some boys attending song schools, where they sang the liturgy. A small number of grammar schools, which featured Latin, existed, but no official university could be found in London proper. Nevertheless, St. Paul’s and the Inns of Court London provided training grounds for priests and lawyers, respectively. Libraries existed at St. Paul’s, Westminster Abbey, and many religious houses, as well as in some smaller churches and at Guildhall, thanks to Whittington. Increasingly, London acquired a reputation for literature, with figures like Geoffrey Chaucer, whose Canterbury Tales (begun in 1387) spun fictional stories about pilgrims traveling to southeast England. MORE ROYAL INTRIGUE

At the midpoint of the fifteenth century, a pair of events occurred that dramatically affected the course of English history, centering on developments in London and the arbitrary boundaries that affected the city. In 1450, Jack Cade, claiming the right to lead the city, guided another group of Kent rebels who occupied Southwark before heading into London, which they held for a few days. Cade’s men demanded reform and the ouster of various government ministers; eventually, they beheaded a num-

Medieval London

ber of unpopular figures. Initially, Londoners opened the drawbridge to allow Cade entry but on the seventh day it remained raised. Cade discovered, as had others, that London Bridge, one of the city’s arbitrary borders, “was impregnable if properly defended.”45 Within a short while, the wounded Cade died as he was being carted off to prison. Soon after, the War of the Roses between the Houses of Lancaster and York broke out, leading, in 1461, to Edward of York claiming the throne and to the imprisonment of the mentally unstable Henry VI in the Tower of London four years later. Edward of York had been enthusiastically welcomed by large crowds just outside the walls of England’s most important city. Unlike Henry, Edward IV got along well with London’s merchants, engaging in trade that allowed him to become less dependent on taxes and loans. For a brief spell, in 1470, Henry won back the crown but he was soon imprisoned in the Tower once more, before being executed a year later. From this point forth, as Geoffrey Trease indicated, the Tower acquired “its reputation as the scene of murderous liquidations within the royal family and those with any possible claim to the crown.”46 Meanwhile, Londoners seemed delighted that Edward had reestablished his hold on power, although foes tried to storm London yet again. Once that rebellion was quashed, London experienced peace and expanded commercial dealings, in spite of the privileges retained by German merchants from the Hanseatic League, who occupied the Steelyard site upstream from London Bridge, until Edward’s death in 1483. In April of that year, the 12-year-old Edward V became king of England, but he proved to be little more than a pawn in a dynastic struggle that involved his uncle Richard, duke of Gloucester. Serving first as Protector of England for the young king, Richard took over the throne in June, which resulted in little opposition. Imprisoned in the Tower of London, the “little princes,” Edward and his brother Richard, the duke of York, were murdered in August, which angered many. Two years later, at Bosworth Field in Leicestershire, Henry Tudor defeated Richard,

39

40


who was killed, having lost the support of his soldiers. The eventful House of Tudor now came to power, starting with Henry VII. As the Middle Ages neared an end, London and Paris stood as the capitals of Western Europe’s two most prominent countries. Medieval London continued to follow the path or arbitrary borders laid out by the Romans when they built the walled city, while Westminster remained, as it had since the reign of Edward I, the principal site for the English monarchy. Now, Paris’s closed area, in contrast to what existed during Roman times, greatly surpassed that of London’s. A number of other European cities also covered more ground than the English municipality, whose existence on an island nation nevertheless safeguarded it in the manner of few of its competitors. London, with its population having rebounded to around 75,000 people, remained an important center for manufacturing and trade.

5 London during the Tudor Dynasty

42


uring the reign of the Tudors, London experienced rapid growth and an expansion of arbitrary borders, with nobles and monarchs building large estates and palaces outside the city walls. Under Henry VIII, Parliament began meeting at the Palace of Westminster, while Hampton Court became a countryside retreat for the king. Religious battles, involving another type of arbitrary border, occurred between the crown and the papacy, leading to the establishment of the Church of England. Notwithstanding the turmoil, London, particularly under Elizabeth I, became a center for international trade. Wealthy merchants began constructing great homes, where they conducted business. At the same time, they gathered at the Royal Exchange building, north of London Bridge. London also became still more noted for its theatrical productions, with the lifting of intellectual arbitrary borders. Londoners, for their part, increasingly dwelled outside the City in various districts, many of which quickly became dilapidated, as geographical arbitrary borders remained fluid. In contrast, fifteenth-century London, despite its emerging suburbs and nearby villages, largely remained “a walled town in the middle ages in an open countryside.”47 That would soon change, and dramatically so. By the end of the Tudor period in 1603, London had truly become a great European city, overcoming a series of epidemics, boasting a population around 200,000, standing as a center of the Protestant Reformation and intellectual rebirth, and continuing the pattern initiated with the Renaissance. William Dunbar, the Scottish poet, recognized this early, declaring in his 1501 poem, “In Honour of the City of London,” that the English capital was “the flower of cities all.”48 At the time, Dunbar’s observation was undoubtedly premature, but dramatic transformations would soon take place, some beginning with the reign of the first Tudor monarch. After repaying a loan to Londoners, Henry VII established financial reserves that allowed him to avoid becoming dependent on Parliament. He built up a trading network between Antwerp and London, and engaged in major building projects, expanding

D


Religious battles between the crown and the papacy led King Henry VIII (1491–1547) to break with the Catholic Church and to establish the Church of England.

Westminster Palace, restoring Baynard’s Castle, constructing the hospital of St. John the Baptist, replacing the burnt palace at Sheen with Richmond Palace, and shaping the Palace of Placentia on the outskirts of London. By contrast, Henry abandoned the palace at Kensington. In 1512, the third year of the reign of Henry VIII, a fire damaged much of Westminster Palace. Eventually, Henry came to prefer other palaces, including those of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey.

43

44


SIR THOMAS MORE Born in London around 1477, Thomas More attended Oxford University, then studied law at the New Inn in London, while also delving into an examination of Greek, philosophy, literature, and theology. After completing his studies at the New Inn, More continued reading the law at Lincoln’s Inn. For four consecutive years, he served as reader at Furnivall’s Inn, an esteemed position. A member of Parliament at age 26, More soon felt compelled to withdraw temporarily from public service, owing to his opposition to increased funding for Henry VII. In 1505, More married Jane Colt, but she died six years later, leaving him with four children. At that point, More was a judge, one who was much respected by Londoners. Concerns about his children persuaded More to remarry quickly. He also maintained an interest in literature and philosophy, melding the two in his 1516 classic tale, Utopia, which envisioned an ideal city-state rooted in justice and equality that would have dramatically altered various arbitrary barriers. Within two years, More was serving as a royal councilor and ambassador for Henry VIII. Knighted, More became undertreasurer in 1521, and served as Lord Chancellor from 1529 to 1532. More strove to improve the English judicial system and to counter tenets he viewed as seditious and inimical to both church and state. On May 16, 1532, however, More resigned from his post, refusing to support Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Henry responded by imprisoning More in the Tower of London. He was repeatedly urged to accept the Oath of Supremacy, which declared that the king ranked above any other ruler, even the pope. More sought to remain silent about the Act of Supremacy, recognizing that “if I should answer one way I should offend my conscience, and I should answer the other, I put my life in jeopardy.”* Continuing his writing, More produced A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation while in prison. On July 6, 1535, More was decapitated. One of the great Christian humanists and classical scholars of the Renaissance, More became the victim of Henry VIII’s determination to reshape arbitrary barriers involving the English monarchy and the papacy, or, ultimately, the church and the state. In 1935, the Roman Catholic Church canonized More. * Susan Brigden, London and the Reformation, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989, pp. 228–229.


That confiscation occurred as Henry battled against the Roman Catholic Church, a fight that altered religious and secular relationships or arbitrary borders across the realm. The English Reformation started in London, the nation’s capital and seat of royal power. Henry VIII, like his successors, recognized the need for religious conformity to take hold in London to ensure royal dominance throughout the kingdom. It was in London where many of England’s religious battles were determined during the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. When the sixteenth century began, the Catholic Church remained a potent force in the capital city, which contained the cathedral church of St. Paul’s, over a hundred churches, and hundreds of clergymen. Ideas associated with the Renaissance and Humanism, however, also filtered through London, with a greater focus on science and rationality, along with a belief in human perfectibility and individualism. By the early stages of the sixteenth century, such seemingly heretical ideas were increasingly well received in various London homes. With the introduction of the printing press in Westminster, tracts associated with the Protestant Reformation appeared in London by the mid-1520s, including Martin Luther’s challenges to papal supremacy and English copies of William Tyndale’s New Testament. In addition, the Lollards maintained their condemnations of Catholic rituals and beliefs, deeming them idolatrous and superstitious; the Catholic hierarchy, in turn, viewed Lollards as heretical and treated some of their most outspoken representatives, like Richard Hunne, accordingly. Indeed, as Susan Brigden suggested, “to be a Lollard, murdered by the clergy, was to become a martyr.”49 Near the end of the following decade, Henry VIII dramatically accelerated the Protestant Reformation in England and the transformation of London, when he initiated the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The religious houses had long controlled much of the land inside the City of London, establishing arbitrary boundaries and thereby preventing an extension in the suburbs.

45

46


Henry began in 1538 by initially targeting the smaller, less powerful houses, confiscating monastic property. Within a year, he went after the larger houses. Henry sold some monastic land to wealthy Londoners, who established country estates, and he allowed other buildings to be converted into inexpensive lodging for town folk. All the while, similar developments occurred throughout England, garnering more funds for the royal treasury. The crown did retain control of some land obtained by Henry during this era, including the city’s “‘royal’ parks—St. James’s Park, Green Park, Hyde Park, and Regent’s Park,” along with “much of Piccadilly and Jermyn Street, as well as Carlton House Terrace and the whole of the south side of Pall Mall,” other than one site.50 Although a small number of church officials who opposed the Dissolution were executed, many monks and nuns were treated decently; they received pensions and, having discarded vows of celibacy, married and established families of their own. That only exacerbated London’s growing problem of overcrowding, a problem heightened by the arrival of foreigners seeking to avoid Catholic persecution or participating in the city’s commercial pursuits. London’s population and that of the surrounding districts surpassed 90,000 by the early 1560s, reached 120,000 within two decades, and hit the 200,000 mark by the end of the century. More and more residents dwelled “in the expanding suburbs to the east of the White Tower, along the roads to Whitechapel and Stepney, Shadwell and Limehouse and down by the waterfront to Wapping.”51 Much of that development was impoverished, as John Stow chronicled in his classic work, A Survey of London. Stow bemoaned the “filthy cottages” near Aldgate, along with the congestion that made it difficult for “any fair, pleasant, or wholesome way for people to walk on foot … no small blemish to so famous a city to have so unsavoury and unseemly an entrance or passage.”52 As London continued to undergo transformations, Henry VIII’s son, Edward VI, ruled as a minor during the middle of the sixteenth century. His reign resulted in the dissolution of over


300 chantries in London, which were located in parish churches and allowed Masses and prayers to be delivered and lights maintained to ensure that the souls of the dead would be saved. The closing of the chantries greatly impacted ordinary Londoners, because of the apparent discarding of a belief in purgatory. Meanwhile, more Protestant tracts appeared in London, as did a Prayer Book that recast religious rites, allowing for the introduction of English in services. Many refugees from the continent desired still greater reform, while a royal charter enabled various congregations to conduct their own rituals without interference. Such a liberal approach temporarily vanished shortly after Mary I, a Catholic, became queen of England in 1553. Initially, few appeared averse to her abandonment of Edward VI’s legislation favoring Protestants, although London remained a largely Protestant community. Mary’s marriage to Philip, soon to become king of Spain, however, resulted in another march on London by a group of men from Kent; Thomas Wyatt, who eventually surrendered and was executed, triggered the aborted uprising. The queen’s popularity continued to wane, as she executed hundreds of Protestants, thereby acquiring the nickname, “Bloody Mary.” Philip’s decision to steer England into a European struggle, which resulted in the loss of Calais, did little to help matters. In 1558, the childless Mary died, enabling her sister, Elizabeth, to succeed to the throne. Elizabeth I helped to re-establish Protestantism as the dominant religion in the realm, particularly in the capital city. Indeed, one historian stated that “the Protestant Reformation was more successful in London than in any other part of the kingdom.”53 A new group of reformers, the Puritans, appeared by the mid1560s, seeking greater reformation of religious practices. During Elizabeth’s reign, small numbers of Jews, for the first time since the ouster ordered by Edward I, were allowed to come to England and live in London. Catholics maintained their religious practices in certain sectors, most noticeably Gray’s Inn and suburban spots outside the city walls. Elizabeth’s relative tolerance hardly extended to Ireland, however, where she followed

47

48


the practices of her father, Henry VIII, in seeking to transplant Protestantism by banning religious services by Catholics and allowing the execution of several bishops and priests. British soldiers harshly dealt with the strong resistance that arose, resulting in “scorched earth policies,” mass bloodletting, and famine.54 Little tolerance was displayed toward Catholics in London conspiring against Elizabeth, who finally agreed to the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587. Mary was associated with the Babington plot, which called for a Spanish invasion of England to bring about a Catholic restoration. The defeat of the Spanish Armada helped ensure England’s supremacy as an international power. In London, the Elizabethan Age continued through the close of the sixteenth century, by which time the capital city had a population around 200,000, with as many as 150,000 people living in the suburbs. This demographic boom occurred because of a high birth rate and large levels of immigration from the English countryside and the continent. It also occurred despite attempts by Queen Elizabeth and several seventeenth-century English rulers to limit London’s future growth through proclamations that sought to establish arbitrary borders for the city. For instance, in 1580, Elizabeth, concerned about the availability of basic necessities and the possibility of another epidemic, declared that Londoners should “desist and forbear from any building of any house or tenement within three miles from any of the gates of the said city of London.”55 Ultimately, demands for expansion outweighed the determination to set such boundaries, while the crown often disregarded its own edicts by offering licenses to build and by enabling offenders to pay fines, in lieu of losing control of illegally constructed buildings. Additional building occurred as a leasehold system thrived, in which individuals who owned undeveloped properties allowed long-term renters to build houses on such sites. Those emigrating from throughout England generally settled in the suburbs, where the influence of guilds and municipal officials was slighter. The parishes just beyond the walled city and


those next to the Thames remained London’s less affluent sectors. By contrast, London’s West End stood as the city’s wealthiest and most fashionable area, thanks to the presence of Westminster Palace and Westminster Abbey. On London’s northern edges, private mansions replaced the monasteries until the middle of the seventeenth century. Eventually, industrial centers began appearing there, as they did south of the river in places like Southwark. Engaging in international trade and possessing an imperial network, England became more of a seafaring state; as that occurred, London’s waterfront area expanded downriver, leading to the establishment of various hamlets, where mariners and unskilled laborers toiled. SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY

Despite the trying times many continued to undergo and the stern admonitions of Calvinists, London offered diversions of various kinds involving popular entertainment. As the city became more crowded, events like bull-baiting, bear-baiting, cockfighting, archery, horse racing, hunting, and skating took place beyond the walls, while “bowling-alleys and dicinghouses,” along with gambling, became more popular.56 Public executions remained favored events. Most significant of all, professional theater thrived in London during this era. Beginning in the 1570s, a series of wooden theaters, which catered to audiences of 2,000 to 3,000 people, cropped up in two areas: in London’s northern outskirts, in Finsbury and Shoreditch, and in Bankside, Southwark, across the river. Also appearing was the London Commercial Theatre. City officials viewed the theaters with alarm, considering them to be “hotbeds of vice and plague, as rendezvous for the idle and licentious, for evil men excited by boys dressed up as women, and for all those who would rather answer the call of the trumpet to a play than the tolling of the bell to a sermon,” Christopher Hibbert noted.57 Ministers referred to the theaters as “chapels of Satan.”58 Nevertheless, Elizabethan theater thrived, with the staging of plays by Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and William Shakespeare,

49

50


The East India Company formed a joint-stock enterprise with England that allowed for sharing of the risks and rewards of overseas commerce.

along with performances by James Burbage and Edward Alleyn, to the delight of often-boisterous spectators. The plays of such noteworthy figures were performed at new theaters, including the Rose and the Globe, which arrived in Southwark, considered a seedy place complete with brothels, taverns, and illegal sporting activities. London as a whole appeared to be thriving as the sixteenth century neared a close. The city continued to grow, both economically and geographically, while becoming the world’s leading trade market. That development was ensured with the establishment of the Royal Exchange by Thomas Gresham, which occurred in 1570 to prevent businessmen from having to conduct commercial transactions in the streets. Also helpful was the formation of joint-stock enterprises, including the East India Company, which allowed for the sharing of risks and rewards as England engaged in exploratory moves beyond its borders. The Tudor Dynasty ended with Elizabeth’s death in 1603. Starting with Henry VII’s reign, London experienced tremendous


transformations involving arbitrary borders including those associated with a mushrooming population, the city’s physical boundaries, and the Protestant Reformation. At the same time, battle lines were drawn, involving the walled city and suburbs, the crown and the papacy, and Catholics and Protestants. The ushering in of the Protestant Reformation challenged longstanding religious and intellectual rigidities associated with the Catholic Church and briefly allowed for the readmission into the city of Jews, but it ultimately spawned new chasms. Meanwhile, through its merchant capitalists, London participated in the nation’s imperial endeavors, which demonstrated the determination of various rulers to push aside arbitrary borders involving other nation-states.

