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above its mouth.' The " City," so
called both formally and popularly, is a small area (673 acres) on
the north
bank
of the river, forming the
heart
of the
metropolis, and
constituting within its boundaries one only, and one of the
smallest, of twenty-nine municipal divisions which make up the
administrative County of London. The twenty-eight remaining
divisions are the
Metropolitan Boroughs. The county thus
defined has an extreme length (E. to W.) of 16 m., an extreme
breadth (N. to S.) of ill m., and an area of 74,839 acres or about
117 sq. m. The boroughs are as follows: I.
North of
Thames. - Touching the northern boundary of the county, from W. to
E. -
Hammersmith,
Kensington,
Paddington,
Hampstead, St Pancras,
Islington,
Stoke Newington,
Poplar.
These names are all in common use, though their formal
application is in some cases extended over several districts of
which the ancient names remain familiar. Each borough is noticed in
a separate article.
' See
map in
London Statistics (vol.
xix., 1909), an annual publication of the London County Council,
which besides these divisions shows " Water London," the London
main drainage area, and the Central Criminal Court district.
I. Extent And Site The County of London is bounded N. and W. by
Middlesex, E. by
Essex and
Kent, S. by Kent and
Surrey. The Metropolitan
police area, or " Greater London," however,
embraces the whole of Middlesex, with parts of the other three
counties and of
Hertfordshire. Its extent is 443,419
acres or nearly 693 sq. m., and its population is about seven
millions. Only here and there upon its fringe the identity of this
great area with the metropolis is lost to the eye, where open
country remains unbroken by streets or close-set buildings.
Site
North of the Thames, and west of its tributary the Lea, which
partly bounds the administrative county on the
east, London is built
upon a series of slight undulations, only rarely sufficient to make
the streets noticeably steep. On the northern boundary of the
county a height of 443 ft. is found on the open Hampstead
Heath. The lesser streams which
flow from this high ground to the Thames are no longer open. Some,
however, as well as other natural features effaced by the growth of
the city, retain an historical interest through the survival of
their names in streets and districts, or through their relation to
the original site of London (in the present City). South of the
Thames a broken
amphitheatre of low hills, approaching the
river near Greenwich and Woolwich on the east and Putney and
Richmond on the west,
encloses a tract flatter than that to the north, and rises more
abruptly in the southern districts of
Streatham,
Norwood and Forest Hill.
In attempting to picture the site of London in its original
condition, that is, before any building took place, it is necessary
to consider (I) the condition of the Thames unconfined between made
banks, (2) the slopes
overlooking it, (3) the tributary streams which watered these
slopes. The low ground between the slight hills flanking the Thames
valley, and therefore mainly south of the present river, was
originally occupied by a shallow
lagoon of estuarine character, tidal, and
interspersed with marshy tracts and certain islets of relatively
firm land. Through this the main stream of the Thames pursued an
ill-defined course. The tributary streams entered through marshy
channels. The natural process of sedimentation assisted the gradual
artificial drainage of the marshes by means of embankments
confining the river. The breadth of this low tract, from Chelsea
downward, was from 2 to 3 m. The line of the foot of the southern
hills, from Putney, where it nearly approaches the present river,
lies through Stockwell and Camberwell to Greenwich, where it again
approaches the river. On the north there is a flat tract between
Chelsea and Westminster, covering Pimlico, but from Westminster
down to the
Tower there is a
marked slope directly up from the river bank. Lower still, marshes
formerly extended far up the valley of the Lea. The higher slopes
of the hills were densely forested (cf. the modern district-name St
John's Wood), while the lower slopes, north of the river, were more
open (cf.
Moor-
gate).
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These and other tributary streams have been covered in and built
over (in some cases serving as sewers), but it is possible to trace
their valleys at various points by the fall and rise of streets
crossing them, and their names survive, as will be seen, in various
modern applications. The Wallbrook
rose in a
marsh
in the modern district of Finsbury, and joined the Thames close to
the
Cannon Street
railway bridge. A street
named after it runs south from the
Mansion House parallel with its course. The
Fleet was larger, rising in, and collecting various small streams
from, the high ground of Hampstead. It passed Kentish Town, Camden
Town and King's Cross, and followed a line approximating to King's
Cross Road. The slope of Farringdon Road, where crossed by Holborn
Viaduct, and of New Bridge Street, Blackfriars, marks its course
exactly, and that of Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill its steep banks.
The name also appears in Fleet Road, Hampstead. From King's Cross
downward the banks were so steep and high that the stream was
called Scale Mile
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i r ls
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ath '
K;idbrooke Hither
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Greenwich Rai lways....-- underground Canals ' '; County
Metropolitan Boroughs ...... :: ... .... Fulh 1?1
12 4 tpM¦ERS S hpher d's ?rSE?rch
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Arsenal C (
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Putney/ Meridian o° of Greenwich - E Longitude East
0°4' of Greenwich ts.
li:yd? Pa
- r. k Hyde
Park': Corner S t Ja _ mes c'pl1' rcr,r?XEala es "
°r ' r Bu'ckinghags alace civil BurlingtanHoused.
R ?
East Wickham Reference to Numbers in Inset: r.
z. 3. Yd. q.
in Main Map: in.
xi.
Hollow or Hole-
bourne, this
name surviving in Holborn; and it was fed by numerous springs
(Bagnigge Well,
Clerkenwell and others) in this vicinity.
It entered a
creek which was
navigable for a considerable distance, and formed a subsidiary
harbour for the City, but by the 14th century this was becoming
choked with refuse, and though an attempt was made to clear it, and
wharves were built in 1670, it was wholly arched over in 1 7371765
below Holborn Bridge. Continuing westward, the most important
stream was
Tyburn, which rose
at Hampstead, and joined the Thames through branches on either side
of Thorney Island, on which grew up the great ecclesiastical
foundation of St
Peter,
Westminster, better known as Westminster
Abbey. There is no modern survival of the name of
Tyburn, which finds, indeed, its chief historical interest as
attaching to the famous place of execution which lay near the
modern
Marble Arch. The
residential district in this vicinity was known at a later date as
Tyburnia. The next stream westward was the Westbourne, the name of
which is perpetuated in Westbourne
Grove and elsewhere in Paddington. It rose on the
heights of Hampstead, traversed Paddington, may be traced in the
course of the
Serpentine lake in Hyde Park, ran parallel
to and east of Sloane Street, and joined the Thames close to
Chelsea Bridge. The main tributaries of the Thames from the north,
to east and west of those described, are not covered, nor is any
tributary of importance from the south entirely concealed.
London lies within the geological area known as the London
basin. Within the confines of Greater London the
chalk which forms the
basement of this area appears at the surface
in isolated patches about Greenwich, while its main line approaches
within 10 m. of the City to the south and within 15 to the
north-west. In the south and north-west the typical
London clay is the
principal formation. In the south-east, however, the
Blackheath and Woolwich
pebble-beds appear, with their belts of Thanet sands bordering the
chalk. Valley
gravel borders
the Thames, with some interruptions, from
Kingston to Greenwich, and extends to a wide
belt, with ramifications, from
Wandsworth south to
Croydon,
and in a narrower line from Greenwich towards Bromley. Brick earth
overlies it from Kensington to
Brentford and west thereof, and appears in
Chelsea and Fulham,
Hornsey
and Stoke Newington, and in patches south of the Thames between
Battersea and Richmond. The main deposits of
alluvium occur below Lambeth and Westminster,
and in the valley of the Wandle, which joins the Thames from the
south near Putney. In the north and west the
clay is interspersed with patches of plateau
gravel in the direction of
Finchley (where
boulder clay also appears),
Enfield and
Barnet; and of Bagshot sands on Hampstead Heath
and
Harrow
Hill. Gravel is found on the high ground about Richmond Park
and
Wimbledon. (See
further
Middlesex.)
Climate. - The climate is equable (though excessive heat
is sometimes felt for short periods during the summer) and moist,
but healthy.
Snow is most common
in the early months of the year. The fogs of London have a peculiar
and perhaps an exaggerated notoriety. They are apt to occur at all
seasons, are common from September to February, and most common in
November. The
atmosphere of London is almost invariably
misty in a greater or less degree, but the denser fogs are
generally local and of no long duration. They sometimes cause a
serious dislocation of railway and other traffic. Their principal
cause is the
smoke from the
general domestic use of
coal. The
evil is of very long standing, for in 1306 the citizens petitioned
Edward I. to prohibit the
use of sea-coal, and he made it a capital offence. The average
temperature of the hottest month, July, is 64° 4 F. of the coldest,
January, 37° 9; and the mean annual 50 0.4. The mean annual
rainfall ranges in different parts of the metropolis from about 202
to 272 in.
II.
Topography
London as a whole owes nothing in appearance to the natural
configuration of its site. Moreover, the splendid building is
nearly always a unit; seldom, unless accidentally, a component part
of a broad effect. London has not grown up along formal lines; nor
is any large part of it laid out according to the conceptions of a
single generation. Yet not a few of the great thoroughfares and
buildings are individually worthy of London's preeminence as a
city. The most notable of these fall within a circumscribed area,
and it is therefore necessary to preface their consideration with a
statement of the broader characteristic divisions of the
metropolis.
Characteristic Divisions
In London north of the Thames, the .salient distinction lies
between West and East. From the western boundary of the City
proper, an area covering the greater part of the city of
Westminster, and extending into Chelsea, Kensington, Paddington and
Marylebone, is exclusively associated with the higher-class life of
London. Within the bounds of Westminster are the royal palaces, the
government offices and many other of the finest public buildings,
and the wider area specified includes the majority of the
residences of the wealthier classes, the most beautiful parks and
the most fashionable places of recreation. " Mayfair," north of
Piccadilly, and " Belgravia," south of Knightsbridge, are common
though unofficial names for the richest residential districts. The
" City " bears in the great commercial buildings fringing its
narrow streets all the marks of a centre of the world's exchanges.
East of it there is an abrupt transition to the district commonly
known as the " East End," as distinguished from the wealthy " West
End," a district of mean streets, roughly coincident with the
boroughs of Stepney and Poplar, Shoreditch and Bethnal Green, and
primarily (though by no means exclusively) associated with the
problems attaching to the life of the poor. On the Thames below
London Bridge, London appears in the aspect of one of the world's
great ports, with extensive docks and crowded
shipping. North London is as a whole
residential:
Hackney,
Islington and St Pancras consist mainly of dwellings of artisans
and the middle classes; while in Hampstead, St Marylebone and
Paddington are many terraces and squares of handsome houses.
Throughout the better residential quarters of London the number of
large blocks of flats has greatly increased in modern times. But
even in the midst of the richest quarters, in Westminster and
elsewhere, small but well-defined areas of the poorest dwellings
occur.
London south of the Thames has none of the grander
characteristics of the wealthy districts to the north. Poor
quarters lie adjacent to the river over the whole distance from
Battersea to Greenwich, merging southward into residential
districts of better class. London has no single well-defined
manufacturing quarter.
Suburbs
Although the boundary of the county of London does not, to
outward appearance, enclose a city distinct from its suburbs,
London outside that boundary may be conveniently considered as
suburban. Large numbers of business men and others who must of
necessity live in proximity to the metropolis have their homes
aloof from its centre.
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In this aspect the principal extension of London
has been into the counties of Kent and Surrey, to the pleasant
hilly districts about
Sydenham, Norwood and Croydon,
Chislehurst and
Orpington,
Caterham, Redhill and
Reigate,
Epsom,
Dorking and
Leatherhead; and up the valley of the
Thames through Richmond to Kingston and
Surbiton,
Esher and
Weybridge, and the many townships on both the
Surrey and the Middlesex shores of the river. On the west and north
the residential suburbs immediately outside the county include
Acton and
Ealing,
Willesden,
Highgate, Finchley and Hornsey; from the last
two a densely populated district extends north through
Wood Green and
Southgate to Barnet and
Enfield; while the " residential influence " of the metropolis far
exceeds these limits, and may be observed at
Harrow and Pinner, Bushey and Boxmoor, St
Albans,
Harpenden,
Stevenage and many other
places. To the north-east the beauty of
Epping Forest attracts numerous residents to
Woodford,
Chingford and
Loughton. The valley of the
Lea is also thickly populated, but chiefly by an industrial
population working in the numerous factories along this river. The
Lea separates the county of London from Essex, but the townships of
West Ham and
Stratford,
Barking and
Ilford,
Leyton and
Walthamstow continue the metropolis in this
direction almost without a break. Their population is also largely
occupied in local manufacturing establishments; while numerous
towns on either bank of the lower Thames share in the industries of
the port of London.
Streets
The principal continuous thoroughfares within the metropolis,
though each bears a succession of names, are coincident with the
main roads converging upon the capital from all parts of England.
On the north of the Thames two great thoroughfares from the west
meet in the heart of the City. The northern enters the county in
Hammersmith as
Uxbridge
Road, crosses Kensington and borders the north side of Kensington
Gardens and Hyde Park as Bayswater Road. It then bears successively
the names of
Oxford Street,
New Oxford Street and High Holborn; enters the City, becomes known
as Holborn Viaduct from the fact that it is there carried over
other streets which lie at a lower level, and then as Newgate
Street and Cheapside. The southern
highway enters Hammersmith, crosses the centre
of Kensington as Kensington Road and High Street, borders
Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park as Kensington
Gore and Knightsbridge, with terraces of fine
residences, and merges into Piccadilly. This beautiful street, with
its northward branches, Park Lane, from which splendid houses
overlook Hyde Park, and Bond Street, lined with handsome shops, may
be said to
focus the fashionable
life of London. The direct line of the thoroughfare is interrupted
after Piccadilly
Circus (the
term " circus " is frequently applied to the open space - not
necessarily round - at the junction of several roads), but is
practically resumed in the Strand, with its hotels, shops and
numerous theatres, and continued through the City in Fleet Street,
the centre of the newspaper world, and Ludgate Hill, at the head of
which is St Paul's
Cathedral. Thence it runs by commercial
Cannon Street to the junction with Cheapside and several other busy
streets. At this junction stand the Royal Exchange, the Mansion
House (the official residence of the Lord
Mayor of London) and the Bank of England, from
which this important point in the communications of London is
commonly known as " Bank." From the east two main roads similarly
converge upon the City, which they enter by Aldgate (the suffix in
this and other names indicating the former existence of one of the
City gates). The southern of these highways, approaching through
the eastern suburbs as Barking Road, becomes East
India Docks Road in Poplar and Commercial Road
East in Stepney. The continuous thoroughfare of 12 m. between
Hammersmith and the East India Docks illustrates successively every
phase of London life. The northern road enters from Stratford and
is called
Bow Road, Mile End Road,
Whitechapel Road and High Street, Whitechapel. From the north of
England two roads preserve communication-lines from the earliest
times. The Old North Road, entering London from the Lea valley
through Hackney and Shoreditch as
Stamford Hill, Stoke Newington Road and
Kingsland Road, reaches the City by Bishopsgate. The straight
highway from the northwest which as Edgware Road joins Oxford
Street at the Marble Arch (the north-eastern entrance to
Hyde Park) is coincident with the
Roman
Watling
Street. The
Holyhead
and
Great North Roads,
uniting at Barnet, enter London by branches through' Hampstead and
through Highgate, between the Old North and Edgware roads. South of
the Thames the thoroughfares crossing the river between Lambeth and
Bermondsey converge upon two circuses, St George's and the
Elephant and
Castle. At the second of these
points the majority of the chief roads from the southern suburbs
and the south of England are collected. Among them, the Old Kent
Road continues the southern section of Watling Street, from
Dover and the south-east, through
Woolwich and across Blackheath. The road. through Streatham,
Brixton and
Kennington, taking name
from these districts successively, is the principal southern
highway. The
Portsmouth Road from the south-west is well
marked as far as Lambeth, under the names of Wandsworth, High
Street, St John's Hill,
Lavender Hill and Wandsworth Road.
Thames Embankments
The Thames follows a devious course through London, and the fine
embankments on its north side, nowhere continuing uninterruptedly
for more than 2 m., do not form important thoroughfares, with the
exception of the Victoria
Embankment. Mostly they serve rather as
beautiful promenades. One of them begins over against Battersea
Bridge. Its finest portion is the Chelsea Embankment, fronting
Battersea Park across the river, shaded by a pleasant
avenue and lined with handsome
houses. It continues, with some interruptions, nearly as far as the
Houses of Parliament. Below these the grandest of the embankments
extends to the City at Blackfriars. It was formed in 1864-1870, and
is named the Victoria Embankment, though its popular title is " The
Embankment " simply. Open gardens fringe it in part on the landward
side, and it is lined with fine public and private buildings. The
bold sweep of the Thames, here some 300 yds. wide, the towers of
Westminster ,on the one hand and the
dome of St Paul's on the other, make up a fine
prospect. Below London Bridge the river is embanked for a short
distance in front of the Tower of London, and above Westminster
Bridge the Albert Embankment extends for nearly 1 m. along the
south bank.
Fourteen road-bridges cross the Thames within the county of
London. Of these London Bridge, connecting the City with Southwark
and Bermondsey, stands first in historical interest and in
importance as a modern highway. The old bridge, famous for many
generations, bearing its rows of houses and its
chapel in the centre, was completed early in the
13th century. It was 308 yds. long and had twenty narrow arches,
through which the tides formed dangerous rapids. It stood just
below the existing bridge, which was built of
granite by
John Rennie and his son Sir John Rennie,
and completed in 1831. A widening to accommodate the growth of
traffic, after being frequently discussed for many years, was
completed in 1904, by means of corbels projecting on either side,
without arresting traffic during the work. There was no bridge over
the Thames below London Bridge until 1894, when the Tower Bridge
was opened. This is a suspension bridge with a central portion,
between two lofty and massive stone towers, consisting of bascules
which can be raised by hydraulic machinery to admit the passage of
vessels. The bridge is both a remarkable engineering work, and
architecturally one of the finest modern structures in London. The
bridges in order above London Bridge are as follows,
railway-bridges being bracketed - Southwark, (Cannon Street),
(Blackfriars), Blackfriars,
Waterloo, (Hungerford - with a footway),
Westminster, Lambeth,
Vauxhall, (Grosvenor), Victoria, Albert,
Battersea, (Battersea), Wandsworth, (Putney), Putney and
Hammersmith. Waterloo Bridge, the oldest now standing within
London, is the work of John Rennie, and was opened in 1817. It is a
massive stone structure of nine arches, carrying a level roadway,
and is considered one of the finest bridges of its kind in the
world. The present Westminster Bridge, of
iron on granite piers, was opened in 1862, but
another preceded it, dating from 1750; the view from which was
appreciated by Wordsworth in his
sonnet beginning " Earth has not anything to
show more fair." The complete reconstruction of Vauxhall Bridge was
undertaken in 1902, and the new bridge was opened in 1906. Some of
the bridges were built by companies, and tolls were levied at their
crossing until modern times; thus Southwark Bridge was made
toll-free in 1866, and Waterloo
Bridge only in 1878, on being acquired by the City Corporation and
the Metropolitan
Board of Works
respectively.
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£120,774 Albert Bridge.. .
Battersea Bridge.. 312,193 Hammersmith Bridge. 204,250 Lambeth
Bridge.. 47,555 496 Putney Bridge.. 430,052 653 Vauxhall Bridge
(temporary) 2 7 0 ,749 73 Vauxhall Bridge (new) 457,108 1109
Wandsworth Bridge.. 65,661 410 Waterloo Bridge 552,867 1102
Westminster Bridge. 393,189 1491 The properties entrusted to the
Corporation for the upkeep of London Bridge are managed by the
Bridge House Estates Committee, the revenues from which are also
used in the maintenance of the other three City bridges, £26,989
being thus expended in 1907, the Tower bridge absorbing £17,735 of
this amount.
Thames Tunnels
Some of the metropolitan railway lines cross the river in
tunnels beneath its
bed. There are
also several tunnels under the river below London Bridge, namely:
Tower Subway, constructed in 1870 for foot-passengers, but no
longer used, Greenwich
Tunnel
(1902) for foot-passengers, Blackwall Tunnel (1897), constructed by
the County Council between Greenwich and Poplar, and Woolwich
Tunnel, begun 1907-1908. £1296 512 421 in 1910. A tunnel between
Rotherhithe and Ratcliff was authorized in 1897 and opened in 1908.
The Thames Tunnel (1825-1843), 2 m. below London Bridge, became a
railway tunnel in 1865. The County Council maintains a free
ferry at Woolwich for passengers
and vehicular traffic. The capital expenditure on this undertaking
was £185,337 and the expense of maintenance in1907-1908£20,881. The
Greenwich Tunnel (capital expenditure £179,293) in the same year
had expended on it for maintenance £3725, and the Blackwall Tunnel
(capital expenditure £1,268,951) £11,420. The capital expenditure
on the Rotherhithe Tunnel was £1,414,561.
Parks
The administration and acreage of parks and open spaces, and
their provisions for the public recreation, fall for consideration
later, but some of them are notable features in the
topography of London. The
royal parks, namely St James's, Green and Hyde Park, and Kensington
Gardens, stretch in an irregular belt for nearly 3 m. between
Whitehall (Westminster) and
Kensington. St James's Park was transformed from marshy land into a
deer park,
bowling green and
tennis court by
Henry
VIII., extended and laid out as a pleasure
garden by
Charles II., and rearranged according to the
designs of John Nash in 1827-1829. Its lake, the broad Mall leading
up to
Buckingham
Palace, and the proximity of the government buildings in Whitehall,
combine to beautify it.
Here was established, by
licence from
James I., the so-called
Milk Fair, which remained, its
ownership always in the same family, until 1905, when, on
alterations being made to the Mall, a new
stall was erected for the owners during their
lifetime, though the cow or cows kept here were no longer allowed.
St James's Park is continued between the Mall and Piccadilly by the
Green Park. Hyde Park, to the west, belonged originally to the
manor of Hyde, which was attached
to Westminster Abbey, but was taken by Henry VIII. on the
dissolution of the
monasteries. Two of its gateways are noteworthy, namely that at
Hyde Park Corner at the southeast and the Marble Arch at the
north-east. The first was built in 1828 from designs of Decimus
Burton, and comprises three
arches with a
frieze above the
central arch copied from the Elgin
marbles in the British Museum. The Marble Arch
was intended as a monument to
Nelson, and first stood in front of Buckingham
Palace, being moved to its present site in 1851. It no longer forms
an entrance to the park, as in 1908 a corner of the park was cut
off and a roadway was formed to give additional
accommodation for
the heavy traffic between Oxford Street, Edgware Road and Park
Lane. The Marble Arch was thus left isolated. Hyde Park contains
the Serpentine, a lake 15.00 yds. in length, from the bridge over
which one of the finest prospects in London is seen, extending to
the distant towers of Westminster. Since the 17th century this park
has been one of the most favoured resorts of fashionable society,
and at the height of the " season," from May to the end of July,
its drives present a brilliant scene. In the 17th and 18th
centuries it was a favourite duellingground, and in the present day
it is not infrequently the scene of political and other popular
demonstrations (as is also Trafalgar Square), while the
neighbourhood of Marble Arch is the constant resort of orators on
social and religious topics. Kensington Gardens, originally
attached to Kensington Palace, were subsequently much extended;
they are magnificently timbered, and contain plantations of rare
shrubs and flowering trees. Regent's Park, mainly in the borough of
Marylebone, owes its preservation to the intention of
George
III. to build a palace here. The other most notable open spaces
wholly or partly within the county are Hampstead Heath in the
north-west, a wild, high-lying tract preserved to a great extent in
its natural state, and in the south-west Wimbledon Common, Putney
Heath and the royal
demesne
of Richmond Park, which from its higher parts commands a wonderful
view up the rich valley of the Thames. The outlying parts of the
county to east, south and north are not lacking in open spaces, but
there is an extensive inner area where at most only small gardens
and squares break the continuity of buildings, and where in some
cases old churchyards serve as public grounds.
While stone is the material used in the construction of the
majority of great buildings of London, some modern examples
(notably the Westminster
Roman Catholic cathedral) are of
red brick with stone dressings; and brick is in commonest use for
general domestic building. The smoke-laden atmosphere has been
found not infrequently to exercise a deleterious effect upon the
stonework of important buildings; and through the same cause the
appearance of London as a whole is by some condemned as sombre.
Bright colour, in truth, is wanting, though attempts are made in a
few important modern erections to supply it, a notable instance
being the Savoy Hotel buildings (1904) in the Strand.
Portland stone is frequently
employed in the larger buildings, as in St Paul's Cathedral, and
under the various influences of weather and atmosphere acquires
strongly contrasting tones of light grey and black. Owing to the
by-laws of the County Council, the method of raising commercial or
residential buildings to an extreme height is not practised in
London; the block known as
Queen Anne's Mansions, Westminster,
is an exception, though it cannot be called high in comparison with
American high buildings.
Architectural remains of earlier date than the
Norman period are very few, and of historical
rather than topographical importance. In architecture of the Norman
and
Gothic periods London must
be considered rich, though its richness is poverty
1 1as-
when its losses, particularly during the great fire of 1666,
tical are recalled. These losses were confined
within the City,
architec- but, to go no farther, included
the Norman and Gothic
tore. cathedral of St
Paul, perhaps a nobler monument of
its period than any which has survived it, much as it had suffered
from injudicious restoration. Ancient architecture in London is
principally ecclesiastical. Westminster Abbey is pre-eminent; in
part, it may be, owing to the reverence felt towards it in
preference to the classical St Paul's by those whose ideal of a
cathedral church is essentially Gothic, but mainly from the fact
that it is the
burial-place of
many of the English monarchs and their greatest subjects, as well
as the scene of their coronations (see
Westminster). In the survey of London
(1598) by
John Stow, 125
churches, including St Paul's and Westminster Abbey, are named; of
these 89 were destroyed by the great fire. Thirteen large
conventual churches were mentioned by Fitzstephen in the time of
Henry II., and of these there
are some remains.
The church of St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, is the
finest remnant of its period in London. It was founded in 1123 by
Rahere, who, probably a
Breton
by birth, was a courtier in the reign of
William II. He is said to have been the
king's
minstrel, and to
have spoilt the earlier part of his life in frivolity. Subsequently
he entered holy orders, and in
c. 1120, being stricken
with
fever while on a
pilgrimage to
Rome, vowed that he would found a
hospital in London. St Bartholomew, appearing to him in a
vision, bade him add a church to
his foundation. He became an Augustinian
canon, and founded his hospital, which is now, as
St Bartholomew's Hospital, one of the principal medical
institutions in the metropolis. He became its first master. Later
he erected the priory, for canons of his order, of which the
nave and transepts of the church
remain. The work is in the main very fine Norman, with
triforium,
ambulatory and apsidal
eastern end. An eastern
lady chapel dates from
c. 1410,
but the upper part is modern, for the chapel was long desecrated.
There are remains of the cloisters north of the church, - and
praiseworthy efforts have been made since 1903 towards their
restoration. The western limit of the former nave of the church is
marked by a fine
Early English doorway, now forming an entrance to the
churchyard. Rahere's
tomb remains in the church; the
canopy is Perpendicular work, but
the effigy is believed to be original. He died in 1144.
The Temple Church (see
Inns Of Court), serving for the Inner and
Middle Temples, belonged to the Knights
Templars. It is the finest of the four ancient
round churches in England, dating from 1185, but an Early English
choir opens from the round
church. St Saviour's in Southwark (q.v.), the cathedral church of
the modern bishopric of Southwark, was the church of the priory of
St Mary Overy, and is a large cruciform building mainly Early
English in
style. There may be
mentioned also an early
pier in
the church of St Katherine
Cree or
Christ Church, Leadenhall
Street, belonging to the priory church of the Holy Trinity; old
monuments in the
vaults beneath St
James's Church, Clerkenwell, formerly attached to a
Benedictine nunnery;
and the Perpendicular gateway and the
crypt of the church of the priory of St John of
Jerusalem (see
Finsbury). Among other
ancient churches within the City, that of All Hallows Barking, near
the Tower of London, is principally Perpendicular and contains some
fine brasses. It belonged to the
convent at Barking, Essex, and was the
burial-place of many who were executed at the
scaffold on Tower Hill. St Andrew Undershaft,
so named because a Maypole used to be set up before the former
church on May-day, is late Perpendicular (
c. 1530); and
contains a monument to John Stow the chronicler (d. 1605). The
church of
Austin Friars,
origin- ally belonging to a friary founded in 1253, became a Dutch
church under a grant of
Edward VI., and still remains so; its style
is principally Decorated, but through various vicissitudes little
of the original work is left.
