London

London is the capital of the United Kingdom and one of the oldest great cities in the world. It was founded by the Romans in the first century AD and has been England’s economic and cultural centre for centuries. Situated in southeastern England on the banks of the River Thames it is about 50 miles (80 kilometres) from the North Sea. Greater London today has around 8.7 million inhabitants. London has developed from three settlements: the City of London, established by the Romans and today the centre of trade and banking; the City of Westminster, which was built around an abbey followed by the royal palace, is still the seat of parliament and government; and Southwark on the south bank of the Thames, known particularly for its pubs and theatres.

Tudor London During the reign of the Tudors, London enjoyed a period of immense growth: the population almost trebled in size, from less than 50,000 in 1500 to around 140,000 people living inside the old Roman walls by Elizabeth’s death in 1603. Given the unhealthy living conditions in the city, with plague and other epidemics regularly haunting the people in the crowded streets, London needed about 5,000 new inhabitants annually from outside its walls in order to grow continually. Accomodating all these new residents was a task facilitated by the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. The secularised monasteries provided the newcomers with a place to live and were the basis for the development of a property market on which private landlords could now invest in properties which had belonged to the Church. These former Church properties were now put to new uses as warehouses, sugar-mills, bakeries and lots of other industries and even theatres. Even though they no longer belonged to the Church, they were still exempt from the City jurisdiction and were thus free from many restrictions set up by the City’s administration. So Henry VIII did not just establish a new denomination, he also created new economic possibilities by secularising so many properties. Whereas the polluting, malodorous industries and slaughterhouses were situated to the east of the City so the Thames would take any waste out to the sea, the west of the City profited from its proximity to the royal court. Many noblemen built their palaces along the Strand, which now formed a link between the cities of London and Westminster. King Henry VIII himself seized Cardinal Wolsey’s York Palace, renamed it Whitehall and converted it into a royal palace along with the palaces in Greenwich, Nonsuch, Ham, Eltham and Hampton Court. Elizabeth I later gave up a number of these palaces and made Whitehall and Greenwich her permanent residences. In 1570, she inaugurated the Royal Exchange, which had been built by Thomas Gresham to provide his fellow London merchants with a distinguished place for trading their goods. Although London had no university, several colleges were set up, such as the Royal College of Physicians, and the City was home to a steadily growing number of printers. Lawyers were trained in the four Inns of Court – the Inner and Middle Temples, Lincoln’s Inn and Gray’s Inn – or in the Inns of Chancery. The Inns had up to 1,000 students during term-time. They livened up the area around Holborn and Fleet Street, bringing with them not only intellectual life but also luxury trades, and thus further promoted the creation of the neighbourhood between London and Westminster.

Sources: Porter, Roy. London. A Social History. London: Penguin, 1994. Clout, Hugh D. "London." Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., n.d. Web. 23 Jan 2018.