51

6 London in the Age of the Stuarts


s the Stuart Dynasty began, England, supported by its monarchs and merchants based in London, was engaged in a quest for international ascendancy. That campaign led to the establishment of colonies in North America; such colonies necessarily involved the setting up of new arbitrary boundaries. Imperial endeavors helped Stuart rulers run up large debts, which, along with cultural and religious divisions of an arbitrary cast, resulted in clashes with Parliament. Eventually, civil war broke out, leading to the temporary establishment of a Puritan commonwealth and the execution of King Charles I. The restoration of the monarchy hardly prevented additional dynastic battles, many intimately involving London. England’s greatest city suffered, too, from the return of the plague and a Great Fire, which raced through the City. Amid the ashes and ruin, Londoners began to rebuild, although few chose to dwell in the City and many merchants opted to set up shop in the West End. The Stuarts’ dynasty ended early in the eighteenth century, following a series of military victories and the merger with Scotland through the Act of Union in 1707. Because of the Act of Settlement, the House of Hanover ended up with the throne. The Stuart Dynasty opened with the reign of James I, who also held the title of King James VI of Scotland and was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots. London hardly welcomed James’s ascension, while the new king made no effort to reach out to the people, often holing up in the palace of Whitehall. In 1605, Catholic conspirators led by Guy Fawkes tried through the Gunpowder Plot to assassinate James, intending to blow up the houses of Parliament. With that plot quashed, James remained little concerned about sexual and financial scandals involving the royal court. He granted licenses for building in the suburbs, which Elizabeth had forbidden. James did support efforts to supply ever-expanding London with fresh drinking water through wooden pipes connected to a fresh reservoir in Clerkenwell. Pushing past existing arbitrary boundaries, London continued to spread well beyond the city walls, with the future West End a preferred spot as winds usually carried away

A

53

54


the noxious odors from the great metropolis. Meanwhile, the architect Inigo Jones, Surveyor of the King’s Works, helped to shape Queen’s House at Greenwich, England’s first classical building; Banqueting Hall in Whitehall; and Covent Garden

THE GUNPOWDER PLOT In May 1604, a band of Catholics sought to overcome relatively recent arbitrary barriers involving religion and the Scottish-born James I. The conspirators, who included Guy Fawkes, a 34-year-old soldier who had served in the Eighty Years’ War against the Protestant United Provinces, plotted to murder King James and the members of Parliament, gathering at the House of Lords building. Conspirator Thomas Percy rented a cellar, located under the House of Lords, where the group stored several barrels of gunpowder. However, word of the plot began to leak out, leading to an uncovering of the gunpowder and the arrest of Fawkes in November 1605, as he entered the cellar. Fawkes was reported to be holding a watch, matches, and torch paper and to have acknowledged that he sought to bring down the English government. Other conspirators were captured as they tried to depart from English soil or afterward, with some killed on the spot, and others imprisoned before being executed. Henry Garnett, who headed the English Jesuits, was among those put to death, owing to his knowledge of the conspiracy. As for Fawkes, after being arrested, he was taken to the bedchamber of James I, where he met with the monarch and his ministers. Again, Fawkes refused to deny his part in the conspiracy and indicated that he sought to drive James’s Scottish advisors out of England. Imprisoned in the Tower of London, Fawkes endured torture, which the king explicitly agreed was necessary. Eventually, the broken-down Fawkes revealed who his compatriots were and the full nature of the conspiracy. Less than three months later, he was hanged, on January 31, 1606. Fireworks, bonfires, and the burning of an effigy of Fawkes, referred to as a “guy,” originally intended as a denigrating reference, soon marked the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, November 5.* * Robert Hendrickson, The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, Revised and Expanded Edition. New York: Checkmark Books, 2000, 308.


Piazza in the West End, which ushered in a new mode of residential town planning. The last construction, in addition to the opening of the royal reserve of Hyde Park to the general public, occurred under Charles I, whose rule began in 1625 but was initially dominated by George Villiers Buckingham. That statesman overrode parliamentary opposition to war, resulting in an unpopular and costly campaign against Spain. Although Elizabeth had been able to establish delicate relations with London, James and Charles had more strained dealings with the capital city and with Parliament. In addition, many merchant-capitalists, including those associated with the East India Company, remained dependent on royal patronage, while others benefited from the special privileges and exemptions that Stuart rulers offered. Nevertheless, London’s merchants increasingly resented the crown’s interference with commercial matters, and its various schemes. The city’s Puritans also were displeased with the unwillingness of James and Charles to become involved in the Thirty Years’ War (16181648), which largely centered on Protestant-Catholic clashes in Germany. Still, London frequently provided funds for Charles, even backing a clash with Scottish forces in 1637. Eventually, however, Londoners, like many Englishmen, turned against Charles and the “Eleven Year Tyranny” (16291640) he orchestrated, leading to a clash regarding political, religious, and ideological boundaries that involved the crown, Parliament, and London by the early 1640s. That resulted from Charles’s decision in 1629 to govern without Parliament; Charles refused to allow Parliament to meet shortly after various members of that body drew up the Petition of Right, forbidding illegal taxation without parliamentary representation, the forced quartering of troops, the declaration of martial law, and arbitrary imprisonment. Opposition to Charles’s rule intensified with his generally disastrous foreign policy; his reliance on certain figures, including his wife, Queen Henrietta Maria, a French Catholic; and his use of unconstitutional measures. In 1640, Charles was compelled to call Parliament into

55

56


session because of financial problems and military setbacks resulting from the Bishops’ Wars, which involved the king’s determination to force Scotland to accept Anglicanism and to win back church lands taken over by Scottish nobles. By that point, Puritan ministers in London had linked up with unhappy merchants and craftsmen, while condemning supposedly immoral actions associated with the crown. A series of public demonstrations and petitions expressed displeasure with the antics of Charles and his top ministers. In contrast, many London officials refused to support the opposition, even offering a sizable fund to the financially strapped king. All the while, anger mounted in the streets. As the clash between Parliament and Charles continued, “London was the main setting and the role of the Londoners was decisive,” Geoffrey Trease wrote.59 In May 1641, Parliament delivered a bill to Charles, demanding the execution of his chief minister, Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford. When the king failed to act, large crowds of apprentices and workers in London compelled Parliament to pass a bill of attainder, condemning Wentworth to death for treason. Charles blundered disastrously on January 4, 1642, when he moved to arrest a handful of his parliamentary foes, including John Pym. Avoiding arrest, they headed into the City, “sealing a Parliament/London bond.” Charles went after the members of Parliament (MPs), with many Londoners exclaiming, “Privilege of Parliament, privilege of Parliament.”60 The king retreated, but civil war soon threatened, with radicals taking control of London and the city’s militia. By July 1642, the king’s foes happily received news that Parliament had impeached and imprisoned Sir Richard Gurney, the lord mayor, who had backed Charles, and prepared for war. Along with many merchants and other militant Protestants, Puritans supported Parliament, which was led by Oliver Cromwell, in its battle with the crown. With Guildhall in the hands of radicals, London strongly backed the Parliamentarians (known as Roundheads), in their fight against Charles’s Royalists (the Cavaliers). Before the parliamentary army was


formed, Charles tried to sweep into London, which could have ended the civil war. Facing a group of 24,000 Londoners at Turnham Green, near Chiswick Common, Charles was outnumbered two-to-one and failed to strike, losing his chance to recapture the capital city. London soon possessed a potent defense system, with the City encircled by ditches and fortifications. Through “connecting lines,” London and Westminster were linked, with a shield covering “from beyond Hyde Park in the west to the Tower in the east, from Hoxton in the north to Newington in the south.” Other arbitrary borders dissolved, as “danger … fleetingly … united all London,” Roy Porter indicated.61 Even a blockade of the city that Charles ordered in January 1643, leading to a difficult winter, failed to break the morale of many Londoners. London ensured that the Parliamentarians’ New Model Army would be paid, while the royalists lacked funds to continue the fight. One royalist acknowledged, “If posterity shall ask who pulled the Crown from the King’s head, say ’twas the proud, unthankful, schismatical, rebellious, bloody City of London.”62 In addition, the Parliamentarians, aided by the zealotry of the Puritans, retained the allegiance of common Londoners. Meanwhile, Charles suffered setbacks at Marston Moor and Naseby, forcing him to surrender to the Scots, near Newark, in 1646. The following year, Charles was delivered to the Parliament and was soon held captive by the New Model Army. After managing to escape, Charles aligned with the Scots to renew the fight against the Parliamentarians but was recaptured in 1648. The following January, the king finally returned to Westminster Hall, where his trial took place, leading to his beheading at Whitehall. Led by the so-called Rump Parliament, which ordered Charles’s execution, England had a republican government for the next 11 years. The Rump Parliament, initially gathered after the ouster of over 100 MPs who had sought to reach some kind of accommodation with Charles and had subsequently been prevented from sitting in the House of Commons, abolished the

57

58


monarchy and the House of Lords, setting up the Puritan-dominated Commonwealth instead. The relations between Parliament and London became frayed, thanks to the heavy burden of taxation that the city endured during the civil war and new, statutorily drawn religious edicts or boundaries. Londoners little appreciated efforts to compel religiosity, as when soldiers were allowed to enter private houses to see if proper observance of the Sabbath was taking place or following prohibitions against both celebrating Christmas, viewed by the Puritans as connected to Catholicism, and the performing of music in churches. In its self-appointed role as moral arbiter, Parliament arbitrarily refused to allow London’s theaters, which were shut down when the civil war began, to reopen, and banned sports events on Sundays. For his part, the more tolerant Cromwell, acting as Elizabeth had all too briefly, allowed Jews to return to London, with many residing near Petticoat Lane. While refusing the crown, Cromwell increasingly took on royal trappings, accepting the title of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth in 1653. After Cromwell’s death five years later, his son Richard proved unable to quell the surge of factionalism inside Parliament. In early 1660, General George Monck marched with his soldiers into London. In February, Monck supported new elections in the city and helped set the stage for the arrival of Charles II, back from several years of exile in Holland. Londoners appeared delighted with the Restoration of the monarchy; indeed, as Thomas Macaulay later indicated, without the assistance of the city, the Restoration would not have occurred. Accompanied by high expectations, the Restoration enabled the Church of England to experience a revival, a growth in the fortunes of the Cavaliers, and a return of fashionable London, now with a population of about 460,000 people. The Cavaliers moved violently against some of their former antagonists, but Londoners welcomed the revival of the theater, which included women’s roles being performed by women, and the antics of the bachelor king, who reputedly had 14 illegitimate children.


The Parliament was led by Oliver Cromwell (shown here) in its battle with Charles I. In 1629, Charles had decided to govern without the Parliament, a decision that was very unpopular with many Londoners, and indeed with many Englishmen.

Lacking funds, Charles still allowed for the design of Southampton (later Bloomsbury) Square, the first open space in the capital city to be called a square. TWIN DISASTERS

Soon, however, dual calamities, occurring in successive years,

59

60


afflicted London. In 1665, the Great Plague again swept through London, causing considerable panic and resulting in 75,000 deaths, the vast majority in the most dilapidated and overcrowded areas on the outskirts of the city. Then, the Great Fire of London caused tremendous damage, destroying the cathedral church of St. Paul’s, many parish churches and civic buildings, and more than 13,000 houses, but apparently taking very few lives, remarkably enough. The conflagration sundered the Royal Exchange, the Custom House, Cheapside, the Fleet Prison, the Inner Temple, Christ’s Hospital, Guildhall, Salisbury Theatre, and Cripplegate. Little helping matters was the failure of the lord mayor, Sir Thomas Bludworth, to act, ensuring that the fire would continue marking a deadly path for three days, torching 400 streets and leaving 100,000 homeless. As Roy Porter recorded, “The City the Fire destroyed had worn a medieval face.”63 Almost the entire wall remained intact, as did a number of monastic buildings, but nearly 80 percent of the city was destroyed. The architect Christopher Wren was unable to persuade city officials to adopt his master plan to rebuild London and broaden its arbitrary borders through expansive streets and great open spaces; he did receive a commission to reconstruct the cathedral church of St. Paul’s and scores of other churches. Various public improvements occurred, including the setting up of an open quayside along the waterfront, the broadening of various streets, the devising of building regulations, and the mandating of safety provisions. The new London would contain more brick and stone, new drainage, and restrictions on the use of wood. Many Londoners declined to return to the City, with a number of merchants setting up shop in the West End, where affluent residential areas appeared, including Bloomsbury and Mayfair. London’s commercial enterprises rebounded, with a new Royal Exchange opening its doors about 1675. More and more, coffeehouses became the preferred sites for transacting business or for obtaining news. King Charles moved to St. James’s Palace, while gentry built squares and town houses in surrounding environs.