St Giles, Cripplegate, was founded
c. 1090, but the existing church is late Perpendicular. It
is the burial-place of
Fox the
martyrologist and
Milton the
poet, and contains some fine
wood-carving by
Grinling
Gibbons. St Helen's, Bishopsgate, belonged to a priory of nuns
founded
c. 1212, but the greater part of the building is
later. It has two naves parallel, originally for the use of the
nuns and the parishioners respectively. The church of St
Mary-le-Bow, in Cheapside, is built upon a Norman crypt, and that
of St Olave's, Hart Street, which was Pepys's church and contains a
modern memorial to him, is of the 15th century. Other ancient
churches outside the City are few; but there may be noted St
Margaret's, under the
shadow
of Westminster Abbey; and the beautiful
Ely Chapel in Holborn (q.v.), the only remnant of a
palace of the
bishops of
Ely, now used by the Roman Catholics. The Chapel Royal, Savoy, near
the Strand, was rebuilt by
Henry VII. on the site of Savoy Palace, which
was erected by Peter, earl of Savoy and Richmond, in 1245, and
destroyed in the insurrection of
Wat Tyler in 1381. In 1505 Henry VII. endowed
here a hospital of St
John the Baptist for the poor. The
chapel was used as the parish church of St Mary-le-Strand
(1564-1717) and constituted a Chapel Royal in 1773; but there are
no remains of the rest of the foundation.
The architect to whom, after the great fire of 1666, the
opportunity fell of leaving the marks of his influence upon London
was
Sir Christopher Wren. Had all his
schemes been followed out, ` that influence would have extended
beyond architecture alone. He, among others, prepared designs for
laying out the City anew. But no such model city was destined to be
built; the necessity for haste and the jealous guardianship of
rights to old foundations resulted in the old lines being generally
followed. It is characteristic of London that St Paul's Cathedral
(q.v.) should be closely hemmed in by houses, and its majestic west
front approached obliquely by a winding thoroughfare. The cathedral
is Wren's crowning work. It is the scene from time to time of
splendid ceremonies, and contains the tombs of many great men; but
in this respect it cannot compete with the peculiar associations of
Westminster Abbey. Of Wren's other churches it is to be noted that
the necessity of economy usually led him to pay special attention
to a single feature. He generally chose the
steeple, and there are many fine examples of
his work in this department. The steeple of St Mary-le-Bow,
commonly called Bow Church, is one of the most noteworthy. This
church has various points of interest besides its Norman crypt,
from which it took the name of Bow, being the first church in
London built on arches. The ecclesiastical
Court of Arches
sat here formerly. " Bow bells " are famous, and any person born
within
hearing of them is
said to be a "
Cockney," a
term now applied particularly to the
dialect of the lower classes in London.
Wren occasionally followed the Gothic
model, as in St Antholin. The classic style, however, was generally
adopted in the period succeeding his own. Some fine churches belong
to this period, such as St Martin's-in-the-Fields (1726), the
Corinthian
portico of which
rises on the upper part of Trafalgar Square; but other examples are
regrettable. While the architecture of the City churches, with the
exceptions mentioned, is not as a rule remarkable, many are notable
for the rich and beautiful woodcarving they contain. A Gothic style
has been most commonly adopted in building modern churches; but of
these the most notable, the Roman
Catholic Westminster Cathedral (see
Westminster), is
Byzantine, and built principally of brick, with a lofty
campanile. The only other
ecclesiastical building to be specially mentioned is Lambeth
Palace, opposite to the Houses of Parliament across the Thames. It
has been a seat of the archbishops of
Canterbury since 1197, and though the
present residential portion dates only from the early 19th century,
the chapel, hall and other parts are of the 13th century and later
(see
Lambeth).
Among secular buildings, there is none more
venerable than the Tower of London (q.v.),
the moated fortress which overlooks the Thames at the eastern
boundary of the City. It presents fine examples of Norman
architecture; its historical associations are of the highest
interest, and its armoury and the
regalia of England, which are kept here,
attract great numbers of visitors.
The Houses of Parliament, with Westminster Abbey and St
Margaret's Church, complete the finest group of buildings which
London possesses; a group essentially Gothic, for the Houses of
Parliament, completed in 1867 from the designs
m . of
Barry, are in a late Perpendicular
style. They cover a great area, the east front giving immediately
upon the Thames. The principal external features are the huge
Victoria Tower at the south, and the
clock tower, with its well-known chimes and the
hour-
bell " Big Ben," on the
north. Some of the apartments are magnificently adorned within, and
the building incorporates the ancient Westminster Hall, belonging
to the former royal palace on the site (see
Westminster). The government offices are
principally in Whitehall, the fine thoroughfare which connects
Parliament Square, in the angle between the Houses and the Abbey,
with Trafalgar Square. Somerset House (1776-1786), a massive range
of buildings by
Sir William Chambers, surrounding
a quadrangle, and having its front upon the Strand and back upon
the Victoria Embankment, occupies the site of a palace founded by
the
protector Somerset,
c. 1548. It contains the
Exchequer and
Audit, Inland Revenue,
Probate, Registrar-General's and other offices,
and one wing houses King's College. Other offices are the New
Record Office, the repository of State papers and other records,
and the Patent Office in
Chancery Lane. The Heralds' College or College
of Arms, the official authority in matters of armorial
bearings and pedigrees,
occupies a building in Queen Victoria Street, City, erected
subsequently to the great fire (1683). The Royal Courts of Justice
or Law Courts stand adjacent to the
Inns of Court, facing the Strand at the
point where a memorial marks the site of Old
Temple Bar (1672), at the entrance to the
City, removed in 1878 and later re-erected at Theobald's Park, near
Cheshunt, Hertfordshire.
The Law Courts (1882) were erected from the designs of G. E.
Street, in a Gothic style.
The buildings connected with
local government in London are with
one exception modern, and handsome town-halls have been erected for
some of the boroughs. The exception is the
Guildhall of the City Corporation, with its
splendid hall, the scene of meetings and entertainments of the
corporation; its council chamber, library and crypt (partly opened
to the public in 1910). In 1906 the London County Council obtained
parliamentary sanction for the erection of a county hall on the
south bank of the Thames, immediately east of Westminster Bridge,
and in 1908 a design submitted by Mr Ralph Knott was accepted in
competition. The style prescribed was English Renaissance. Several
of the great
livery companies or
gilds of the City possess fine halls, containing
portraits and other collections of high interest and value. Among
the more notable of these halls are those of the Mercers, Drapers,
Fishmongers, Clothworkers, Armourers and Stationers.
The former royal palaces of Westminster and of Whitehall, of
which the fine Jacobean banqueting hall remains, are described
under
Westminster.
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Buckingham House was built in 1705 for the duke
of
Buckinghamshire, and purchased by
George III. in 1762. The existing palace was finished by John Nash
in 1835, but did not meet with approval, and was considerably
altered before Queen Victoria occupied it in 1837. As regards its
exterior appearance it is one of the least satisfactory of London's
great buildings, though the throne room and other state apartments
are magnificent within. The picture gallery contains valuable works
of Dutch masters and others. The front of the palace forms the
background to the public memorial to Queen Victoria, at the head of
the Mall. Provision was made in the design, by Sir Aston Webb, for
the extension of the Mall to open upon Trafalgar Square, through
gateways in a semicircular range of buildings to be occupied by
government offices, and for a wide circular space in front of the
Palace, with a statue of the Queen by
Thomas Brock in its centre. St James's
Palace, at the north side of St James's Park, was acquired and
rebuilt by Henry VIII., having been formerly a hospital founded in
the 12th century for leprous maidens. It was the royal residence
after the destruction of Whitehall by fire in the time of
William III. until a
fire in 1809 destroyed the greater part. Only the gateway and
certain apartments remain of the
Tudor building.
Marlborough House, adjacent to the palace,
was built by the first duke of Marlborough in 1710 from the designs
of Wren, came into possession of the
Crown in 1817, and has been occupied since 1863
by the prince of
Wales. In
Kensington (q.v.), on the west side of Kensington Gardens, is the
palace acquired by William III. as a country seat, and though no
longer used by the sovereign, is in part occupied by members of the
royal family, and possesses a deeper historical interest than the
other royal palaces, as the birth-place of Queen Victoria and her
residence in youth.
There are few survivals of ancient°domestic architecture in
London, but the gabled and timbered front of
Staple Inn,
Holborn (q.v.) is a picturesque fragment. In Bishopsgate Street,
City, stood Crosby Hall, which belonged to Crosby Place, the
mansion of Sir John Crosby (d. 1475).
Richard III. occupied the mansion as duke
of
Gloucester and Lord
Protector (cf. Shakespeare's
Richard III., Act i. Sc. 3,
&c.) The hall was removed in 1908, in spite of strong efforts
to preserve it, which resulted in its re-erection on a site in
Chelsea. The hall of the Middle Temple is an admirable example of a
refectory of later date
(1572).
A fine though circumscribed group of buildings is that in the
heart of the City which includes the Bank of England, the Royal
Exchange and the Mansion House. The Bank is a characteristic
building,
quadrilateral, massive and low, but
covering a large area, without external windows, and almost wholly
unadorned; though the northwest corner is copied from the Temple of
the Sibyl at
Tivoli. The
building is mainly the work of
Sir John Soane (
c. 1788). The
first building for the Royal Exchange was erected and presented to
the City by
Sir Thomas Gresham (1565-1570) whose
crest, a
grasshopper, appears in the wind-
vane above the present building.
Gresham's Exchange was destroyed in the great fire of 1666; and the
subsequent building was similarly destroyed in 1838. The present
building has an imposing Corinthian portico, and encloses a court
surrounded by an ambulatory adorned with historical paintings by
Leighton,
Seymour Lucas, Stanhope
Forbes and others. The Mansion
House was erected
c. 1740.
The only other public buildings, beyond those at Westminster,
which fall into a great group are the modern museums, the Imperial
Institute, London University and other institutions, and Albert
Hall, which lie between Kensington Gore and
Brompton and Cromwell Roads, and these,
together with the National Gallery (in Trafalgar Square) and other
art galleries,
and the principal scientific, educational and recreative
institutions, are considered in Section V.
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Monuments and Memorials
The Monument (1677),
Fish
Street Hill, City, erected from the designs of Wren in
commemoration of
the great fire of 1666, is a Doric column surmounted by a gilt
representation of a flaming
urn. The
Nelson Column, the central feature of Trafalgar Square, is from the
designs of William Railton (1843), crowned with a statue of Nelson
by Baily, and has at its base four colossal lions in
bronze, modelled by
Sir Edwin Landseer. A statue
of the duke of Cambridge, by Captain Adrian Jones, was unveiled in
1907 in front of the War Office, Whitehall. The duke of York's
Column, Carlton House
Terrace (1833), an Ionic
pillar, is surmounted by a bronze statue by
Sir
Richard Westmacott. The Westminster Column, outside the
entrance to Dean's Yard, was erected to the memory of the old
pupils of Westminster School who died in the
Russian and Indian wars of 1854-1859. The
Guards Memorial, Waterloo Place, commemorates the foot guards who
died in the Crifnea. The Albert Memorial, Kensington Gardens, was
erected (1872) by " Queen Victoria and her People to the memory of
Albert, Prince
Consort,"
from the designs of
Sir Gilbert Scott, with a
statue of the Prince (1876) by
John Henry Foley beneath a huge ornate
Gothic canopy. At the eastern end of the Strand a memorial with
statue by Hamo Thorneycroft of
William Ewart Gladstone was
unveiled in 1905. In Parliament Square and elsewhere are numerous
statues, some of high merit, but it cannot be said that statuary
occupies an important place in the adornment of streets and open
places in London. Cleopatra's
Needle, an ancient Egyptian monument, was
presented to the government by
Mehemet Ali in 1819, brought from
Alexandria in 1878, and erected on
the Victoria embankment on a
pedestal of grey granite.
Nomenclature
Having regard to the destruction of visible evidences of
antiquity in London, both through accidental agencies such as the
great fire, and through inevitable modernizing influences, it is
well that historical associations in nomenclature are preserved in
a great measure unimpaired. The City naturally offers the richest
field for study in this direction.
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Among
examples of the first group, Cheapside is prominent. This modern
thoroughfare of shops was in early times the Chepe (0. Eng.
ceap, bargain), an
open place occupied by a market, having, until the 14th century, a
space set apart for popular entertainments. There was a Queen
Eleanor cross here, and conduits supplied the city with water.
Modern Cheapside merges eastward into the street called the
Poultry, from the
poulterers' stalls " but lately departed from thence," according to
Stow, at the close of the 16th century. Cornhill, again, recalls
the cornmarket " time out of mind there holden " (Stow), and
Gracechurch Street was corrupted from the name of the church of St
Benet Grasschurch (destroyed by the great fire, rebuilt, and
removed in 1868), which was said to be derived from a
herb-market held under its walls. The
Jews had their quarter near the
commercial centre, their presence being indicated by the street
named Old Jewry, though it is probable that they did not reoccupy
this locality after their
expulsion in 1290. Lombard Street similarly
points to the residence of Lombard merchants, the name existing
when Edward II. confirmed a grant to Florentine merchants in 1318,
while the
Lombards
maintained their position until Tudor times. Paternoster Row, still
occupied by booksellers, takes name from the sellers of
prayer-books and writers of texts
who collected under the shadow of St Paul's Cathedral. As regards
names derived from ancient buildings, instances are the streets
called London Wall and
Barbican, and those named after the numerous
gates. Of those associated with ecclesiastical foundations several
occur in the course of this article (Section II.,
Ecclesiastical Architecture, &c.). Such are Austin
Friars, Crutched Friars, Blackfriars and Whitefriars. To this last
district a curious alternative name,
Alsatia, was given, probably in the 17th
century, with reference to its notoriety as a hiding-place of
debtors. A derivation is suggested from the disputed territory of
Alsace, pointing the contrast
between this lawless district and the adjacent Temple, the home of
the law itself. The name
Bridewell came from a well near the Fleet
(New Bridge Street), dedicated to St
Bride, and was attached to a house built by Henry
VIII. (1522), but is most familiar in its application to the house
of correction instituted by Edward VI., which remained a
prison till 1863. The Minories, a
street leading south from Aldgate, takes name from an abbey of nuns
of St
Clare (
Sorores
Minores) founded in 1293. Apart from the City an interesting
ecclesiastical survival is the name Broad
Sanctuary, Westminster, recalling the place
of sanctuary which long survived the monastery under the protection
of which it originally existed.
Covent Garden, again, took its name from
a convent garden belonging to Westminster. Among the survivals of
names of non-ecclesiastical buildings Castle Baynard may be noted;
it stood in the City on the banks of the Thames, and was held by
Ralph Baynard, a Norman, in the time of William the Conqueror; a
later building being erected in 1428 by
Humphrey duke of
Gloucester. Here Richard III. was acclaimed king, and the
mansion was used by Henry VII. and Henry VIII. Its name is kept in
a
wharf and a
ward of the City.
The survival of names of obliterated physical features or
characteristics is illustrated in Section I.; but additional
instances are found in the Strand, which originally ran close to
the sloping bank of the Thames, and in Smithfield, now the central
meat market, but for long the "
smooth field " where a
cattle
and
hay market was held, and the
scene of tournaments and games, and also of executions. Here in
1381 Wat
Tyler the rebel was
killed by
Sir William Walworth during the
parley with
Richard
II.
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The derivation commonly accepted for Piccadilly is from
pickadil, a stiff
collar or hem in fashion in the early part of
the 17th century (Span.
picca, a
spear-head). In
Pall Mall and the neighbouring Mall in St
James' Park is found the title of a
game resembling
croquet (Fr.
paille maille) in favour at or before the time of
Charles I., though the Mall
was laid out for the game by Charles II. Other names pointing to
the existence of pastimes now extinct are found elsewhere in
London, as in Balls
Pond Road,
Islington, where in the 17th century was a proprietary pond for the
sport of
duck-
hunting. An entertainment of another form is
recalled in the name of Spring Gardens, St James' Park, where at
the time of James I. there was a
fountain or spring so arranged as to
besprinkle those who trod unwarily on the
valve which opened it. Many of the names of the
rich residential streets and squares in the west have associations
with the various owners of the properties; but Mayfair is so called
from a fair held on this ground in May as early as the reign of
Charles II. Finally there are several survivals, in street-names,
of former private mansions and other buildings. Thus the district
of the Adelphi, south of Charing Cross, takes name from the block
of dwellings and offices erected in 1768 by the brothers (Gr.
adelphi)
Robert and
William Adam,
Scottish architects. In Piccadilly Clarendon House, erected in 1664
by Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, became Albemarle House when
acquired by the duke of Albemarle in 1675.
Northumberland
House, from which is named Northumberland Avenue, opening upon
Trafalgar Square, was built c. 1605 by
Henry Howard, earl of Northampton, and was
acquired by marriage by Algernon
Percy, earl of Northumberland, in 1642.
It took name from this family, and stood until 1874.
Arundel House, originally a
seat of the bishops of
Bath, was
the residence of Thomas
Howard, earl of Arundel, whose famous
collection of
sculpture,
the Arundel Marbles, was housed here until presented to Oxford
University in 1667. The site of the house is marked by Arundel
Street, Strand.
III. Communications
Railways. - The trunk railways leaving London, with their
termini, are as follows: (1)
Northern. The Great Northern,
Midland and London & North-Western systems have adjacent
termini, namely King's Cross, St Pancras and Euston, in Euston
Road, St Pancras. The
terminus of the Great Central railway is
Marylebone, in the road of that name. (2)
Western. The
terminus of the Great Western railway is Paddington (Praed Street);
and that of the London & South-Western, Waterloo, south of the
Thames in Lambeth. (3)
Southern. The London,
Brighton & South Coast
railway has its western terminus at Victoria, and its central
terminus at London Bridge, on the south side of the Thames. The
South-Eastern &
Chatham
railway has four terminal stations, all on or close to the north
bank of the river - Victoria, Charing Cross,' Holborn Viaduct and
Cannon Street (City). St Paul's Station on the Holborn branch is
also terminal in part. (4)
Eastern. The principal terminus
of the Great Eastern Railway is in
Liverpool Street (City), but the company also
uses Fenchurch Street (City), the terminus of the London, Tilbury
& Southend railway, and St Pancras. These lines, especially the
southern lines, the Great Eastern, Great Northern and South-Western
carry a very heavy suburban traffic. Systems of joint lines and
running powers are maintained to afford communication between the
main lines. Thus the West London Extension line carries local
traffic between the North Western and Great Western and the
Brighton and South-Western systems, while the Metropolitan
Extension through the City connects the Midland and Great Northern
with the South-Eastern & Chatham lines.
The railways whose systems are mainly or wholly confined within
the metropolitan area are as follows. The North London railway has
a terminal station at Broad Street, City, and serves the parts of
London implied by its name. The company possesses running powers
over the lines of various other companies: thus its trains run as
far north as Potter's
Bar on the
Great Northern line, while it serves Richmond on the west and
Poplar on the east. The East London line connects Shoreditch with
New Cross (Deptford) by way of the Thames Tunnel, a subway under
the river originally built for footpassengers. The London &
India Docks line connects the city with the docks on the north bank
of the river as far as North Woolwich. The Metropolitan railway has
a line from Baker Street through north-west London to Harrow,
continuing to Uxbridge, while the original main line runs on to
Rickmansworth,
Aylesbury and
Verney Junction, but has been
worked by the Metropolitan and Great Central companies jointly
since 1906. Another line serves the western outskirts (Hammersmith,
Richmond, &c.) from the city. Metropolitan trains also connect
at New Cross with the southeastern railway system. This company
combines with the Metropolitan District to form the Inner Circle
line, which has stations close to all the great railway termini
north of the Thames. The Metropolitan District (commonly called the
District) system serves Wimbledon, Richmond, Ealing and Harrow on
the west, and passes eastward by Earl's Court, South Kensington,
Victoria and Mansion House (City) to Whitechapel and Bow. The
Metropolitan and the District lines within London are for the most
part underground (this feature supplying the title of " the
Underground " familiarly applied to both systems); the tunnels
being constructed of brick. The earliest part of the system was
opened in 1863. Although these railways, as far as concerns the
districts they serve, form the fastest method of communication from
point to point, their discomfort, arising mainly from the
impossibility of proper
ventilation, and various other
disadvantages attendant upon the use of
steam traction, led to a determination to adapt the
lines to
electrical
working. Experiments on a short section of the line were made in
1900, and later schemes were set on foot to electrify the District
system and bring under one general control this railway, other
lines in deep level " tubes " between Baker Street and Waterloo,
between Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead, and between
Hammersmith, Brompton, Piccadilly, King's Cross and Finsbury Park,
and the London United Tramways Company. The Underground Electric
Railways Company, which acquired a controlling influence over these
concerns, undertook the construction of a great power station at
Chelsea; while the Metropolitan Company, which had fallen into line
with the District (not without dispute over the system of
electrification to be adopted) erected a station at Neasden on the
Aylesbury branch. Electric traction was gradually introduced on the
Metropolitan and the District lines in 1906. The former company
combined with the Great Western Company as regards the
electrification of, and provision of stock for, the lines which
they had previously worked jointly, from Edgware Road by Bishop's
Road to Hammersmith, &c. The Baker Street & Waterloo
railway (known as the " Bakerloo ") was opened in 1906 and
subsequently extended in one direction to Paddington and in the
other to the Elephant and Castle. The Great Northern, Piccadilly
& Brompton line, from Finsbury Park to Hammersmith, was opened
early in 1907, and the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead line
later in the same year. Deeplevel electric railways (" tubes "),
communicating with the surface by lifts, were already familiar in
London. The first opened was the City & South London (1890),
subsequently extended to run between Euston, the
Angel, Islington, the Bank (City) and Clapham.
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Tramways
The surface tramway
system of London cannot be complete, as, within an area roughly
represented by the boroughs of Chelsea, Kensington and Fulham, the
city of Westminster and a considerable district north thereof, and
the city of London, the ' Charing Cross station was the scene of a
remarkable catastrophe on the 5th of December 1905,
when a large part of the roof collapsed, and the falling debris did
very serious damage to the Avenue theatre, which stands close to the station at a
lower level.
existing streets could not accommodate tram lines along with
other traffic over any great distance consecutively, and in point
of fact there are few, beyond the embankment line from Blackfriars
Bridge to Westminster Bridge, which connects with the southern
system. Another line, running south from Islington, uses the
shallow-level subway under Kingsway and connects with the
embankment line. The northern, western and eastern outskirts and
London south of the Thames are extensively served by trams. On the
formation of the London County Council there were thirteen tramway
companies in existence. Powers under the Tramways Act of 1870 were
given to the council, enabling it to acquire possession of these
undertakings, and within the county of London they have been for
the most part so acquired, and are worked by the council. Outside
the county both companies and local authorities own and work
tramways. Both electric and
horse traction are used; the latter, however, has
been in great part displaced by the former. The total mileage for
greater London is about 240.
Omnibuses
The
omnibus system is
very extensive, embracing all the principal streets throughout the
county and extending over a large part of Greater London. The two
principal omnibus companies are the London General Omnibus and the
London Road
Car. The first omnibus
ran between the Bank and Paddington in 1829. In 1905 and following
years motor omnibuses (worked mostly by internal
combustion engines) began
to a large extent to supplant horse traction. The principal
existing companies adopted them, and new companies were formed to
work them exclusively. With their advantages of greater speed and
carrying capacity over the horsed vehicles, their introduction was
a most important development, though their working at first imposed
a severe financial
strain on
many companies.
Cabs
The horse-drawn cabs which ply for hire in the streets, or wait
at authorized "
cab-stands," are of
two kinds, the " hansom," a two-wheeled vehicle so named after its
inventor (1834) and the " four-wheeler." " Hackney coaches " for
hire are first mentioned in 1625, when they were kept at inns, and
numbered 20. Until 1832 their numbers were restricted, in 1662 to
400, in 1694 to 700, in 1771 to moo. In some cases a driver owns
his cab, but the majority of vehicles are let to drivers by owners,
and the
adjustment of
terms between them has led to disputes from time to time. In 1894 a
dispute necessitated the formulation of the " Asquith
award " by the Rt. Hon. H. H.
Asquith as home secretary, and subsequent modifications of this
were only arrived at, as in 1904, after a strike of the drivers
affected. A long-standing cause of complaint on the part of the
public has been the common refusal of cab-drivers to accept their
legal fares, but, on the other hand, several attempts to introduce
cabs with an automatic taximeter failed, until the introduction of
motor cabs, of which a few had already been plying for some time
when in 1907 a large number, provided with taximeters, were put
into service. Subsequently, as the number of " taxicabs " (see
Motor Vehicles)
increased, that of horse-cabs decreased.
Traffic Problem
One of the most serious administrative problems met with in
London is that of locomotion, especially as regards the regulation
of traffic in the principal thoroughfares and at the busiest
crossings. The police have powers of control over vehicles and
exercise them admirably; their work in this respect is a constant
source of wonder to foreign visitors. But this control does not
meet the problem of actually lessening the number of vehicles in
the main
arteries of
traffic. At such crossings as that of the Strand and
Wellington Street,
Ludgate Circus and south of the Thames, the Elephant and Castle, as
also in the narrow streets of the City, congestion is often
exceedingly severe, and is aggravated when any main street is under
repair, and diversion of traffic through narrow side streets
becomes necessary. Many street improvements were carried out, it is
true, in the last half of the 19th century, the dates of the
principal being as follows: 1854, Cannon Street; 1864, Southwark
Street; 1870, Holborn Viaduct; 1871,
Hamilton Place, Queen Victoria Street; 1876,
Northumberland Avenue; 1882, Tooley Street; 1883, Hyde Park Corner;
1884, Eastcheap; 1886,
Shaftesbury Avenue; 1887, Charing Cross
Road; 1890-1892, Rosebery Avenue. At the beginning of the 20th
century several important local widenings of streets were put in
hand, as for example between Sloane Street and Hyde Park Corner, in
the Strand and at the Marble Arch (1908). At the same period a
great work was undertaken to meet the want of a proper central
communication between north and south, namely, the construction of
a broad thoroughfare, called Kingsway in honour of King
Edward VII., from High
Holborn opposite
Southampton Row southward to the Strand,
connexion with which is established at two points through a
crescent named Aldwych. The
idea of such a thoroughfare is traceable back to the time of
William IV. The magnitude
of the traffic problem as a whole may be best appreciated by
examples of the vast schemes of improvement which from time to time
have been put forward by responsible individuals. Thus Sir John
Wolfe Barry, as chairman of the Council of the Society of Arts in
1899, proposed to alleviate congestion of traffic by bridges over
and tunnels under the streets at six points, namely - Hyde Park
Corner, Piccadilly Circus, Ludgate Circus, Oxford Street and
Tottenham Court Road,
Strand and Wellington Street, and Southwark Bridge and Upper Thames
Street. Another scheme seriously suggested in 1904, to meet
existing disabilities of communication between north and south by
linking the northern and southern tramway services, involved the
removal of the Charing Cross terminus of the South Eastern and
Chatham railway to the south side of the river, and the
construction of a new bridge in place of the railway bridge. The
mere control of existing traffic, local street improvements and
provision of new means of communication between casual points, were
felt to miss the root of the problem, and in 1903 a Royal
Commission was appointed to consider the whole question of
locomotion and transport in London,
expert evidence being taken from engineers,
representatives of the various railway and other companies, of the
County Council, borough councils and police, and others. The
commission reported in 1905.1 regard to street improvements the
most important
commis- recommendation was that of
the construction of two
1903, main avenues 140 ft. wide,
one running west and east, from Bayswater Road to Whitechapel, and
passing through the city in the neighbourhood of London Wall, and
another from Holloway to the Elephant and Castle, to cross the
Thames by a new bridge above Blackfriars. Four lines of surface
tramways and four railway lines in shallow tunnels were proposed
along these avenues. Many widenings and other improvements of
existing thoroughfares, and extensions of tramways were proposed,
and detailed recommendations were made as regards urban and
suburban railways, and the rehousing of the working population on
the outskirts of London. Finally, the commission made the important
recommendation that a traffic board should be established for
London, to exercise a general supervision of traffic, and to act as
a tribunal to which all schemes of railway and tramway construction
should be referred.
Thames Steamers
A local passenger steamboat service on the Thames suffers from
the disadvantage that the river does not provide the shortest route
between points at any great distance apart, and that the main
thoroughfares between east and west do not touch its banks, so that
passengers along those thoroughfares are not tempted to use it as a
channel of communication. High pier dues, moreover, contributed to
the decline of the traffic, and attempts to overcome the
disinclination of passengers to use the river (at any rate in
winter) show a record of failure. The London, Westminster and
Vauxhall Steamboat Company established in 1840 a service of seven
steamboats between London Bridge and Vauxhall. This company was
bought up by the
Citizen and
Iron Steamboat Companies in 1865. The City Steamboat Company,
established in 1848, began with eight boats, and by 1865 had
increased their fleet to seventeen, running from London Bridge to
Chelsea. This company was taken over by the London Steamboat
Company in 1875. The sinking of the " Princess Alice " in 1878 was
a serious blow to the London Steamboat Company, which collapsed,
and was succeeded by the River Thames Steamboat Navigation Company,
which went into
liquidation in 1887. The fleet was bought
by a
syndicate and sold
to the Victoria Steamboat Association. The Thames Steamboat Company
then took up the service, but early in 1902 announced that it would
be discontinued, although in 1904 it was temporarily resumed.
