Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/877

HISTORY.] LONDON 847

London continued to grow. In 1568 a conduit was constructed at Dowgate for the purpose of obtaining water from the Thames, and in 1580 Peter Moris, an ingenious Dutchman, brought his scheme for raising the Thames water high enough to supply the upper parts of the city under the notice of the lord mayor and aldermen, and in order to show its feasibility he threw a jet of water over the steeple of St Magnus's Church (see p. 825). 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. 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. When Shakespeare and his companions went to act at the Globe Theatre they did not cross London Bridge, but took boat at Blackfriars Stairs, and were landed opposite at the Paris Garden Stairs on the Bankside. The Bankside was of old a favourite place for entertainments, but two only – the bull-baiting and the bear-baiting – were in existence when Aggas's map was first planned. On Norden's map,^[1] 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.

Norden's Map of Tudor London.

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. Much of the life of the time was then in the City, but the last years of Stuart London take us to the 18th century, when social life had permanently shifted to the west end. 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. Then the line of the Strand was almost the only respectable outskirt. 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 15, 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 schoolhouse were commenced in 1611, and in the same year Sutton died. Somerset House was occupied by Anne of Denmark, and in 1616 James I. commanded it to be called Denmark House. In 1619 Inigo Jones commenced the Banqueting House at Whitehall, which was only part of a proposed vast palace, but which has remained to our time to be one of the chief ornaments of the town. The fatal vespers at Blackfriars threw a gloom over the year 1623. A large and mixed congregation of

1. 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.