Meanwhile, suburban development spread, in Soho, East London, Westminster, Southwark, and adjacent parishes beyond the City walls. A GLORIOUS REVOLUTION

In coffeehouses around Fleet Street, Londoners read newspaper accounts of events of the period, including the death of Charles II in 1685 and the ascension of James II, the younger son of Charles I who had to contend with Monmouth’s Rebellion, an insurrection led by one of Charles II’s illegitimate children. James supported the holding of several trials involving the rebels, which led to hundreds of hangings and the selling of hundreds of other prisoners into slavery. Opposition to such harsh treatment, along with dismay over James’s appointment of Catholics to several high-level posts, his disregard of various laws, and the birth of a son, an event that promised to ensure Catholic succession, helped to weaken allegiance to James, culminating in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. A bloodless affair, that uprising brought about James’s ouster and his replacement by his Protestant daughter, Mary, and son-in-law, William of Orange, the effective ruler of the United Provinces of the Netherlands. At the Battle of the Boyne near Drogheda, William subsequently routed James II, who was largely relying on Irish and French forces. William also defeated Scottish highlanders, thereby strengthening his hold on power. In 1689, Parliament passed the Bill of Rights, establishing the conditions, or arbitrary borders of a constitutional variety, under which William and his wife, Mary, could rule over England, Scotland, and Ireland. The Bill of Rights included provisions precluding the monarch from mandating taxes without the approval of Parliament, suspending laws, or possessing a standing army in peacetime unless Parliament agreed that such a force was necessary. Hardly a popular figure, William, along with Queen Mary, left no heir to the throne, which passed in 1702 to Anne, the daughter of James II. The previous year’s Act of Settlement

61

62


ensured that the House of Hanover would take over the English monarchy after Anne’s death. Like his immediate predecessors, William also was financially strapped, in his case because of war waged with France in the early 1690s. That led, in 1694, to the founding of the Bank of England, which dealt in bills of exchange, gold, and silver. Notwithstanding his financial difficulties, the asthmatic William purchased Kensington House, which he instructed Wren to enlarge into a royal palace. At William’s request, Wren also rebuilt Hampton Court Palace. Henry Wise, Queen Anne’s gardener, cultivated the grounds at Kensington Garden. Its charters having been revised by James II in a futile effort to win the city’s allegiance, London re-emerged as a potent political force during Anne’s reign. Londoners expressed themselves in a colorful fashion. Whigs, who supported a strong Parliament, sympathized with religious dissidents and favored considerable separation of church and state, while burning images of the pope and shooting off fireworks. Tories, backing royal prerogatives and strong ties between the church and state, celebrated the anniversary of Charles I’s supposed martyrdom. The massive program of rebuilding continued, with the new St. Paul’s Cathedral finally opening in 1710. Throughout the Stuart Dynasty, arbitrary boundaries of various sorts dramatically affected developments pertaining to London, which became Europe’s largest city by 1700, with a population of 600,000. Clashes regarding the setting of such boundaries repeatedly occurred, pitting Catholics against Protestants, the crown versus Parliament, and England against foreign states, with London often a key battleground. The city’s own residents helped determine the fate of the nation as well as the destiny of one ruler after another. Influencing the course of events were the Protestant Reformation, an attempted Counter-Reformation of a kind, a belief in royal absolutism, parliamentary rights, nationalism, and mercantile capitalism—the proponents of which all vied for support in London as they sought to create, extend, or obliterate arbitrary boundaries of various sorts. During the


reign of the Stuarts, even the physical makeup of London underwent alterations pertaining to arbitrary borders, through disease, fire, war, revolution, and demographic developments.

63

7 Georgian London

Georgian London

hroughout the eighteenth century and into the early stages of the nineteenth century, London, like England as a whole, underwent tremendous transformations. Older arbitrary borders affecting the capital city were reshaped, and new ones emerged altogether, establishing boundaries of a political, economic, and cultural nature. The disinclination by Hanoverian monarchs to govern ensured that political power shifted into the hands of the royal cabinet, headed by a prime minister. This was no insignificant matter, as England was increasingly involved in global affairs, striving to become the most dominant imperial actor. In addition, economic changes through the flourishing of mercantile capitalism and the Industrial Revolution, which helped to ensure England’s international primacy, transformed labor-capital relations. Social relations inside London and its suburbs underwent shifts, too, for good and ill, as the population expanded greatly during the eighteenth century. That population was increasingly diverse, with communities of Jews, French Huguenots, blacks, Asians, Scots, Irish, and Welsh. Young people particularly appeared attracted to London, with thousands entering the capital each year, hoping to improve their station in life. At the same time, with certain exceptions, Georgian London failed to undergo the kind of catalytic developments that had occurred in the previous two centuries, with “no religious reformation, no civil war … no more outbreaks of plague, and no great fire.”64 In a curious twist of fate, Queen Anne’s death and the 1701 Act of Settlement passed the English crown to the House of Hanover, based in the capital of Lower Saxony, Germany. Neither George I, who ruled from 1714 to 1727, nor George II, whose reign extended from 1727 to 1760, cared much for England, resulting in cabinet and parliamentary decisions largely being made without their input. Their greatest contribution, Geoffrey Trease suggested, involved improvements made at Kensington through the laying out of the Broad Walk, the Round Pound, and the Serpentine. Also, during George II’s reign, the British Museum and Westminster Bridge, which

T

65

66


Under the reign of George II, London became more noted for its many improvements, which included the building of the British Museum (shown here) and the Westminster Bridge.

allowed for another spanning of the Thames and the tearing down of the old Roman wall, were established. London became more noted for its pleasure gardens, including the Vauxhall Gardens on the south bank of the Thames and the Ranelagh Gardens on the north bank in Chelsea. The music of George Frideric Handel, who was from Lower Saxony but became a naturalized Englishman, could be heard in the pleasure gardens, churches, and theaters. Wealthy Londoners built elegant mansions and met in coffeehouses, but large dilapidated areas also arose. Alcoholism became more widespread, with inexpensive gin eagerly consumed by many slum dwellers. Breweries like Whitbread’s, Barclay’s, and Truman’s provided drinks for adults and children, as concerns remained about the hygiene of the city’s water. In such paintings as A Harlot’s Progress, A Rake’s Progress, and Marriage à la Mode, William Hogarth captured some of London’s squalor and pointed to

Georgian London

what numerous Londoners had been driven to, while condemning a society that was selfish and materialistic. Concerns about the spread of crime abounded, with the magistrate and novelist Henry Fielding highlighting the city’s helterskelter development, and thus the potential collapse of arbitrary borders involving social classes: Whoever indeed considers the Cities of London and Westminster, with the late vast Addition of their Suburbs; the great Irregularity of their Buildings, the immense Number of Lanes, Alleys, Courts and Bye-Places; must think, that, had they been intended for the very Purpose of Concealment, they could scarce have been better contrived. Upon such a View, the whole appears as a vast Wood or Forest, in which a Thief may harbour with as great Security, as wild Beasts do in the Deserts of Africa or Arabia. For by wandering from one Part to another, and often shifting his quarters, he may almost avoid the Possibility of being discovered.65

A need to improve the policing of the great city resulted, but many remained opposed to centralizing authority, fearing that liberty would be endangered. London, nevertheless, had 18 prisons by the end of the eighteenth century, such as the Fleet, King’s Bench, Bridewell, and Newgate, but corruption riddled the prison system. London exhibited other tensions, including some involving the very governance of the City and surrounding suburbs. At the same time, the City continued to deeply influence national politics, which increasingly involved matters beyond the British Isles. Uneasy relations between London and the national government hardly abated. The City had a constitution that had largely endured the travails of the seventeenth century, with aristocratic aldermen continuing to dominate London politics while possessing greater patronage powers. Clashes ensued between the aldermen, most of whom were Whigs, and the elected members of the Court of Common Council, chosen by rate-paying residents who generally voted as Tories.

67

68


Through its representatives, the City insisted on the retention of its ancient privileges, as had again been demonstrated during the conflicts between Parliament and Charles I and James II. The Glorious Revolution helped to reinforce London’s precedents, while the City under Hanoverian rulers reaffirmed its independent stature. Relations between London and George I were initially good, but a scandal involving the South Sea Company, key politicians, and members of the court, which ruined thousands of investors, sullied relations, beginning in the 1720s. Decades of difficult relations between London and the central government followed. Indeed, in 1774, the merchant John Wilkes, accused of seditious libel after condemning the king’s ministers as problems involving the North American colonies worsened, became mayor, undoubtedly to the dismay of the monarchy’s supporters. A series of wars with France, which continued through the end of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century, helped to bring about additional changes in London. Dockyards emerged, while the economy generally thrived. By the early nineteenth century, London’s population surpassed the one million mark, thanks to higher birth rates. No longer were the London squares frequented by aristocrats and gentry only, but rather by larger numbers of middling sorts and businessmen, too. Skilled laborers formed their own political movement, with Westminster serving as a catalyst for middle-class, radical engagement. Thus, the city and its people recast arbitrary boundaries involving demography and class. Under George I and George II, parliamentary primacy had begun to take place at the national level, resulting in bitterly contested battles between Whigs and Tories for control of the House of Commons. A leading Whig, Robert Walpole, effectively served as the nation’s first prime minister, and resided at 10 Downing St. in London. George III, who ruled for 60 years beginning in 1760, was troubled by Whig dominance of government early in his reign but sought to convey an objective attitude toward governance in England. He had to contend with the American

Georgian London

colonists’ fight for independence, which resulted in England’s loss of the 13 colonies in North America. The American colonists, through their Continental Congress, sent a thank-you note to London’s lord mayor on the eve of the revolution: The City of London, my Lord, having, in all ages, proved itself the patron of liberty and the support of just government, against lawless tyranny and oppression, cannot fail to make us deeply sensible of the powerful aid our cause must receive from such advocates: a cause, my Lord, worthy of the support of the first city in the world….66

Although their compatriots overseas may well have recast the British capital’s position about events in North America, that perception nevertheless helped to strengthen support for the Patriot cause in the 13 colonies. As for George III, who responded ineptly to the crisis involving the colonies, mental illness afflicted him, and he would suffer senility, deafness, and blindness near the end of his life. His illness led to the establishment of the Regency of the Prince of Wales, who became George IV in 1820. A CITY OF COMMERCE

Many blamed George IV for further weakening the British monarchy. His brother and successor, William IV, whose rule ended in 1837, also witnessed a decline in the political power of the crown. Nevertheless, it was during the reigns of George III and his sons that London experienced the opening of the National Gallery, the establishment of University College, and the founding of King’s College. The architect John Nash helped to shape the West End, designing the Nash Terraces around Regent’s Park, Regent Street, and Trafalgar Square, and he rebuilt Buckingham House to serve as a royal palace. Hanoverian London experienced sweeping changes, as it became Europe’s and possibly the world’s largest city. Moreover, “Londoners formed a larger proportion of the national population than the inhabitants of any major city.”67 This resulted in

69

70


Edward Lloyd’s coffee house (shown here in a 1798 illustration done by William Holland) served as the headquarters for marine underwriters. This business eventually evolved into Lloyd’s of London, the world’s largest insurance company.

the emergence of a great consumers’ market that greatly influenced the British economy. As early as the 1720s, as Daniel Defoe wrote, various markets in London, whose expanse he considered unequalled by any city “except old Rome in Trajan’s Time,” surpassed any others. He stated, “There are so considerable, such Numbers of Buyers, and such an infinite Quantity of Provisions of all Sorts, Flesh, Fish, and Fowl, that, especially of the First, no City in the World can equal them.”68 At the same time, London served as the center for world trade, possessing Great Britain’s greatest port, which handled 75 percent of the nation’s trade by 1700, while standing as the world’s largest owner and builder of ships. The building of artificial dock basins altered the districts or arbitrary borders that ran along the banks of the Thames. On London’s East End, distilling, sugar-refining, and brewing industries thrived. So too did banks, like Stone’s, Hoare’s, and

Georgian London

Martin’s, many located on Lombard Street. Insurance companies sprang up, the most noteworthy being Lloyd’s, eventually the world’s largest insurance corporation. Also prominent in London were crafts of various sorts, ranging from watch-making to jewelry-making to cabinet-making, with Chippendale’s acquiring a reputation for quality work and the Chelsea Factory becoming noted for its exquisite porcelain. So-called dirty trades abounded, too, including grease-making, glue-making, paint-making, and tallow-making, which helped to pollute London’s air. By contrast, various sectors, particularly in the West End, the City, and Mayfair, featured high-quality retailers, fashionable shops, and soon-to-be-famous names, such as Christie’s auction house in Pall Mall. As the writer Robert Southey revealed, “If I were to pass the remainder of my life in London, I think the shops would always continue to amuse me. Something extraordinary or beautiful is for ever to be seen in them.”69 For their part, London merchants, based in the City, acted as powerful princes might. All the while, political power increasingly resided in the hands of the Parliament, where members of the gentry class determined government and imperial policies. That aristocracy, in turn, provided support for the arts, thus shaping London’s cultural life. Still, by the middle of the eighteenth century, a new middling culture emerged, which was rooted in the City and the Strand, with great mansions and inns that housed law students scattered along the ancient track between the Thames and the highway heading west out of London. By the 1760s, middle-class patrons frequented theaters in the Haymarket and Covent Garden. In 1764, the author Samuel Johnson and the artist Sir Joshua Reynolds founded The Club, which included such members as Johnson’s friend and confidant, James Boswell; the actor David Garrick; the historian Edward Gibbon; and the political economist and philosopher Adam Smith, author of An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. In 1768, Reynolds helped to establish the Royal Academy of Arts.

71

72


London also experienced the beginnings of democracy and the lessening of various arbitrary boundaries, as the holding of the parliamentary franchise became more widespread and smaller merchants, shopkeepers, and craftsmen influenced the Court of Common Council. Still more strikingly, disfranchised citizens engaged in agitations of their own, and laborers formed their own associations, as city leaders recognized. Religious tensions sprouted yet again when Parliament called for the end of legislation or arbitrary barriers prohibiting Catholics from purchasing or inheriting property. Led by Lord George Gordon, as many as 30,000 people protested the changes by rioting in 1780, opening up prison gates, destroying property, attacking institutions ranging from the Fleet Prison to the Bank of England, and causing several hundred deaths. The Gordon riots demonstrated the intolerance that could still afflict London, but the city exhibited greater religious diversity, as even more arbitrary boundaries diminished, during the Georgian period. Anglicanism remained an important force, but nonconformity flourished, too, with Methodists particularly thriving, while Presbyterians, Baptists, Independents, and Quakers also worshiped freely, as Protestant dissent spread. By contrast, Catholics continued to confront religious prejudices. Whether for religious or secular reasons, Londoners, by way of philanthropy and legacies, supported the establishment of five large new hospitals, including, in 1719, Westminster General Infirmary on James Street, designed to attend to the infirm and the needy. The Lock Hospital and St. George’s Hospital, which cared for patients with venereal diseases and the mentally ill, respectively, were established in mid-century. Other charitable institutions emerged, too, like a School for the Indigent Blind, in St. George’s Fields; the Society for the Relief and Discharge of Persons Confined for Small Debts, on Cravan Street; and the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor, on Parliament Street. Scores of Anglican charity schools appeared, but secular developments continued to transform England’s leading metropolis.

Georgian London

Significantly, one chronicler noted as early as 1747, “London has been justly described as a world by itself, in which we may discover more new countries, and surprising singularities, than in all the universe besides.”70 Samuel Johnson insisted that there existed “in London all that life can afford.”71 The pleasure gardens and parks flourished, along with theaters, coffeehouses, circulating libraries, concerts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and dens of inequity. So too did fairs, like those in Southwark, Mayfair, and Bartholomew, featuring “sideshows, rope-dancers, wire-walkers, acrobats, puppets, freaks, and sometimes wild animals,” along with “pickpockets and prostitutes.”72 Special celebrations occurred annually, revolving around the anniversaries of such events as William the Conqueror’s landing on English soil and Guy Fawkes’s attempt to blow up Parliament. Londoners continued enjoying shooting competitions, racing sculls on the Thames, playing football, bowling, and practicing archery. They also retained an interest in bull-baiting, bear-baiting, and boxing. An intermingling of various classes, or the breaking down of arbitrary barriers regarding social relations, necessarily occurred at many events, to the astonishment of foreign onlookers. From 1714 to 1837, Georgian London experienced considerable alterations, which involved a recasting of social, political, religious, cultural, and economic arbitrary barriers, while becoming the dominant city in Europe. In spite of class chasms, political corruption, and other social ailments, London remained vibrant, with lively intellectual discourse, fine arts presentations, and popular culture flourishing; London stood as the nation’s intellectual, artistic, and cultural center. City dwellers appeared more accepting of modernity than remaining tied to beliefs and theories rooted in superstition and dogma. By the end of this period, London exhibited another kind of expansiveness, containing new turnpike roads; better lighting, due to the appearance of several gas companies; improved water supplies; a greater facility for tackling fires; and a deepened awareness about social ills. Concerns regarding the seemingly pervasive

73

74


criminality that afflicted London enabled Sir Robert Peel in 1829 to establish the Metropolitan Police, which was initially headquartered in Great Scotland Yard, near Whitehall, and whose members were nicknamed “bobbies” or “peelers” after Great Britain’s home secretary. Improved living standards existed for many, thanks to better medical care and building directives, although a large pool of Londoners remained mired in desperate straits, afflicted with unemployment or underemployment, poor housing, uncertainties regarding even basic foodstuffs, and social pathologies of various kinds. Londoners remained deeply enmeshed in the affairs of government, serving as officials, belonging to the civil bureaucracy, or taking to the streets to protest acts of Parliament or the crown. They thus again demonstrated a ready willingness to challenge arbitrary borders involving elites and others, the City and the suburbs, or London and the rest of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (formed through the Act of Union of 1800, which consisted of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland).