Meanwhile, however, in 1902 the London County Council had promoted
a bill in Parliament to enable them to run a service of boats on
the Thames. The bill was thrown out on this occasion, but was
revived and passed in 1904, and on the 17th of June 1905 the
service was put into operation. The boats, however, were worked at
a loss, and the service was discontinued in 1909.
Foreign Communications
A large pleasure traffic is maintained by the steamers of the
New Palace Company and others in summer between London Bridge and
Southend, Clacton and
Harwich,
Ramsgate,
Margate and other resorts of the Kent coast,
and
Calais and
Boulogne. Passenger steamers
sail from the port of London to
the principal ports of she British Isles and northern
Europe, and to all parts of the
world, but the most favoured passenger services to and from Europe
and
North
America pass through other ports, to which the railways provide
special services of trains from London. The principal travelling
agency in London is that of Messrs
Cook, whose head office is at Ludgate Circus. A
number of sub-offices of large
steamship lines are congregated in
Cockspur Street, Trafalgar Square, and several of the principal
railway companies have local offices throughout the centre of the
metropolis for the issue of tickets and the collection and
forwarding of luggage and parcels.
Post Office
The General Post Office lies in the centre of the City on either
side of the street called St Martin's le Grand. The oldest portion
of the buildings, Ionic in style, was designed by Sir
Robert Smirke and
erected in 1829. Here are the central offices of the letter,
newspaper and
telegraph
departments, with the office of the Postmaster General; but the
headquarters of the parcels department are at Mount Pleasant,
Clerkenwell; those of the Post Office Savings Bank at Blythe Road,
West Kensington, and those of the Money Order department in Queen
Victoria Street. The postal area is divided into eight districts,
commonly designated by
initials (which it is customary to employ in
writing addresses) - East Central (E.C., the City, north to
Pentonville and City Roads, west to Gray's Inn Road and the Law
Courts); West Central (W.C., from Euston Road to the Thames, and
west to Tottenham Court Road); West (W., from Piccadilly and Hyde
Park north to Marylebone and Edg 1 The report appeared in eight
volumes, the first of which, containing the general conclusions to
which allusion is here made, bore the number, as a
blue-book, Cd. 2597.
ware Roads; the greater part of Paddington and Kensington, north
part of Fulham and Hammersmith); South-west (S.W., City of
Westminster south of Piccadilly, Chelsea, South Kensington, the
greater part of Fulham, and London south of the Thames and west of
Vauxhall Bridge); South-east (S.E., remainder of London south of
the Thames); East (E., east of the City and Kingsland Road); North
(N., west of Kingsland Road; Islington); North-west (N.W., greater
part of St Pancras and St Marylebone, and Hampstead). The postal
area excludes part of Woolwich within the county; but includes
considerable areas outside the county in other directions, as West
Ham, Leyton, &c., on the east;
Woodford, Chingford, &c., on the north-east; Wood Green,
Southgate and Finchley on the north;
Hendon and Willesden on the north-west; Acton
and Ealing, Barnes and Wimbledon on the west; and Penge and
Beckenham on the south,
wholly
or in part. There are ten district head
offices and about a thousand local offices in the metropolitan
district.
Telephones
The National
Telephone Company, working under licence
expiring on the 31st of December 1911, had until 1901 practically a
monopoly of telephonic
communication within London, though the Post Office owned all the
trunk lines connecting the various telephone areas of the company.
The company's management did not give
satisfaction, and the use of the telephone
was consequently restricted in the metropolis, when in 1898 a
Select Committee on Telephones reported that " general immediate
and effective " competition by either the government or local
authority was necessary to ensure efficient working. The Post
Office thereupon instituted a separate system of exchanges and
lines, intercommunication between the two systems being arranged.
Charges were reduced and efficiency benefited by this movement. The
area covered by the local as distinct from the trunk service is
about 630 sq. m. extending to
Romford, Enfield, Harrow, &c., north of the
Thames, and to
Dartford
Reigate, Epsom, &c., south of it. Public call offices are
provided in numerous shops, railway stations and other public
places, and at many post offices. The District Messengers Company
affords facilities through local offices for the use of special
messengers.
IV. Population, Public Health, &C.
The population of Greater London by the
census of 1901 was 6,581,402.
The following table gives comparisons between the figures of
certain census returns for Greater London and its chief component
parts, namely, the City, the county and the outer ring (i.e.
Greater London outside the county). All the figures before those of
1901 are adjusted to these areas.
|
Year.
|
City.
|
County.
|
Outer Ring.
|
Greater London.
|
|
1801
|
128,129
|
831,181
|
155,334
|
1,114,644
|
|
1841
|
123,563
|
1,825,714
|
286,067
|
2,235,344
|
|
1881
|
5 0 ,5 6 9
|
3,779,7 28
|
936,364
|
4,766,661
|
|
1901
|
26 ,9 2 3
|
4,5 0 9, 618
|
2,044,864
|
6,581,402
|
The reason for the decrease in the resident City population is
to be found in the rapid extension of business premises, while the
widening ramifications of the outer residential areas are
illustrated by the increase in the later years of the population of
the Outer Ring. The growth and population of London previous to the
Igth century is considered under Histor y, ad fin. The
foreign-born population of London was 60,252 in 1881: and 1 35,377
in 1901. During 1901, 27,070 aliens (excluding sailors) arrived at
the port, and in 1902, 33,060. Of these last Russians and Poles
numbered 21,013; Germans, 3386; Austrians and Hungarians, 2197;
Dutch, 1902; Norwegians Swedes and Danes, 1341; and Rumanians,
1016. Other nation alities numbered below one thousand each. The
foreign-born popu lation shows a large increase in percentage to
the whole, being 1.57 in 1881 and 2.98 in 1901. Residents of Irish
birth have decreased since 1851; those of Scottish birth have
increased steadily, and roughly as the population. German residents
are found mainly in the western and west central districts; French
mainly in the City of Westminster (especially the district of
Soho), St Pancras and St Marylebone; Italians in Holborn (Saffron
Hill), Soho and Finsbury; and Russians and Poles in Stepney and
Bethnal Green.
Vital Statistics
The following table shows the average birthrate and death-rate
per thousand at stated periods.
|
Years.
|
Births.
|
Deaths.
|
|
1861-1880 2
|
35'4
|
23.4
|
|
1891-1900 2
|
30.3
|
19.2
|
|
1 9 01 - 1904 2
|
28.5
|
16.5
|
|
1905
|
27.1
|
15.6
|
2 Average.
|
Average
1895-1904.
|
1905.
|
|
Leicester .
|
16.7
|
13.3
|
|
Brussels. .
|
16.7
|
14.5
|
|
Bristol. .
|
16.9
|
14.6
|
|
Bradford. .
|
17.7
|
15.2
|
|
Leeds. .
|
19 I
|
15.2
|
|
LONDON. .
|
18.2
|
15.6
|
|
Birmingham .
|
20.2
|
16.2
|
|
Nottingham .
|
18.4
|
16.5
|
|
Newcastle .
|
20.9
|
16.8
|
|
Sheffield. .
|
19.6
|
17.0
|
|
Berlin. .
|
17.8
|
17.2
|
|
Paris .
|
19.2
|
17.4
|
|
Manchester .
|
22.6
|
18.0
|
|
New York
|
20.2
|
18.3
|
|
Vienna
|
20.0
|
19.0
|
|
Liverpool
|
23.2
|
19.6
|
|
Rome
|
19.1
|
20.6
|
|
St Petersburg
|
25'9
|
25.3
|
A comparison of the death-rate of London and those of other
great towns in England and abroad is given here: - In 1905 the
lowest death-rates among the metropolitan boroughs were returned by
Hampstead (9.3), Lewisham (11.7), Wandsworth (12.6), Woolwich
(12.8), Stoke Newington (12.9), and the highest by Shoreditch
(19.7), Finsbury (19.0), Bermondsey (18.7), Bethnal Green (18.6)
and Southwark (18.5). A return of the percentage of inhabitants
dwelling in over-crowded tenements shows 2.7 for Lewisham, 4.5 for
Wandsworth, 5.5 for Stoke Newington, and 6.4 for Hampstead, against
35.2 for Finsbury and 29.9 for Shoreditch.
Sanitation.-As regards sanitation London is under
special regulations. When the statutes relating to
public
health were consolidated and amended in 1875 London was
excluded; and the law applicable to it was specially consolidated
and amended in 1891. The London County Council is a central
sanitary authority; the City and metropolitan boroughs are sanitary
districts, and the Corporation and borough councils are local
sanitary authorities. The County Council deals directly with
matters where uniformity of administration is essential,
e.g. main drainage,
housing of working classes,
infant life protection,
common
lodging-houses and shelters, and contagious diseases of
animals. With a further view to uniformity it has certain powers of
supervision and control over local authorities, and can make
by-laws respecting construction of local sewers, sanitary
conveniences, offensive trades, slaughter-houses and dairies,, and
prevention of nuisances outside the jurisdiction of local
authorities. A medical officer of health for the whole county is
appointed by the Council, which also pays half the salaries of
local medical officers and sanitary inspectors. The Council may
also act in cases of
default
by the local authorities, or may make representations to the
Local
Government Board respecting such default, whereupon the Board
may direct the Council to withhold payment due to the local
authority under the Equalization of Rates Act 1894.
The first act providing for a commission of sewers in London
dates from 1531. Various works of a more or less imperfect
character were carried out, such as the bridging over in 1637 of
the
Drainage. river Fleet, which as early as 1307 had
become inaccessible to shipping through the
accumulation of filth. Scavengers were
employed in early times, and sewage was received into
wells and pumped into the kennels
of the streets. A system of main drainage was inaugurated by the
Commissioners of Sewers in 1849, but their work proceeded very
slowly. It was carried on more effectively by the Metropolitan
Board of Works (1856-1888) which expended over six-and-a-half
millions
sterling on the
work. The London County Council maintained, completed and improved
the system. The length of sewers in the main system is about 288
m., and their construction has cost about eight millions. The
system covers the county of London, West Ham, Penge, Tottenham,
Wood Green, and parts of Beckenham, Hornsey, Croydon, Willesden,
East Ham and Acton. There are
actually two distinct systems, north and south of the Thames,
having separate outfall works on the north and south banks of the
river, at Barking and Crossness. The clear effluent flows into the
Thames, and the sludge is taken 50 m. out to sea. The annual cost
of maintenance of the system exceeds £250,000. The sanitary
authorities are concerned only with the supervision of house
drainage, and the construction and maintenance of local sewers
discharging into the main system. The Thames and the Lea
Conservancies have powers to guard against the pollution of the
rivers.
Hospitals.-The Metropolitan Asylums Board, though
established in 1867 purely as a
poor-law authority for the relief of the sick,
insane
Metro- and infirm paupers, has become a central
hospital authority for infectious diseases, with power to receive
into
politan its hospitals persons, who are not paupers,
suffering from
Asylums fever, smallpox or
diphtheria. Both the
Board and the
Board. County Council have certain powers
and duties of sanitary authority for the purpose of epidemic
regulations. The local sanitary authorities carry out the
provisions of the Infectious Diseases (Notification and Prevention)
Acts, which for London are embodied in the Public Health (London)
Act 1891. The Board has asylums for the insane at Tooting Bec
(Wandsworth), Ealing (for children); King's Langley, Hertfordshire;
Caterham, Surrey; and Darenth, Kent. There are twelve fever
hospitals, including northern and southern convalescent hospitals.
For smallpox the Board maintains hospital ships moored in the
Thames at Dartford, and a land establishment at the same place.
There are land and river
ambulance services.
There are three regular funds in London for the support of
hospitals. (I) King Edward's Hospital Fund (1897) founded by King
Edward VII. as Prince of Wales in commemoration of the Diamond
Jubilee of Queen Victoria. The
League of
Mercy, under royal
charter, operates in conjunction with the Fund in the collection of
small subscriptions. The Order of Mercy was instituted by the King
as a reward for distinguished personal service. (2) The
Metropolitan Hospital Sunday Fund, founded in 1873, draws the
greater part of its revenue from collections in churches on stated
occasions. (3) The Metropolitan Hospital Saturday Fund was founded
in 1873, and is made up chiefly of small sums collected in places
of business, &c. The following is a list of the principal
London hospitals, with dates of foundation
I. General Hospitals
with Medical Schools (all of which, with the exception of that
of the Seamen's Hospital, are schools of London University):
Charing Cross; Agar Street, Strand (1820).
Guy's; St Thomas Street, Southwark (1724).
King's College; Lincoln's Inn Fields (1839).
London; Whitechapel (1740).
Middlesex;
Mortimer
Street, Marylebone (1745).
North London, or University College;
Gower Street (1833). Royal Free; Gray's Inn Road
(1828; on present site, 1842). London School of
Medicine for Women.
St Bartholomew's; Smithfield (1123; refounded 1547). St
George's; Hyde Park Corner (1733).
St Mary's; Paddington (1845).
St Thomas'; Lambeth (1213; on present site, 1871). Seamen's
Hospital Society; Greenwich (1821).
Westminster, facing the Abbey. (1720; on present site,
1834).
2. General Hospitals without Schools:- Great Northern
Central; Islington (1856; on present site, 1887) Metropolitan;
Hackney (1836).
Poplar Hospital for Accidents (1854).
West London; Hammersmith Road (1856).
3. Hospitals for Special Purposes Brompton
Consumption Hospital
(1841).
Cancer Hospital; Brompton (1851).
City of London Hospital for diseases of the
chest; Bethnal Green (1848).
East London Hospital for Children and Dispensary for Women;
Shadwell (1868).
Hospital for Sick Children; Bloomsbury (1852).
London Fever Hospital; Islington (1802).
National Hospital for Paralysed and Epileptics; Bloomsbury
(1859).
Royal Hospital for Incurables; Putney (1854).
Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital; City Road (1804; on present
site, 1899).
(See also separate articles on boroughs.)
Water Supply.-In
the 12th century London was supplied with water from local streams
and wells, of which Holy Well, Clerk's Well (Clerkenwell) and St
Clement's Well, near St Clement's Inn, were examples. In 1236 the
magistrates purchased the liberty to convey the waters of the
Tyburn from Paddington to the City by leaden pipes, and a great
conduit was erected in West Cheap in 1285. Other conduits were
subsequently built (cf. Conduit Street off Bond Street, Lamb's
Conduit Street, Bloomsbury); and water was also supplied by the
company of water-bearers in leathern panniers borne by horses. In
1582 Peter Moris, a Dutchman, erected a " forcier " on an arch of
London Bridge, which he rented for Ios. per annum for 500 years.
His works succeeded and increased, and continued in his family till
1701, when a company took over the
lease. Other forciers had been set up, and in
1609, on an act of 1605, Sir Hugh
Myddelton undertook the task of supplying
reservoirs at Clerkenwell through the New river from springs near
Ware, Hertfordshire; and these were opened in 1613. In 1630 a
scheme to bring water from I-Ioddesdon on the Lea was promoted by
aid of a lottery licensed by Charles I. The Chelsea Water Company
opened its supply from the Thames in 1721; the Lambeth waterworks
were erected in 1783; the Vauxhall Company was established in 1805,
the West Middlesex, near Hammersmith, and the East London on the
river Lea in 1806, the Kent on the Ravensbourne (Deptford) in 1810,
the Grand Junction in 1811, and the Southwark (which amalgamated
with the Vauxhall) in 1822.
For many years proposals to amalgamate the working of the
companies and displace them by a central public authority were put
forward from time to time. The difficulty of administration lay in
the fact that of the area of 620 sq. m. constituting what is known
as " Water London " (see map in
London Statistics, vol.
xix., issued by the L.C.C., 1909) the London County Council has
authority over little more than one-third, and therefore when the
Council proposed to acquire the eight undertakings concerned its
scheme was opposed not only by the companies but by the county
councils and local authorities outside the County of London. The
Council had a scheme of bringing water to London from Wales, in
view of increasing demands on a stationary supply. This involved
impounding the headwaters of the
Wye, the Towey and the
Usk, and the total cost was estimated to exceed
fifteen millions sterling. The capacity of existing sources,
however, was deemed sufficient by a Royal Commission under Lord
Balfour of Burleigh in 1893, and this opinion was endorsed by a
further Commission under Lord
Llandaff. The construction of large storage
reservoirs was recommended, and this work was put in hand jointly
by the New River, West Middlesex and Grand Junction companies at
Staines on the Thames. As
regards administration,Lord Llandaff's Commission recommended the
creation
Metro- of a Water
Trust, and in 1902 the Metropolis Water Act
constituted the Metropolitan Water Board to purchase
politan and carry on the undertakings of the eight
companies,
Water and of certain local authorities. It
consists of 66 members
Board. appointed by the London
County Council 1 pp y y (4), the City of London and the City of
Westminster (2 each), the other Metropolitan boroughs (1 each), the
county councils of Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent and Surrey
(1 each), borough of West Ham (2), various groups of other boroughs
and urban districts, and the Thames and the Lea Conservancies. The
first election of the Board took place in 1903. The 24th of June,
1904, was the date fixed on which control passed to the Board, and
in the meantime a Court of
Arbitration adjudicated the claims of the
companies for
compensation for the acquisition of their
properties.
" Water London " is an irregular area extending from Ware in
Hertfordshire to
Sevenoaks in Kent, and westward as far as
Ealing and Sunbury.
A constant supply is maintained generally throughout " Water
London," although a suspension between certain hours has been
occasionally necessitated, as in 1895 and 1898, when, during summer
droughts, the East London supply was so affected. During these
periods other companies had a surplus of water, and in 1899 an act
was passed providing for the interconnexion of systems. The Thames
and Lea are the principal sources of supply, but the Kent and
(partially) the New River Company draw supplies from springs. The
systems of filtration employed by the different companies varied in
efficacy, but both the Royal Commissions decided that water as
supplied to the consumer was generally of a very high standard of
purity. The expenditure of the Water Board for1907-1908amounted to
2,846,265. Debt charges absorbed £1,512,718 of this amount.
Public
baths and washhouses
are provided by local authorities under various acts between 1846
and 1896, which have been adopted by all the borough councils.
From 1416 citizens were obliged to hang out candles between
certain hours on dark nights to illuminate the streets. An
act of
parliament enforced this in 1661; in 1684 Edward Heming, the
inventor of oil lamps, obtained licence to supply public lights;
and in 1736 the corporation took the matter in hand, levying a
rate.
Gas-lighting was introduced on
one side of Pall Mall in 1807, and in 1810 the Gas Light &
Coke Company received a charter, and
developed gas-lighting in Westminster. The City of London Gas
Company followed in 1817, and seven other companies soon after.
Wasteful competition ensued until in 1857 an agreement was made
between the companies to restrict their services to separate
localities, and the Gas Light & Coke Company, by amalgamating
other companies, then gradually acquired all the gas-lighting north
of the Thames, while a considerable area in the south was provided
for by another great gas company, the South Metropolitan. Various
acts from 1860 onwards have laid down laws as to the quality and
cost of gas. Gas must be supplied at 16-
candle illuminating power, and is officially
tested by the chemists' department of the London County Council.
The amalgamations mentioned were effected subsequently to 1860, and
there are now three principal companies within the county, the Gas
Light & Coke, South Metropolitan and Commercial, though certain
other companies supply some of the outlying districts. As regards
street lighting, the extended use of burners with incandescent
mantles has been of good effect. The Metropolitan Board of Works,
and the commissioners of sewers in the City, began experiments with
electric light. At the close of the 19th and the beginning of the
20th century a large number of electric light companies came into
existence, and some of the metropolitan borough councils, and local
authorities within Greater London, also undertook the supply. An
extensive use of the light resulted in the principal streets and in
shops, offices and private houses.
Fire
In 1832 the fire
insurance companies united to maintain a
small fire
brigade, and
continued to do so until 1866. The brigade was confined to the
central part of the metropolis; for the rest, the parochial
authorities had charge of protection from fire. The central brigade
came under the control of the Metropolitan Board of Works; and the
County Council now manages the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, under a
chief officer and a staff numbering about 1300. The cost of
maintenance exceeds
£200,000 annually; contributions
towards this are made by the Treasury and the fire insurance
companies. The Council controls the provision of fire escapes in
factories employing over 40 persons, under an act of 1901; it also
compels the mainten ance of proper precautions against fire in
theatres and places of entertainments. A
Salvage Corps is independently maintained
by the Insurance Companies.
Cemeteries
The administrative authorities of cemeteries for the county are
the borough councils and the City Corporation and private
companies. The large
cemetery at Brompton is the property of the
government. Kensal Green cemetery, the burial-place of many famous
persons, is of great extent, but several large cemeteries outside
the metropolis have come into use. Such are that of the London
Necropolis Company at
Brookwood near
Woking, Surrey,
and that of the parishes of St Mary Abbots, Kensington, and St
George,
Hanover Square, at
Hanwell, Middlesex. Crematoria are provided at
certain of the companies' cemeteries, and the
Cremation Act 1902 enabled borough councils
to provide crematoria.
V. Education And Recreation
Education. - The British
and Foreign School Society (1808) and the National Society (1811),
together with the Ragged Schools Union (1844), were the only
special organizations providing for
Element- the education
of the poorer classes until 1870. To meet
my the demand
for elementary education, increasing as it did
education.
with population, was beyond the powers of these societies, the
churches and the various charitable institutions. Thus a return of
1871 showed that the schools were capable of accommodating only 39%
of the children of School-going age. In 1870, however, a School
Board had been created in addition, and this body carried out much
good work during its thirty-four years of existence. In 1903 the
Education (London) Act was passed in pursuance of the general
system, put into operation by the Education Act (1902) of bringing
education within the scope of municipal government. The County
Council was created a local education authority, and given control
of secular education in both board and voluntary schools. It
appoints an education committee in accordance with a scheme
approved by the Board of Education. This scheme must allow of the
Council selecting at least a majority of the committee, and must
provide for the inclusion of experts and women. Each school or
group of schools is under a body of managers, in the appointment of
whom the borough council and the County Council share in the
following proportions: - (a)
Board or provided schools;
borough council, two-thirds; county council, one-third: (
b)
Voluntary or non-provided schools; the foundation, two-thirds;
borough council and county council, each one-sixth. The total
number of public elementary schools was 963 in 1905, with 752,487
scholars on the
register.
Other institutions include higher elementary schools for pupils
certified to be able to profit by higher instruction; and schools
for blind,
deaf
and defective children. Instruction for teachers is provided in
pupil teachers' centres (preparatory), and in residential and day
training colleges. There are about 15 such colleges. Previous to
the act of 1903 the County Council had educational powers under the
Technical Technical Instructions Acts which enabled it to
provide
Technical technical education through a
special board, merged by the act of 1903 in the education
committee. The City and Guilds of London Institute, Gresham
College, also maintains various technical institutions. The
establishment of polytechnics was provided for by the City of
London Parochial
Charities Act 1883; the charities
being administered by trustees. The model institution was that of
Mr Quintin Hogg (1880) in
Regent Street, where a striking statue by George
Frampton (1906) commemorates him. The general scope of the
polytechnics is to give instruction both in general knowledge and
special crafts or trades by means of classes, lectures and
laboratories, instructive entertainments and exhibitions, and
facilities for bodily and mental exercise (gymnasia,
libraries, &c.). Other
similar institutions exist primarily for special purposes, as the
St Bride Foundation Institute, near Fleet Street, in immediate
proximity to the great newspaper offices, for the
printing trade, and the
Herolds' Institute, a branch of the Borough
Polytechnic situated in Bermondsey, for the
purposes of the
leather
trade. The County Council also
aids numerous separate schools of art, both
general and special, such as the Royal School of Art
Needlework and the School
of Art Woodcarving; the City and Guilds Institute maintains similar
establishments at some of its colleges, and art schools are also
generally attached to the polytechnics.
The London County Council maintains a number of industrial
schools and reformatories, both in London and in the country, for
children who have shown or are likely to be misled into a ii
phaa- tendency towards lawlessness. The City Corporation has
th Phil "' separate responsibilities in the same
direction, but has institu= no schools of its own. The
expenditure of the London b oas. County Council on
education for1907-1908was £4,281,291 for elementary education, and
£742,962 for higher education.
The work of private philanthropists and philanthropical bodies
among the poor of East London, Southwark and Bermondsey, and
elsewhere, falls to be noticed at this point. The labours of the
regular clergy here lie largely in the direction of social reform,
and churches and
missions
have been established and are maintained by colleges, such as
Christ Church, Oxford, schools and other bodies.
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Such are the Oxford House, Bethnal Green; the
Cambridge House, Camberwell Road; Toynbee Hall, Whitechapel;
Mansfield House, Canning Town; the
Robert Browning Settlement, Southwark;
and the Passmore Edwards Settlement, St Pancras. There are also
several women's settlements of a similar character. The People's
Palace, Mile End Road, opened in 1887, is both a recreative and an
educational institution (called East London College) erected and
subsequently extended mainly through the liberality of the Drapers'
Company and of private donors.
In early times the priories and other religious houses had
generally grammar schools attached to them. Those at St Peter's,
Westminster, and St Paul's, attained a fame which has survived,
while other similar foundations lapsed, such as St Anthony's
(Threadneedle Street, City), at which
Sir Thomas More,
Archbishop Whitgift and many other men of
eminence received education. Certain of the schools were re-endowed
after the dissolution of the monasteries. St Peter's College or
Westminster School (see
Westminster) is unique among English public
schools of the highest rank in maintaining its original situation
in London. Other early metropolitan foundations have been moved in
accordance with modern tendencies either into the country or to
sites aloof from the heart of London. Thus
Charterhouse school, part of the
foundation of Sir
Thomas Sutton (1611), was moved from
Finsbury to
Godalming,
Surrey; St Paul's School occupies modern buildings at Hammersmith,
and
Christ's Hospital is at
Horsham,
Sussex. Of other schools, Merchant Taylors' was
founded by the Company of that name in 1561, and has occupied,
since 1875, the premises vacated by Charterhouse School. The
Mercers' School, Dowgate, was originally attached to the hospital
of St Thomas of Acon, which was sold to the Mercers' Company in
1522, on condition that the company should maintain the school. The
City of London School, founded in Milk Street, Cheapside, by the
City Corporation in 1835, occupies modern buildings on the Victoria
Embankment.
Dulwich College
originated in the foundation of the College of God's Gift by
Edward Alleyn in
1626, and is now constituted as one of the principal English public
schools. St Olave's and St Saviour's grammar school, Southwark,
received its charter in 1571. Both classical and modern education
is provided; a large number of scholarships are maintained out of
the foundation, and exhibitions from the school to the universities
and other higher educational institutions.
London University
The University of London was incorporated by royal charter in
1836, as an examining body for conferring degrees. Its scope and
powers were extended by subsequent charters, and in 1900, under the
University of London Act 1898, it was reorganized as both a
teaching and an examining body. The function of the academic
department is to control the teaching branch, internal
examinations,
&c., and that of the external department to control external
examinations, while the university extension system occupies a
third department. The university is governed by a
senate consisting of a chancellor, chairman of
convocation and 54
members, whose appointment is shared by the Crown, convocation, the
Royal Colleges of Physicians and of Surgeons, the Inns of Court,
the Law Society, the London County Council, City Corporation, City
and Guilds Institute, University and King's Colleges and the
faculties. The faculties are
theology, arts, law,
music, medicine, science, engineering and
economics. The schools of the University include University
College, Gower Street, and King's College, Somerset House (with
both of which preparatory schools are connected), East London
College and numerous institutions devoted to special faculties both
within and without London. The university in part occupies
buildings which formerly belonged to the Imperial Institute.
Other Educational Institutions
The he
Board of Education directly administers the following
educational institutions - the Victoria and Albert Museum, South
Kensington, with its branch at Bethnal Green, from both of which
objects are lent to various
institutions for educational purposes; the Royal College of
Science, South Kensington, with which is incorporated the Royal
School of Mines; the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom
and the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street; the Solar
Physics Observatory,
South Kensington; and the Royal College of Art, South Kensington.
At Gresham College, Basinghall Street, City, founded in 1 597 by
Sir Thomas Gresham, and moved to its present site in 1843, lectures
are given in the principal branches of science, law, divinity,
medicine, &c.Some further important establishments and institutions may be
tabulated here :- Architecture. - The Royal Institute of
British Architects, Conduit Street, conducts examinations and
awards diplomas.
Education
The College of Preceptors, Bloomsbury, conducts examinations of
persons engaged in education and awards diplomas.
Engineering.
- A School of Practical Engineering is maintained at
the Crystal
Palace, Sydenham.
Law
The Inns of Court are four - Middle Temple, Inner Temple,
Lincoln's Inn, Gray's Inn. A joint board of examiners examines
students previous to admission. The Council of Legal Education
superintends the education and subsequent examination of students.
(See
Inns Of
Court.) The Law Society is the superintending body for
examination and admission in the case of solicitors.
Medical
The Royal College of Physicians is in Pall Mall East, and the
Royal College of Surgeons is in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The Society
of Apothecaries is in Water Lane, City. The Royal College of
Veterinary Surgeons is in Red
Lion
Square, and the Royal Veterinary College at Camden Town. (The
principal hospitals having schools are noted in the list of
hospitals, Section VII.)
Military and Naval. - The Royal
Military College and the
Ordnance College are at Woolwich; the Royal
Naval College at Greenwich.
Music. - The principal
educational institutions are - the
Royal Academy of Music,
Tenterden Street,
Hanover Square; the Royal
College of Music, South Kensington; Guildhall School, City, near
the Victoria Embankment; London College, Great Marlborough Street;
Trinity College,
Manchester Square; Victoria College, Berners
Street; and the Royal College of Organists, Bloomsbury.
Scientific Societies. - Numerous learned
societies have their headquarters in London, and the following
may especially be noticed here.
Burlington House, in Piccadilly, built in
1872 on the site of a mansion of the earls of Burlington, houses
the Royal
Society, the Chemical, Geological, Linnaean and Royal
Astronomical Societies, the Society of Antiquaries and the British
Association for the
Advancement of Science, of which the annual
meetings take place at different British or colonial towns in
succession. The Royal Society, the most dignified and influential
of all, was incorporated by Charles II. in 1663. It originally
occupied rooms in
Crane Court,
City, and was moved in 1780 to Somerset House, where others of the
societies named were also located. The Society of Arts, John
Street, Adelphi, was established in 1754 for the encouragement of
arts, manufactures and commerce. The Royal Institution, Albemarle
Street, was founded in 1799, maintains a library and laboratories
and promotes research in connexion with the experimental sciences.
The Royal Geographical Society, occupying a building close to
Burlington House in Savile Row, maintains a map-room open to the
public, holds lectures by prominent explorers and geographers, and
takes a leading part in the promotion of geographical discovery.
The Royal Botanic Society has private gardens in the midst of
Regent's Park, where
flower
shows and general entertainments are held. The Royal Horticultural
Society maintains gardens at Wisley, Surrey, and has an exhibition
hall in
Vincent
Square, Westminster. The exhibitions of the Royal Agricultural
Society are held at Park Royal, near Willesden. The Zoological
Society maintains a magnificent collection of living specimens in
the
Zoological Gardens, Regent's Park, a
popular resort.
In the British Museum London possesses one of the most
celebrated collections in the world, originated in 1753 by the
purchase of Sir Hans Sloane's collection and library by the
government. The great building in Bloomsbury (1828-1852) with its
massive Ionic portico, houses the collections of antiquities,
coins, books, manuscripts and drawings, and contains the
reading-rooms for the use of
readers. The natural history branch was removed to a building at
South Kensington (the Natural History Museum) in 1881, where the
zoological, botanical and mineralogical exhibits are kept. Close to
this museum is the Victoria and Albert Museum (formerly South
Kensington Museum, 1857) for which an extension of buildings, from
a fine design by Sir Aston Webb, was begun in 1899 and completed in
ten years. Here are collections of pictures and drawings, including
the
Raphael cartoons,
objects of art of every description, mechanical and scientific
collections, and Japanese, Chinese and Persian collections, and an
Indian section. In the vicinity, also, is the fine building of the
Imperial Institute, founded in 1887 as an exhibition to illustrate
the resources of all parts of the Empire, as well as an institution
for the furtherance of imperial intercourse; though not developed
on the scale originally intended. Other museums are Sir John
Soane's collection in Lincoln's Inn Fields and the Museum of
Practical Geology in Jermyn Street, while the scientific societies
have libraries and in some cases collections of a specialized
character, such as the museums of the Royal College of Surgeons,
the Royal Architectural Society, and the Society of Art and the
Parkes Museum of the Sanitar y Institute. Among permanent art
collections the first place is taken by the National Gallery in
Trafalgar Square. This magnificent collection was originated in
1824, and the building dates from 1838, but has been more than once
enlarged. The building of the National Portrait Gallery, adjoining
it, dates from 1896, but the
nucleus of the collection was formed in 1858.
The munificence of
Sir Henry Tate provided the
gallery, commonly named after him, by the Thames near Vauxhall
Bridge, which contains the national collection of British art. The
Wallace collection of paintings and objects of art, in
Hertford House, Manchester
Square, was bequeathed to the nation by the widow of
Sir Richard
Wallace in 1897. Dulwich College possesses a fine series of
paintings, of the Dutch and other schools, bequeathed by Sir P. F.
Bourgeois in
1811. There are also notable collections of
pictures in several of the mansions of the
nobility, government buildings, halls of the
City Companies and elsewhere. No gallery in London is exclusively
or especially devoted to sculpture. Of the periodical art
exhibitions that of the Royal Academy is most noteworthy. It is
held annually at Burlington House from the first
Monday in May to the first Monday in August. It
consists mainly of paintings, but includes a few drawings and
examples of sculpture. Earlier in each year exhibitions of works by
deceased British artists and by old masters are held, and the
Gibson and Diploma Galleries are permanent exhibitions. At the
Guildhall special exhibitions are held from time to time. There are
a number of art galleries in and about Bond Street and Piccadilly,
Regent Street and Pall Mall, such as the New Gallery, where
periodical exhibitions are given by the New English Art Club, the
Royal Society of Painters in WaterColours, the Royal Institute of
Painters in Water-Colours, other societies and art dealers.
Municipal provision of public libraries under acts of 1892 and
1893 is general throughout London, and these institutions are
exceedingly popular for purposes both of reference and of
loan. The acts are extended to
include the provisions of museums and art galleries, but the
borough councils have not as a rule availed themselves of this
extension. The London County Council administers the Horniman
Museum at Forest Hill, Lewisham. The City Corporation maintains the
fine Guildhall library and museum. A few free libraries are
supported by donations and subscriptions or charities. Besides the
Government reference libraries at the British Museum and South
Kensington there are other such libraries, of a specialized
character, as at the Patent Office and the Record Office. Among
lending libraries should be noticed the London Library in St
James's Square, Pall Mall.
Theatres and Places of Entertainment
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The principal
music halls (variety theatres) are in
Shaftesbury Avenue, Piccadilly Circus,
Leicester Square and the Strand. The Covent
Garden theatre is the principal home of grand
opera; the building, though spacious, suffers by
comparison with the magnificence of opera houses in some other
capitals, but during the opera season the scene within the theatre
is brilliant.
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For a long time St
James's Hall (demolished in 1905) between Regent Street and
Piccadilly was the chief
concert hall.
Oratorio is given usually in the Albert Hall,
the vast area of which is especially suited for a large
chorus and
orchestra, and at the Crystal Palace (q.v.).
This latter building, standing on high ground at Sydenham, and
visible from far over the metropolis, is devoted not only to
concerts, but to general entertainment, and the extensive grounds
give accommodation for a variety of sports and amusements. Among
other popular places of entertainment may be mentioned the
exhibition grounds and buildings at Earl's Court; similar grounds
at Shepherd's Bush, where a Franco-British Exhibition was held in
1908, an Imperial Exhibition in 1909, and an Anglo-Japanese in
1910; the great
Olympia
hall, West Kensington; the celebrated
wax-work exhibition of Madame Tussaud in Marylebone
Roan, the Alexandra Palace,
Muswell Hill, an institution resembling the Crystal Palace; and the
Agricultural Hall, Islington, where agricultural and other
exhibitions are held. The well-known Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly
was taken down in 1906, and the permanent
conjuring entertainment for which (besides
picture exhibitions) it was noted was removed elsewhere. Theatres,
music halls, concert halls and other places of entertainment are
licensed by the County Council, except that the licence for
stage-plays is granted by the
lord chamberlain under the Theatres
Act 1843. The council provides for inspection of places of
entertainment in respect of precautions against fire, structural
safety, &c. The principal clubs are in and about Piccadilly and
Pall Mall (see Club). A club for soldiers, sailors and
marines in London, called the
Union
Jack Club, was opened in
Waterloo Road by King Edward VII. in 1907.
|
I. Under the Office of Works:
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Green Park. .
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521 acres
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Greenwich Park .
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.
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185 „
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Hyde Park
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3634 „
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Kensington Gardens
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2742
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Regent's Park
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472',-
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St James's Park .
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.
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93 „
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2. Under the War Office:
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Woolwich Common .
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159
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3. Under the London County Council:
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Avery Hill, Eltham .
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80 „
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Battersea Park
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199
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Blackheath .
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267
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Bostall Heath and Woods, Woolwich
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.
|
1334
|
Parks and Open Spaces: Administration
The administration of parks and open spaces in and round London,
topographical details of the principal of which are given in
Section I., is divided between the Office of Works, the London
County Council, the City Corporation and the borough councils. The
Office of Works controls the Royal parks, the County Council
controls the larger parks and open spaces not under Government or
City control, and the borough councils the smaller; while the City
Corporation controls certain public grounds outside the County of
London. There are a few other bodies controlling particular open
spaces, as the following list of public grounds exceeding 50 acres
(in 1910) will show: Brockwell Park,
Herne Hill 1274 acres Clapham Common 205 Clissold
Park 541 Dulwich Park 72 Finsbury Park 115 Hackney Marsh 339
Hainault Forest, Essex. 805 Hampstead Heath. 3202 Ladywell Ground,
Lewisham 512 Marble Hill,
Twickenham. 66 Millfields, Hackney 621
Parliament Hill. 2674 Peckham
Rye
and Park 112 Plumstead Common. 103 Southwark Park. 63 Streatham
Common 664 Tooting Bec Common.
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193 4.
Under the City Corporation: Burnham Beeches, Buckinghamshire
Coulsdon Commons, Surrey .Epping Forest, Essex .
Highgate Woods. .
West Ham Park. ... 77 Wimbledon and Putney Commons are under a
board of conservators.
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The expenditure
in1907-1908was £131,582, which sum included £11,987 for bands. (See
also separate articles on boroughs.) Bathing (at certain hours) and
boating are permitted in the ornamental waters in several of the
parks, music is provided and much attention is paid to the
protection of waterfowl and other birds, while herds of
deer are maintained in some places,
and also botanical gardens. Surplus plants and cuttings are
generally distributed without charge to educational or charitable
institutions, and to the poor. Provision is made for
cricket,
football and other games in a number of the
parks.
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In the
Crystal Palace grounds the final
match for the English Association Football
cup is generally played, and huge
crowds from both the metropolis and the provinces
witness the game. At Queen's
Club, West Kensington, the annual Oxford and Cambridge athletic
meeting and others take place, besides football matches, and there
is covered accommodation for tennis and other games.
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Rugby football is upheld by such
notable teams as Blackheath and Richmond. Fashionable society takes
its pastimes at such centres as the grounds of the Hurlingham and
Ranelagh clubs, at Fulham
and Barnes respectively, where
polo and other games are played; and Rotten Row,
the horse-track in Hyde Park, is the favourite resort of riders. In
summer, boating on the lovely reaches of the Thames above the
metropolis forms the recreation of thousands. The growth of
popularity of the
cycle, and
later of the motor-car, has been a principal factor in the wide
development of a tendency to leave London during the ” week-end,”
that is to say, as a rule, for Saturday afternoon and Sunday. With
many this is a practice at all seasons, and the railway companies
foster the habit by means of tickets at reduced fares to all parts.
The watering-places of the Sussex, Kent and Essex coasts, and
pre-eminently Brighton, are specially favoured for these brief
holidays.
VI. Commerce
Port of London. - The extent of the Port
of London has been variously defined for different purposes, but
for those of the Port Authority it is taken to extend from
Teddington Lock to a line between Yantlet Creek
in Kent and the City Stone opposite Canvey Isle and in Essex.
London Bridge is to outward appearance the up-river limit of the
port. There are wharves and a large carrying trade in barges above
this point, but below it the river is crowded with shipping, and
extensive docks open on either hand.
Towards the close of the igth century evidence was accumulating
that the development of the Port of London was not keeping
pace with that of shipping generally.
In 1900 a Royal Commission was appointed to investigate the
existing administration of the port, the alleged inadequacy of
accommodation for vessels and kindred questions, and to advance a
scheme of, 375 347 55591.69 reform. The report, issued in 1902,
showed
apprehension to be well founded. The
river, it was ascertained, was not kept sufficiently dredged; the
re-export trade was noted as showing an especially serious decline,
and the administration was found to suffer from decentralization.
The recommendations of the Commission included the creation of a
single controlling authority to take over the powers of the Thames
Conservancy Watermen's Company, and
Trinity House and the
docks of the companies already detailed. This authority, it was
advised, should consist of 40 members, of whom II should be
nominated by the London County Council and 3 by the Corporation of
the City (supposing these bodies to accept certain financial
responsibilities proposed in the direction of river improvements),
5 by the governors of the Bank of England from the
mercantile community, 2
by the London Chamber of Commerce, and I each by the Admiralty,
Board of Trade
and Trinity House. The remaining members should be elected by
various groups,
e.g. shipowners,
barge owners, the railway companies interested,
&c. Rival schemes, however, were proposed by the London County
Council,which proposed to take over the entire control through a
committee, by the City Corporation, which suggested that it should
appoint instead of 3 members to the new board; and by the London
Chamber of Commerce, which proposed a Harbour Trust of
ex-officio and elected members. The Thames Conservancy
also offered itself as the public authority. In 1902 a Mansion
House Conference was convened by the lord mayor and a deputation
was appointed which in 1903 pressed the solution of the matter upon
the government.
A noteworthy scheme to improve the condition of the Thames,
first put forward in 1902-1903, was that of constructing a
dam with four locks across the river
between
Gravesend and
Tilbury. The estimated cost was between three and four millions
sterling, to be met by a toll, and it was urged that a uniform
depth, independent of tides, would be ensured above the dam, that
delay of large vessels wishing to proceed up river would thus be
obviated, that the river would be relieved of pollution by the
tides, and the necessity for constant dredging would be abolished.
This " barrage scheme " was discussed at considerable length, and
its theoretical advantages were not universally admitted. The
scheme included a railway tunnel beneath the dam, for which,
incidentally, a high military importance was claimed.
In 1904 the Port of London Bill, embodying the recommendations
of the Royal Commission with certain exceptions, was
Port brought forward, but it was found
impossible to carry it through. In 1908, however, the Port of
London Act was passed, and came into force in 1909. This act
1909. provided for the
establishment of a Port
Authority, the constitution of which is detailed below, which took
over the entire control of the port, together with the docks and
other property of the several existing companies.
The principal
dock companies,
with the docks owned by them, were as follows
:- I. London and
India Company. - This company had amalgamated all the docks on
the north side of the river except the Millwall Docks.
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in distance (181 acres)
and
Tilbury
Docks, 25 m. below London Bridge, constructed in 1886 by the
East and West India Docks Company (65 acres). Tilbury Docks are
used by the largest steamers trading with the port.
2. Millwall Docks (1868), in the south part of the Isle
of Dogs, are 36 acres in extent.
3. Surrey Commercial Docks, Rotherhithe (Bermondsey),
occupy a peninsula between the Lower
Pool and Limehouse Reach. There have been docks at
Rotherhithe since the middle of the 17th century. The total area is
176 acres, a large new dock, the
Greenland, being opened in 1904.
The principal railways have wharves and through connexions for
goods traffic, and huge warehouses are attached to the docks. The
custom house
stands on the north bank, a short distance from London Bridge, in
Lower Thames Street. It dates from 1817, the body of the building
being by Laing, but the Corinthian façade was added by Smirke. It
includes a museum containing ancient documents and specimens of
articles seized by the customs authorities.
The chief authorities concerned in the government of the Port of
London till 1909 were: I. Thames Conservancy. - For
conservancy purposes, regulation of navigation, removal of
obstruction, dredging, &c.
2. City Corporation
Port sanitary purposes from Teddington Lock seawards.
3. Trinity House. - Pilotage, lighting and buoying from
London Bridge seawards.
4. The Watermen's and Lightermen's Company. - The
licensing authority for watermen and lightermen.
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Port Authority
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The Board of Trade and
the County Council must each, under the act, consult with
representatives of labour as to the appointment of one of the
members, in order that labour may be represented on the Port
Authority. The first " elected " members were actually, under the
act, appointed by the Board of Trade. The undertakings of the three
dock companies mentioned above were transferred to and vested in
the Port Authority, an equivalent amount of port stock created
under the act being issued to each. The Port Authority has full
powers to authorize construction works. All the rights, powers and
duties of the Thames Conservancy, so far as concerns the Thames
below Teddington Lock, were transferred to the Port Authority under
the act, as also were the powers of the Watermen's Company in
respect of the
registration and licensing of vessels, and
the regulation of lightermen and watermen. The Port Authority fixes
the port rates, which, however, must not in any two consecutive
years exceed one-thousandth part of the value of all imports and
exports, or a three-thousandth of the value of goods discharged
from or taken on board vessels not within the premises of a dock.
Preferential dock charges are prohibited and a port fund
established under the act. The authority has powers to borrow
money, but for certain purposes in this connexion, as in other
matters, it can only act subject to the approval of the Board of
Trade.
Commerce
The following figures may be quoted for distinct purposes of
comparison at different periods: Value of Exports of Home
Produce (1840), £11,586,037; (1874), £60,232,118; (1880),
£52,600,929; (1902-1905 average), £60,095,294. Imports (1880),
£141,442,907; (1902-1905), £ 1 74, 0 59,3 16.
These figures point to the fact that London is essentially a mart,
and neither is itself, nor is the especial outlet for, a large
manufacturing centre; hence imports greatly exceed exports.
|
Year.
|
Entered.
|
Cleared.
|
|
Tonnage.
|
Tonnage.
|
|
16 94
|
135,972
|
81,148
|
|
1750
|
511,680
|
179,860
|
|
1800
|
796,632
|
729,554
|
|
1841-1850
|
1 ,59 6 ,453
|
1,124,793
|
|
(average)
|
|
|
|
1881
|
5,810,043
|
4,478,960
|
|
18 95
|
8,435,676
|
6,110,325
|
|
1905
|
10,814,115
|
7,913,115
|
Vessels entered and cleared (foreign and colonial
trade): - In the coastwise trade, in 1881, 38,953 vessels of
4,545,904 tons entered; in 18 95, 43,7 0 4 vessels of 6,555,618
tons; but these figures include vessels trading within the Thames
estuary (ports of London,
Rochester,
Colchester and
Faversham), which later
returns do not. Omitting such vessels, therefore, the number which
entered in the coastwise trade in 1905 was 16,358 of 6,374,832
tons.
Business
The City has been indicated as the business centre of the
metropolis. Besides the Royal Exchange, in the building of which
are numerous offices, including "
Lloyd's," the centre of the shipping business
and marine insurance, there are many exchanges for special
articles. Among these are the
Corn
Exchange in
Mark Lane, where the
privilege of a fair was originally granted by Edward I.; the
Wool Exchange,
Coleman Street; the Coal Exchange, Lower Thames Street; the
Shipping Exchange, Billiter Street; and the auction mart for landed
property in Tokenhouse Yard. The
Hop
Exchange is across the river in Southwark. In Mincing Lane are the
commercial salerooms. Besides the Bank of England there are many
banking houses; and the name of Lombard Street, commemorating the
former money dealers of
Lombardy, is especially associated with them.
The majority of the banks are members of the
Clearing House,
Post Office Court, where a daily exchange of drafts representing
millions of pounds sterling is effected. The Royal
Mint is on Tower Hill. The
Stock Exchange is
in Capel Court, and numbers of brokers have their offices in the
vicinity of the Royal Exchange and the Bank of England.
Manufactures and Retail
Trade
No part of London can be pointed out as essentially a
manufacturing quarter, and there is a strong tendency for
manufacturing firms to establish their factories outside the
metropolis. There are, however, several large breweries, among
which that of Messrs Barclay & Perkins, on the
riverside in Southwark, may
be mentioned; engineering works are numerous in East London by the
river, where there are also
shipbuilding yards; the leather industry
centres in Bermondsey, the extensive pottery works of Messrs
Doulton are in Lambeth, there are chemical works on the Lea, and
paper-mills on the Wandle. Certain industries (not confined to
factories) have long been associated with particular localities.
Thus, clock-makers and
metal-workers are congregated in Finsbury,
especially Clerkenwell and in Islington; Hatton Garden, near
Holborn Viaduct, is a centre for diamond merchants; cabinet-making
is carried on in Bethnal Green, Shoreditch and the vicinity; and
large numbers in the East End are employed in the match industry.
Silk-
weaving is still carried on in the district of
Spitalfields (see
STE Pney). West of the City certain streets are essentially
connected with certain trades. The old-established collection of
second-hand book-shops in
Holywell Street was only abolished by the
widening of the Strand, and a large proportion then removed to
Charing Cross Road. In the Strand, and more especially in Fleet
Street and its offshoots, are found the offices of the majority of
the most important daily
newspapers and other journals.
Carriage and motor-car
warehouses congregate in Long
Acre. In Tottenham Court Road are the
showrooms of several large upholstering and furnishing firms. Of
the streets most frequented on account of their fashionable shops
Bond Street, Regent Street, Oxford Street, Sloane Street and High
Street, Kensington, may be selected. In the East End and other poor
quarters a large trade in second-hand clothing, flowers and
vegetables, and many other commodities is carried on in the streets
on movable stalls by costermongers and
hawkers.
Markets
The City Corporation exercises a control over the majority of
the London markets, which dates from the close of the 14th century,
when dealers were placed under the governance of the mayor and
aldermen. The markets thus controlled are:
Central
Markets, Smithfield, for meat, poultry, provisions,
fruit, vegetables, flowers and
fish. These extend over a great area north of Newgate Street and
east of Farringdon Road. Beneath them are extensive underground
railway sidings. A market for horses and cattle existed here at
least as early as the time of Henry II.
Leadenhall Market, Leadenhall Street, City, for poultry
and meat. This market was in existence before 1411 when it came
into the possession of the City.
Billingsgate Market, by the Thames immediately above
the custom house, for fish. Formerly a point of anchorage for small
vessels, it was made a free market in 1699.
Smithfield Hay Market. Metropolitan Cattle Market, Copenhagen Fields,
Islington.
Deptford Cattle Market (foreign cattle).
Spitalfields Market (fruit, vegetables and
flowers).
Shadwell Market (fish).
Of other markets, the Whitechapel Hay Market and Borough Market,
Southwark, are under the control of trustees; and Woolwich Market
is under the council of that borough. Covent Garden, the great mart
in the west of London for flowers, fruit and vegetables, is in the
hands of private owners. It appears to have been used as a market
early in the 17th century. Scenes of remarkable activity may be
witnessed here and at Billingsgate in the early hours of the
morning when the stock is brought in and the wholesale
distributions are carried on.
VII. Government
Administration before 1888. - The
middle of the 19th century found the whole local administration of
London still of a medieval character. Moreover, as complete reform
had always been steadily resisted, homogeneity was entirely
wanting. Outside the City itself a system of local government can
hardly be said to have existed. Greater London (in the sense in
which that name might then have been applied) was governed by the
inhabitants of each parish in
vestry assembled, save that in some instances
parishes had elected select vestries under the provisions of the
Vestries Act 1831. In neither case had the vestry powers of town
management. To meet the needs of particular localities,
commissioners or trustees having such powers had been from time to
time created by local acts. The resulting
chaos was remarkable. In 1855 these local acts
numbered 250, administered by not less than 300 bodies, and by a
number of persons serving on them computed at 10,448. These persons
were either self-elected, or elected for life, or both, and
therefore in no degree responsible to the ratepayers. There were
two bodies having jurisdiction over the whole metropolis except the
City, namely, the officers appointed under the Metropolitan
Building Act of 1844, and the Metropolitan Commissioners of Sewers,
appointed under the Commissioners of Sewers Act 1848. Neither body
was responsible to the ratepayers. To remedy this chaotic state of
affairs, the Metropolis Management Act 1855 was passed. Under that
act a vestry elected by the ratepayers of the parish was
established for each parish in the metropolis outside the City. The
vestries so elected for the twenty-two larger parishes were
constituted the local authorities. The fifty-six smaller parishes
were grouped together in fifteen districts, each under a district
board, the members of which were elected by the vestries of the
constituent parishes. A central body, styled the Metropolitan Board
of
- Works, having jurisdiction over the whole metropolis
(including the City) was also established, the members of which
were elected by the Common Council of the
Works.
City, the vestries and district boards, and the previously
established local board of Woolwich (q.v.). Further the area of the
metropolis for local government purposes was for the first time
defined, being the same as that adopted in the Commissioners of
Sewers Act, which had been taken from the area of the weekly bills
of mortality. The Metropolitan Board of Works was also given
certain powers of supervision over the vestries and district
boards, and superseded the commissioners of sewers as authority for
main drainage. By an act of the same
session it became the central authority for the
administration of the Building Acts, and subsequently had many
additional powers and duties conferred upon it. The vestries and
district boards became the authorities for local drainage, paving,
lighting, repairing and maintaining streets, and for the removal of
nuisances, &c.
Acts of 1888 and 1899
An objection to the Metropolitan Board of Works soon became
manifest, inasmuch as the
system of election was indirect. Moreover, some of its actions were
open to such suspicion that a royal commission was appointed to
inquire into certain matters connected with the working of the
board. This commission issued an
interim report in 1888 (the final report did
not appear until 1891), which disclosed the inefficiency of the
board in certain respects, and also indicated the existence of
corruption. Reform followed immediately. Already in 1884 Sir
William
Harcourt had
attempted to constitute the metropolis a municipal borough under
the government of a single council. But in 1888 the Local
Government Act, dealing with the area of the metropolis as a
separate county, created the London County Council as the central
administrative body, possessing not only the powers of an ordinary
county council, but also extensive powers of town management,
transferred to it from the abolished Board of Works. Here, then,
was the central body, under their direct control, which inhabitants
of London had hitherto lacked. The question of subsidiary councils
remained to be settled. The wealthier metropolitan parishes became
discontented with the form of local government to which they
remained subject, and in 1897 Kensington and Westminster petitioned
to be created boroughs by the grant of charters under the Municipal
Corporation Acts. These, however, were inapplicable to London, and
it was realized
Metro- Instead, the London Government Act
of 1899 was evolved. It brought into existence the twenty-eight
Metropolitan boroughs enumerated at the outset of this article. The
county of London may thus be regarded from the administrative
standpoint as consisting of twenty-nine contiguous towns, counting
the City of London. As regards the distribution of powers and
duties between the County Council and the Borough Councils, and the
constitution and working of each, the underlying principle may be
briefly indicated as giving all powers and duties which require
uniformity of action throughout the whole of London to the County
Council, and powers and duties that can be locally administered to
the Borough Councils.
Summary of Administrative Bodies
The administrative bodies of the County of London may now be
summarized: 1. London County Council. - Consists of 118
councillors, 2 elected by each parliamentary division (but the City
of London elects 4); and 19 aldermen, with chairman, vice-chairman
and deputy-chairman, elected in council. Triennial elections of
councillors by householders (male and female) on the rate-books.
Aldermen hold office for 6 years.
2. Metropolitan Boroughs
Councils consist of a mayor and aldermen and councillors in
proportion as 1 to 6. The commonest numbers, which cannot be
exceeded, are 10 and 60 (see separate article on each borough).
Triennial elections.
3. Corporation of the City of London
The legislation of 1855, 1888 and 1899 left the government of
the small area of the City in the hands of an unreformed
Corporation. Here at least the medieval system, in spite of any
anomalies with respect to modern conditions, has resisted reform,
and no other municipal body shares the traditions and peculiar
dignity of the City Corporation. This consists of a Lord Mayor, 26
aldermen and 206 common councilmen, forming the
Court
of Common Council, which is the principal administrative body.
Its scope may be briefly indicated as including (a) duties
exercised elsewhere by the Borough Councils, and by the London
County Council (although that body is by no means powerless within
the City boundaries); and (
b) peculiar duties such as
control of markets and police. The election of common councilmen,
whose institution dates from the reign of Edward I., takes place
annually, the
electors
being the ratepayers, divided among the twenty-five wards of the
City. An
alderman of each
ward (save that the wards of Cripplegate within and without, share
one) is elected for life. The Lord Mayor (q.v.) is elected by the
Court of Aldermen from two aldermen nominated in the Court of
Common Hall by the
Livery, an
electorate drawn from the members of the ancient trade gilds or
Livery Companies (q.v.), which, through their control over the
several trades or manufactures, had formerly an influence over the
government of the city which from the time of
Edward III. was
paramount.
Non-administrative Arrangements
The Local Government Act of 1888 dealt with the metropolis for
non-administrative purposes as it did for administrative, that is
to say, as a separate county. The arrangements
of quarter-sessions,
justices, coroners, sheriffs, &c., were thus brought into line
with other counties, except in so far as the ordinary organization
is modified by the existence of the central criminal court, the
metropolitan police,
police courts and magistrates, and a paid
chairman of quarter-sessions. The powers of the governing body of
the City, moreover, are as peculiar in this direction as in that of
municipal administration; and the act left the City as a county of
a city practically unchanged.
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The chief courts for the trial of criminal cases are the Central
Criminal Court and the Court of Quarter-sessions. The Central.
Criminal Court, taking the place of the provincial
Courts.
Assizes, was established by an act of 1834. There are twelve
sessions annually, under the Lord Mayor, aldermen and judges. They
were formerly held in the " Old
Bailey " sessionshouse, but a fine new building
from designs of E. W. Mountford took the place of this in 1906.