8 Victorian London

76


he dynasty of the Hanovers ended with Queen Victoria’s reign, which lasted from 1837 to 1901. During her lengthy rule, the Industrial Revolution continued to transform life for Londoners, bringing misery to some and prosperity to others, although conditions generally began to improve in the last half of the nineteenth century, with reshaped arbitrary borders of a geographical, economic, government, and imperial nature. Throughout the Victorian era, Londoners maintained their steady procession to the suburbs, thanks in part to improved transportation facilities, which included the ringing of railroad stations around London and the world’s first subway system. Changes in the makeup of the city’s government took place, too, with the establishment in 1888 of the County of London and the London County Council, possibly “the first time since the Roman Londonium that there had been one single controlling authority attempting to administer the chaos that called itself London.”73 The City of London insisted on remaining outside those frameworks, resulting in the dilution of some of its power over Southwark and other outside districts. The lord mayor’s authority also decreased, with greater power coming to reside with the chairman of the London County Council. The City of London was still a potent force, nevertheless, as scores of British banks, based in London, had branches worldwide by 1900. Foreign banks, in turn, began to establish London branches. As A.N. Wilson noted, much of modern London was constructed during Queen Victoria’s reign, from the new Palace of Westminster, the Gothic-style home of Parliament built by Charles Barry, to the suburbs that continued to spread out all around the city. When the 18-year-old Victoria assumed the throne in 1837, London, with its teeming population of 2 million, stood at the center of the greatest empire the world had yet witnessed. Sixty-four years later, the British Empire was larger still, spanning 11 million square miles, one-fourth of the world’s land surface, while London had nearly 5 million residents— despite a series of cholera epidemics that took tens of thousands of lives. The population of the City, however, had fallen to

T

Victorian London

around 27,000. The overall population was increasingly diverse with ethnic arbitrary borders becoming less rigid as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would unhappily reflect, when he referred to London as “that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.”74 In the midst of its demographic boom, London underwent a transportation revolution that allowed for a further shaping of the city’s geographic arbitrary borders. A series of turnpikes appeared early in the nineteenth century, with tolls required for roads and bridges; although the London, Blackfriars, and Westminster bridges avoided tolls, only the purchase of a number of other major road bridges by the Metropolitan Board of Works allowed for their tolls to be lifted. Various suburban areas featured tolls and gates of their own, also hampering easy movement through the city. Eventually, the horse-drawn omnibus became a familiar sight in London, while railways and steam engines brought about dramatic alterations involving residential and work patterns. By the middle of the nineteenth century, England possessed the beginnings of a national railway system, with London serving as a hub for towns and cities throughout England, and by extension, the rest of the British Isles. London acquired this pre-eminence because of its prime geographical location, huge population base, economic might, and political potency. In 1836, just one year before the Victorian era began, London Bridge Station opened, soon followed by other railway stations, including ones in Paddington and Fenchurch Street, the first to appear in the City. By the end of the 1840s, additional stations could be found in Euston and Waterloo, while King’s Cross opened in 1852. The next decade saw railway companies conduct “their most spectacular invasion of the city,” building bridges over the Thames and expanding “into the very heart of the capital.” In 1860, Victoria Station was located close to the queen’s palace, while Charing Cross Station and Blackfriars arrived in 1864, followed in the next two years by Broad Street in the City and Cannon Street. From 1867 to 1869, a new station

77

78


was built at Holborn Viaduct, which itself was used for road traffic and spanned “1,400 feet long and a majestic 80 feet wide, bridging the valley of the Fleet.”75 Railway traffic mushroomed, producing massive congestion in central London. Charles Pearson, solicitor to the City of London, urged the building of an underground network to transport people, which conjured up concerns ranging from the solidity of the foundations of houses above the lines to the possibility that French soldiers could use such an underground passage. Necessity, however, trumped such fears, resulting in construction of the world’s first underground railway, which opened for business in 1863. Largely built just a few feet below ground level, generally beneath wide streets, the Metropolitan Railway Company’s trains traversed the four miles from Paddington to Farringdon Street. Londoners called the network the Underground, and its very existence transformed arbitrary barriers of several types, involving matters ranging from transportation and housing patterns to the workplace. The same period also witnessed the introduction of the horse-drawn trams, which ran on rails built along existing thoroughfares. The first successful tram operations followed parliamentary authorization in 1869 of the laying-out of lines next to approach roads, largely in heavily populated South and East London. Three years later, Parliament felt compelled to preclude the running of tramways through the City and the West End. Trams, however, continued reaching out to London suburbs, and, by 1875, were carrying nearly 50 million passengers annually. Further expansion of the suburbs near the close of the century resulted in considerable congestion in the City yet again. This, in turn, led to the first electric tube line, the City and South London Railway, which opened in 1890 and ran for three miles from King William Street to the suburb of Stockwell. Technical difficulties prevented electrically powered trains from becoming successful until about 1900, after which point the building of electric tube lines expanded quickly.

Victorian London

GROWTH AND MORE GROWTH

The expansion of the railways helped to transform London’s physical makeup impressively and to further reshape its arbitrary boundaries. The displacement of working-class houses and neighborhoods, along with small businesses, multiplied accordingly. Many of those forced out of the condemned houses were tenants, entitled to no legal compensation; railway companies sometimes offered small payments, but provided no replacement housing even when required to do so. Compelled to move, poor Londoners obtained lodging where they could, although the Chatham and Dover’s Metropolitan Extensions Act mandated the running of trains with inexpensive fares for workers. New communities sprang up near the railway stations, with much of the housing poorly constructed and dispiriting, in the eyes of many. Conservative Party leader Benjamin Disraeli complained, “It is impossible to conceive of anything more tame, more insipid, more uniform. Pancras is like Marylebone, Marylebone is like Paddington.”76 Charles Dickens, in Dombey and Son, pointed to the shattering effects of the railways on Camden Town: The first shock of a great earthquake had … rent the whole neighbourhood to its centre. Traces of its course were visible on every side. Houses were knocked down; streets broken through and stopped; deep pits and trenches dug in the ground; enormous heaps of earth and clay thrown up; buildings that were undermined and shaking, propped by great beams of wood. Here, a chaos of charts, overthrown and jumbled together, lay topsy-turvy at the bottom of a steep unnatural hill; there, confused treasures of iron soaked and rusted in something that had accidentally become a pond. Everywhere were bridges that led nowhere; thoroughfares that were wholly impassable … temporary wooden houses and enclosures, in the most unlikely situations; carcases of ragged tenements, and fragments of unfinished walls and arches, and piles of scaffolding, and wilderness of bricks, and

79

80


giant forms of cranes, and tripods straddling above nothing … mounds of ashes blocked up rights of way, and wholly changed the law and custom of the neighbourhood.77

London’s transportation revolution allowed for the breaking down of geographical arbitrary barriers, enabling commuters to reside more easily in farther-flung suburbs. Despite the complaints of Disraeli and Dickens, additional housing emerged for middle-class suburbanites, who were merely a train ride away from the heart of London. Furthermore, working-class suburban areas cropped up and continued to grow. The suburbs offered countless business opportunities for builders, realtors, attorneys, and shopkeepers, among others, while serving as a kind of safety-valve for London, Roy Porter astutely noted. He contended that suburban development “allowed continued expansion, demographically and economically, by decanting the affluent out of inner-city areas, many of which were being blighted by the very technology that permitted suburbia to develop.”78 After the laying out of the exclusive residential districts of Kensington and Belgravia, the availability of central land for construction purposes all but disappeared, while previously fashionable spots like Soho and Fitzrovia lacked the stature they earlier possessed. The solution was to build flats or mansion blocks containing new residences, which resulted in the replacement of Georgian architecture as well as many churches devised by Christopher Wren. Also appearing in London were hotels like the Savoy, Garland’s, the Great Western Royal, the Westminster Palace, and the Carlton, catering to country gentry, affluent travelers from the continent or overseas, and other well-heeled individuals. Department stores, including William Whiteley’s and the Army and Navy Stores, attracted customers in major centers, while Harrods began as a grocery store in Knightsbridge but was converted into an emporium featuring a vast panoply of goods. As the end of the nineteenth century approached, Thomas Lipton had set up scores of grocery stores in London, a feat soon

Victorian London

duplicated by the International Tea Company and other enterprises. FROM MISERY TO THE MUSIC HALL

As England’s leading city underwent territorial and demographic changes, many problems arose, which John Ruskin bemoaned: “That great foul city of London—rattling, growling, smoking, stinking—ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork, pouring out poison at every pore.”79 Typhus afflicted even wealthy Londoners. Charles Dickens underscored both the dreary nature of general conditions in London and the particular plight of the poor. During the midpoint of the nineteenth century, he informed a journalist, “The amount of crime, starvation and nakedness or misery of every sort in the metropolis surpasses all understanding.”80 Working conditions were dire for many, including women and children entering the labor market, with hours long, wages low, and abusive conditions proliferating. While London’s economic revolution provided work in teeming factories thanks to the Industrial Revolution, thousands were forced to live by their wits, hoping for temporary work in the Dock area and scavenging in the streets or sewers. Many slept in dilapidated lodging-houses, paying a penny-a-night for temporary lodging, or lacked housing altogether. Popular entertainment thrived, with a type of working-class culture emerging, thereby reshaping still more arbitrary boundaries that affected the common citizenry. Those with the financial means could eat in “cook-shop, eating rooms and street-stands,” stop at coffee-stalls, or obtain food in open street markets.81 Despite a temperance movement, Londoners continued to partake of alcoholic drinks. They also engaged in betting, with horse racing especially becoming popular after the introduction of both the popular press and the railway telegraph; the poor gravitated to rat-matches, which involved tallying up the number of rodents that dogs killed during evening sessions in special pits. A reduction in the workweek for many, leading to half-holidays on Saturdays coupled with Sundays off, enabled

81

82


Street entertainment thrived in London as people had more leisure time. Punch and Judy shows, such as this one outside the Haymarket Theatre in London in 1910, provided light entertainment for the masses.

individuals to choose between the pub, the street, and the family. Important venues ranged from football to the music hall, from scandalous or pornographic literature to street entertainers, including Punch and Judy performers in Leicester Square and fire-eaters in Gray’s Inn Lane. Theatrical shows continued to attract large crowds, with prostitutes frequently awaiting the end of performances to solicit customers. Almost 3,000 brothels could be found in the London area, along with tens of thousands of prostitutes, many of them children, seeking clients from across the class spectrum. Middle-class and wealthy Londoners took part in various pleasures, both licit and illicit, in the fashion of the less affluent. In a London seemingly far removed from the dour conditions frequently drawn by Dickens, lavish balls, elegant restaurants,

Victorian London

rich clubs, and new theaters were regularly frequented. Those with the financial means rode in horse-drawn vehicles, sported bicycles, and sat in motorcars, which they began to purchase. Their homes might well contain hardbound books, magazines, and newspapers, along with glass doors, lace curtains, carpeted stairs, china vases, pianos, hot water, telephones, and gas lighting. Domestic help was relatively inexpensive even for many middle-class families, who engaged in sporting activities, joined literary or debating societies, took walks in city parks, and, by the end of the nineteenth century, watched a procession of new cinematic releases. Exclusive clubs, such as Pall Mall and St. James’s, provided luxurious settings for London’s gentlemen class. Wealthy and not-so-affluent Londoners came together on special occasions, like the Great Exhibition of the Works of All Nations, held in 1851 in the glass and iron Crystal Palace, designed in Hyde Park by Sir Joseph Paxton and sponsored by Prince Albert. The financial success of the Great Exhibition, which contained some 19,000 exhibits and attracted more than 6 million visitors, allowed for the construction of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal Albert Hall. In 1887 and 1897, respectively, Londoners also attended the Golden and Diamond Jubilees, held in honor of Queen Victoria while underscoring London’s position at the center of the British Empire. PUBLIC AID AND PUBLIC WORKS

Throughout the Victorian era, Londoners from across the economic spectrum were affected by various reform efforts that frequently involved attempts to redraw arbitrary boundaries of different sorts. In 1834, Edwin Chadwick helped to bring about passage of the Poor Law Amendment Act, which resulted in a refusal to provide “able-bodied” individuals any assistance from royal officials except in workhouses, where conditions were made quite harsh to discourage such solicitations. Increasingly, it became clear that the majority of those seeking public assistance were ill, a problem heightened by the influenza and

83

84


THE GREAT EXHIBITION In 1851, hoping to display how the British Empire had shattered arbitrary barriers in transnational fashion around the globe, its leaders held the Great Exhibition of the Works of All Nations in London. Initiated by Queen Victoria’s German husband, Prince Albert, the exhibition was held in the heart of Hyde Park in the dazzling, prefabricated, glass and iron Crystal Palace, designed in 10 days by Joseph Paxton, and intended to underscore the superiority of British industry. Hyde Park was spruced up, through collections of statues, spectacular offerings of Brock’s fireworks, a display that sought to replicate extinct animals, and magnificent fountains, containing nearly 12,000 jets and using 120,000 gallons of water at full capacity. Drawing daily crowds of more than 40,000, and a total audience of over six million people, the exhibition proved so profitable that the government was able to construct the Albertopolis in South Kensington, made up of a series of buildings that included the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Royal Albert Hall, the Natural History Museum, and the Science Museum. Queen Victoria reportedly made 42 visits to the site, although Charles Dickens supposedly only showed up twice. Visited by notables, middle-class individuals, and members of the working class, the 19,000 exhibits included the world’s largest pearl, the Koh-i-Noor diamond, china, glass, and cutlery of all kinds. Prince Albert intended the Great Exhibition to demonstrate the worldwide scope of the British Empire. Objects on display came from all parts of the empire, including India, Australia, and New Zealand, the latter two examples of white settler societies; they also came from the United States (itself a former white settler society). Many visitors arrived from throughout the British Isles or the European continent. They encountered courtyards presenting the history of art and architecture, dating from ancient Egypt through the Renaissance, along with exhibits highlighting both industry and the natural environment. The enormous, arched Centre Transept featured large concerts, a circus, and feats, including those by Charles Blondin, the acclaimed tightrope walker from France. National exhibitions were offered, ranging from aeronautics to motor, cat, dog, pigeon, and flower shows. The exhibition’s great popularity and financial success resulted in a decision to relocate the Crystal Palace to Sydenham Hill in South London. The 200-acre Victorian theme park opened in June 1854, with two railways stations built for the expected onrush of customers. The park provided the backdrop for the Festival of Empire in 1911, but a fire destroyed much of the Crystal Palace 25 years later.

Victorian London

typhoid epidemics of 1837–1838. Chadwick’s subsequent report, The Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population (1842), contended that disease and living conditions were interconnected and called for the establishment of a national public-health agency. The conservative administration of Sir Robert Peel refused to act as Chadwick advised, but the new liberal government, headed by Lord John Russell, obtained parliamentary passage of the Public Health Act in 1848, which set up a Central Board of Health. That central authority possessed the power to establish local boards of health involved with water supply, sewage, street cleaning, and inspection. London’s boroughs and the City of London were not covered by the new act, but were supposedly covered, however inadequately, by the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers and the Sewers Act of 1848, respectively. Landlords and water companies strenuously battled against the introduction of public health reforms. In 1855, the Metropolitan Board of Works was established to ensure “the better management of the metropolis in respect of the sewage and drainage and the paving, cleansing, lighting and improvements thereof.”82 The so-called great stink of June 30, 1858, emanating from the Thames River, persuaded Parliament to allow the Board of Works to establish a new sewage system spanning more than 1,250 miles, designed by the board’s chief engineer, Sir Joseph Bazalgette. By contrast, attempts to improve London’s water supply, urged by Chadwick, long foundered, although private companies were compelled to introduce filtration systems; early in the twentieth century, those companies were municipalized. The Metropolitan Board of Works was more successful in initiating road improvements, although frequently at the cost of existing housing. The Board of Works also attended to the city’s parks, but the problem of the metropolis’s slums proved more intractable. Measures to reduce smoke and other types of air pollution similarly had little effect, although London’s fogginess appeared to abate to some extent in the 1890s, as Londoners became spread out over a greater expanse of territory.