Quarter-sessions for the county of London are held thirty-six times
annually, for the north side of the Thames at the Sessions-house in
Clerkenwell (Finsbury) and for the south side at that in Newington
Causeway, Southwark. For
judicial purposes Westminster was merged with the county of London
in 1889, and the Liberty of the Tower was abolished in 1894. The
separate court of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen is held at the
Guildhall. The Metropolitan police courts are fourteen in number,
namely - Bow Street, Covent Garden; Clerkenwell; Great Marlborough
Street (Westminster); Greenwich and Woolwich; Lambeth; Marylebone;
North London, Stoke Newington Road; Southwark; South Western,
Lavender Hill (Battersea); Thames,
Arbour Street East (Stepney); West Ham; West
London, Vernon Street (Fulham); Westminster, Vincent Square;
Worship Street (Shoreditch). The police courts of the City are held
at the Mansion House, the Lord Mayor or an alderman sitting as
magistrate, and at the
Guildhall, where the aldermen preside in rotation. The prisons
within the metropolis are Brixton, Holloway, Pentonville,
Wandsworth and Wormwood Scrubbs. In the county of London there are
12 coroners' districts, 19 petty sessional divisions (the City
forming a separate one) and 13
county court districts (the City forming a
separate one). The boundaries of these divisions do not in any way
correspond with each other, or with the police divisions, or with
the borough or parish boundaries. The registration county of London
coincides with the administrative county.
Parliamentary Representation
The London Government Act contains a saving clause by which "
nothing in or done under this act shall be construed as altering
the limits of any parliamentary borough or parliamentary county."
The parliamentary boroughs are thus in many cases named and bounded
differently from the metropolitan boroughs. The parliamentary
arrangements of each metropolitan borough are indicated in the
separate articles on the boroughs. In the following list the
boroughs which extend outside the administrative county of London
are noted. Each division of each borough, or each borough where not
divided, returns one member, save that the City of London returns
two members.
(
a) North of the Thames. (1) Bethnal Green - Divs.:
Northeastern, South-western. (2) Chelsea (detached portion in
administrative county of Middlesex, Kensal Town). (3) Finsbury
(detached portion in Middlesex, Muswell
Hill) - Divs.:
Holborn, Central, Eastern. (5) Fulham. (6) Hackney - Divs.: North,
Central, South. (7) Hammersmith. (8) Hampstead. (9) Islington -
Divs.: Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western. (lo)
Kensington -
Divs.: Northern, Southern; (11) City of
London. (12) Marylebone - Divs.: Eastern, Western. (13) Paddington
(extending into Middlesex) - Divs.: Northern, Southern. (14) St
George's Hanover Square. (15) St Pancras - Divs.: Northern,
Southern, Eastern, Western. (16) Shoreditch - Divs.: Hoxton,
Haggerston. (17) Strand. (18) Tower Hamlets - Divs.: Bow and
Bromley, Limehouse, Mile End, Poplar, St
George, Stepney, Whitechapel. (19)
Westminster.
A detached portion of the parliamentary division of Hornsey,
Middlesex, is in the metropolitan borough of Hackney. London
University returns a member.
(b) South of the Thames. (1) Battersea and Clapham -
Divs.: Battersea, Clapham. (2) Camberwell (extending into Kent) -
Divs.: Northern, Peckham, Dulwich. (3) Deptford. (4) Greenwich.
(5) Lambeth - Divs.: Northern, Kennington, Brixton, Norwood.
(6) Lewisham. (7) Newington - Divs.: Western, Walworth. (8)
Southwark - Divs.: Western, Rotherhithe, Bermondsey. (9)
Wandsworth. (to) Woolwich.
Part of the Wimbledon parliamentary division of Surrey is in the
metropolitan borough of Wandsworth.
Ecclesiastical Divisions and Denominations
London north of the Thames is within
the
Church of England bishopric of London, the bishop's palace
being at Fulham. In this diocese, which covers nearly the whole of
Middlesex and a very small portion of Hertfordshire, are the
suffragan bishoprics of
Islington, Kensington and Stepney. The bishopric of Southwark was
created in 1904, having been previously a suffragan bishopric in
the diocese of Rochester. The county contains 612 ecclesiastical
parishes. Westminster is the seat of the Roman Catholic
archbishopric in England, and Southwark is a bishopric. Among the
numerous chapels of dissenting bodies there may be mentioned the
City Temple, Congregational, on Holborn Viaduct; the Metropolitan
Tabernacle, Baptist,
in Southwark, the creation of which was the outcome of the labours
of the famous preacher
Charles Spurgeon (d. 1892); and
Wesley's Chapel, City Road, in the graveyard of which is the tomb
of
John Wesley; his
house, which adjoins the chapel, being open as a memorial museum.
In 1903 the Wesleyans acquired the site of the Royal
Aquarium, near Westminster
Abbey, for the erection of a central hall. The Great
Synagogue of the Jews is in
St James' Place, Aldgate.
that the bringing of special legislation to
bear on special cases (as the
petition of these two boroughs would have
demanded) would be inexpedient as making against homogeneity.
The headquarters of the
Salvation Army are in Queen Victoria
Street, City. There are numerous foreign churches, among which may
be mentioned the French
Protestant churches in
Monmouth Road, Bayswater and Soho Square; the
Greek church of St
Sophia,
Moscow Road, Bayswater; and the
German
Evangelical church in
Montpelier Place, Brompton Road, opened in
1904. (0. J. R. H.) Viii. Finance In addition to the provisions
that have been mentioned above (Section VII.), the London
Government Act 1899 simplified administration in two respects.
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In some parishes overseers were appointed in the ordinary
manner; in others the vestry, by local acts and by orders under the
Local Government Act 1894, was appointed to act as, or empowered to
appoint, overseers, whilst in Chelsea the guardians acted as
overseers. The act of 1899 swept away all these distinctions, and
constituted the new borough councils in every case the overseers
for every parish within their respective boroughs, except that the
town clerk of each borough performs the duties of overseers with
respect to the registration of electors.' Again, with regard to
rates, there were in all cases three different rates leviable in
each parish-the poor rate, the general rate and the sewers
rate-whilst in many parishes in addition there was a separate
lighting rate. From the sewers rate and lighting rate, land, as
opposed to buildings, was entitled to certain exemptions. Under the
act of 1899 all these rates are consolidated into a single rate,
called the general rate, which is assessed, made, collected and
levied as the poor rate, but the interests of persons previously
entitled to exemptions are safeguarded. Further, every
precept sent by an authority in
London for the purpose of obtaining money (these authorities
include the London County Council, the
receiver of the Metropolitan Police, the
Central Unemployed Body and the Boards of Guardians) which has
ultimately to be raised out of a rate within a borough is sent
direct to the council of the borough instead of filtering through
other authorities before reaching the overseers.
' Over 200 local acts were repealed by schemes made under the
act of 1899.
|
Estimated Income.
|
(I) Rate and
|
Debt Accounts.
Estimated Expenditure.
|
|
|
Balances. ... .
|
£967740
|
Debt (including management)
|
£3,905,135
|
Receipts in aid of expenditure (local taxation licences |
513,541
|
Grants (mostly guardians)
Pensions .
|
645,913
75,665
|
|
Government grants in aid of education .
|
1,515,663
|
Establishment charges
|
232,045
|
|
Interest on loans advanced to local authorities, &c.
|
586,065
|
Judicial expenses. .
|
52,515
|
|
Rents, &c. .
|
427,767
|
Services-
|
|
|
Contributions from revenue-producing undertakings
|
|
Main drainage. £295,650
|
|
|
for interest and repayment of debt
|
685,948
|
Fire brigade. 263,575
|
|
|
Miscellaneous .
|
3,633
|
Parks and open spaces 140,715
|
|
|
Rate contributions-
|
|
Bridges, tunnels, ferry 49,925
|
|
|
General, for other than education
|
2,698,610
|
Embankments. 14,940
|
|
|
For education .
|
3,675,694
|
Pauper lunatics 78,870
|
|
|
Special
|
407 ,946
|
Inebriates Acts 14,045
|
|
|
|
Coroners.. 30,925
|
|
|
|
Weights and measures 14,830
|
|
|
|
Gas testing.. 13,785
|
|
|
|
Building Acts. 25,595
|
|
|
|
Diseases of Animals Acts 19,260
|
|
|
|
Miscellaneous.. 63,060
|
|
|
|
£1, 02 5,175
|
|
|
|
Education. 4837,442
|
|
|
|
Steamboats. .. 14,805
|
|
|
|
Works Dept... 12,100
|
5,889,522
|
|
|
Parliamentary expenses
|
22,675
|
|
|
Miscellaneous .
|
6,214
|
|
|
Total expenditure
|
10,829,684
|
|
|
Balances .
|
652,923
|
|
Estimated Income.
|
(2) Revenue Producing
|
Undertakings.
Estimated Expenditure.
|
|
Balances .
|
|
£4 0 55
|
Working expenses-
|
|
Receipts-
|
|
|
Working class dwellings. .
|
£56,060
|
|
Working class dwellings .
|
£173,443
|
|
Tramways .
|
1,318,620
|
|
Tramways
|
2,089,955
|
|
|
621
|
|
Small Holdings and Allotments
|
410
|
|
Parks boating
|
2,965
|
|
Parks boating .
|
5,100
|
2,268,908
|
Renewals .
|
|
|
Transfers. .
|
|
6,214
|
Reserve .
|
|
|
|
|
Interest on and repayment of debts
|
|
|
|
|
Transfer in relief of rates (parks boating)
|
|
|
|
|
Balances .
|
|
The only exceptions to this rule are: (I) precepts issued by the
local government board for raising the sums to be contributed to
the metropolitan common poor fund; and (2) precepts issued by poor
law authorities representing two or more poor-law unions; in both
these cases the precept has of necessity to be first sent to the
guardians. The metropolitan borough councils make one general rate,
which includes the amount necessary to meet their own expenditure,
as well as to meet the demands of the various precepting
authorities. There was thus raised in the year1906-1907a sum of £ 1
5,393,95 6 (in1898-1899the amount was £10,401,441); of this
£11,012,424 was for central rates, which was subdivided into
£7,930,275 for county services and £3,082,149 for local services,
leaving a balance of £4,381,532, strictly local rates. The total
local expenditure of London for the year1906-1907was £24,703,087
(in1898-1899it was only £14,768,757), the balance of £9,761,734
being made up by receipts-in-aid and imperial subventions. This
expenditure was divided among the following bodies: London County
Council. £9,491,271 Metropolitan Borough Councils 5,009,982 Boards
of Guardians.. 3,587,429 Metropolitan Water Board. 2,318,618
Metropolitan Police.. 1,903,441 City Corporation. .. 1,270,406
Metropolitan Asylums Board. 934,463 Central (Unemployed) Body.
141,284 Overseers-City of London. 34,757 Market Trustees
(Southwark).. Io,680 Local Government Board-Common Poor Fund 756
£24,703,087 The total expenditure was equal to a rate in the
pound of s. 4.4d.; the actual
amount raised in rates was equivalent to a rate of 7s. 1 od.,
receipts-in-aid were equivalent to a rate of 3s. 2.5d., and
imperial subventions to a rate of is. 3.4d.
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They are revised by
statutory
assessment
committees, who hear any objections by ratepayers against their
valuation. These lists when revised are sent to the clerk of the
County Council, who publishes the totals. By the Metropolitan Poor
Act 1867, the metropolitan common poor fund, to which each union in
London contributes in proportion to its rateable value, was
established. Out of this fund certain expenses of guardians in
connexion with the maintenance of indoor paupers and lunatics, the
salaries of officers, the maintenance of children in poorlaw
schools, valuation,
vaccination, registration, &c., are
paid. The payments amounted in1906-1907to £1,662,942. Under the
Local Government Act 1888, the London County Council makes grants
to boards of guardians, sanitary authorities and overseers in
London in respect of certain services. This grant is in lieu of the
grants formerly made out of the exchequer grant in aid of local
rates, and amounted in1906-1907to £619,489. Finally, in 1894, the
fund called the Equalization Fund was established. This fund is
raised by the rate of 6d.in the pound on the assessable value of
the county of London, and redistributed among the boroughs in
proportion to their population. It amounted in1906-1907to
£1,094,946. But, in spite of attempts at equalization, rates remain
very unequal in London, and varied in 1908 from 6s. 2d. in St
Anne's, Westminster, to Hs. 6d. in Poplar. The London County
Council levied in 1909-19TO to meet its estimated expenditure for
the year a total rate of 36 75d.; 14.50d. of this was for general
county purposes, 19.75d. for education purposes and 2.50d. for
special county purposes. The preceding tables show the estimated
income and expenditure of the London County Council for
1909-1910.
|
Local Authorities.
|
Loans outstanding
31st March 1908.
|
|
London County Council (excluding loans
advanced to other authorities).
|
£49,938,131
|
|
Metropolitan Asylums Board
|
3,113,612
|
|
Metropolitan Police (London's proportion).
|
226,131
|
|
Metropolitan Water Board (proportion) .
|
38,726,514
|
|
Central (Unemployed) Body .
|
31,845
|
|
City of London Corporation. .. .
|
5,553,173
|
|
Metropolitan Borough Councils.. .
|
12,551,204
|
Guardians and sick asylum
managers. . |
4,029,013
|
|
£ 114,169,623
|
Besides the annual expenditure of the various authorities large
sums have been borrowed to defray the cost of works of a permanent
nature. The debt of London, like that of other municipalities, has
considerably increased and shows a tendency to go on increasing,
although certain safeguards against too ready borrowing have been
imposed. Every local authority has to obtain the sanction of some
higher authority before raising a loan, and there are in addition
certain statutory limits of borrowing. Metropolitan borough
councils have to obtain the sanction of the Local Government Board
to loans for baths, washhouses, public libraries, sanitary
conveniences and certain other purposes under the Public Health
Acts; for cemeteries the sanction of the Treasury is required, and
for all other purposes that of the London County Council; poor law
authorities, the metropolitan asylums board, the metropolitan water
board and the central (unemployed) body require the sanction of the
Local Government Board the receiver for the metropolitan police
district that of the
Home Office, and the London County Council
that of parliament and the Treasury. The following table gives the
net loans outstanding of the several classes of local authorities
in London at the 31st of March 1908 :/n==Authorities== - Full
details and figures relating to the
finance of London will be found in the
parliamentary papers
Local Taxation Returns (England and
Wales), part iv. published annually;
Returns relating to
the London County Council, published annually; the annual
report and accounts of the Metropolitan Water Board, and the
metropolitan police accounts. The publications of the London County
Council, especially the tramways accounts, the annual estimates,
London Statistics, and the
Financial Abstract (to
years ended 31st March 1908) have much valuable information. (T. A.
I.) IX. History I.
British and Roman to A.D. 449. - There
is practically no record of British London, and considerable
difference of opinion exists among antiquaries as to its very
existence.
Bishop
Stillingfleet held that London was of Roman foundation and not
older than the time of
Claudius (
Origines Brit.,
1685, p. 43); and Dr Guest affirmed that the notion of a British
town having " preceded the Roman camp has no foundation to rest
upon " (
Archaeological Journal, xxiii. 180). J. R. Green
expressed the same opinion in
The Making of England (p.
Ioi). On the other side
Kemble
held that it was difficult to believe that Cair Lunden was an
unimportant place even in Caesar's day (
Saxons in England, ii. 266); and Thomas
Lewin believed that London had attained prosperity before the
Romans came, and held that it was
probably the capital of Cassivellaunus, which was taken and sacked
by
Julius Caesar
(
Archaeologic, xl. 59). The origin of London will probably
always remain a subject of dispute for want of decisive facts.
The strongest reason for believing in a British London is to be
found in the name, which is undoubtedly Celtic, adopted with little
alteration by the Romans. It is also difficult to believe that
Londinium had come to be the important commercial centre described
by Tacitus (A.D. 61) if it had only been founded a few years before
the conquest of Claudius.
The discovery by General
Pitt Rivers in 1867
of the remains of
pile dwellings
both on the north and on the south of the Thames gives ground for
an argument of some force in favour of the date of the foundation
of London having been before the Roman occupation of
Britain. Of Roman London we
possess so many remains that its appearance can be conjectured with
little difficulty.
During the centuries when Britain was occupied by the Romans
(A.D. 43-409) there was ample time for cities to grow up from small
beginnings, to overflow their borders and to be more than once
rebuilt. The earliest Roman London must have been a comparatively
small place, but it probably contained a military fort of some kind
intended to cover the passage of the river.
The Roman general
Paulinus Suetonius, after marching rapidly
from Wales to put down a serious insurrection, found Londinium
unfitted for a base of military operations, and therefore left the
place to the mercy of
Boadicea, who entirely destroyed it, and
killed the inhabitants. After this the need of fortifying Londinium
must have been apparent, and a walled city of small dimensions
arose soon after the defeat of the British queen. The earliest
Roman city probably extended as far as Tower Hill on the east, and
there is, reason to believe that it did not include any ground to
the west of Leadenhall. The excavations at the latter place in 1881
threw great light upon the early history of London. The foundation
walls of a
basilica were
discovered, and from the time when that was built until the present
day the ground has always. been devoted to public uses. How far
north the first wall was placed it is difficult to guess. One help
towards a settlement of the question may be found in the discovery
of burial places. As it was illegal in Roman times to
bury within the walls, we are forced
to the conclusion that the places where these sepulchral remains
have been found were at one time extramural. Now no such remains
have been found between Gracechurch Street and the Tower. The
northern wall was placed by
Roach Smith somewhere along the course of
Cornhill and Leadenhall Street.. The second extension of the city
westwards was probably to. Wallbrook.
In the latest or third Roman enclosure the line of the wall` ran
straight from the Tower to Aldgate, where it bent round somewhat to
Bishopsgate. On the east it was bordered by the district
subsequently called the Minories and Houndsditch.. The line from
Bishopsgate ran eastward to St Giles's churchyard (Cripplegate),
where it turned to the south as far as
Falcon square; again
westerly by Aldersgate round the site of the
Greyfriars (afterwards Christ's Hospital) towards Giltspur Street,
then south by the Old Bailey to Ludgate, and then down to the
Thames, where Dr Edwin Freshfield suggests that a Roman fortress
stood on the site of Baynard's Castle. This is most probable,
because the Romans naturally required a special protection on the
river at the west as well as at the east. So in later times when
William the Conqueror planned the Tower he gave the site at the
western extremity to his follower Ralph Baynard, where was erected
the stronghold known as. Baynard's Castle. Roach Smith pointed out
that the enclosure indicated above gives dimensions far greater
than those of any other town in Britain. There can be no doubt that
within the walls there was originally much unoccupied space, for
with the single exception of the larger
circuit south of Ludgate, up to where the river
Fleet ran, made in 1276 for the benefit of the Black Friars, the
line of the walls, planned by the later Romans, remained complete
until the Great Fire (1666). The Thames formed the natural barrier
on the south, but the Romans do not appear to have been content
with this protection, for they built a wall here in addition, which
remained for several centuries. Portions of this wall have been
discovered at various times.
It is difficult even to guess when the third wall was erected.
The
emperor Theodosius came to London
from Boulogne to mature his plan for the restoration of the
tranquillity of the province. As Theodosius is said to have left
Britain in a
sound and secure
condition it has been suggested that to him was due the wall of the
later Londinium, but there is little or no evidence for this
opinion, and according to an old tradition
Constantine the Great walled the
city at the request of his mother
Helena, presumed to be a native of Britain.
There is, however, some evidence in favour of the supposition that
the wall was built at a much earlier date. It is not improbable
that early in the 2nd century the wall was finished at the west
portion and enclosed a cemetery near Newgate.
Sir William
Tite, in describing a
tessellated pavement found in 1854 on the site of the
Excise Office (Bishopsgate
Street), expresses the opinion that the finished character of the
pavement points to a period of
security and wealth, and fixes on the reign of
Hadrian (A.D. 117138), to
which the
silver coin found on the floor belongs, as
the date of its foundation.
The historians of the Roman Empire have left us some particulars
of the visits of emperors and generals to Britain, but little or
nothing about what happened in London, and we should be more
ignorant than we are of the condition of Londinium if it had not
been that a large number of excavations have been made in various
parts of the city which have disclosed a considerable amount of its
early history. From these remains we may guess that London was a
handsome city in the reign of Hadrian, and probably then in as
great a position of importance as it ever attained. This being so,
there seems to be reason in attributing the completed walls to this
period.
The persistence of the
relics of the walls of London is one of the most
remarkable facts of history. Pieces of the wall are to be seen in
various parts of the city, and are frequently found when extensive
excavations are made for new buildings. In some places where the
Roman wall is not to be seen there still exist pieces of the old
wall that stand upon Roman foundations. In
Amen Court, where the residences of canons of St
Paul's and the later houses of the minor canons are situated, there
stretches such a piece of wall, dividing the gardens of the Court
from the Old Bailey. Of the few accessible fragments of the Roman
wall still existing special mention may be made of the
bastion in the churchyard of St
Giles's, Cripplegate; a little farther west is a small fragment in
St Martin's Court, Ludgate Hill (opposite the Old Bailey), but the
best specimen can be seen near Tower Hill just out of
George
Street, Trinity Square. Early in the 10th century a fragment
nearly 40 ft. long, together with the base of a bastion, was
brought to light in digging for the foundation of some large
warehouses in Camomile Street, at a depth of 10 ft. below the level
of the present street. A considerable portion of the old wall was
laid bare by the excavations for the new Post Office in St
Martin's-le-Grand. From a comparison of these fragments with the
descriptions of Woodward, Maitland and others, who in the early
part of the r8th century examined portions of the wall still
standing, we learn that the wall was from 9 to 12 ft. thick, and
formed of a core of rough
rubble cemented together with
mortar (containing much coarse gravel) of
extraordinary hardness and tenacity, and a facing for the most part
of stone - Kentish rag, freestone or ironstone - but occasionally
of flints; about 2 ft. apart are double layers of tiles or bricks.
which serve as bonding courses. The wall appears to have been about
20 ft. high, the towers from 40 to 50 ft., but when described only
the base was Roman. Upon that was raised a wall of rough rubble
rudely faced with stone and
flint, evidently a medieval work and about 22 ft.
thick; then succeeded a portion wholly of brick, terminating in
battlements topped with copings of stone.
Although the course of the
later Roman walls is clear, we do
not know with any certainty the position of the Roman gates. They
were not the same as the medieval gates which have left the record
of their names in modern London nomenclature. It follows,
therefore, that the main streets also are not in line with the
Roman ways, except perhaps in a few instances. Many ineffectual
attempts have been made to connect the Watling street in the city
with the great Roman road so named in medieval times. The name of
the small street is evidently a corruption, and in the valuable
Report of the MSS. of the
Dean and
Chapter of St Paul's (
Ninth Report of the Historical MSS.
Commission, Appendix, p. 4) the original name is given as "
Atheling Street," and instances of this spelling are common in the
13th century. The form Watling Street seems to occur first in 1307.
Stow spells it Watheling Street (Kingsford's edition of Stow's
Survey, 5908, vol. ii. p. 352). Sir William Tite gave
reasons for believing that Bishopsgate Street was not a Roman
thoroughfare, and in the excavations at Leadenhall the basilica to
which allusion has already been made was found apparently crossing
the present thoroughfare of Gracechurch Street. Tite also agreed
with Dr Stukeley's suggestion that on the site of the Mansion House
(formerly
Stocks Market) stood
the Roman
forum, and he states
that a line drawn from that spot as a centre would pass by the
pavements found on the site of the Excise Office. Besides the forum
Stukeley suggested the sites of seven other buildings - the
Arx
Palatina guarding the south-eastern angle of the city where
the Tower now stands, the grove and temple of
Diana on the site of St Paul's, &c. No traces
of any of these buildings have been found, and they are therefore
purely conjectural. Stukeley's industrious researches into the
history of Roman London cannot be said to have any particular
value, although at one time they enjoyed considerable vogue. As to
the Temple of Diana, Sir Christopher Wren formed an opinion
strongly adverse to the old tradition of its existence
(
Parentalia, p. 266). Although we know that the Christian
church was established in Britain during the later period of the
Roman domination, there is little to be learnt respecting it, and
the bishop Restitutus, who is said to have attended an
Ecclesiastical Council, is a somewhat mythical character. In
respect to the discovery of the position of the Roman gates, the
true date of the
Antonini Itinerarium (q.v.)
is of great importance, as it will be seen from it that Londinium
was either a starting-point or a terminus in nearly half the routes
described in the portion relating to Britain. This would be
remarkable if the work dated back to the 2nd century. Probably in
the later, as in the earlier time, Londinium had the usual four
gates of a Roman city, with the main roads to them. The one on the
east was doubtless situated near where Aldgate afterwards stood. On
the south the entrance to Londinium must always have been near
where London Bridge was subsequently built. On the west the gate
could not have been far from the place afterwards occupied by
Newgate. As to Ludgate there is reason to believe that if there was
an opening there in Roman times it was merely a
postern. On the north the gate may have been
near Bishopsgate or at Aldersgate. If we take from the
Itinerary the last station before Londinium in all the
routes we shall be able to obtain some idea of the position of the
gate entered from each route by drawing a line on the map of London
to the nearest point. Ammianus Marcellinus (about A.D. 390) speaks
twice of Londinium as an ancient town to which the
honourable title of
Augusta had been accorded. Some
writers have been under the misapprehension that this name for a
time superseded that of Londinium. The anonymous Chorographer of
Ravenna calls the place
Londinium Augusta, and doubtless this was the form adopted.
The most interesting Roman relic is " London Stone." It has
generally been supposed to be a " milliarium " or central point for
measuring distances, but Sir Christopher Wren believed it was part
of some more considerable monuments in the forum
(
Parentalia, pp. 265, 266).
Holinshed (who was followed by
Shakespeare in
2 Henry VI., act 4 sc. 6)
tells us that when Cade, in 1450, forced his way into London, he
first 45 Y of all proceeded to London Stone, and having struck his
sword upon it, said in reference
to himself and in explanation of his own action, " Now is Mortimer
lord of this city." Mr H. C. Coote, in a paper published in the
Trans. London and Middlesex Arch. Soc. for 1878, points
out that this act meant something to the
mob who followed the rebel chief, and was not a
piece of foolish acting. Mr Laurence Gomme (
Primitive
Folk-Moots, pp. 1 55, 156) takes up the matter at this point,
and places the tradition implied by Cade's significant action as
belonging to times when the London Stone was, as other great stones
were, the place where the suitors of an open-
air assembly were accustomed to gather together and
to legislate for the government of the city. Corroborative facts
have been gathered from other parts of the country, and, although
more evidence is required, such as we have is strongly in favour of
the supposition that the London Stone is a prehistoric
monument.
One of the most important questions in the history of London
that requires settlement is the date of the building of the first
bridge, that is whether it was constructed by Britons or by Romans.
If the Britons had not already made he bridge before the Romans
arrived it must have been one of the first Roman works. As long as
there was no bridge to join the north and south banks of the Thames
the great object of Roman rule remained unfulfilled. This object
was the completion of a system of roads connecting all parts of the
Empire with Rome.
Dio Cassius, who
lived in the early part of the 3rd century (
Hist. Rom.
lib. lx. c. 20), states that there was a bridge over the Thames at
the time of the invasion of Claudius (A.D. 43), but he places it a
little above the mouth of the river (" higher up "). The position
is vague, but the mouth of the Thames in these early times may be
considered as not far from the present position of London Bridge.
Sir George Airy held that this
bridge was not far from the site of London Bridge (
Proceedings
of Institut. Civil Engineers, xlix. 120), but Dr Guest was not
prepared to allow that the Britons were able to construct a bridge
over a tidal river such as the Thames, some 300 yds. wide, with a
difference of level at high and low water of nearly 20 ft. He
therefore suggested that the bridge was constructed over the marshy
valley of the Lea, probably near Stratford. It needs some temerity
to differ from so great an authority as Dr Guest, but it strikes
one as surprising that, having accepted the fact of a bridge made
by the Britons, he should deny that these Britons possessed a town
or village in the place to which he supposes that Aulus Plautius
retired.