85

86


Concerns about the city’s social and economic difficulties led many to fear that London, like Paris, might serve as a backdrop to political revolution. London avoided that fate, experiencing instead a series of reforms, which continued to alter arbitrary boundaries, throughout the last several decades of the nineteenth century. The Reform Act of 1832 had initiated a lengthy process of enfranchisement, giving many middle-class men the right to vote and more than doubling London’s representation in the House of Commons. That measure, however, led many working-class Londoners to feel betrayed, and drives to establish trade unions escalated. Eventually, the London Working Men’s Association, headed by William Lovett and Francis Place, set the stage for The People’s Charter of 1838, which demanded universal male suffrage, annual sessions of Parliament, the discarding of property qualifications for members of the House of Commons, and the carving out of equal electoral districts. Altogether, three such petitions were presented, but Parliament refused to respond other than by arresting Chartist leaders and, in 1848, by stationing large numbers of troops throughout the London area. Prince Albert, troubled by events in London, wrote a note on May 6 of that year, worrying about the following: We have Chartist riots every night …the organization of these people is incredible. They have secret signals and correspond from town to town by carrier pigeons. In London they are from 10,000 to 20,000 strong, which is not much out of a population of two million; but if they could, by means of their organization, throw themselves in a body upon any one point, they might be successful in a coup de main.83

For their part, the Chartists rejected the possibility of violent insurrection, even as revolutions erupted on the continent. Political changes did ultimately take place, with the Reform Act of 1867 doubling the size of the electorate, enfranchising many working-class men, and once more increasing the number of London’s MPs. Similar increases again occurred in 1884, with

Victorian London

London’s MP representation more than doubling. Such moves hardly placated everyone, with the Social Democratic Federation, a Marxist organization led by H.M. Hyndman, and the Fabian Society, whose founders included George Bernard Shaw and Sidney Webb, appearing in London in the early 1880s. Unions, too, attracted more support, with scores cropping up throughout the region. Such militancy set the stage in 1900 for the founding of the Labour Representation Committee, the precursor to the Labour Party. The Victorian era ended with the death of the queen on January 22, 1901. Under her lengthy rule, Londoners had witnessed imperial glory. Great Britain’s reach extended farther than ever, establishing new arbitrary borders that assured dominance over 372 million people, helping to sustain the boast that “the sun never sets on the British Empire.” The empire had expanded yet again during Victoria’s last decades, thanks to the age of the “New Imperialism” that saw European states grab territories, not always in an uncontested fashion, in Asia and Africa. Meanwhile, seemingly ever-changing London served as a repository for government and financial networks engaged in imperial pursuits. Like the empire, London itself “was physically enormous,” heading “from six to fifteen miles in every direction from the center,” with commuter trains allowing for a reaching out to new suburbs.84 For some, however, including the writer H.G. Wells, the preeminence of “the greatest power in the world” and “the great Mother of Cities” appeared tenuous in a more advanced technological age. In his fin-de-siecle novel, The War of the Worlds, Wells predicted how south England and London could suffer a “poisonous vapor,” with its “touch … the inhaling of its pungent wisps … death to all that breathes.” Wells foresaw “the great disaster that had come on humanity,” which ironically, could teach “us pity—pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion.” The War of the Worlds, written during a period of heightened imperialism and an intensifying arms race, concluded with Wells’s observation that “we cannot regard this planet as being

87

88


fenced in and a secure abiding place for Man”; in other words, Wells recognized that arbitrary borders could be overcome, resulting in apocalyptic developments. Sadly, his prescience would be borne out in the following century and the one that succeeded it. On more than occasion, London itself would suffer the consequences.85

9 Edwardian London and the House of Windsor

90


he death of Queen Victoria in 1901 ushered in Edwardian London, beginning with the relatively short reign of Edward VII, which lasted until 1910. As its population neared 5 million, London possessed a more extensive territorial reach, with countless single-family houses boasting small backyards or gardens, while housing in the City was neglected. A contemporary account in Building News had referred to London as a “huge overgrown Metropolis” that contained a “tide of small houses.”86 Increasingly, London, having pushed aside geographical barriers of an arbitrary nature, stood as “a ‘conurbation,’ a collection of radically different urban centers linked by a web of metropolitan trains, buses, and taxis.”87 The advent of World War I resulted in Zeppelin raids on the capital city and competition from New York as the center of world trade. It also led to King George V’s adoption of the House of Windsor as the British Royal Family’s official name in 1917 to assuage any concerns about ancestral ties to Germany, England’s leading foe during the Great War. During the 1920s, London’s population continued to surge, soon approaching 7.5 million, compelling the London County Council to engage in slum clearance projects and to build new housing in more far-flung suburbs. Unemployment mounted as hard times rippled through the decade, culminating in a general strike in 1926 that led to the calling in of the army. Despite the economic uncertainties, intellectual boundaries of an arbitrary nature continued being pushed aside, with the Bloomsbury Group, including Virginia Woolf and John Maynard Keynes, capturing the attention of many. New horizons were reached through cinema, radio, and television. Events with global significance, including some occurring in London itself, continued to affect the city’s residents. Londoners listened as Edward VIII abdicated his throne in 1936 to marry an America divorcée, while native fascists conducted marches in England, including in London’s West End. During the Edwardian age, London, still afflicted with large numbers of desperately poor individuals and families, remained the greatest city in the world, exuding the sense of superiority

T


that had characterized the Victorian period. The Underground or the Tube became electrified in 1902, with steam trains abandoned. Renowned academic institutions continued to become more visible in London, as they had under the Victorians. The University of London became the largest institution of higher learning in Great Britain, while constituent institutions like the London School of Economics and the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine acquired considerable stature. Splendor characterized new hotels, such as the Ritz and Norman Shaw’s Piccadilly; new theaters abounded, including the Palladium, the Palace, Wyndham’s, and the London Pavilion; new shops appeared, like the revamped Harrods on Brompton Road and Waring & Gillow’s on Oxford Street; and new restaurants, banks, shops, and offices sprang up, as well. Wealthy Londoners possessed magnificent town houses or still larger mansions, while reveling in the new Edwardian streets that carried horse-drawn vehicles, bicycles, and motorcars, taxis, and omnibuses. While Regent Street was rebuilt, the thoroughfare of Kingsway coursed its way to Holborn, as a tunnel ran underneath. Soon, grand buildings appeared along that road, including the London Opera House, the Stoll Theatre, and the Australia House. In keeping with London’s pre-eminence, the city was the host of the 1908 Olympic Games. London’s position of unrivaled supremacy, however, was already becoming more problematic. While the City remained a center for English and international bankers, England’s dominance of world trade was abating. In addition, as early as the 1890s, the United States had surpassed England as the leading industrial nation. Perhaps a foreshadowing of the diminished stature of both Great Britain and London should have been recognized during the so-called “naughty nineties,” when conventional boundaries of an arbitrary nature were increasingly challenged. A number of intellectuals and young people were drawn to bohemianism, leading them to experiment with nontraditional social, cultural, and sexual practices. The playwrights

91

92


Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, both born in Ireland but residing in London, probed standard social mores, while the novelist H.G. Wells, in The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds, used science fiction and fantasy to call into question arbitrary barriers involving science, nature, man, and the universe. The Edwardian age hardly witnessed a moderating of such provocative queries, with Emmeline, Christabel, and Sylvia Pankhurst founding the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903, demanding “Votes for Women.” After Christabel’s arrest two years later, her mother, Emmeline, started a militant suffragette campaign, which necessarily insisted on the termination of various arbitrary barriers involving gender. The new tabloid press, led by the Daily Mail, regularly reported on the suffragettes, telegraphing its stories to other municipalities, thereby ensuring that “Fleet Street virtually dominated what people read about the world around them.”88 As of 1914, the fourth year of the reign of George V, the City of London remained the apex of commerce and credit for the British Empire. Increasingly, London was dominated by the service sector, which itself was characterized by greater specialization, productivity, and the acquiring of new external markets. The pound sterling, backed by the Bank of England and the national Treasury, provided the major currency for world trade, ensuring the additional growth of British investment and commerce. THE TENTACLES OF WAR

Great Britain’s fortunes and those of the capital city, along with its arbitrary borders, began to alter dramatically with the advent of World War I in August 1914. Initially, Londoners confidently supported the war effort, with young men eagerly putting on military uniforms. As the war began, Prime Minister Herbert H. Asquith declared, “War or anything that seems likely to lead to war is always popular with the London mob.” But he pointed to the statement by Sir Robert Walpole, “Now they are ringing their bells; in a few weeks they’ll be wringing their hands.”89 The


economy of the metropolis expanded, with full employment arriving, construction halted, parks and squares employed as kitchen-gardens, and hotels converted into government offices or residences. On the other hand, London soon had more foreign restaurants and émigrés, and refused to shut down its music or dance halls. Less happily, Germany began conducting Zeppelin raids on London in 1915, involving gas-filled airships that flew at a height of 10,000 to 15,000 feet; the Germans carried on those raids intermittently throughout the duration of the war. Londoners condemned the Zeppelins as “baby killers.” The civilian loss of life surpassed 600, with another 1,000 to 2,000 injured. Most dramatic, the aerial assault demonstrated that twentieth-century London was hardly immune to military assaults. The city suffered still more grievously on the continent, with the front less than 100 miles away, as nearly 125,000 Londoners perished in the war. The end of the war in November 1918 resulted in an outpouring of euphoria. The war helped to bring about a reshaping of arbitrary borders involving nation-states and rival empires, demonstrating through the employment of aerial bombardments, poison gas, submarine attacks, and trench warfare, the dimensions to which humanity could sink. England and London experienced a further lessening of their economic and political power, and more challenges to imperial dominion took hold. Gender relations too endured changes, with women working in factories and offices during the war. That, in turn, provided an impetus for the suffragettes, who watched in 1918 as Parliament afforded women over the age of 30 the right to vote. The end of the war resulted in a large expansion of public transportation, with the establishment of new railway lines and the birth of so-called metroland, named for the Metropolitan Line that extended London’s suburbs deep into the countryside of Hertfordshire. THE ROARING TWENTIES

Following the Armistice, London, like Great Britain overall,

93

94


initially benefited from an economic boom, although the East End suffered from high unemployment and generally tough times. In 1919, the Labour Party captured the East End borough councils, while the socialist George Lansbury became mayor of the borough of Poplar. Because of a severe slump that developed by 1920, taxing economic circumstances soon became more widespread. Refusing to follow the national government’s approach of failing to attend to the needs of the poor, the Poplar borough councilors, led by Lansbury, went to jail rather than cut relief payments for the unemployed. In other pockets of London, long lines of individuals seeking relief, hunger marches, and strikes developed. Meanwhile, clashes continued between proponents of Poplarism, which has been likened to Chartism as a working-class movement, and the national government, which eventually felt compelled to adopt a more generous position. Despite such economic and political turmoil, London featured another celebration, the British Empire Exhibition, held at Wembley, in 1924 and 1925. A new economic downturn subsequently led to a 10-day general strike in May 1926, which had considerable backing among London laborers and helped to generate an audience for the radio performances of the new British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). On a lighter note, London experienced its own version of the Roaring Twenties, with jazz, flappers, and a kind of hedonism proving popular. The Bloomsbury Group, made up of writers and artists, also contested arbitrary barriers of all kinds, as its members championed modernism, feminism, pacifism, vegetarianism, spiritualism, sexual experimentation, and free thought. Among the key figures in this influential group were the writers Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, and Lytton Strachey, the economist John Maynard Keynes, the painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, and the musician Saxon Sydney-Turner. On the outskirts of the Bloomsbury Set, but sometimes attending sessions, were figures like the philosopher Bertrand Russell, the writer Aldous Huxley, and the American poet T.S. Eliot.


AN UNCERTAIN ECONOMY

Hard economic times returned with the advent of the Great Depression, which heightened unemployment and resulted in a sharpening of class tensions in London. England suffered economically, leading to the abandonment in 1931 of the gold standard, only recently restored. The obvious financial disaster, Francis Sheppard argued, proved to be “a severe setback for the City and the Establishment in general,” and was followed by a discarding of free trade within the empire.90 At the same time, London itself became still more powerful within Great Britain, as the city acquired greater political authority, with expanded representation in Parliament. As the Depression wound on, Conservative, Liberal, and Labour party leaders responded inadequately to the severity of the financial difficulties besetting the nation. Unemployment benefits ended after 26 weeks; at that point, those still without work could receive transitional benefits if they met the stringent Household Means Test, established in 1931. Three years later, the Unemployment Assistance Board was set up to care for the longterm jobless, but resulting relief remained highly inadequate. The National Unemployed Workers’ Movement, connected with the Communist Party, orchestrated a series of hunger marches, including one involving 200 blind people, who headed into London in 1936, an eventful year in which Edward VIII ascended to the throne and then abdicated, enabling his brother to become George VI. That same year, the Jarrow Borough Council sponsored a 300-mile trek to London. M.P. Ellen Wilkinson supported the 200 marchers, all carefully selected, and their petition for government assistance. The coalition government, headed by the Conservative Stanley Baldwin, failed to respond. Such inaction, coupled with worldwide events, led Sir Oswald Mosley, who had been an M.P. as a member of both the Conservative and Labour parties, to eventually form the British Union of Fascists. On October 4, 1936, Mosley led black-shirted party members on a provocative procession through the East End, with its sizable Jewish population, resulting in massive

95

96


On October 11, 1936, one week after Sir Oswald Mosley led a black-shirted procession of Fascists through Victoria Park in the East End of London on October 4, 1936, the Communists, the Labour Party, and the trade unions mounted a massive counterdemonstration.

counterdemonstrations spearheaded by the Communist Party, the Labour Party, and trade unions. Neither Mosley’s brand of fascism nor the Communist Party, however, acquired much support in London, or indeed, throughout Great Britain. In The Road to Wigan Pier, published in 1937, George Orwell astutely suggested that “fish and chips, art-silk stockings, tinned salmon, cut-price chocolates … the movies, the radio, strong tea and the Football Pools have between them averted revolution.”91 In the last four years of the decade, the London County Council, dominated by Labour Party members, largely adopted the program of Herbert Morrison, who proclaimed, “Up with the Houses! Down with the Slum!”92 The Council helped bring


about the construction of about 4,000 flats each year, quadrupling the number built during the first part of the 1930s. As it turned out, much of the building occurred in new outlying areas and would shelter middle-class Londoners, as well as workingclass individuals. The London County Council also allocated more funds for hospitals, education, health, welfare, parks, open spaces, cafes, and tennis courts, ushering in “local government with a human face,” Francis Sheppard asserted.93 Other examples of progress occurred during the final interwar years, particularly as economic circumstances improved somewhat. London’s transportation network stood at its peak, with new suburban stations, designed by Charles Holden, for the Underground; trolleybuses replacing trams; and the vast array of problems caused by private automobiles yet to surface fully. More families could purchase private housing than at any point in London’s history, as such housing became affordable even for decently paid laborers and clerks. Alan Jackson wrote, “Finding a new home within their financial reach, many thousands had their living standards transformed; in a few short years, the sum of human happiness was immeasurably increased.”94 As the 1930s neared a close, however, a great deal of uncertainty enveloped London, owing less to economic conditions than to expansionary designs of dictatorial regimes, determined to transform the arbitrary borders separating nationstates. Now with a population of nearly 9 million, London remained the leading metropolis in the British Empire, although it faced more competition from other great cities across the globe. Its territorial makeup was larger than ever, with more countryside having been taken over by suburban growth, demonstrating the ability of urban centers to encroach on the arbitrary boundaries associated with rural sectors. Other artificial divisions, including those pertaining to class, had scarcely disappeared and large numbers of Londoners continued to experience trying economic times, but more opportunities for landownership had arisen. Other arbitrary boundaries, involving intellectual pursuits, continued to be

97

98


contested, with émigrés like the psychiatrist Sigmund Freud and the economist Friedrich von Hayek among those who challenged standard shibboleths while helping to enrich scientific and cultural pursuits in London. The outbreak of another world war, of course, would threaten the very existence of those who championed modernism in various guises and, for a time, London itself.