As the Welsh word for " bridge " is "
pont," and this was taken directly from the
Latin, the inference is almost
conclusive that the Britons acquired their knowledge of bridges
from the Romans. Looking at the stage of culture which the Britons
had probably reached, it would further be a natural inference that
there was no such thing as a bridge anywhere in Britain before the
Roman occupation; but, if Dion's statement is correct, it may be
suggested as a possible explanation that the increased intercourse
with
Gaul during the hundred years
that - elapsed between Julius Caesar's raids and Claudius Caesar's
invasion may have led to the construction of a bridge of some kind
across the Thames at this point, through the influence and under
the guidance of Roman traders and engineers. If so, the word " pont
" may have been borrowed by the Britons before the commencement of
the Roman occupation. Much stronger are the reasons for believing
that there was a bridge in Roman times. Remains of Roman villas are
found in Southwark, which was evidently a portion of Londinium, and
it therefore hardly seems likely that a bridge-building people such
as the Romans would remain contented with a ferry. Roach Smith is a
strong advocate for the bridge, and remarks, " It would naturally
be erected somewhere in the direct line of road into Kent, which I
cannot but think pointed towards the site of Old London Bridge,
both from its central situation, from the general absence of the
foundations of buildings in the approaches on the northern side,
and from discoveries recently made in the Thames on the line of the
old bridge " (
Archaeologia, xxix. 160). Smith has,
however, still stronger arguments, which he states as follows: "
Throughout the entire line of the old bridge, the bed of the river
was found to contain ancient wooden piles; and when these piles,
subsequently to the erection of the new bridge, were pulled up to
deepen the channel of the river, many thousands of Roman coins,
with abundance of broken Roman tiles and pottery, were discovered,
and immediately beneath some of the central piles
brass medallions of Aurelius, Faustina and
Commodus. All these remains are indicative of a bridge. The
enormous quantities of Roman coins may be accounted for by
consideration of the well-known practice of the Romans to make
these imperishable monuments subservient towards perpetuating the
memory, not only of their conquests, but also of those public works
which were the natural result of their successes in remote parts of
the world. They may have been deposited either upon the building or
repairs of the bridge, as
well as upon the accession of a new emperor " (
Archaeological
Journal, i. 113).
At the beginning of the 5th century the Roman legions left
Britain, and the
Saxon Chronicle gives the
exact date, stating that never since A.D. 409 " have the Romans
ruled in Britain "- the chronicler setting down the Roman sway at
470 winters and dating from Julius Caesar's invasion. We learn that
in the year 418 " the Romans collected all the treasures that were
in Britain, and hid some of them in the earth, that no man might
afterwards find them, and conveyed some with them into Gaul." 2.
Saxon (449-1066). - We are informed in the
Saxon
Chronicle that about A.D. 449 or 450 the invaders settled in
Britain, and in 457 Hengist and Aesc fought against the Britons at
Crayford,
driving them out
of Kent. The vanquished fled to London in terror and apparently
found a shelter there. After this entry there is no further mention
of London in the
Chronicle for a century and a half. This
silence has been taken by some historians of weight to imply that
London practically ceased to exist. Dr Guest asserted " that good
reason may be given for the belief that even London itself for a
while lay desolate and uninhabited " (
Archaeological
Journal, xix. 219). J. R. Green and Mr Loftie strongly
supported this view, and in Sir Walter Besant's
Early
London (1908) the idea of the desolation of the city is taken
for granted.
In answer to this contention it may be said that, although the
silence of the
Chronicle is difficult to understand, it is
almost impossible to believe that the very existence of the most
important city in the country could suddenly cease and the
inhabitants disappear without some special notice. Battles and
scenes of destruction are so fully described in other instances
that one must believe that when nothing is related nothing special
occurred. No doubt the coming of the Saxons, which entirely changed
the condition of the country, must have greatly injured trade, but
although there was not the same freedom of access to the roads, the
Londoners had the highway of the river at their doors. Although the
Saxons hated towns and refused to
settle in London, they may have allowed the
original inhabitants to continue their trade on condition that they
received some share of the profits or a
tribute. The only question really is whether
London being an exceptional city received exceptional
treatment.
Along the banks of the Thames are several small havens whose
names have remained to us, such as Rotherhithe, Lambhith (Lambeth),
Chelchith (Chelsea), &c., and it is not unlikely that the
Saxons, who would not settle in the city itself, associated
themselves with these small open spots. Places were thus founded
over a large space which otherwise might have remained
unsettled.
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Laurence Gomme,
in
The Governance of London (1907), opposes the view that
the city was for a time left deserted (a view which, it may be
remarked, is a comparatively modern one, probably originating with
Dr Guest). H. C. Coote in his
Romans of Britain elaborated
a description of the survival of Roman influence in English
institutions, but his views did not obtain much support from London
historians. Mr Gomme's contention is to some extent a modification
of Mr Coote's view, but it is original in the illustrations that
give it force. Londinium was a Roman city, and (as in the case of
all such cities) was formed on the model of ancient Rome. It may
therefore be expected to retain evidence of the existence of a
Pomoerium and Territorium as at Rome. The Pomoerium marked the
unbuilt space around the walls. Gomme refers to an open space
outside the western wall of
Dorchester still called the Pummery as an
indication of the Pomoerium in that place; and he considers that
the name of Mile End, situated 1 m. from Aldgate and the city
walls, marks the extent of the open space around the walls of
London known as the Pomoerium. This fact throws a curious light
upon the growth of the " Liberties. " It has always been a
puzzle that no note exists of the
first institution of these liberties. If this open space was from
the earliest times attached to the city there would be no
Origin of need when it was built upon for any special act
to be
the passed for its inclusion in London. " The
Territorium Liberties. P of the city was its special
property, and it extended as far as the limits of the territorium
of the nearest Roman city or as near thereto as the natural
boundaries." This explains the position of Middlesex in relation to
London. In connexion with these two features of a Roman city
supposed to be found in Ancient London the author argues for the
continuity of the city through the changes of Roman and Saxon
dominion.
One of the most striking illustrations of the probable
continuity of London history is to be found in the contrast between
York and London. This is only
alluded to in Gomme's book, but it is elaborated in an article in
the
Cornhill Magazine (November 1906). These two were the
chief Roman cities in Britain, one in the north and the other in
the south. They are both equally good examples of important cities
under Roman domination. York was conquered and occupied by the
Saxons, and there not only are the results of English settlement
clear but all records of Roman government were destroyed. In London
the Saxon stood outside the government for centuries, and the
acceptance of the Roman survival explains much that is otherwise
unintelligible.
Gomme finds important evidence of the independence of London in
the existence of a merchant law which was opposed to
Anglo-Saxon
law. He reprints and discusses the
Independ-
celebrated
Judicia Civitatis Lundoniae of King ./ thelence
of London. stan's reign - " the
ordinance " (as it declares itself) " which
the bishop and the reeves belonging to London have ordained." He
holds that the Londoners passed " their own laws by their own
citizens without reference to the king at all," and in the present
case of a king who according to Kemble " had carried the influence
of the crown to an extent unexampled in any of his predecessors."
He adds: " What happened afterwards was evidently this: that the
code passed by the Londoners was sent to the king for him to extend
its application throughout the kingdom, and this is done by the
eleventh section." The view originated by Gomme certainly explains
many difficulties in the history of the transition from Roman to
English London, which have hitherto been overlooked by
historians.
When the city is next referred to in the
Saxon
Chronicle it appears to have been inhabited by a population of
heathens. Under the date 604 we read: " This year
Augustine to Justus he gave
Rochester, which is
twenty-four miles from
Canterbury. " The
Christianity of the Londoners was of an
unsatisfactory character, for, after the death of Sebert, his sons
who were heathens stirred up the multitude to drive out their
bishop.
Mellitus became
archbishop of Canterbury, and London relapsed into heathenism. In
this, the earliest period of Saxon history recorded, there appears
to be no relic of the Christianity of the Britons, which at one
time was well in evidence. What became of the cathedral which we
may suppose to have existed in London during the later Roman period
we cannot tell, but we may guess that it was destroyed by the
heathen Saxons.
Bede records that the church of St Paul was built
by lEthelbert, and from that time to this a cathedral dedicated to
St Paul has stood upon the hill looking down on Ludgate.
After the driving out of Mellitus London remained without a
bishop until the year 656, when Cedda, brother of St Chad of
Lichfield, was invited to
London by
Sigebert, who
had been converted to Christianity by Finan, bishop of the
Northumbrians. Cedda was consecrated bishop of the East Saxons by
Finan and held the see till his death on the 26th of October 664.
He was succeeded by Wini, bishop of
Winchester, and then came Earconuald (or St
Erkenwald), whose
shrine was
one of the chief glories of old St Paul's. He died on the 30th of
April 693, a day which was kept in memory in his cathedral for
centuries by special offices. The list of bishops from Cedda to
William (who is addressed in the Conqueror's Charter) is long, and
each bishop apparently held a position of great importance in the
government of the city.
In the 7th century the city seems to have settled down into a
prosperous place and to have been peopled by merchants of many
nationalities. We learn that at this time it was the great mart of
slaves. It was in the fullest sense a
Uaaish g
Invasions. free-trading town; neutral to a certain extent
between the kingdoms around, although the most powerful of the
kings conquered their feebler neighbours. During the 8th century,
when a more settled condition of life became possible, the trade
and commerce of London increased in volume and prosperity. A
change, however, came about towards the end of the century, when
the Scandinavian freebooters known as Danes began to harry the
coasts. The Saxons had become law-abiding, and the fierce Danes
treated them in the same way as in former days they had treated the
Britons. In 871 the chronicler affirms that
Alfred fought
nine great battles against the Danes in the kingdom south of the
Thames, and that the West Saxons made peace with them. In the next
year the Danes went from Reading to London, and there took up their
winter quarters. Then the Mercians made peace with them. In 886
Alfred overcame the Danes, restored London to its inhabitants,
rebuilt its walls, reannexed the city to
Mercia, and committed it to Ethelred, alderman
of Mercia. Then, as the chronicler writes, " all the Angle race
turned to him (Alfred) that were not in bondage of the Danish men."
In 896 the Londoners came off victorious in their encounters with
the Danes. The king obstructed the river so that the enemy could
not bring up their ships, and they therefore abandoned them. The
Londoners broke up some, and brought the strongest and best to
London. In 91 2 1Ethelred, the alderman of the Mercians, who had
been placed in authority by Alfred, died, and Edward the Elder took
possession of London and Oxford, " and all the lands which thereto
belonged." Under ZEthelstan we find the city increasing in
importance and general prosperity. There were then eight mints at
work, a fact which exhibits evidence of great activity and the need
of coin for the purposes of trade. The folk-
moot met in the precincts of St Paul's at the
sound of the bell of the famous belltower, which also rang out when
the armed
levy was required to
march under St Paul's banner. For some years after the decisive
battle of Brunanburh (A.D. 93 7) the Danes ceased to trouble the
country. Fire, however, was almost as great an enemy to London as
the Dane. Fabyan when recording the entire destruction of London by
fire in the reign of !Ethelred (981) makes this remarkable
statement - " Ye shall understand that this daye the cytie of
London had more housynge and buyldinge
Arrival consecrated
two bishops: Mellitus and Justus. He
of Chris- tianity.
sent Mellitus to preach
baptism to the East Saxons, whose king was
called Sebert, son of Ricole the sister of "Ethelbert, and whom
IEthelbert had then appointed king. And !Ethelbert gave
Mellitus a bishop's see in Lundenevic and from Ludgate toward
Westmynstre and lytel or none wher the chief or hart of the citie
is now, except (that) in dyvers places were housyng, but they stod
without order." In the reign of Æthelred II., called the Unready
(but more correctly the Redeless), the Danes were more successful
in their operations against London, but the inhabitants resisted
stoutly. Snorre the Icelander tells us that the Danes fortified
Southwark with ditch and rampart, which the English assailed in
vain. In 982 London was burnt, and in 994
Olaf and
Sweyn (the father of Canute)
came with ninety-four ships to besiege it. They tried to set the
city on fire, but the townsmen did them more harm than they " ever
weened." The chronicler piously adds that " the holy Mother of God
on that day manifested her mercy to the townsmen, and delivered
them from their foes." The Danes went from the town and ravaged the
neighbourhood, so that in the end the king and his
witan agreed to give sixteen thousand pounds to
be relieved of the presence of the enemy. This was the origin of
the Danegelt.
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The Londoners withstood Sweyn in 1013, but in the end they
submitted and gave him hostages. Three years after this, Æthelred
died in London, and such of the witan as were there and the
townsmen chose
Edmund Ironside for king, although the
witan outside London had elected
Canute. Canute's ships were then at Greenwich on
their way to London, where they soon afterwards arrived. The Danes
at once set to work to dig a great ditch by Southwark, and then
dragged their ships through to the west side of the bridge. They
were able after this to keep the inhabitants from going either in
or out of the town. In spite of all this, after fighting
obstinately both by land and by water, the Danes had to raise the
siege of London and take the
ships to the river Orwell. After a glorious reign of seven months
Edmund died in London, and
Canute became master of England. The tribute which the townsmen of
London had to pay was £ro,50o, about one-seventh of the amount
which was paid by all the rest of the English nation. This shows
the growing importance of the city. From this time there appears to
have been a permanent Danish settlement in London, probably
Aldwich, referred to below.
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On his death the Witan which had attended his
funeral elected to succeed him Harold, the foremost man in England,
and the leader who had attempted to check the spread of the Norman
influence fostered by the Confessor. After his defeat and death on
the hill on the Sussex
Downs
then called Senlac, the duke of
Normandy had the country at his mercy, but he
recognized the importance of London's position, and moved forward
with the greatest caution and tact.
Before proceeding with the history of London during the Norman
period it is necessary to say something of the counties more
especially connected with London.
The walled city of London was a distinct political unit,
although it owed a certain
allegiance to that one of the kingdoms
around it which was the most powerful for the time being.
This allegiance therefore frequently changed, but
Lo
ndon retained its identity and individuality all
Y
Y through. Essex seems seldom to have held an inde pendent
position, for when London first appears as connected with the East
Saxons the real power was in the hands of the king of Kent.
According to Bede, Wini, being expelled from his bishopric of
Wessex in 635, took refuge with
Wulfhere, king of the
Mercians, of whom he purchased the see of London. Hence the Mercian
king must then have been the overlord of London. Not many years
afterwards the king of Kent again seems to have held some
jurisdiction here. From the laws of the Kentish kings Lhothhere and
Eadric (673-685) we learn that the Wic-
reeve was an officer of the king of Kent, who
exercised a jurisdiction over the Kentish men trading with or at
London, or was appointed to
watch over their interests.
The origin of the two counties in which London is chiefly
situated opens up an interesting question. It is necessary to
remember that London is older than these counties, whose names,
Middlesex and Surrey, indicate their relative positions to the city
and the surrounding county. We have neither record of their
settlement nor of the origin of their names. Both must have been
peopled from the river. The name Middle Saxons plainly shows that
Middlesex must have been settled after the East and West Saxons had
given their names to their respective districts. The name Surrey
clearly refers to the southern position of the county.
Reference has already been made to a Danish settlement, and
there seems some reason for placing it on the ground now occupied
by the parishes of St
Clement Danes and
Aldwich. St Giles's. For many centuries
this district between London and Westminster was a kind of " no
man's land " having certain archaic customs. Gomme in his
Governance of London (1907) gives an account of the
connexion of this with the old village of Aldwich, a name that
survived in Wych Street, and has been revived by the London County
Council in Aldwych, the crescent which leads to Kingsway.
3. Norman (1066-1154). - To return to the condition of
things after the great battle. The citizens of London were a
divided body, and Duke William knowing that he had many friends in
the city saw that a waiting game was the best for his cause in the
end. The defeated chiefs retired on the city, led by Ansgar the
Staller, under whom as
sheriff the citizens of London had marched to
fight for Harold at Senlac. They elected Edgar Atheling, the
grandson of Edmund Ironside, as king, which the
Saxon
Chronicle says " was indeed his natural right." On hearing of
this action William marched towards London, when the citizens
sallied forth to meet him. They were repulsed by the Norman horse,
but with such loss to the latter that the duke thought it imprudent
to lay siege to the city at that time, and he retired to
Berkhampstead.' It
is reported that William sent a private
message to Ansgar asking for his support. The
result was that Edgar and Earls Edwin and Morkere and " the best
men of London " repaired to Berkhampstead, where they submitted
themselves and swore fealty to the Conqueror.
Thus ends the Saxon period, and the Norman period in London
begins with the submission of the citizens as distinct from the
action of the rest of the kingdom, which submission resulted soon
afterwards in the Conqueror's remarkable charter to William the
bishop and Gosfrith the portcity, reeve, supposed to be the elder
Geoffrey de Mandeville.
A great change was at once made both in the appearance and in
the government of the city under Norman rule. One of the earliest
acts of the Conqueror was to undertake the erection of a citadel
which should overawe the citizens and give him the command of the
city. The Tower was situated at the eastern limit of the city, and
not far from the western extremity Castle Baynard was built.
The position of the city grew in importance, but the citizens
suffered from severe laws and from serious restrictions upon their
liberties. In August 1077 occurred a most extensive fire, such a
one, says the
Chronicle, as " never was before since
London was founded." This constant burning of large portions of the
city is a marked feature of its early history, and we must remember
that, although stone buildings were rising on all sides, these were
churches, monasteries, and other public edifices; the ordinary
houses remained as before, small wooden structures. The White
Tower, the famous keep of the Tower of London, was begun by
Gundulph, bishop of Rochester, c.
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xiii. p. 17). This
article contains an account of Duke William's movements after the
battle of Senlac between Enfield,
Edmonton, Tottenham and Berkhampstead.
city." In this same year (1087) William the Conqueror died. In
1090 a tremendous
hurricane passed over London, and blew down
six hundred houses and many churches. The Tower was injured, and a
portion of the roof of the church of St Mary-leBow, Cheapside, was
carried off and fell some distance away, being forced into the
ground as much as 20 ft., a proof of the badness of the
thoroughfares as well as of the force of the wind. William Rufus
inherited from his father a love for building, and in the year 1097
he exacted large sums of money from his subjects with the object of
carrying on some of the undertakings he had in hand. These were the
walling round of the Tower and the rebuilding of London Bridge,
which had been almost destroyed by a
flood. In 1 roo Rufus was slain, and
Henry I. was crowned in London.
This king granted the citizens their first real charter, but this
was constantly violated. When
Stephen seized the crown on the death of Henry
I., he tried successfully to obtain the support of the people of
London. He published a charter confirming in genera] terms the one
granted by
Henry, and commanding
that the good laws of Edward the Confessor should be observed. The
citizens, however, did not obtain their rights without paying for
them, and in 1139 they paid Stephen one hundred marks of silver to
enable them to choose their own sheriffs. In this reign the
all-powerfulness of the Londoners is brought prominently forward.
Stephen became by the shifting fortune of war a prisoner, and the
empress Matilda might, if she had had the wisdom to favour the
citizens, have held the throne, which was hers by right of birth.
She, however, made them her enemies by delivering up the office of
justiciary of London and the sheriffwick to her
partisan Geoffrey, earl of Essex, and
attempting to reduce the citizens to the enslaved condition of the
rest of the country. This made her influential enemies, who soon
afterwards replaced Stephen upon the throne. The Norman era closes
with the death of Stephen in 1154.
One of the most striking changes in the appearance of Norman
London was caused by the rebuilding of old churches and the
building of new ones, and also by the foundation of bourhood of
London, although the houses of nuns, of which there were many
dotted over the suburbs of London, were governed by this rule. In
course of time there was a widespread desire in Europe for a
stricter rule among the
monks,
and reforms of the Benedictine rule were instituted at Cluni (910),
Chartreuse (about
1080) and Citeaux (1098). All these reforms were represented in
London.
Cluniac Order
This order was first brought to England by William, earl of
Warren (son-in-law of William the
Conqueror), who built the first house at
Lewes in Sussex about 1077. The priory of
Bermondsey in Surrey was founded by Aylwin Child, citizen of London
about 1082.
When this order was brought to England in 1178 the first house
was founded at
Witham in
Somersetshire. In
all there were nine houses of the order in England. One of these
was the Charterhouse of London which was not founded until 1371 by
Sir Walter Manny,
K.G.
It was usual to plant these monasteries in solitary and
uncultivated places, and no other house, even of their own order,
was allowed to build within a certain distance of the original
establishment. This makes it surprising to learn that there were
two separate houses of this order in the near neighbourhood of
London. A branch of the order came to England about 1128 and the
first house was founded at Waverley in Surrey. Very shortly after
(about 1134) the abbey of Stratford Langthorne in Essex was founded
by William de Montfichet, who endowed it with all his lordship in
West Ham. It was not until two centuries afterwards that the second
Cistercian house in the immediate neighbourhood of London was
founded. This was the Abbey of St Mary
Graces, East-
Minster or
New Abbey without the walls of London, beyond
Tower Hill, which Edward III. instituted in 1350 after a severe
scourge of
plague (the so-called Black Death).
The two great Military Orders - the Knights Hospitallers of St
John of Jerusalem and the Templars - followed the Augustinian rule
and were both settled in London. The Hospital or Priory of St John
was founded in 1100 by Jordan Briset and his wife Muriel, outside
the northern wall of London, and the original village of
Clerkenwell grew up around the buildings of the knights. A few
years after this the Brethren of the Temple of
Solomon at Jerusalem or Knights of the Temple
came into being at the Holy City, and they settled first on the
south side of Holborn near Southampton Row. They removed to Fleet
Street or the New Temple in 1184. On the suppression of the order
by command of the
pope the house
in Fleet Street was given in 1313 by Edward II. to
Aymer de
Valence, earl of Pembroke, at
whose death in 1324 the property passed to the knights of St John,
who leased the new Temple to the lawyers, still the occupants of
the district.
The queen of Henry I. (Matilda or Maud) was one of the chief
founders of religious houses, and so great was the number of
monasteries built in this king's reign that it was said almost all
the labourers became bricklayers and carpenters and there was much
discontent in consequence.
4.
Plantagenet (1154-1485). - Henry II.
appears to have been to a certain extent prejudiced against the
citizens of London on account of their attitude towards his mother,
and
- he treated them with some severity. In 1176 the
rebuilding of London Bridge with stone was begun by
descrip- Peter of Colechurch. This was the bridge which
was pulled down early in the 19th century. It consisted of twenty
stone arches and a drawbridge. There was a
gatehouse at each end and a chapel or crypt
in the centre, dedicated to St Thomas of Canterbury, in which Peter
of Colechurch was buried in 1205. The large amount of building at
this time proves that the citizens were wealthy. Fitzstephen, the
monk of Canterbury, has left us
the first picture of London. He speaks of its wealth, commerce,
grandeur and magnificence - of the mildness of the climate, the
beauty of the gardens, the sweet, clear and salubrious springs, the
flowing streams, and the pleasant clack of the watermills. Even the
vast forest of Middlesex, with its densely wooded thickets, its
coverts of game, stags,
fallow deer, boars and wild bulls is
pressed into the description to give a contrast which shall enhance
the beauty of the city itself. Fitzstephen tells how, when the
great marsh that washed the walls of the city on the north
(Moorfields) was frozen over; the young men went out to slide and
skate and sport on the
ice. Skates
made of bones have been dug up in this district. This sport was
allowed to fall into disuse, and was not again prevalent until it
was introduced from
Holland
after the Restoration.
In spite of Fitzstephen's glowing description we must remember
that the houses of London were wholly built of wood and thatched
with
straw or reeds. These
houses were specially liable to be destroyed by fire, and in order
to save the city from this imminent danger the famous
Assize of Building known as "
Fitz-Ailwyne's Assize " was drawn up in 1189. In this document the
following statement was made: " Many citizens, to avoid such
danger, built according to their means, on their ground, a stone
house covered and protected by thick tiles against the fury of
fire, whereby it often happened that when a fire arose in the city
and burnt many edifices and' had reached such a house, not being
able to injure it, it then became extinguished, so that many
neighbours' houses were wholly saved from fire by that house."
Various privileges were conceded to those who built in stone, but
no provision was made as to the material to be used in the great
monastic establishments. The early history of the parishes of
London is one of great difficulty and complexity. Although some of
the parishes must be of great antiquity, we have little
authentic information
respecting them before the Conquest. The dedications of many of the
churches indicate their great age, but the constant fires in London
destroyed these buildings. The original churches appear to have
been very small, as may be judged from their number. It is not
easy, however, to understand how it was that when the first
parishes were formed so small an area was attached to each. The
parish church of which we have the most authentic notice before the
Conquest is St Helen's, Bishopsgate. It was in existence many years
before the priory of the nuns of St Helen's was founded. Bishop
Stubbs in his Introduction to the Historical Works of
Ralph de Diceto
writes: " St Paul's stood at the head of the religious life of
London, and by its side, at some considerable interval, however, St
Martin's le Grand (1056), St Bartholomew's, Smithfield (1123) and
the great and ancient foundation of Trinity, Aldgate " (1 r08). The
great Benedictine monastery of Black Monks was situated away from
the city at Westminster, and it was the only monastic house subject
to the rule of St Benedict in the neigh roofing tenements. This
Assize, which has been described as the earliest English Building
Act, is of great value from an historical point of view, but
unfortunately it had little practical effect, and in
1212
what was called " Fitz-Ailwyne's Second Assize," with certain
compulsory regulations, was enacted. Thenceforth everyone who built
a house was strictly charged not to cover it with reeds, rushes,
stubble or straw, but only with tiles,
shingle boards or
lead. In future, in order to stop a fire, houses
could be pulled down in case of need with an alderman's hook and
cord. For the speedy removal of
burning houses each ward was to provide a strong iron hook, with a
wooden handle, two chains and two strong cords, which were to be
left in the charge of the bedel of the ward, who was also provided
with a good
horn, " loudly
sounding."
Richard I. was a popular
king, but his fighting in the Holy Land cost his subjects much.
London had to pay heavily towards his
ransom; and, when the king made his triumphal
entry into London after his release from imprisonment, a German
nobleman is said to have remarked that had the emperor known of the
wealth of England he would have insisted on a larger sum. The
Londoners were the more glad to welcome
Richard back in that the head of the regency,
Longchamp, bishop of Ely, was very unpopular from the encroachments
he made upon the city with his works at the Tower.
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The citizens opposed the
king during the wars of the barons. In the year 1215 the barons
having received intelligence secretly that they might enter London
with ease through Aldgate, which was then in a very ruinous state,
removed their camp from
Bedford to Ware, and shortly after marched into
the city in the night-time. Having succeeded in their object, they
determined that so important a gate should no longer remain in a
defenceless condition. They therefore spoiled the religious houses
and robbed the monastery coffers in order to have means wherewith
to rebuild it. Much of the material was obtained from the destroyed
houses of the unfortunate Jews, but the stone for the bulwarks was
obtained from
Caen, and the small
bricks or tiles from
Flanders.
Allusion has already been made to the great change in the aspect
of London and its surroundings made during the Norman period by the
establishment of a large number of monasteries. A still more
important change in the configuration of the interior of London was
made in the 13th century, when the various orders of the friars
established themselves there. The Benedictine monks preferred
secluded sites; the
Augustinians did not cultivate seclusion
so strictly; but the friars chose the interior of towns by
preference. At the beginning of the 13th century the remarkable
evangelical revival, instituted almost simultaneously by St Dominic
and St
Francis, swept over
Europe.
The four chief orders of
Mendicant friars were
magnificently housed in London
:- Blackfriars. - The
Black,
Preaching or
Dominican Friars came to England in 1221 and their first house was
at Oxford. Shortly after this they came to London and settled in
Holborn near L
i ncoln's Inn, where they remained for more
than fifty years. In 1276 they removed to the neighbourhood of
Baynard Castle, and their house gave a name to a London district
which it still retains.
Greyfriars.
The Greyfriars, Minorites or
Franciscans, first settled in Cornhill, and
in 1224 John Ewin made over to them an estate situated in the ward
of Farringdon Within and in the parish of St
Nicholas in the
Shambles, where their friary was built. Christ
Church, Newgate Street, occupies the site of the choir of the great
church of the Greyfriars.
Austin Friars.
The house of the Austin Friars or Friars Eremites was founded in
Broad Street Ward in 1253.
White Friars.
The Friars of the Blessed Virgin of
Mount Carmel or
Carmelites or Whitefriars came to London in
1241, and made their home on land between Fleet Street and the
Thames given by Edward I.
Besides the four chief orders of friars there were the Crutched
Friars in the parish of St Olave, Hart Street (about 1298), and the
Friars of the Sac first outside Aldersgate (about 1257) and
afterwards in the Old Jewry.
The names of places in London form valuable records of the
habitations of different classes of the population. The monasteries
and friaries are kept in memory by their names in various parts of
London. In the same way the residences of the Jews have been
marked. When Edward I. expelled the Jews from England in
1290 the district in which they had lived since William
the Conqueror's day came to be called the Old Jewry. On their
return after many centuries of exile most of them settled in the
neighbourhood of Aldgate and Aldersgate. There is a reminder of
them in the names of Jewry Street near the former and of Jewin
Street near the latter place. Jewin Street was built on the site of
the burying-place of the Jews before the expulsion.
In
the middle
ages there was a constant succession of pageants, processions
and tournaments. The royal processions arranged in connexion with
coronations were of great antiquity, but one of the earliest to be
described is that of
Henry
III. in 1236, which was chronicled by
Matthew
Paris. After the marriage at Canterbury of the king with
Eleanor of
Provence the
royal personages came to London, and were met by the mayor,
aldermen and principal citizens to the number of 360, sumptuously
apparelled in silken
robes
embroidered,
riding upon
stately horses. After the death of Henry III. (1272) the country
had to wait for their new king, who was then in the Holy Land.
Edward I. came to London on the 2nd of August 1274, when he was
received with the wildest expressions of joy. The streets were hung
with rich cloths of silk
arras
and
tapestry; the aldermen
and principal men of the city threw out of their windows handsful
of
gold and silver, to signify
their gladness at the king's return; and the conduits ran with
wine, both white and red.
Dr Jessopp gives a vivid picture of what occurred when King
Edward III. entered London in triumph on the 14th of October 1347.
He was the foremost man in Europe, and England had reached a height
of power and
glory such as she
had never attained before.
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This was a scene unequalled until
Henry V. returned from the glorious field of
Agincourt in 1415. The
mayor and aldermen apparelled in orient-grained
scarlet, and four hundred commoners in murrey,
well mounted, with rich collars and chains, met the king at
Blackheath. At the entrance to London Bridge the towers were
adorned with banners of the royal arms, and in the front of them
was inscribed
Civitas Regis Justicie. During the troubles
of the 15th century the authorities had seen the necessity of
paying more attention to the security of the gates and walls of the
city, and when Thomas Nevill, son of William, Lord Fauconberg, made
his attack upon London in 1471 he experienced a spirited
resistance. He first attempted to land from his ships in the city,
but the Thames side from Baynard's Castle to the Tower was so well
fortified that he had to seek a quieter and less prepared position.
He then set upon the several gates in succession, and was repulsed
at all. On the 11th of May he made a desperate attack upon Aldgate,
followed by soo men. He won the bulwarks and some of his followers
entered into the city, but the
portcullis being let down these were cut off
from their own party and were slain by the enemy. The portcullis
was drawn up, and the besieged issued forth against the rebels, who
were soon forced to flee.
When Richard, duke of Gloucester, laid his plans for seizing the
crown, he obtained the countenance of the lord mayor, Sir Edmund
Shaw, whose brother Dr Shaw praised Richard at Paul's Cross. Crosby
Hall, in Bishopsgate Street, then lately built, was made the
lodging of the Protector. There he acted the accessible prince in
the eyes of the people, for the last of the Plantagenets was
another of the usurpers who found favour in the eyes of the men of
London. His day, however, was short, and with the battle of
Bosworth ends Plantagenet London.
5.
Tudor (1485-1603). - It was during this period that
the first maps of London were drawn. No representation of the city
earlier than the middle of the 16th century has been discovered,
although it seems more than probable that some plans must have been
produced at an earlier period.' The earliest known view is the
drawing of Van den Wyngaerde in the Bodleian Library (dated 1550).
Braun and Hogenberg's map was published in 1572-1573, and the
so-called Agas's map was probably produced soon afterwards, and was
doubtless influenced by the publication of Braun and Hogenberg's
excellent
engraving;
Norden's maps of London and Westminster are dated 1593. Some of
these maps were pasted upon walls, and must have been largely
destroyed by ordinary wear and
tear. It is curious that the only two existing
copies of Agas's map 2 were published in the reign of James I.,
although apparently they had not been altered from the earlier
editions of Elizabeth's reign which have been lost. By the help of
these maps we are able to obtain a clear notion of the extent and
chief characteristics of Tudor London. Henry VII. did little to
connect his name with the history of London, although the erection
of the exquisite specimen of florid Gothic at Westminster Abbey has
carried his memory down in its popular name of Henry VII.'s chapel.
Soon after this king obtained the throne he borrowed the sum of
3000 marks from the city, and moreover founded the excellent
precedent of repaying it at the appointed time. The citizens were
so pleased at this unexpected occurrence that they willingly lent
the king £¦000 in 1488, which he required for military preparations
against
France. In 1497 London
was threatened by the rebels favourable to
Perkin Warbeck,
who encamped on Blackheath on the 17th of June. At first there was
a panic among the citizens, but subsequently the city was placed in
a proper state of defence, and the king himself encamped in St
George's Fields. On June 22 he entirely routed the rebels; and some
time afterwards Perkin Warbeck gave himself up, and was conducted
in triumph through London to the Tower.
As the chief feature of Norman London was the foundation of
monasteries, and that of Plantagenet London was the estab-
? lishment of friaries, so Tudor London was specially
characterized by the suppression of the whole of these religious
houses, and also of the almost numberless religious gilds and
brotherhoods. When we remember that more than half of the area of
London was occupied by these establishments, and that about a third
of the inhabitants were monks, nuns and friars, it is easy to
imagine how great must have been the disorganization caused by this
root and branch reform. One of the earliest of the religious houses
to be suppressed was the hospital cf St Thomas of Acon (or Acre) on
the north side of Cheapside, the site of which is now occupied by
Mercers' Hall. The larger houses soon followed, and the Black, the
White and the Grey Friars, with the Carthusians and many others,
were all condemned in November 1538.
Love of show was so marked a characteristic of Henry VIII. that
we are not surprised to find him encouraging the citizens in the
same expensive taste. On the occasion of his marriage with
Catherine
of Aragon the city was gorgeously ornamented with rich silks
and tapestry, and Goldsmiths' Row (Cheapside) and part of Cornhill
were hung with golden brocades. When on the
eve of St John's Day, 1510, the king in the habit
of a
yeoman of his own guard
saw the famous march of the city watch, he was so delighted that on
the following St Peter's Eve he again attended in Cheapside to see
the march, but this time he was accompanied by the queen and the
principal nobility. The cost of these two marches in the year was
very considerable, and, having been suspended in 1528 on account of
the prevai 1 " A map of London engraved on
copper-plate, dated 1497," which was bought by
Ferdinand Columbus during his travels
in Europe about 1518-1525, is entered in the catalogue of
Ferdinand's books, maps, &c., made by himself and preserved in
the Cathedral Library at
Seville, but there is no
clue to its existence.
One is in the Guildhall Library, and the other among the
Pepysian maps in Magdalene College, Cambridge.
ence of the
sweating sickness, they were soon
afterwards forbidden by the king, and discontinued during the
remainder of his reign. Sir John Gresham, mayor in 1548, revived
the march of the city watch, which was made more splendid by the
addition of three hundred light horsemen raised by the citizens for
the king's service.
The best mode of utilizing the buildings of the suppressed
religious houses was a difficult question left unsolved by Henry
VIII. That king, shortly before his death, refounded Rahere's St
Bartholomew's Hospital, " for the continual relief and help of an
hundred sore and diseased," but most of the large buildings were
left unoccupied to be filled by his successor. The first parliament
of Edward's reign gave all the lands and possessions of colleges,
chantries, &c., to the king, when the different companies of
London redeemed those which they had held for the payment of
priests'
wages, obits and lights
at the price of £20,000, and applied the rents arising from them to
charitable purposes. In 1550 the citizens purchased the manor of
Southwark, and with it they became possessed of the monastery of St
Thomas, which was enlarged and prepared for the reception of "
poor, sick and helpless objects." Thus was refounded St Thomas's
Hospital, which was moved to Lambeth in 1870-1871. Shortly before
his death Edward founded Christ's Hospital in the Grey Friars, and
gave the old palace of Bridewell to the city " for the lodging of
poor wayfaring people, the correction of vagabonds and disorderly
persons, and for finding them work." On the death of Edward VI.
Lady Jane Grey
was received at the Tower as queen, she having gone there by water
from
Durham House in the
Strand. The citizens, however, soon found out their mistake, and
the lord mayor, aldermen and
recorder proclaimed Queen Mary at Cheapside.
London was then gay with pageants, but when the queen made known
her intention of marrying
Philip of
Spain the discontent of the country found vent in
the rising of Sir
Thomas
Wyat, and the city had to prepare itself against attack. Wyat
took possession of Southwark, and expected to have been admitted
into London; but finding the gates shut against him and the
drawbridge cut down he marched to Kingston, the bridge at which
place had been destroyed. This he restored, and then proceeded
towards London. In consequence of the breakdown of some of his guns
he imprudently halted at Turnham Green. Had he not done so it is
probable that he might have obtained possession of the city. He
planted his ordnance on Hay Hill, and then marched by St James's
Palace to Charing Cross. Here he was attacked by Sir John
Gage with a thousand men, but he
repulsed them and reached Ludgate without further opposition. He
was disappointed at the resistance which was made, and after musing
a while " upon a stall over against the Bell Savadge Gate " he
turned back. His retreat was cut off, and he surrendered to Sir
Maurice Berkeley. We have somewhat fully described
this historical incident here because it has an important bearing
on the history of London, and shows also the small importance of
the districts outside the walls at that period.
We now come to consider the appearance of London during the
reign of the last of the Tudors. At no other period were so many
great men associated with its history; the latter years of
Elizabeth's reign are specially interesting to us because it was
then that Shakespeare lived in London, and introduced its streets
and people into his plays. In those days the frequent
visitation of plagues
made men fear the gathering together of multitudes. This dread of
pestilence, united with a puritanic hatred of plays, made the
citizens do all they could to discountenance theatrical
entertainments. The queen acknowledged the validity of the first
reason, but she repudiated the religious objection provided
ordinary care was taken to allow " such plays only as were fitted
to yield honest recreation and no example of evil." On April 11,
1582, the lords of the council wrote to the lord mayor to the
effect that, as " her
Majesty sometimes took delight in those
pastimes, it had been thought not unfit, having regard to the
season of the year and the clearance of the city from infection, to
allow of certain companies of players in London, partly that they
might thereby xvi. 31 attain more dexterity and perfection the
better to content her Majesty " (Analytical Index to the
Remembrancia). When theatres were established the lord
mayor took care that they should not be built within the city. The
" Theatre " and the "
Curtain " were situated at Shoreditch; the "
Globe," the "
Swan," the " Rose "
and the " Hope " on the Bankside; and the Blackfriars theatre,
although within the walls, was without the city jurisdiction.
In 1561 St Paul's steeple and roof were destroyed by
lightning, and the
spire was never replaced. This
circumstance allows us to test the date of certain views; thus
Wyngaerde's map has the spire, but Agas's map is without it. In
1566 the first stone was laid of the " Burse," which owed its
origin to Sir Thomas Gresham. In 1571 Queen
Elizabeth changed its name to the Royal
Exchange. The Strand was filled with noble mansions washed by the
waters of the Thames, but the street, if street it could be called,
was little used by pedestrians. Londoners frequented the river,
which was their great highway. The banks were crowded with stairs
for boats, and the watermen of that day answered to the chairmen of
a later date and the cabmen of to-day. The Bankside was of old a
favourite place for entertainments, but two only - the
bull-baiting and the
bear-baiting - were in existence when Agas's map was first planned.
On Norden's map,' however, we find the gardens of
Paris Garden, the bearhouse and the
playhouse.
The settled character of the later years of Elizabeth's reign
appears to have caused a considerable change in the habits of the
people. Many of the chief citizens followed the example of the
courtiers, and built for themselves country residences in
Middlesex, Essex and Surrey; thus we learn from
Norden that Alderman
Roe lived at Muswell Hill, and we know that Sir
Thomas Gresham built a fine house and planned a beautiful park at
Osterley. The maps show us much that remains somewhat the same as
it was, but also much that has greatly altered. St Giles's was
literally a village in the fields; Piccadilly was " the waye to
Redinge," Oxford Street " the way to Uxbridge," Covent Garden an
open field or garden, and Leicester Fields
lammas land. Moorfields was drained and laid out
in walks in Elizabeth's reign. At Spitalfields crowds used to
congregate on
Easter Monday
and Tuesday to hear the Spital sermons preached from the
pulpit cross. The ground was
originally a Roman Cemetery, and about the year 1576 bricks were
largely made from the clayey earth, the recollection of which is
kept alive in the name of Brick Lane. Citizens went to Holborn and
Bloomsbury for change of air, and houses were there prepared for
the reception of children, invalids and convalescents. In the north
were sprinkled the outlying villages of Islington, Hoxton and
Clerkenwell.
6.
Stuart (1603-1714). - The Stuart
period, from the accession of James I. to the death of Queen Anne,
extends over little more than a century, and yet greater changes
occurred during those years than at any previous period. The early
years of Stuart London may be said to be closely linked with the
last years of Elizabethan London, for the greatest men, such as
Raleigh, Shakespeare and
Ben Jonson, lived on into
James's reign.
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In the
middle of the period occurred the civil wars, and then the fire
which changed the whole aspect of London. When James came to the
throne the term suburbs had a bad name, as all those disreputable
persons who could find no shelter in the city itself settled in
these outlying districts. Stubbs denounced suburban gardens and
garden houses in his
Anatomy of Abuses, and another writer
observed " how happy were cities if they had no suburbs." The
preparations for the
coronation of King James were interrupted by
a severe visitation of the plague, which killed off as many as
30,578 persons, and it was not till March 25, 1604, that the king,
the queen and Prince Henry passed triumphantly from the Tower to
Westminster. The lord mayor's shows, which had been discontinued
for some years, were revived by order of the king in 1609. The
dissolved monastery of the Charterhouse, which had been bought and
sold by the courtiers several times, was obtained from Thomas, earl
of
Suffolk, by Thomas
Sutton for 13,000. The new
hospital chapel and ' This map of London by Norden is dated 1593,
as stated above. The same topographer published in his
Middlesex a map of Westminster as well as this one of the
City of London.
schoolhouse were begun in 1611, and in the same year Sutton
died.
With the death of James I. in 1625 the older history of London
may be said to have closed. During the reign of his successor the
great change in the relative positions of London within and without
the walls had set in. Before
Sociallife. going on to
consider the chief incidents of this change it will be well to
refer to some features of the social life of James's reign. Ben
Jonson places one of the scenes of
Every Man in his Humour in Moorfields, which
at the time he wrote the play had, as stated above, lately been
drained and laid out in walks. Beggars frequented the place, and
travellers from the village of Hoxton, who crossed it in order to
get into London, did so with as much expedition as possible.
Adjoining Moorfields were Finsbury Fields, a favourite practising
ground for the archers. Mile End, a common on the Great Eastern
Road, was long famous as a
rendezvous for the troops. These places are
frequently referred to by the old dramatists; Justice Shallow
boasts of his doings at Mile End Green when he was Dagonet in
Arthur's Show. Fleet Street was the show-place of London, in which
were exhibited a constant succession of puppets, naked Indians and
strange fishes. The great meeting-place of Londoners in the
day-time was the nave of old St Paul's. Crowds of merchants with
their hats on transacted business in the aisles, and used the
font as a
counter upon which to make their payments;
lawyers received clients at their several pillars; and masterless
serving-men waited to be engaged upon their own particular
bench. Besides those who came on
business there were gallants dressed in fashionable finery, so that
it was worth the tailor's while to stand behind a pillar and fill
his table-books with notes. The middle or Mediterranean
aisle was the Paul's Walk, also
called the Duke's Gallery from the erroneous supposition that the
tomb of Sir Guy
Beauchamp, earl of
Warwick, was that of the " good " Humphrey, duke of Gloucester.
After the Restoration a fence was erected on the inside of the
great north
door to hinder a
concourse of rude people, and when the cathedral was being rebuilt
Sir Christopher Wren made a strict order against any profanation of
the sacred building. St Paul's churchyard was from the earliest
days of printing until the end of the 18th century the headquarters
of the book trade, when it shifted to Paternoster Row. Another of
the favourite haunts of the people was the garden of Gray's Inn,
where the choicest society was to be met. There, under the shadow
of the
elm trees which
Bacon had planted, Pepys and his
wife constantly walked. Mrs Pepys went on one occasion specially to
observe the fashions of the ladies because she was then "making
some clothes." In those days of public conviviality, and for many
years afterwards, the taverns of London held a very important
place. The Boar's Head in Great Eastcheap was an inn of
Taverns. Shakespeare's own day, and the characters he
introduces into his plays are really his own contemporaries. The "
Mermaid " is sometimes described as in
Bread Street, and at other times in Friday Street
and also in Cheapside. We are thus able to fix its exact position;
for a little to the west of Bow church is Bread Street, then came a
block of houses, and the next thoroughfare was Friday Street. It
was in this block that the " Mermaid " was situated, and there
appear to have been entrances from each street. What makes this
fact still more certain is the circumstance that a
haberdasher in
Cheapside living "'twixt Wood Street and Milk Street," two streets
on the north side opposite Bread and Friday Streets, described
himself as " over against the Mermaid
tavern in Cheapside." The
Windmill tavern occupies a prominent position
in the action of
Every Man in his Humour. 2 The Windmill
stood at the corner of the Old Jewry towards Lothbury, and the
Mitre close by the Mermaid in Bread
Street. The Mitre in Fleet Street, so intimately associated with Dr
Johnson, also existed at this time. It is mentioned in a
comedy entitled
Ram Alley (1611) and Lilly the 2 Various changes
in the names of the taverns are made in the
folio edition of this play (1616) from the
quarto (1601); thus the Mermaid
of the quarto becomes the Windmill in the folio, and the Mitre of
the quarto is the
Star of the
folio.
astrologer frequented it in 1640. At the Mermaid Ben Jonson had
such companions as Shakespeare, Raleigh,
Beaumont, Fletcher, Carew, Donne,
Cotton and Selden, but at the
Devil in Fleet Street, where he
started the
Apollo Club, he
was omnipotent. Herrick, in his well-known
Ode to Ben, mentions several of the inns of
the day.
Under James I. the theatre, which established itself so firmly
in the latter years of Elizabeth, had still further increased its.
influence, and to the entertainments given at the many playhouses
may be added the masques so expensively produced at court and by
the lawyers at the inns of court. In 1613
The Masque of
Flowers was presented by the members of Gray's Inn in the Old
Banqueting House in honour of the marriage of the infamous Carr,
earl of Somerset, and the equally infamous Lady Frances, daughter
of the earl of Suffolk. The entertainment was prepared by Sir
Francis Bacon at a
cost of about X2000.
It was during the reign of Charles I. that the first great
exodus of the wealthy and fashionable was made to the West End.
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Great Queen
Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, was built about 1629, and named in
honour of
Henrietta Maria. Lincoln's Inn Fields
had been planned some years before. With the Restoration the
separation of fashionable from city life became complete.
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A strong earthen rampart, flanked with bastions and
redoubts, surrounded the City, its liberties, Westminster and
Southwark, making an immense enclosure.
London had been ravaged by plague on many former occasions, but
the pestilence that began in December 1664 lives in history as "
the Plague of London." On the 7th of June 1665
Samuel Pepys for the
first time saw two or three houses marked with the red cross and
the words " Lord, have mercy upon us," on the doors. The deaths
daily increased, and business was stopped.
Grass
grew in the area of the Royal Exchange, at Whitehall, and in the
principal streets of the city. On the 4th of September 1665 Pepys
writes an interesting letter to Lady Carteret from Woolwich: " I
have stayed in the city till above 7400 died in one week, and of
them about 6000 of the plague, and little
noise heard day or night but tolling of bells."
The plague was scarcely stayed before the whole city was in flames,
a calamity of the first magnitude, but one which in the end caused
much good, as the seeds of disease were destroyed, and London has
never since been visited by such an epidemic. On the 2nd of
September 1666 the fire broke out at one o'clock in the morning at
a house in
Pudding Lane. A
violent east wind fomented the flames which ra ed durin the whole
of Monda and
Fire. g g y great part of Tuesday. On Tuesday
night the wind fell somewhat, and on Wednesday the fire slackened.
On Thursday it was extinguished, but on the evening of that day the
flames again burst forth at the Temple. Some houses were at once
blown up by
gunpowder,
and thus the fire was finally mastered. Many interesting details of
the fire are given in Pepys's
Diary. The river swarmed with vessels filled
with persons carrying away such of their goods as they were able to
save. Some fled to the hills of Hampstead and Highgate, but
Moorfields was the chief resort of the houseless Londoner. Soon
paved streets and two-
storey
houses were seen in that swampy place. The people bore their
troubles heroically, and Henry
Oldenburg, writing to the Hon.
Robert Boyle on
September Io, says: " The citizens, instead of complaining,
discoursed almost of nothing but of a survey for rebuilding the
city with bricks and large streets." Within a few days of the fire
three several plans were presented to the king for the rebuilding
of the city, by Christopher Wren,
John Evelyn and
Robert Hooke. Wren proposed to build main
thoroughfares north and south, and east and west, to insulate all
the churches in conspicuous positions, to form the most public
places into large piazzas, to unite the halls of the twelve chief
companies into one regular square annexed to Guildhall and to make
a fine
quay on the bank of the
river from Blackfriars to the Tower. His streets were to be of
three magnitudes-90 ft., 60 ft. and 30 ft. wide respectively.
Evelyn's plan differed from Wren's chiefly in proposing a street
from the church of St Dunstan's in the East to the cathedral, and
in having no quay or terrace along the river. In spite of the best
advice, however, the jealousies of the citizens prevented any
systematic design from being carried out, and in consequence the
old lines were in almost every case retained. But though the plans
of Wren and Hooke were not adopted, it was to these two fellows of
the Royal Society that the labour of rebuilding London was
committed. Wren's great work was the erection of the cathedral of
St Paul's, and the many churches ranged round it as satellites.
Hooke's task was the humbler one of arranging as city surveyor for
the building of the houses. He laid out the ground of the several
proprietors in the rebuilding of the city, and had no rest early or
late from persons soliciting him to set out their ground for them
at once. The first great impetus of change in the configuration of
London was given by the great fire, and Evelyn records and regrets
that the town in his time had grown almost as large again as it was
within his own memory. Although for several centuries attempts had
been made in favour of building houses with brick or stone, yet the
carpenters continued to be the chief housebuilders. As late as the
year 1650 the Carpenters' Company drew up a memorial in which they
" gave their reasons that tymber buildings were more commodious for
this citie than brick buildings were." The Act of Parliament " for
rebuilding the city of London " passed after the great fire, gave
the
coup de grace to the carpenters as house-builders.
After setting forth that " building with brick was not only more
comely and durable, but also more safe against future perils of
fire," it was enacted " that all the outsides of all buildings in
and about the city should be made of brick or stone, except
doorcases and windowframes, and other parts. of the first story to
the front between the piers," for which substantial oaken
timber might be used "for
conveniency of shops." In the winter of1683-1684a fair was held for
some time upon the Thames. The
frost, which began about
seven weeks
before
Christmas and
continued for six weeks after, was the greatest on record; the ice
was I i in. thick.
The revocation of the
edict of Nantes in October 1685, and
the consequent
migration
of a large number of industrious French Protestants, caused a
considerable growth in the east end of London. The silk
manufactories at Spitalfields were then established.
During the short reign of
James II. the fortunes of the city were at
their lowest, and nowhere was the arrival of the prince of Orange
more welcomed.
William III. cared little for London, the smoke of which gave
him
asthma, and when a great
part of Whitehall was burnt in 1691 he purchased
Nottingham House and made
it into Kensington Palace. Kensington was then an insignificant
village, but the arrival of the court soon caused it to grow in
importance.
Although the spiritual wants of the city were amply provided for
by the churches built by Wren, the large districts outside the city
and its liberties had been greatly neglected. The act passed in the
reign of Queen Anne for building fifty new churches (1710) for a
time supplied the wants of large districts.
7. Eighteenth Century. - London had hitherto grown up
by the side of the Thames. In the 18th century other parts of the
town were more largely built upon. The inhabitants used coaches and
chairs more than boats, and the banks of the river were neglected.
London could no longer be seen as a whole, and became a mere
collection of houses. In spite of this the 18th century produced
some of the most devoted of Londoners - men who considered a day
lived out of London as one lost out of their lives. Of this class
Dr Johnson and Hogarth are striking examples. The exhibitions of
vice and
cruelty that were
Growth And Population constantly to be seen in the capital have
been reproduced by Hogarth, and had they not been set down by so
truthful an observer it would have been almost impossible to
believe that such enormities could have been committed in the
streets of a great city.
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On the following
lord mayor's
day the king witnessed the show in Cheapside and attended the
banquet at Guildhall.
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In the time of
Queen .Anne and George I. David Barclay (the son of the famous
apologist for the Quakers) was an apprentice in the house, but he
subsequently became master, and had the honour of receiving
George
II. and George III. as his guests. There was a large
balcony extending along the
front of the house which was fitted with a canopy and hangings of
crimson damask silk. The building, then numbered 108
Cheapside, was pulled down in 1861.
Early in the 18th century there was a considerable extension of
building operations in the West End. Still, however, the north of
London remained ,unbuilt upon. In 1756
Extension
and for some years subsequently the land behind Montague House (now
the British Museum) was occupied as a
farm, and when in that year a proposal was made to
plan out a new road the
tenant
and the duke of Bedford strongly opposed it. In 1772 all beyond
Portland Chapel in Great Portland Street was country. Bedford House
in Bloomsbury Square had its full view of Hampstead and Highgate
from the back, and Queen's Square was built open to the north in
order that the inhabitants might obtain the same prospect.
In 1737 the Fleet ditch between Holborn Bridge and Fleet Bridge
was covered over, and Stocks Market was removed from the site of
the Mansion House to the present Farringdon Street, and called
Fleet market. On October 2 5, 1 739, the first stone of the Mansion
House was laid. Previously the first magistrates lived in several
different houses. A frost almost as severe as the memorable one
of1683-1684occurred in the winter of 1 7391740, and the Thames was
again the scene of a busy fair. In 1758 the houses on London Bridge
were cleared away, and in1760-1762several of the city gates were
taken down and sold. Moorgate is said to have fetched £166,
Aldersgate £91, Aldgate £177, Cripplegate £90, and Ludgate £148.
The statue of Queen Elizabeth which stood on the west side of
Ludgate was purchased by Alderman Gosling and set up against the
east end of St Dunstan's church in Fleet Street, where it still
remains.
8. Nineteenth Century. - In 1806 London saw the public
funerals of three of England's greatest men. On the 8th February
the body of Nelson was borne with great pomp from the Admiralty to
St Paul's Cathedral, where it was interred in the presence of the
prince of Wales and the royal dukes. Pitt was buried on the 22nd of
February, and Fox on the 10th of October, both in Westminster
Abbey.
The first exhibition of Winsor's system of lighting the streets
with gas took place on the king's birthday (June 4) 1807, and was
made in a row of lamps in front of the
colonnade before Carlton House. Finsbury
Square was the first public place in which gas lighting was
actually adopted, and Grosvenor Square the last. In the winter
of1813-1814the Thames was again frozen over. The frost began on the
evening of December 27, 1813, with a thick
fog. After it had lasted for a month, a thaw of
four days, from the 26th to the 29th of January, took place, but
this thaw was succeeded by a renewal of the frost, so severe that
the river soon became one immovable
sheet of ice. There was a street of tents called
the City Road, which was daily thronged with visitors. In 1838 the
second Royal Exchange was destroyed by fire; and on October 28,
1844, the Queen opened the new Royal Exchange, built by Mr
(afterwards Sir William) Tite. The Great Exhibition of 1851 brought
a larger number of visitors to London than had ever been in it
before at one time. The great and continuous increase in the
buildings and the enlargement of London on all sides dates from
this period.
London within the walls has been almost entirely rebuilt,
although in the neighbourhood of the Tower there are still many old
houses which have only been refronted. From the upper rooms of the
houses may be seen a large number of old tiled
roofs.
Unlike many capitals of Europe which have shifted their centres
the city of London in spite of all changes and the continued
enlargement of the capital remains the centre and head-quarters of
the business of the country.
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Among other events which made the
streets gay and centred in processions to St Paul's may be
specially mentioned the
Thanksgiving Day on the 27th of
February 1872 for the recovery of the prince of Wales after his
dangerous illness; and the rejoicings at the Jubilee of Queen
Victoria in 1887, and the Diamond Jubilee in 1897.
The first great
emigration of the London merchants westward
was about the middle of the 18th century, but only those who had
already secured large fortunes ventured so far as Hatton Garden.
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During the first half of the 19th century the position of the
City Corporation had somewhat fallen in public esteem, and some of
the most influential men in the city were unconnected with it, but
a considerable change took place in the latter half of the century.
Violent attacks were made upon the Livery Companies, but of late
years, largely owing to the public spirit of the companies in
devoting large sums of money towards the improvement of the several
industries in connexion with which they were founded, and the
establishment of the City and Guilds of London Technical Institute,
a complete change has taken place as to the public estimation in
which they are held.
Growth And Population Much has been written upon the population
of medieval London, but little certainty has resulted therefrom. We
know the size of London at different periods and are able to guess
to some extent as to the number of its inhabitants, but most of the
figures which have come down to us are mere guesses. The
tion. results of the
poll-tax have often been considered as trust
worthy substitutes for population returns, but Professor
Oman has shown that little trust can
be placed in these results. As an instance he states that the
commissioners of the poll-tax reported that there were only
two-thirds as many contributaries in 1381 as in 1377. The adult
population of the
realm had
ostensibly fallen from 1,355,201 to 896,481. These figures were
monstrous and incredible.' The Bills of Mortality of the 16th and
17th centuries are of more value, and they have been considered and
revised by such able statisticians as John Graunt and
Sir William
Petty. It was not, however, before the 19th century that
accurate figures were obtainable. The circuit of the walls of
London which were left by the Romans was never afterwards enlarged,
and the population did not overflow into the suburbs to any extent
until the
Tudor
period. Population was practically stationary for centuries
owing to pestilences and the large proportion of deaths among
infants. We have no materials to
judge of the number of inhabitants before the
Norman Conquest, but we can guess that there were many open spaces
within the walls that were afterwards filled up. It is scarcely
worth while to guess as to the numbers in Saxon London, but it is
possible that in the early period there were about 10,000
inhabitants, growing later to about 20,000. During the latter part
of the Saxon period the numbers of the population of the country
began to decay; this decay, however, was arrested by the Norman
Conquest. The population increased during ten peaceful years of
Henry III., and increased slowly until the death of Edward II., and
then it began to fall off, and continued to decrease during the
period of the
Wars of the Roses and of the Barons
until the accession of the first Tudor monarch.