10 Postwar London and the New Towns

100


orld War II dramatically transformed London, with German bombs falling on the city, resulting in great suffering and the loss of 30,000 lives. The aerial attacks by the Luftwaffe, which ironically helped to uncover a long-hidden portion of the Roman Wall, starkly demonstrated that London was hardly immune to the technological genius that could translate into horrors in the modern era. Even the ancient separation of England from the European continent, setting up a physical arbitrary barrier resulting from sedimentary developments, failed to shield London from aerial bombardments. The war wounded England financially, crippling industrial concerns and leaving behind a crushing debt, but London, like the nation altogether, soon emerged with a hopeful, even optimistic tenor. Another kind of arbitrary barrier had been surmounted in the summer of 1945, shortly after the Allied victory in Europe, when the British Labour Party overwhelmed Winston Churchill and the Conservatives in the general elections. Labour, for the first time, possessed a sweeping electoral majority and an apparently clear mandate to usher in a major extension of the British welfare state. Economic difficulties and the challenge to arbitrary boundaries of an imperial nature, however, led to the continuation of rationing on the one hand and the sloughing off of colonial possessions on the other. The horrors of the war and concerns regarding totalitarianism and the emerging Cold War, pitting the Soviet Union and its allies against the West, resulted in George Orwell’s gripping tales, Animal Farm and 1984. In keeping with the Labour government of Clement Attlee, the London County Council and city planners, including Patrick Abercrombie, strove to provide more services while establishing a Green Belt that encircled London, with new towns planned to be built beyond the belt. Major rebuilding throughout London, particularly in the hard-hit East End, was required, but planners also foresaw the development of the South Bank. Responding to a severe housing shortage, the government constructed high-rise buildings on sites in Pimlico and the East End that had been heavily bombed during the war. The hopeful attitude of many

W


101

Londoners was nurtured by the 1948 Olympic Games and the 1951 Festival of Britain. Herbert Morrison spearheaded the festival, designed to commemorate the Great Exhibition of 1851 and to celebrate Great Britain’s post-war recovery, which

THE OLYMPIC GAMES IN LONDON In 1896, spurred on by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the modern Olympic Games began in Athens. De Coubertin hoped the sporting competition would break down arbitrary barriers between nation-states, which had proven so corrosive. London hosted the fourth games, and the International Olympic Committee in June 1939 granted the city the 1944 Summer Games. The outbreak of World War II resulted in a cancellation of those games, but in 1946, London was again chosen to host the next Summer Olympics. London was still in the midst of reconstruction, following the Blitz that had crippled it. Londoners proved determined to prepare their city for the flood of worldclass athletes, with a decision to house many in military barracks and school buildings. Various government buildings were temporarily turned over to the organizers of the Games, including some for use by the media. Information about numerous events would be transmitted worldwide through short-wave radio transmission, while television audiences in the British Isles watched broadcasts of the events. New records for participation were set, as 59 countries and over 4,000 athletes competed for Olympic glory. The brightest star of the games was 30year-old Fanny Blankers-Koen of the Netherlands, the mother of two children, who garnered gold medals in the 80-meter hurdles, the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter race, and the 4x100-meter relay. Also shining was Bob Mathias, a 17-year-old high school graduate from Tulare, California, who won the decathlon. While Hungarian and Czechoslovakian athletes, including the great long-distance runner Emil Zátopek, competed, in the spirit of de Coubertin, the Soviet Union refused to do so, as the Cold War entered a new, dangerous phase. Arbitrary borders involving ideology again afflicted the Olympic movement. In the post-Cold War era, the Olympics have hardly remained immune to differences between nation-states and regarding worldviews. London, the world’s greatest metropolitan center, outlasted fellow competitors New York City, Paris, and Moscow to be named host of the 2012 Olympic Games.

102


remained incomplete. The festival led to the construction of arts buildings like the South Bank Centre near Waterloo. Although the Great Smog (resulting from fog, smoke, and pollution) of December 6, 1952, reportedly led to the unanticipated death of about 4,000 people, the 1953 coronation of Elizabeth II helped to engender a spirit of optimism. By that point, Winston Churchill was in the midst of a second term as British prime minister, while the efforts to continue rebuilding London proceeded apace. Unfortunately, property developers began tossing up more and more high-rise buildings made of concrete and lacking aesthetic considerations. The 1950s proved to be generally prosperous, with the Port of London remaining the capital city’s largest employer, industries thriving in the suburbs, and the aircraft industry experiencing “a golden age,” as Hatfield De Havilland produced the Comet, the world’s first commercial jet airliner.95 During this period, London became even more international, with immigrants, particularly from Great Britain’s former colonies, gravitating to the city, which began to experience a labor shortage. After several years of full employment, however, Great Britain endured a mild recession by 1958 and the loss of jobs. That led to charges that black immigrants were taking jobs away from whites as well as seeking Great Britain’s generous welfare benefits. The breaking down of arbitrary borders involving race, however, proved difficult at best as exemplified by the Notting Hill riots in 1958. The trouble started when white thugs began harassing West Indian blacks. Then, on August 23, “a crowd of a thousand white men and some women … tooled up with razors, knives, bricks and bottles.” By the following week, a mob began targeting West Indians. On September 1, the most severe rioting occurred, involving a “smashing rampage,” in which mobs chanted, “Kill the niggers!,” and were urged on by women hollering at them, “Go on boys, get yourselves some blacks.” That evening, a group of West Indians gathered their own “armoury of weapons including milk bottles, petrol and sand for Molotov cocktails.” As the white mob shouted, “Let’s


burn the niggers out!,” homemade bombs were delivered.96 After the riots, conservative and liberal politicians, as well as radical unions, demanded immigration restrictions. There remained the troubling question of how race relations in Great Britain would develop. The economy underwent an upswing again by the opening of the 1960s, when London’s skyline altered considerably, thanks to the appearance of skyscrapers, including the 619-foot-tall Post Office Tower and the Shell Centre, the 26-story British headquarters for Shell Oil. London continued its outward march, as the London Government Act of 1963 extended the reach of London’s governing body, with the Greater London Council ultimately replacing the London County Council. Greater London was divided into 32 boroughs, which had to contend with the vast array of urban problems afflicting many cities, such as air pollution, traffic congestion, housing shortages, and unemployment. The earlier Clean Air Act of 1956 forbade the burning of fuel that spewed out smoke, eventually resulting in a dissipating of smog and soot-like smells. Running on electricity, red double-decker trolley buses also helped to lighten air and noise pollution, but London continued to be beset by dense automobile traffic. By the early 1960s, new towns were affording many Londoners better housing, while also attracting industries that provided jobs. During that decade, the city’s cultural scene changed, too, with the emergence of “Swinging London.” Prime Minister Harold Macmillan informed his countrymen that they had “never had it so good,” and London appeared to be at the center of a fashion, musical, and social explosion. Hip Londoners gravitated to Carnaby Street and the King’s Road, while the era’s top musical groups, the Rolling Stones and Liverpool’s favorites, the Beatles, vied for supremacy. Mods battled with rockers, but even Time magazine recognized that London “swings, it is the scene.” For some analysts, however, what transpired in London in the 1960s was hardly new but instead involved the cultivation of a youth market.97

103

104


Moreover, in the midst of the cultural explosions occurring in London, the city underwent at least equally telling alterations involving arbitrary borders of many types. Tower blocks continued to appear across the metropolitan landscape, but so too did satellite towns. The Green Belt, Peter Ackroyd indicated, “did not … act as a barrier or inhibitor of urban life; in certain respects it simply became a large open space fortuitously situated within the outer Metropolitan Region.” At the same time, it did result “in checking the physical development of the inner city and its immediate suburbs which had to leap over the greenness. …”98 Meanwhile, in community after community, middle-class individuals began to purchase and refurbish Georgian cottages, Victorian villas, or other older buildings, as gentrification pushed out less affluent people. All the while, London became, perhaps more than ever, “a collection of villages,” once “separate and independent” but increasingly “gobbled up by a growing and enormous London,” Nerina Shute suggested.99 A return of tough economic times, punctuated by severe spikes in oil prices caused by a pair of embargoes, characterized the 1970s, a less hopeful time that saw labor unions clash with government officials regarding rising levels of unemployment and general economic distress. In mid-decade, an Irish Republican Army bomb factory was uncovered by Scotland Yard investigators in London, while an explosion in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel in central London killed two people and wounded 63 others. The appearance of punkers, generally disaffected young people, and the leftward shift of a portion of the Labour Party demonstrated rising discontent. So too did the growing appeal of Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady” who became prime minister in 1979, promising to privatize many services and to reassert old-fashioned values. THE THATCHER YEARS

Thatcher’s hardline, monetarist policy, which allowed for an abridgment of government regulations, taxation, and social services, led to soaring unemployment and riots, including those


that occurred in Brixton in 1981 and in Tottenham four years later. The national government’s determination to privatize the economy failed to prevent jobs from disappearing from the London docks altogether by 1981. To revitalize the region, Thatcher proposed turning the Docklands into a giant enterprise zone, where the free market would supposedly reign supreme. Eventually, the area contained the Docklands Light Railway, a new airport, and the 800-foot-high Canary Wharf, Great Britain’s tallest inhabitable building. Thatcher clashed with the Greater London Council, which remained dominated by the Labour Party and was influenced by the charismatic Ken Livingstone. Thatcher responded by moving to abolish the Council in 1986, which effectively terminated local government in London. Also, in 1986, the government, after seeking to build additional expressways in central London, constructed Motorway 25, which encircled London, in an effort to alleviate traffic congestion. That same year, Thatcher helped to bring about the deregulation of the Stock Exchange, referred to as the Big Bang, which fostered speculative enterprises in the worlds of finance and real estate. The stock market soon plummeted, ushering in a recession. Unemployment and the number of homeless began to surge once more. Anger intensified when the prime minister initiated a flat-rate poll tax, leading to protests and riots that helped to drive Thatcher out of office. The Conservatives, now led by John Major, managed to win another term in 1992, but difficulties accumulated, dampening their popularity yet again. On April 10 of that year, members of the Provisional IRA, seeking to drive the English from Northern Ireland, exploded two massive bombs in the City’s financial district, resulting in three deaths and considerable property damage. An economic downturn fostered greater uneasiness, as would growing concerns about the Conservatives’ emphasis on privatization. The collapse of the nearly 200-year-old Barings Bank hardly helped matters, nor did the takeover of British banks by foreign owners or yet another bombing by the Provisionals, which occurred in the Docklands in 1996.

105

106


COOL BRITANNIA

Having abandoned much of its previous socialist orientation, the Labour Party, under Tony Blair, returned to power after the May 1997 general elections. The Blair government became identified with Cool Britannia, a kind of cultural renaissance indicated by attempts to convert London into the “Capital of the Millennium.” In 2000, the Tate Modern, the world’s largest museum for modern art, opened, as did the Millennium Bridge and the Great Court, which involved the reconstruction of the central courtyard at the British Museum. The Greater London Authority Act allowed for a reconstitution of the Greater London Authority in 2000, with Ken Livingstone easily elected as mayor, despite opposition from the prime minister. Blair’s government refused to support Livingstone’s determination to maintain full public ownership of the London Underground, calling instead for joint public-private control. As the new century opened, London appeared both vibrant and more polyglot than ever before, with corresponding changes in its arbitrary borders. The city again stood at the cutting edge in fashion and the arts, all the while traditional places like Harrods, Buckingham Palace, and the Ritz remained available for tourists and Londoners alike. Congestion continued to afflict the city and, in an initially unpopular move, Mayor Livingstone required a five-pound payment for private vehicles going to the city center; traffic delays soon slackened, to the delight of many. Bus service seemed improved, and the Underground remained efficient but experienced considerable delays. Less-affluent workers found it increasingly difficult to live in London, which, in a more positive vein, was experiencing revitalization. No longer an imperial capital metropolis but remaining dependent on the City’s financial apparatus, London attracted tens of millions of visitors annually, with a growing number of jobs related to tourism. By 2005, London began replacing many of its familiar red double-decker buses, beloved by tourists, with either new double-deck buses that had only a single front door and driver or


long, single-deck buses. No matter how unsettling to many Londoners, more signs of change occurred. Fewer black taxicabs and pubs also could be found, while Brits began spending more money on coffee than tea. Massive protests failed to prevent Parliament from banning fox hunting, the final Jaguar plant shut its doors, and the prime minister urged that hereditary peers be stripped “of automatic seats in the House of Lords.”100 In the first decade of the twenty-first century, visitors returning to London were also undoubtedly struck by the increasingly multi-ethnic, multi-national makeup of its population; Londoners experienced sometimes dramatic and not always welcomed alterations of arbitrary borders involving race and ethnicity. From the 1950s onward, a large number of immigrants from throughout the British Commonwealth and Pakistan had settled in London. Although earlier immigrants, like Jews and French Huguenots, had tended to move up the socio-economic ladder after a short while, conditions often proved otherwise for Afro-Caribbeans, many of whom arrived to take on low-paying jobs during difficult economic times. The influx of new immigrants resulted in London’s population, which had been dropping since World War II, rising once again. In his well-regarded study of London, Peter Ackroyd indicated that the polyglot nature of the immigration had brought about a rethinking of what it means to be English: Now there are Montserratians in Hackney and Anguillians in Slough, Dominicans in Paddington and Grenadians in Hammersmith. Where once there were Swiss in Soho, and Cypriots in Holborn, there are now Barbadians in Notting Hill and Jamaicans in Stockwell. There are Punjabis in Southall and Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets, Turks in Stoke Newington and Pakistanis in Leyton.

Moreover, Ackroyd continued, “each community has replicated its independence within the larger context of London, so that once more the city takes on the aspects of a world in itself.”101 Mayor Livingstone spoke to London’s heightened diversity,

107

108


declaring the need to “tackle disadvantage—particularly among groups including women, disabled people and black and minority ethnic communities” within the city.102 Lonely Planet’s 2004 edition of London: City Guide lauded the metropolis’s “energy, vitality and aspirations of a population made up of some 40 different ethnic groups … a tapestry of different cultures, unparalleled in complexity and colour.”103 Sadly, London’s open, cosmopolitan makeup was called into question after a series of explosions that rocked the city on July 7, 2005, when bombs exploded on subway trains and a doubledecker bus. Hundreds suffered serious injuries, while scores died from “the bloodiest day in England since World War II.”104 Closed circuit television cameras revealed that four young men, all Muslims, had conducted the bombings. British officials began demanding stronger antiterrorism laws, to the chagrin of civil libertarians. BEYOND THE WALL

From its founding as a Roman outpost to the present, London’s history has been decidedly affected by arbitrary borders, including those of a territorial, imperial, cultural, political, economic, social, and demographic cast. Even its location on the British Isles failed to prevent London and its residents from becoming ensnared in conflicts involving other nation-states and peoples. While the Romans sought to defend their city through the building of a wall around it, London soon spread beyond that physical barrier, as it has continued to do with the appearance of a series of new towns or suburbs in last few decades. Nevertheless, the very “lanes and alleys within the City of London” today were initially formulated during the Roman settlement. Peter Mardsen noted that the “former course” of the wall “is indelibly marked on the face of modern London through street alignments and property boundaries.”105 In a similar fashion, “ ‘Knight Rider Street,’ south of St. Paul’s Cathedral, is believed to contain the line of an old circus used for gladiatorial and equestrian display,” Peter Ackroyd related. “The present


Guildhall, in the City of London, is established on the site of the Roman amphitheatre where administrative matters were debated and which in turn the Saxons employed for their folkmoots.” As Ackroyd noted, “There is a continuity here of some two thousand years.” He continued, “The administrative units of the City of London, too, were first established in Saxon times; that air of good governance, which has always been characteristic of the City and indeed of the larger country, has ancient properties.” Thus, certain of London’s arbitrary borders, despite the ravages of fires and architects alike, have remained constant, with “the powers and forces of past time” still “visible beneath the surface of the earth.”106 For centuries, ever-changing but constant London has stood as the capital of England, and, beginning in the sixteenth century, as the focal point for what became the British Empire. While that empire has clearly diminished since World War II, London has remained one of the world’s great cities, becoming possibly the leading international metropolis, with New York City undoubtedly positioned as its major competitor. London’s recent, admittedly sometimes uneasy acceptance of a more diverse populace demonstrates the arbitrariness of barriers based on ethnicity or nationality. The city’s inclusiveness and residence in an open society poses risks, however, in a world where diseases and weapons of mass destruction can transcend the kinds of arbitrary borders that London was initially created to sustain.