1 The Great Revolt of 1381 (Oxford, 1906), p. 27.
Mortality. Sir William Petty followed with his
important inquiries upon the population (
Essay on Political Arithmetic, 1683).
It is not worth while to refer to all the wild guesses that were
made by various writers, but Dr Creighton shows the absurdity of
one of these calculations made in 1554 by Soranzo, the Venetian
ambassador for the information of the
doge and senators of
Venice. He estimates the population to have been
180,000 persons, which Dr Creighton affirms to be nearly three
times the number that we obtain by a moderate calculation from the
bills of mortality in 1532 and 1 535. Following on his calculations
from 1509, when the population may be supposed to have been about
50,000, Dr Creighton carries on his numbers to the Restoration The
same causes that operated to bring about these changes in the whole
kingdom were of course also at work in the case of the City of
London.
One of the earliest statements as to the population of London
occurs in a letter of about the year 1199 written to Pope
Innocent III. by
Peter of Blois,
then
archdeacon of
London, and therefore a man of some authority on the subject. He
states that the City contained 120 parish churches and 40,000
inhabitants. These numbers have been very generally accepted as
fairly correct, and Dr Creighton 1 comes to the conclusion after
careful consideration that the population of London from the reign
of Richard I. to that of Henry VII. varied within a limit of about
forty to fifty thousand inhabitants.
Dr Creighton points out that the number given by certain
chroniclers of the deaths from the early pestilences in London are
incredible; such for instance as the statement that forty or fifty
thousand bodies were buried in Charterhouse churchyard at the time
of the Black Death in 1348-1349. These numbers have been taken as a
basis for calculation of population, and one statistician reasoned
that if 50,000 were buried in one churchyard 100,000 should
represent the whole mortality of London. If this were allowed the
population at this time must have been at least 200,000, an
impossible amount.
Although the mortality caused by the different plagues had a
great effect upon the population of the country at large the city
soon recovered the losses by reason of the numbers who came to
London from outside in hopes of obtaining work. Although there were
fluctuations in the numbers at different periods there is evidence
to show that on the average the amount of forty to fifty thousand
fixed by Dr Creighton for the years between 1189 and 1509 is fairly
correct. The medieval period closed with the accession of the Tudor
dynasty, and from that time the population of London continued to
increase, in spite of attempts by the government to prevent it. One
of the first periods of increase was after the dissolution of the
religious houses; another period of increase was after the
Restoration.
A
proclamation
was issued in 1580 prohibiting the erection within 3 m. of the city
gates of any new houses or tenements " where no former house hath
been known to have been." In a subsequent proclamation Queen
Elizabeth commanded that only one family should live in one house,
that empty houses erected within
seven years were not to be let and
that unfinished buildings on new foundations were to be pulled
down. In spite of these restrictions London continued to grow.
James I. and Charles I. were filled with the same fear of the
increasing growth of London. In 1630 a similar proclamation to that
of 1580 was published. During the greater part of the 18th century
there was a serious check to the increase of population, but at the
end of the century a considerable increase occurred, and in the
middle of the 19th century the enormous annual increase became
particularly marked. To return to the 16th century when the Bills
of Mortality came into existence. 2 Mention is made of these bills
as early as 1517, but the earliest series now known dates from
1532. Dr Creighton had access to the manuscript returns of burials
and christenings for five years from 1578 to 1582 preserved in the
library at
Hatfield House.
The history of the Bills of Mortality which in the early years were
intermittent in their publication is of much interest, and Dr
Creighton has stated it with great clearness. The Company of Parish
Clerks is named in an ordinance of 1581 (of which there is a copy
in the Record Office) as the body responsible for the bills, and
their duties were then said to be " according to the Order in that
behalf heretofore provided."
John Bell, clerk to the company, who wrote an
essay during the great plague of 1665, had no records in his office
of an earlier date than 1593, and he was not aware that his company
had been engaged in registering births and deaths before that year.
The fire of 1666 destroyed all the documents of the Parish Clerks
Company, and in its hall in Silver Street only printed tables from
about the year 1700 are to be found. There is a set of Annual Bills
from 1658 (with the exception of the years 1756 to 1764) in the
library of the British Museum.3 These bills were not analysed and
general results obtained from them until 1662, when Captain John
Graunt first published his valuable
Natural and Political
Observations upon the Bills of 1 In a valuable paper on " The
Population of Old London" in
Blackwood's Magazine for
April 1891.
2 The old Bills of Mortality, although of value from being the
only authority on the subject, were never complete owing to various
causes: one being that large numbers of Roman Catholics and
Dissenters were not registered in the returns of the parish clerk
who was a church officer. The bills were killed by the action of
the Registration Act for England and Wales, which came into
operation July 1, 1837. The Weekly Returns of the Registrar-General
began in 1840.
" The invention of ' bills of mortality ' is not so modern as
has been generally supposed, for their proper designation may be
found in the language of ancient Rome.
Libitina was the goddess of funerals; her
officers were the Libitinarii
our undertakers; her temple
in which all business connected with the last rites was transacted,
in which the account of deaths - ratio
Libitinae - was
kept, served the purpose of a register
office." - Journal
Statistical Society, xvii. 117 (1854).
224,275 272,207 339$24 460,000 The numbers for 1661 are those
arrived at by Graunt, and they are just about half the population
given authoritatively in the first census 1801 (864,845). It
therefore took 140 years to double the numbers, while in 1841 the
numbers of 1801 were more than doubled.
These numbers were arrived at with much care and may be
considered as fairly accurate although some other calculations
conflict with a few of the figures. The first attempt at a census
was in August 1631 when the lord mayor returned the number of
mouths in the city of London and Liberties at 130,268, which is
only about half the number given above. This is accounted for by
the larger area contained in the bills of mortality compared with
that containing only the city and its liberties. 4 Howell's
suggestion that the population of London in 1631 was a million and
a half need only be mentioned as a specimen of the wildest of
guesses.
Petty's numbers for 1682 are 670,000 and those of
Gregory King for 1696, 530,000.
The latter are corroborated by those of 1700, which are given as
550,000. Maitland gives the numbers
18th in 1737 as
725,903. With regard to the relative size of great cities Petty
affirms that before the Restoration the people of Paris were more
in number than those of London and
Dublin, whereas in 1687 the people of London
were more than those of Paris and Rome or of Paris and
Rouen.
It is not necessary to give any further numbers for the
population of the 18th century, as that has been already stated to
have been almost stationary. This is proved by Gregory King's
figures for 1696 (530,000) when compared with those of the first
census for 1801 (864,035). A corroboration is also to be found in
the report of the first census for 1801, where a calculation is
made of the probable population of the years 1700 and 1750. These
are given respectively as 674,350 and 676,250. These figures
include (1) the City of London within and (2) without the walls,
(3) the City and Liberties of Westminster, (4) the outparishes
within the bills of mortality and (5) the parishes not within the
bills of mortality. No. 5 is given as 9150 in 1700, and 22,350 in
1750. It is curious to find that already in the 18th century a
considerable reduction in the numbers of the city of London is
supposed to have taken place, as is seen in the following figures:
1700.1750.
City of London within the walls.. 1 39,3 00 87,000 without the
walls. 69,000 57,300 As the increase in Westminster is not great
(130,000 in 1700 and 152,000 in 1750) and there is little
difference in the totals it will be seen that the amount is chiefly
made up by the increase in the parishes without the bills of
mortality. The extraordinary growth of London did not come into
existence until about the middle of the 19th century (see § IV.
above).
Government We know little of The government of London during the
Saxon period, and it is only incidentally that we learn how the
Londoner had become possessed of special privileges which he
continued to claim with success through many centuries.
Period. One of the chief of these was the claim to a
separate voice in the election of the king. The citizens did not
dispute the right of election by the kingdom but they held that
that election did not necessarily include the choice of London.
An instance of this is seen in the election of Edmund Ironside,
although the Witan outside London had elected Canute. The
remarkable instance of this after the Conquest was the election of
Stephen, but William the Conqueror did not feel secure until he had
the sanction of the Londoners to his kingship, and his attitude
towards London when he hovered about the neighbourhood of the city
for a time shows that he was anxious to obtain this sanction freely
rather than by compulsion. His hopes and expectations were
fulfilled when 4 The return was made " by special command from the
Right Honourable the Lords of His Majesty's
Privy Council." The
Privy Council were at this time apprehensive of an approaching
scarcity of food. The numbers (130,268) were made up as follows:
London Within the Walls 71,029, London Without the Walls 40,579,
Old Borough of Southwark (Bridge Without) 18,660.
|
in the following table :-
|
|
|
1 53 2 - 1 535
|
|
62,400
|
1605.
|
.
|
|
1563
|
|
93,276
|
1622 .
|
|
|
1580
|
|
. 12 3, 0 34
|
1634.
|
|
|
1 593- 1 595
|
|
152,478
|
1661 .
|
.
|
the gates of London were opened to receive him, as already
related. Athelstan's acceptance of the London-made law for the
whole kingdom, as pointed out by Mr Gomme, is another instance of
the independence of the Londoner. When William the Conqueror
granted the first charter to London he addressed the bishop and the
portreeve - the bishop as the ecclesiastical governor and the
portreeve as the representative of the civil power.
The word " port " in the title "portreeve " does not indicate
the Port of London as might naturally be supposed, for Stubbs has
pointed out that it is
porta not
por us, and
"although used for the city generally, seems to refer to it
specially in its character of a Mart or City of Merchants." The
Saxon title of reeve was continued during the Norman period and the
shire-reeve or sheriff has continued to our own time. There were
originally several distinct reeves, all apparently officers
appointed by the king. Some writers have supposed that a succession
of portreeves continued in London, but J. H. Round holds that this
title disappeared after the Conqueror's charter. Henry I. granted
to the city by charter the right of appointing its own sheriffs;
this was a great privilege, which, however, was recalled in the
reigns of Henry II. and Richard I., to be restored by John in 1199.
H. Round holds that the office of
Justiciar was created by Henry
I.'s charter, and as he was the chief authority in
the city this somewhat takes off from the value of the privilege of
appointing sheriffs.
In the 12th century there was a great municipal movement over
Europe. Londoners were well informed as to what was going on
abroad, and although the rulers were always willing to wait for an
opportunity of enlarging their liberties, they remained ready to
take advantage of such circumstances as might occur. Their great
opportunity occurred while Richard I. was engaged abroad as a
crusader.
In 1889 a
medal was struck to
commemorate the Tooth anniversary of the mayoralty which according
to popular tradition was founded in 1189. With respect to this
tradition Round writes (
Commune of London, p. 223): " The
assumption that the mayoralty of London dates from the accession of
Richard I. is an absolute perversion of history," and he adds that
" there is record evidence which completely confirms the remarkable
words of
Richard of Devizes, who declares
that on no terms whatever would King Richard or his father have
ever assented to the establishment of the
Communa in
London." In October 1191 the - conflict between John the king's
brother and Longchamp the king's representative became acute. The
latter bitterly offended the Londoners, who, finding that they
could turn the scales to either side, named the Commune as the
price of their support of John. A small party of the citizens under
Henry of Cornhill remained faithful to the chancellor Longchamp,
but at a meeting held at St Paul's on the 8th of October, the
barons welcomed the archbishop of Rouen as chief justiciar (he
having produced the king's
sign manual appointing a new
commission), and they saluted John as regent. Stubbs, in his
introduction to the"'Chronicle of
Roger de Hoveden, writes: " This done, oaths were
largely taken: John, the Justiciar and the Barons swore to maintain
the
Communa of London; the oath of fealty to Richard was
then sworn, John taking it first, then the two archbishops, the
bishops, the barons, and last the burghers with the express
understanding that should the king die without issue they would
receive John as his successor." Referring to this important event
Mr Round writes: " The excited citizens, who had poured out
overnight, with lanterns and torches, to welcome John to the
capital, streamed together on the morning of the eventful 8th of
October at the wellknown sound of the great bell swinging out from
its campanile in St Paul's Churchyard. There they heard John take
the oath to the ` Commune ' like a French king or lord; and then
London for the first time had a
municipality of her own." Little is known
as to what the Commune then established really was. Round's
remarkable discovery among the manuscripts of the British Museum of
the Oath of the Commune proves for the first time that London in
1193 possessed a fully developed " Commune " of the continental
pattern.
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This MS. gives us
information which was unknown before, but upsets the received
opinions as to the early governing position of the aldermen. From
this we learn that the government of the city was in the hands of a
mayor and twelve dchevins (
skivini); both these names
being French, seem for a time to have excluded the Saxon
aldermen.
Twelve years later (1205-1206) we learn from another document,
preserved in the same volume as the oath, that
alii probi
homines were associated with the mayor and dchevins to form a
body of twenty-four (that is, twelve
skivini and an equal
number of councillors). Round holds that the Court of Skivini and
alii probi homines, of which at present we
know nothing further
than what is contained in the terms of the oaths, was the germ of
the Common Council. We must not suppose that when the city of
London obtained the privilege of appointing a mayor, and a citizen
could boast in 1194 that " come what may the Londoners shall have
no king but their mayor," that the king did not occasionally exert
his power in suspending the liberties of the city. There were
really constant disagreements, and sometimes the king degraded the
mayor and appointed a custos or
warden in his place. Several instances of this
are recorded in the 13th and 14th centuries. It is very important
to bear in mind that the mayors of London besides holding a very
onerous position were mostly men of great distinction. They often
held rank outside the city, and naturally took their place among
the rulers of the country.. They were mostly representatives of the
landed interests as well as merchant princes.
There is no definite information as to when the mayor first
received the title of lord. A claim has been set up for Thomas
Legge, mayor for the second time in
1354, that he was the first lord mayor, but there is positively no
authority whatever for this claim, although it is boldly stated
that he;was createdlord mayor by Edward III. in this year.
Apparently the title was occasionally used, and the use gradually
grew into a prescriptive right. There is no evidence of any grant,
but after 1540 the title had become general.
No record has been found of the date when the aldermen became
the official advisers of the mayor. The various wards were each
presided over by an alderman from an early period, but we cannot
fix the time when they were united as a court of aldermen. Stubbs
writes: " The governing body of London in the 13th century was
composed of the mayor, twenty-five aldermen of the wards and two
sheriffs." As we do not find any further evidence than the oath of
the Commune alluded to of the existence of "dchevins " in London,
it is possible that aldermen were elected on the mayor's council
under this title. This, however, is not the opinion of Mr
Round,who,as before stated, is inclined to believe that the body of
dchevins became in course of time the Court of Common Council. The
aldermen are not mentioned as the colleagues of the mayor until the
very end of the 13th century, except in the case of Fitz-Ailwin's
Assize of 1189, and this, of course, related specially to the
duties of aldermen as heads of the wards of the city.
In March1298-1299letters were sent from " the Mayor and Commune
of the City of London " to the municipalities of
Bruges, Caen and Cambray. Although the official
form of "The Mayor and Commune " was continued until the end of the
13th century, and it was not until early in the 14th century that
the form " Mayor, Aldermen and Common Council " came into
existence, there is sufficient evidence to show that the aldermen
and common council before that time were acting with the mayor as
governors of the city. In 1377 it was ordered that aldermen could
be elected annually, but in 1384 the rule was modified so as to
allow an alderman to be reelected for his ward at the expiration of
his year of office without any interval.
In 1394 the Ordinance respecting annual elections was repealed
by the king (Richard II.). Distinct rank was accorded to aldermen,
and in the
Liber Albus
we are told that " it is a matter of experience that ever since the
year of our Lord 1350, at the sepulture of aldermen, the ancient
custom of interment with baronial honours was observed." When the
poll-tax of 1379 was imposed the mayor was assessed as an earl and
the aldermen as barons.
The government of the city by reeves dates back to a very early
period, and these reeves were appointed by the king. The prefix of
the various kinds of reeves made but little difference in the
duties of the office, although the area of these duties might be
different. There was slight difference between the office of
sheriff and that of portreeve, which latter does not appear to have
survived the Conquest.
After the establishment of the Commune and the appointment of a
mayor the sheriffs naturally lost much of their importance, and
they became what they are styled in Liber Albus " the Eyes
of the Mayor." When Middlesex was in farm to London the two
sheriffs were equally sheriffs of London and Middlesex. There is
only one instance in the city records of a sheriff of Middlesex
being mentioned as distinct from the sheriffs, and this was in 1283
when Anketin de Betteville and Walter le Blond are described as
sheriffs of London, and Gerin as sheriff of Middlesex. By the Local
Government Act of 1888 the citizens of London were deprived of all
right of jurisdiction over the county of Middlesex, which had been
expressly granted by various charters.
In 1383 it was ordained and agreed " that no person shall from
henceforth be mayor in the said city if he have not first been
sheriff of the said city, to the end that he may be tried in
governance and
bounty before
he attains such estate of the mayoralty." The two courts - that of
aldermen and that of the common council - were probably formed
about the same time, but it is remarkable that we have no definite
information on the subject. The number of members of the common
council varied greatly at different times, but the right to
determine the number was indirectly granted by the charter of
Edward III. (1341) which enables the city to amend customs and
usages which have become hard.
There have also been many changes in the mode of election. The
common council were chosen by the wards until 1351, when the
appointments were made by certain companies. In 1376 an ordinance
was made by the mayor and aldermen, with the assent of the whole
commons, to the effect that the companies should select men with
whom they were content, and none other should come to the elections
of mayors and sheriffs; that the greater companies should not elect
more than six, the lesser four and the least two. Fortyseven
companies nominated 156 members. In 1383 the right of election
reverted to the wards, but was obtained again by the livery
companies in 1467.
The Common Hall was the successor of the folkmote, the meetings
of which were originally held in the open air at the east end of St
Paul's and afterwards in the Guildhall. These general
Common assemblies of the citizens are described in the old
city
Hall. records as
immensa communitas or
immensa multitudo civium. The elections in Common Hall
were by the whole body of citizens until Edward
I.'s reign, citizens were then specially summoned
to Common Hall by the mayor. In Edward IV.'s reign the elections of
mayor, sheriffs and other officers and members of parliament were
transferred to liverymen. Various alterations were subsequently
made and now the qualification of electors at the election of the
corporate offices of lord mayor, sheriffs,
chamberlain and minor offices in Common
Hall is that of being a liveryman of a livery company and an
enrolled
freeman of London.
The election of aldermen and common councilmen takes place in the
wardmotes.
The recorder, the chief official, is appointed for life. He was
formerly appointed by the city, but since the Local Government Act
of 1888 he is nominated by the city and approved by
Officials the lord chancellor. The common sergeant was
formerly of the appointed by the city, but since 1888 by
the lord city. chancellor. The town clerk is appointed by
the city and re-elected annually.
The chamberlain or
comptroller of the king's chamber is
appointed by the livery. He was originally a king's officer and the
office was probably instituted soon after the Conquest. The
re- membrancer is appointed by the common
council.
The common hunt, an office abolished in 1807, was filled by John
Courtenay in 1417. The
sword-
bearer is noticed in the
Liber Albus (1419) and the first record of an appointment
is dated 1426.
Few fundamental alterations have been made in the constitution
of the city, but in the reign of Charles II. the most arbitrary pro
ceedings were taken against its liberties. The king and
Later his brother had long entertained designs against the
city,
history of and for the purpose of crushing them two
pretexts were
the cor- set up-(I) that a new rate of
market tolls had been levied
poration. by virtue of an act
of common council, and (2) that a petition to the king, in which it
was alleged that by the
prorogation of parliament public justice
had been interrupted, had been printed by order of the Court of
Common Council. Charles directed a
writ quo warranto against the corporation
of London in 1683, and the
Court of King's Bench declared
its charter forfeited. Soon afterwards all the
obnoxious aldermen were displaced and others
appointed in their room by royal commission. When James II. found
himself in danger from the landing of the Prince of Orange he sent
for the lord mayor and aldermen and informed them of his
determination to restore the city charter and privileges, but he
had no time to do anything before his flight. The Convention which
was summoned to meet on the 22nd of January 1689 was converted by a
formal act into a true parliament (February 23).
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The motion was lost but the
House resolved to bring in a bill for repealing the Corporation
Act, and ten years later (March 5) the Grand Committee of
Grievances reported to the House its opinion (I) that the rights of
the City of London in the election of sheriffs in the year 1682
were invaded and that such invasion was illegal and a grievance,
and (2) that the judgment given upon the
Quo Warranto
against the city was illegal and a grievance. The committee's
opinion on these two points (among others) was endorsed by the
House and on the 16th of March it ordered a Bill to be brought in
to restore all corporations to the state and condition they were in
on the 29th of May 1660, and to confirm the liberties and
franchises which at that time they respectively held and enjoyed.'
When the Act for the reform of Municipal Corporations was passed in
1835 London was specially excepted from its provisions.
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When the county of Middlesex was dissociated from the city of
London one portion was joined to the administrative county of
London, and the other to the county of Middlesex.
The lord mayor of London has certain very remarkable privileges
which have been religiously guarded and must be of great antiquity.
Privileges It is only necessary to mention these here, but
each
fthe lord of the privileges requires an exhaustive
examination
o , as to its origin.
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Shortly stated the privileges are four: ' R. R. Sharpe,
London
and the Kingdom (1894), i. 541.
I. The closing of Temple Bar to the sovereign.
2. The mayor's position in the city, where he is second only to
the king.
3. His
summons to the
Privy Council on the accession of a new sovereign.
4. His position of
butler
at the coronation banquets. The last may be considered in
abeyance as there has not
been any coronation banquet since that of
George
IV. In the case of the coronation of King Edward VII. the claim
was excluded from the consideration of the Court of Claims under
the royal proclamation. The terms of the judgment on a further
claim are as follows: " The Court considers and adjudges that the
lord mayor has by usage a right, subject to His Majesty's pleasure,
to attend the Abbey during the coronation and bear the crystal
mace." Bibliography. -The earliest
description of London is that written by the monk Fitzstephen in
1174 as an introduction to his life of Archbishop Thomas a Becket.
This was first printed by Stow in his
Survey. It was
reprinted by Strype in his editions of Stow; by Hearne in his
edition of Leland's
Itinerary (vol. 8), by
Samuel Pegge in 1772, and
elsewhere. The first history is contained in
A Survey of
London by John Stow (1598, 1603). The author died in 1605, and
his work was continued by Anthony
Munday and others (1618, 1633) and in the next
century by
John
Strype (1720, 1 7541 755). Stow's original work was reprinted
by W. J. Thoms in 1842 and a monumental edition has been published
by C. L. Kingsford (Oxford, 1908).
The following are the most important of subsequent histories
arranged in order of publication;
James Howell,
Londinopolis
(1657); W. Stow,
Remarks on London and Westminster (1722);
Robert
Seymour (John
Mottley),
Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster
(1 734, another edition 1753);
William Maitland,
History of
London (1 739, other editions 1756, 1760, 1769, continued by
John Entick 1775); John Entick,
A New and Accurate History of
London, Westminster, Southwark (1766); The City
Remembrancer,
Narratives of the Plague 1665, Fire 1666 and Great Storm 1703 (1769);
A New
and Compleat History and Survey, by a Society of Gentlemen
(1770, revised by H. Chamberlain, folio revised by W. Thornton
1784); J. Noorthouck,
A New History (1773); Walter
Harrison,
A New and
Universal History (1775) J. P.
Malcolm,
Londinium Redivivum or an Ancient
History and Modern Description of London (1803); David Hughson
(E. Pugh),
London (1805-1809); B.
Lambert,
History and Survey of London
(1806); Henry Hunter,
History of London (181 I); J. W.
Abbott,
History of London (1821);
Thomas Allen,
History and Antiquities
of London (1827-1829, continued by
Thomas Wright 1839);
William Smith,
A New History of London (1833);
Charles Mackay,
A History of
London (1838);
The History of London, illustrated by
W. G. Fearnside (1838);
George Grant,
A Comprehensive
History of London (Dublin, 1849);
John Timbs,
Curiosities of London
(1855, later editions 1855, 1868, 1875, 1876);
Old London
Papers, Archaeological Institute (1867); W. J. Loftie,
A
History of London (1883); W. J. Loftie,
Historic
Towns (London, 1887); Claude de
la Roche Francis,
London, Historic and
Social (Philadelphia, 1902)
Sir Walter Besant,
The Survey of
London (1902-1908)-Early
London, Prehistoric, Roman, Saxon
and Norman (1908);
Medieval London, vol. I,
Historical and Social (1906), vol. 2,
Ecclesiastical (1906);
London in the Time of the
Tudors (1904);
London in the Time of the Stuarts
(1903);
London in the Eighteenth Century (1902); H. B.
Wheatley,
The Story of London [Medieval Towns] (London,
1904).
The following are some of the Chronicles of London which have
been printed, arranged in order of publication: R.
Grafton,
Chronicle
1189-1558 (1809); R. Arnold,
London Chronicle (1811);
A Chrcnicle of London from 1089 to 1483 written in the
Fifteenth Century (1827);
William Gregory's Chronicle of
London,1189-1469 (1876);
Historical Collections of a
Citizen of London, edited by
James Gairdner (Camden Society, 1876);
Chronicles of London [1200-1516], edited by C. L.
Kingsford (Oxford, 1905).
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1869);
Munimenta Gildhallae Londoniensis,
edited by H. T. Riley-vol. 1,
Liber Albus (1419), vol. 2,
Liber Custumarum (1859);
Liber Albus: the White Book
of the City of London, translated by T. Riley (1861); H. T.
Riley,
Memorials of London and London Life in the 13th, 14th
and 15th centuries (1868);
De Antiquis Legibus Liber.
Curante Thoma Stapleton (Camden Society, 1846);
Chronicles
of the Mayors and Sheriffs of London 1188-1274, translated
from the
Liber de Antiquis Legibus by H. T. Riley.
French Chronicle of London1259-1343(1863); Analytical Index to
the Series of Records known as the Remembrancia 1579-1664
(1888);
Calendar of
Letter-Books [circa 1275-1399] preserved among the Archives of
the Corporation of London at the Guildhall, edited by Reginald R.
Sharpe, D.C.L. (1899-1907); W. and R.
Woodcock,
Lives of Lord Mayors
(1846); J. F. B. Firth,
Municipal London (1876); Walter
Delgray
Birch,
Historical
Charters and Constitutional Documents of the City of London
(1884, 1887); J. H. Round,
The Commune of London and other
Studies (1899); Reginald R. Sharpe,
London and the
Kingdom; a History derived mainly from the Archives at
Guildhall (1894); G. L. Gomme,
The Governance of London.
Studies on the Place occupied by London in English
Institutions (1907); Alfred B. Beaven,
The Aldermen of the
City of London temp. Henry III. (1908).
In connexion with the government of London may be noted works on
the following: Inns of Court.
William Herbert,
Antiquities
of the Inns of Court and Chancery (1804); Robert P. Pearce,
History (1848).
Artillery Company, Anthony Highmore,
History of the Hon. Artillery Co. of London to 1802
(1804); G. A. Raikes,
History of the Hon. Artillery Co.
(1878). William
Herbert published in 1837
History
of the Twelve great Livery Companies of London, and in 1869
Thomas Arundell
published
Historical Reminiscences of the City and its Livery
Companies. Since then have appeared
The Livery Companies
of the City of London, by W. Carew Hazlitt (1892);
The
City Companies of London, by P. H. Ditchfield (1904);
The
Gilds and Companies of London, by George Unwin (1908).
Separate histories have been published of the chief London
companies.
The following are some of the chief works connected with the
topography of London:
Thomas Pennant,
Of London (1 79
0, 1793, 1805, 1813, translated into German 1791); John T. Smith,
Antient Topography of London (1815); David Hughson [E.
Pugh],
Walks through London (1817); London (edited by
Charles Knight
1841-1844, reprinted 1851, revised by E. Walford 1875-1877); J. H.
Jesse,
Literary and
Historical Memorials of London (1847);
Leigh
Hunt,
The Town, its Memorable Character and Events
(1848, new ed. 1859); Peter
Cunningham,
A Handbook of London past
and present (1849, 2nd ed. 1850, enlarged into a new work in
1891); Henry B. Wheatley,
London past and present; Vestiges of
Old London, etchings by J. W. Archer (1851);
A New Survey
of London (1853); G. W. Thornbury,
Haunted London
(1865, new ed. by E. Walford 1880);
Old and New London,
vols. i.-ii. by G. W. Thornbury, vols. iii.-vi. by
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by T. Birch, D.D. 1 759);
Graunt's
Observations, Petty's
Another Essay and
C. Morris's
Observations are reprinted in this collection.
Graunt and Petty's
Essays are reprinted in
Economic
Writings of Sir W. Petty (1899). (H. B. W.*)
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