109

CHRONOLOGY & TIMELINE 54 B.C. Romans arrive at the Thames River. A.D.

43 Aulus Plautius builds a bridge over the Thames; Romans establish the port of Londinium. 60 Queen Boudicca leads a revolt against the Romans.

Second century The Roman wall is constructed. 400 Germanic tribes arrive. 410 The Romans evacuate Londinium. 457 Britons from Kent flee to London. Late 6th–7th century St. Augustine arrives; the cathedral church of St. Paul is constructed. 8th–10th century London endures a series of raids by Norsemen or Vikings; Vikings burn Lundenwic to the ground. 886 The Saxons liberate the city from Danish control. 1013 Danish rule is restored. 1042–1066 Edward the Confessor reigns. 1065 Westminster Abbey is bounded. 1066–1087 William the Conqueror reigns; he begins construction of the Tower of London and Windsor Castle. 1087–1100 William II reigns; he constructs Westminster Hall. 1100–1135 Henry I reigns; he grants royal charter to the City of London. 1135–1154 Stephen reigns. 1154–1189 Henry II reigns. 1189–1199 Richard I reigns; Henry fitz Ailwin is elected as the first mayor of the City of London. 1199–1216 John I reigns; he grants royal charter to the City; the Magna Carta is signed at Runnymede. 1216–1272 Henry III reigns; the tower and steeple of the cathedral church of St. Paul are completed; law courts are established at Westminster; Westminster Abbey is rebuilt. 1272–1307 Edward I reigns. 1307–1327 Edward II reigns. 1327–1377 Edward III reigns; Black Death decimates the population of London. 1377–1399 Richard II reigns; Wat Tyler leads the Peasants’ Revolt; Dick Whittington serves his first term as mayor; Chaucer writes The Canterbury Tales. 110

CHRONOLOGY & TIMELINE 1399–1413 Henry IV reigns. 1413–1422 Henry V reigns. 1422–1461 Henry VI reigns; War of the Roses, pitting the House of Lancaster against the House of York, occurs. 1461–1483 Edward IV reigns; William Caxton sets up a printing press, London’s first. 1483 Edward V reigns; Edward and his brother are murdered in the Tower of London. 1483–1485 Richard III reigns. 1485–1509 Henry VII reigns. 1509–1547 Henry VIII reigns; he asserts supremacy over the church. 1547–1553 Edward VI reigns. 1553–1558 Mary I reigns; 300 Protestants are executed at Smithfield. 1558–1603 Elizabeth I reigns; the Royal Exchange is opened; the Globe Theatre is built. 1603–1625 James I reigns; the Gunpowder Plot is foiled; Inigo Jones becomes Surveyor of the King’s Works, and he designs Queen’s House at Greenwich, Banqueting Hall in Whitehall, and Covent Garden Piazza in the West End. 1625–1649 Charles I reigns; the civil war takes place, leading to the execution of the king. 1649–1660 The Commonwealth is in existence; Oliver Cromwell becomes Protector of the Commonwealth. 1660–1685 The Restoration of the monarchy takes place; Charles II reigns; the Royal Society is officially constituted; Bloomsbury Square, London’s first, is designed; the Great Plague and the Great Fire devastate London; reconstruction of the City begins. 1685–1688 James II reigns; the Glorious Revolution results in his ouster. 1689–1702 William and Mary (she died in 1694) reign; the 1694 Bank of England Act allows for the creation of a national bank and recognition of a national debt. 1702–1714 Queen Anne reigns; St. Paul’s Cathedral is completed. 1714–1727 George I reigns; Westminster General Infirmary is

111

CHRONOLOGY & TIMELINE established; the South Sea Bubble produces an economic crisis. 1727–1760 George II reigns; the Westminster Bridge and the British Museum are built. 1760–1820 George III reigns; the American Revolution results in the loss of a considerable portion of Great Britain’s North American empire; Lord George Gordon spearheads riots, protesting the end of anti-Catholic legislation. 1820–1830 George IV reigns. 1830–1837 William IV reigns; Sir Robert Peel’s Metropolitan

A.D. 43

Aulus Plautius builds a bridge over the Thames, and Romans establish the port of London

2nd c. The Roman wall is constructed

1215 The Magna Carta is signed at Runnymede

1066 William the Conqueror invades England

Late 6th to Early 7th c. St. Augustine arrives

112

1534–1547 Henry VIII asserts supremacy over the church

1603

A.D. 43 410 The Romans evacuate Londinium

1381 Wat Tyler leads the Peasants’ Revolt

1100–1135 Henry I grants royal charter to the City of London

1349 Black Death decimates the population of London 1558–1603 The Elizabethan age occurs

CHRONOLOGY & TIMELINE Police Bill allows for a police force in London; the Reform Act is passed. 1837–1901 Queen Victoria reigns; Chartism becomes a major popular movement, agitating for electoral and social reform; the Great Exhibition is held in Hyde Park; the Metropolitan Railway, the initial steam-powered Underground, opens; the electric railway begins operation; London also contains horse-drawn trams and omnibuses; the West End boasts large department stores. 1901–1910 Edward VII reigns.

1837–1901 The Victorian Age occurs 1665–1666 The Great Plague and the Great Fire devastate London, compelling the reconstruction of the city

1642 1642–1649 The English Civil War takes place, leading to the execution of Charles I and the establishment of the Commonwealth

1963 Parliament agrees to the London Government Act, leading to the establishment of the Greater London Council

2000 1832 The Reform Act is passed

1915–1918 Germany conducts Zeppelin raids

1940–1945 The city endures raids 2000 The Greater London Authority Act allows for a reconstitution of the Greater London Authority

113

CHRONOLOGY & TIMELINE 1910–1936 George V reigns; World War I begins; Germany conducts Zeppelin raids; the British Union of Fascists hold public rallies. 1936 Edward VIII reigns; he abdicates, in order to marry an American divorcée; discussion of a Green Belt for London takes place. 1936–1952 George VI reigns; London establishes the Green Belt; the city endures the Blitz during World War II; in 1951, the Festival of Britain is held. 1952–present Elizabeth II reigns; Parliament passes the Clean Air Act; riots occur in Notting Hill; City University is founded; Parliament agrees to the London Government Act; Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher abolishes the Greater London Council, which is later restored by Tony Blair; the Big Bang (deregulation of the Stock Exchange) occurs, but the economy soon falters; the London Docklands Development Corporation is established; the Greater London Authority Act leads to the election of Ken Livingstone as mayor of London.

114

NOTES Chapter 1 1. Winston S. Churchill, “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat,” in The Speeches of Winston Churchill, ed. David Cannadine. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989, p. 149. 2. Churchill, “Wars Are Not Won by Evacuations,” in The Speeches of Winston Churchill, p. 165. 3. Churchill, “Their Finest Hour,” in The Speeches of Winston Churchill, pp. 177–178. 4. Telford Taylor, The Breaking Wave: The Second World War in the Summer of 1940. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967, p. 188. 5. A.N. Wilson, London: A History. New York: A Modern Library Chronicles Book, 2004, p. 141. 6. Roy Porter, London: A Social History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995, p. 338. 7. Ibid., p. 341. 8. Geoffrey Trease, London: A Concise History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975, p. 206. 9. Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means. New York: Knopf, 1963, p. 4. 10. Angus Calder, The People’s War: Britain 1939–1945. New York: Pantheon Books, 1969, p. 163. 11. Ibid., p. 555. 12. Evelyn Waugh, Unconditional Surrender. London: Methuen Publishing, 1986, p. 245. 13. Richard Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office and Longman, Green and Co., 1951(corrected edition), p. 301.

Chapter 2 14. John Morris, Londinivm: London in the Roman Empire. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982, p. 1. 15. Francis Sheppard, London: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988 p. 7. 16. Peter Ackroyd, London: The Biography. New York: Anchor Books, 2003, p. 9. 17. Ibid., p. 11. 18. Morris, Londinivm, p. 6. 19. Ibid., p. 55. 20. Sheppard, London, p. 36.

21. Ralph Merrifield, London: City of the Romans. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983, p. 154. 22. Morris, Londinivm, pp. 174, 176. 23. Ackroyd, London, p. 21. 24. Sheppard, London, p. 38. 25. Ackroyd, London, p. 21. 26. Trease, London, p. 14. 27. Sheppard, London, p. 60. 28. Timothy Baker, Medieval London. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970, p. 11. 29. Christopher N.L. Brooke, London 800 –1216: The Shaping of a City. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1975, p. 17. 30. Steen Eiler Rasmussen, London: The Unique City. Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press, 1967, p. 31. 31. Sheppard, London, p. 65.

Chapter 3 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38.

39. 40.

41.

Ibid., p. 68. Porter, London, p. 22. Rasmussen, London, p. 39. Christopher Hibbert, London: The Biography of a City. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1970, p. 10. Porter, London, p. 22. Ackroyd, London, p. 48. William fitz Stephen, Norman London. New York: Italica Press, 1990, pp. 48–50, 52, 55. Ibid., pp. 56–59. The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes of the Time of King Richard the First, ed. John T. Appleby. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1963, p. 3. “Magna Charta 1215,” in The Great Documents of Western Civilization, ed. Milton Viorst. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1994, pp. 113–114.

Chapter 4 42. Sheppard, London, p. 93. 43. Ibid., p. 97. 44. Peter Ackroyd, Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination. New York: Anchor Books, 2004, p. 109. 45. Trease, London, p. 76. 46. Ibid., p. 77.

115

NOTES Chapter 5 47. Hibbert, London, p. 33. 48. William Dunbar, “In Honour of the City of London,” 1501. 49. Susan Brigden, London and the Reformation. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989, p. 101. 50. Sheppard, London, p. 173. 51. Hibbert, London, p. 39. 52. John Stow, A Survey of London. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1959, p. 376. 53. Ian W. Archer, The Pursuit of Stability. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 88. 54. Robert C. Cottrell, Northern Ireland and the England: The Troubles. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2005, p. 17. 55. Rasmussen, London, p. 68. 56. Trease, London, p. 110. 57. Hibbert, London, p. 45. 58. Trease, London, p. 115.

Chapter 6 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

Trease, London, p. 132. Porter, London, p. 76. Ibid., pp. 76–77. Ibid., p. 77. Porter, London, p. 87.

Chapter 7 64. Sheppard, London, p. 205. 65. Henry Fielding, “An Enquiry Into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers,” in An Enquiry Into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers and Related Writings. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988, p. 131. 66. Paul Langford, “London and the American Revolution,” in London in the Age of Reform, ed. John Stevenson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977, p. 55. 67. George Rude, Hanoverian London 1714–1808. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971, p. ix. 68. Daniel Defoe, A Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, Divided Into Circuits or Journies. London: Peter Davis, 1927, pp. 316, 346. 69. Porter, London, pp. 146–147. 70. Ibid., p. 168. 71. Dorothy Marshall, Dr. Johnson’s London.

116

New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1968, p. 36. 72. Porter, London, p. 172.

Chapter 8 73. Wilson, London, p. 112. 74. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet in The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1930, p. 15. 75. Trease, London, p. 193. 76. Hibbert, London, p. 186. 77. Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1950, pp. 60–61. 78. Porter, London, p. 236. 79. Ibid., p. 236. 80. Ackroyd, London, p. 639. 81. Hibbert, London, pp. 216–217. 82. Porter, London, p. 263. 83. David Large, “London in the Year of Revolutions, 1848,” in London in the Age of Reform, p. 197. 84. Jonathan Schneer, London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999, p. 4. 85. H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1997, pp. 69, 75, 120, 122, 137, 144.

Chapter 9 86. Ackroyd, London, p. 717. 87. Libero, Chiara, London: Past and Present. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2004, p. 46. 88. Sheppard, London, p. 310. 89. Ackroyd, London, p. 707. 90. Sheppard, London, p. 329. 91. George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1958, p. 90. 92. Wilson, London, p. 119. 93. Sheppard, London, p. 326. 94. Alan A. Jackson, Semi-Detached London: Suburban Development, Life and Transport 1900–1939. London: Routledge, 1977, pp. 190–191, 323.

Chapter 10 95. Wilson, London, p. 154.

NOTES 96. 97. 98. 99.

Ackroyd, London, pp. 393–394. Ibid., p. 742. Ibid., p. 740. Nerina Shute, London Villages, London: Robert Hale, 1977, p. 11. 100. Gary A. Warner, “Modern Times Eliminating Many of London’s Icons,” Sacramento Bee, January 30, 2005, p. M5. 101. Ackroyd, London, p. 701. 102. Wilson, London, p. 188.

103. Martin Hughes, Sarah Johnstone & Tom Masters, London: City Guide. Melbourne: Lonely Planet Publications, 2004, p. 5. 104. Evan Thomas and Stryker McGuire, “Terror at Rush Hour,” Newsweek (July 18, 2005), p. 30. 105. Peter Marsden, Roman London. London: Thames and London, 1980, p. 119. 106. Ackroyd, Albion, pp. 264–265.

117

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ackroyd, Peter. Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination. New York: Anchor Books, 2004. ———. London: The Biography. New York: Anchor Books, 2003. Archer, Ian W. The Pursuit of Stability. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Baker, Timothy. Medieval London. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970. Brigden, Susan. London and the Reformation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. Brooke, Christopher N.L. London 800–1216: The Shaping of a City. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1975. Calder, Angus. The People’s War: Britain 1939–1945. New York: Pantheon Books, 1969. The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes of the Time of King Richard the First, ed. by John T. Appleby. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1963. Churchill, Winston S. “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat,” in The Speeches of Winston Churchill, ed. by David Cannadine. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989. ———. “Wars Are Not Won by Evacuations,” in The Speeches of Winston Churchill. ———. “Their Finest Hour,” in The Speeches of Winston Churchill. Cottrell, Robert C. Northern Ireland and England: The Troubles. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2005. Defoe, Daniel. A Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, Divided Into Circuits or Journies. London: Peter Davis, 1927. Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1950. Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. A Study in Scarlet in The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1930.

118

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dunbar, William. “In Honour of the City of London,” 1501. Fielding, Henry. “An Enquiry Into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers,” in An Enquiry Into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers and Related Writings. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988. Fitz Stephen, William. Norman London. New York: Italica Press, 1990. Gilbert, David and Fiona Henderson. “London and the Tourist Imagination,” in Imagined Londons, ed. by Pamela K. Gilbert. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002. Hendrickson, Robert. The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, Revised and Expanded Edition. New York: Checkmark Books, 2000. Hibbert, Christopher. London: The Biography of a City. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1970. Hughes, Martin, Sarah Johnstone and Tom Masters. London: City Guide. Melbourne: Lonely Planet Publications, 2004. Jackson, Alan A. Semi-Detached London: Suburban Development, Life and Transport 1900–1939. London: Routledge, 1977. Langford, Paul. “London and the American Revolution,” in London in the Age of Reform, ed. by John Stevenson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell: 1977. Large, David. “London in the Year of Revolutions, 1848,” in London in the Age of Reform, ed. John Stevenson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell: 1977. Libero, Chiara, London: Past and Present. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2004. Marsden, Peter. Roman London. London: Thames and London, 1980. Marshall, Dorothy. Dr. Johnson’s London. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1968. Merrifield, Ralph. London: City of the Romans. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983.

119

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Morris, John. Londinivm: London in the Roman Empire. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982. Orwell, George. The Road to Wigan Pier. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1958. Porter, Roy. London: A Social History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Rasmussen, Steen Eiler. London: The Unique City. Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press, 1967. Rude, George. Hanoverian London 1714–1808. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971. Schneer, Jonathan. London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999. Sheppard, Francis. London: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Shute, Nerina. London Villages. London: Robert Hale, 1977. Spark, Muriel. The Girls of Slender Means. New York: Knopf, 1963. Stevenson, John, ed. London in the Age of Reform. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977. Stow, John. A Survey of London. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1956. Taylor, Telford. The Breaking Wave: The Second World War in the Summer of 1940. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967. Thomas, Evan, and Stryker McGuire. “Terror at Rush Hour.” Newsweek (July 18, 2005). Titmuss, Richard M. Problems of Social Policy. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office and Longman, Green and Co., 1951 (corrected edition). Trease, Geoffrey. London: A Concise History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975.

120

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Viorst, Milton, ed. The Great Documents of Western Civilization. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1994. Warner, Gary A. “Modern Times Eliminating Many of London’s Icons.” Sacramento Bee, January 30, 2005. Waugh, Evelyn. Unconditional Surrender. London: Methuen Publishing, 1986. Wells, H.G. The War of the Worlds. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1997. Wilson, A.N. London: A History. New York: A Modern Library Chronicles Book, 2004.

121

FURTHER READING

Ehrlich, Blake. London on the Thames. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1966. Gilbert, Pamela K., ed. Imagined Londons. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002. Gray, Robert. A History of London. London: Hutchinson, 1978. Hanson, Neil. The Great Fire of London: In that Apocalyptic Year, 1666. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2002. Howson, H.F. London’s Underground, 4th ed. London: Ian Allan, 1967. Inwood, Stephen. A History of London. New York: Harold and Graff, 1998. Jenkins, Simon. Landlords to London: The Story of a Capital and Its Growth. London: Constable, 1975. Norton, Graham. London Before the Blitz 1906–40: From the Coming of the Motor-Car to the Outbreak of War. New York: Hastings House, 1971. Orwell, George. Down and Out in Paris and London. New York: Harvest/HBJ Book, 1972. Quindlen, Anna. Imagined London: A Tour of the World’s Greatest Fictional City. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Direction, 2004. Schofield, John. The Building of London: From the Conquest to the Great Fire. London: British Museum Publications, 1984. Trench, Richard. London Before the Blitz. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989.

122

INDEX Ackroyd, Peter on London, 12, 107, 108–109 and the wall, 15–16 Act of Settlement, 61–62, 65 Act of Union, (1707), 53 Act of Union of 1800, 74 Aldgate, 15, 19 Alfred the Great, (King), 17, 18 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 18 Animal Farm, (Orwell), 100

Babington Plot, 48 Bank of England, 62 Barbican Estate, 19 Barons’ War, 30–31 Battle of Boyne, 61 Battle of Britain, 4 Battle of Hastings, 23 Battle of London, 4–5, 9, 26 Becket, Thomas, 27 Bishopsgate, 15, 19 Bishops Wars, 55–56 Black Death, 33, 35 Blair, Tony, 106 Blitz, 2, 101 Blitzkrieg, 6 Bloomsbury Group, 90, 94 Bombs, 2 British Broadcasting Corporation, (BBC), 94 British Museum, 66 British Union of Fascists, 95 Buckingham Palace, 2, 6

Cade, Jack, 38–39 Caesar, Julius Canterbury Tales, (Chaucer), 38 Chadwick, Edwin, 83 Chamberlain, Neville, 2 Charles I, 55–57, 59, 68 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 38 Chelsea Factory, 71 Chippendale, 71 Christie’s Auction House, 71 Church of England, 43 Churchill, Winston, 2, 8, 10, 100, 102 his speech, 3–4 his wartime strategy, 5 Clean Air Act of 1956, 103 Clubs, 83

Club, The, 71 Cold War, 100 Comet, (jet), 102 Cool Britannia, 106 Court of Common Council, 67, 72 Cripplegate, 15, 19 Cromwell, Oliver, 56, 58, 59 Czechoslovakia, 2–3

Daily Mail, (tabloid), 92 Democracy, 72 Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, A, (More), 44 Dickens, Charles, 79–80 Dio, Cassius, 13–14 Dissolution of the Monasteries, 45 Dombey and Son, (Dickens), 79–80 Dunbar, William, 42

East India Company, 50, 55 Ecclesiastical History, (Bede), 16 Edward the Confessor, 20, 23, 29 Edward I, 33, 40 Edward II, 34 Edward III, 35 Edward IV, 39 Edward V, 39 Edward VI, 46–47 Edward VII, 90 Edward VIII, 90, 95 Eighty Years’ War, 54 Eleven Year Tyranny, 55 Elizabeth I, 42, 47 Elizabeth II, 102 Elizabethan Age, 48 English Reformation, 45 Ethelred, (King), 20

Fabian Society, 87 Fawkes, Guy, 53, 54 Festival of Britain, 100–101 Fielding, Henry, 67 fitz Stephen, William on London, 27, 28 Fleet River, 12–13 France, 4 Freud, Sigmund, 97–98

123

INDEX Gardens, 66 George I, 65, 68 George II, 65, 66, 68 George III, 69 George IV, 69 George VI, 6, 95 Georgian London, 65–74 Germany the attack on London, 2, 3 the invasion of Poland, 3 surrender of, 9 Girls of Slender Means, The, (Spark), 8 Glorious Revolution, (1688), 61 Gordon Riots, 72 Great Britain declaration of war, 3 Great Depression, 95 Greater London Authority Act, 106 Great Exhibition of the Works of All Nations, (1851), 83, 101–102 purpose of, 84 Great Fire, 60 Great Plague, 60 Green Belt, 104 Gresham, Thomas, 50 Gunpowder Plot, 53 story of, 54

Hanover Dynasty, 76 Harlot’s Progress, A, (painting), Hogarth, 66–67 Henry II, 26–27 Henry III, 33 Henry IV, 37–38 Henry VII, 42–43, 50–51 Henry VIII, 42, 43, 45, 46 Hitler, 2–3, 8, 9–10 Hogarth, William, 66–67 Holden, Charles, 97 “Honour of the City of London, In,” (Dunbar), 42 Hospitals, 72 House of Commons, 3–4, 8 Household Means Test, (1931), 95 House of Tudor, 40 House of Windsor, 90 Howard, Earl, 23 Hyde Park, 55

Industrial Revolution, 65, 76

124

Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, (Smith), 71 International Tea Company, 80–81 Invisible Man, The, (Wells), 92

James I, 53 James II, 68 Jews, 34, 47, 51 John, (King), 29 Johnson, Samuel, 71, 72 Jonson, Ben, 49–50 July 7, 2005, 2, 108

King’s College, 69 Knights of Templars, 34

Labour Party, 87, 100 Libraries, 38 Lightning War, 3 Little Blitz, 8 Lloyd’s of London, 70–71 Lollards, 36, 45 London, 2, 4 the blackout, 6 bombing of, 3, 6, 7 and cities origin, 12–13 a city of commerce, 69 diversity of, 73 as England’s capital, 33 on growth of, 14 and Roman control of, 12–16 on Saxon rule, 16 suburban development, 60–61 of today, 100–109 transformation of, 65 London Bridge, 26, 39 London Commercial Theatre, 49, 50 London Government Act, (1963), 103 London Times, 7 Lud, (King), 12 Ludenwic, 17–18 Ludgate, 15, 19 Luftwaffe, 2, 3, 6, 100

Magna Carta, 23, 31, 33, 34 on limiting power of the King, 29–30 Marlowe, Christopher, 49–50

INDEX Marriage a la Mode, (painting), Hogarth, 66â7 Mary I, (Bloody Mary), 47 Metropolitan Board of Works, 85 Metropolitan Commission of Sewers and Sewers Act of 1848, 85 Metropolitan Police, 73–74 Middle Ages, 33– 40 More, Thomas, (Sir) his life, 44 Morris, John, 15 on London, 12, 13 Mosley, Oswald, 95, 96 Museum of London, 19

Nash, John, 69 National Gallery, 69 National Unemployed Workers’ Movement, 95 Newgate, 15, 19 New Testament, (Tyndale), 45 Notting Hill riots, 102–103

Olympic Games, (1948), 100–101 Orwell, George, 96, 100

Parliament, 55–56 Parliamentarians, (Roundheads), 56, 57 Peasants’ Revolt, 33, 36 Peel, Robert, 73–74 People’s Charter of 1838, 86 Phony War, 3, 5 Plantagenet Dynasty, 26–31, 32 Plautius, Aulus, 13 Poor Law Amendment Act, 83 Pope Gregory the Great, 16 Population, 65, 90 Priestley, J. B., 8 Protestant Reformation, 42, 45, 47, 50–51, 62 Provisional IRA, 105 Public Health Act, (1848), 85 Puritans, 47, 55

Rake’s Progress, A, (painting), Hogarth, 66–67 Reform Act of 1832, 86 Reform Act of 1867, 86

Restoration, 58 Reynolds, Joshua, 71 Richard I, 28 Richard II, 36, 37–38 Road to Wigan Pier, The, (Orwell), 96 Roaring Twenties, 93–94 Roman Catholic Church, 45, 51 Rome, 12 Royal Academy of Arts, 71 Royal Exchange, 50 Royalists, (Cavaliers), 56, 58 Royal Marines, 5 Royal parks, 46 Rump Parliament, 57–58 Ruskin, John, 81 Russell, Bertrand, 5

Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population, The, (report), 83, 85 Saxon Dynasty, 23 Saxon rule, 17–18, 21, 23 Shakespeare, William, 49–50 Smith, Adam, 71 Social Democratic Federation, 87 Social relations, 65 Southampton Square, (Bloomsbury), 58–59 Soviet Union, 2–3, 8 Spark, Muriel, 8 Stow, John, 46 Street entertainment, 82 Stuart Dynasty, 53–63 Survey of London, A, (Stow), 46 Swein, (King), 20

Tate Modern, 106 Temple Bar, 19 Thames river, 12–13, 19 Thatcher, Margaret her years in office, 104–105 Thirty Years’ War, 55 Time Machine, The, (Wells), 92 Titmuss, Richard, 9 Tories, 62, 67 Tower Hill Station, 19 Tower of London, 8, 23 history of, 24 Tubes, 6–7, 76, 78, 91 Tudor Dynasty, 42––51 Tyndale, William, 45

125

INDEX Unemployment Assistance Board, 95 University College, 69 Utopia, (More), 44

V-1, (doodlebugs), 5, 8–9 V-2, 9 Victoria, (Queen), 76, 87, 90 Victorian London entertainment, 81 growth of, 79 procession to suburbs, 76 public works, 84–8 transportation revolution, 77–78, 80 Vikings, 17, 18 von Hayek, 97–98

Wall, The, 2, 14, 20, 100 an arbitrary barrier, 19 building of, 15 Walpole, Robert, 68 War of the Roses, 33

126

War of the Worlds, The, (Wells), 87, 92 Waugh, Evelyn, 9 Wells, H. G., 87–88, 92 West End, 53–55, 69 Westminster Abbey, 8, 21, 49 Westminster Bridge, 66 Whigs, 62, 67 White Tower, 25, 26 Whittington, Dick, 36–37, 38 Wilkes, John, 68 William, (Duke of Normandy), 23 William the Conqueror, 24, 25 Women’s Social and Political Union, (1903), 92 World War I, 92 World War II, 2, 10 on transforming London, 100 Wren, Christopher, 60, 62, 80 Wycliffe, John, 36

Zeppelin raids, 93

PICTURE CREDITS page: Frontis © Historical Picture Archive/CORBIS 3 Associated Press, U.S. Information Agency 7 Associated Press, AP 13 © Historical Picture Archive/CORBIS 17 © Bettman/CORBIS 25 © Bettman/CORBIS 30 © Bettman/CORBIS 37 © Michael Nicholson/CORBIS 43 © Bettmann/CORBIS

50 © Hulton-Deutsch Collections/ CORBIS 59 © Bettman/CORBIS 66 © Stapleton Collections/CORBIS 70 © Bettman/CORBIS 82 © Hulton-Deutsch Collections/ CORBIS 96 © Hulton-Deutsch Collections/ CORBIS

Cover © Historical Picture Archive/CORBIS

127

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS Robert C. Cottrell, Professor of History and American Studies at California State University, Chico, is the author of many books, including Izzy: A Biography of I.F. Stone, Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union, The Best Pitcher in Baseball: The Life of Rube Foster, Negro League Giant, and Uncertain Order: The World in the Twentieth Century. Named the Outstanding Professor at CSUC in 1998, Professor Cottrell received the 2000 Wang Family Excellence Award for Social & Behavioral Sciences & Public Services, a systemwide honor for the 23 campuses that make up the California State University.

George J. Mitchell served as chairman of the peace negotiations in Northern Ireland during the 1990s. Under his leadership, an historic accord, ending decades of conflict, was agreed to by the governments of Ireland and the United Kingdom and the political parties in Northern Ireland. In May 1998, the agreement was overwhelmingly endorsed by a referendum of the voters of Ireland, North and South. Senator Mitchell’s leadership earned him worldwide praise and a Nobel Peace Prize nomination. He accepted his appointment to the U.S. Senate in 1980. After leaving the Senate, Senator Mitchell joined the Washington, D.C. law firm of Piper Rudnick, where he now practices law. Senator Mitchell’s life and career have embodied a deep commitment to public service and he continues to be active in worldwide peace and disarmament efforts. James I. Matray is professor of history and chair at California State University, Chico. He has published more than forty articles and book chapters on U.S.-Korean relations during and after World War II. Author of The Reluctant Crusade: American Foreign Policy in Korea, 1941–1950 and Japan’s Emergence as a Global Power, his most recent publication is East Asia and the United States: An Encyclopledia of Relations Since 1784. Matray also is international columnist for the Donga libo in South Korea.

128

London: From the Walled City to New Towns

Walled Towns and the Shaping of France: From the Medieval to the Early Modern Era

The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo

The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo

From Tehran to London

From London to Lands End

London [City-Lit]

Country Towns of New Mexico

The Walled Garden

City Schools: Lessons from New York

Murder, London-New York

Murder, London New York

To London

Commuter City: How the Railways Shaped London

Letters from London

Letters from London

From London with Love

From London With Love

From London with Love

Paper Towns

Oz Reimagined_ New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond

Hill Towns

Hill Towns

Ghost Towns

Paper Towns

Paper Towns

Paper Towns

The New Brazil: From Backwater to BRIC

From welfare state to real estate: regime change in New York City, 1974 to the present

London: From the Walled City to New Towns

Walled Towns and the Shaping of France: From the Medieval to the Early Modern Era

The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo

The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo

From Tehran to London

From London to Lands End

London [City-Lit]

Country Towns of New Mexico

The Walled Garden

City Schools: Lessons from New York

Murder, London-New York

Murder, London New York

To London

Commuter City: How the Railways Shaped London

Letters from London

Letters from London

From London with Love

From London With Love

From London with Love

Paper Towns

Oz Reimagined_ New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond

Hill Towns

Hill Towns

Ghost Towns

Paper Towns

Paper Towns

Paper Towns

The New Brazil: From Backwater to BRIC

From welfare state to real estate: regime change in New York City, 1974 to the present

Recommend Documents