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Plan of London in the time of Queen Elizabeth (1563).

In the Survey of John Stow we have three separable elements: the archæology and history of London, Stow's youthful recollections of London in the time of Henry the Eighth, and Stow's description of the great change which came over London after the dissolution of the religious houses, and continued in process throughout his lifetime. The mediæval conditions were not remote. He could remember when London was clearly defined by the wall, like a girdle, of which the Tower was the knot. No heroic change had befallen; the wall had not been cast down into its accompanying fosse to form a ring-street, as was done when Vienna was transformed from the mediæval state. London had simply filled up the ditch with its refuse; its buildings had simply swarmed over the wall and across the dike; shapeless and haphazard suburbs had grown up, till the surrounding villages became connected with the city. Even more grievous, in the estimation of Stow, was the change which he had witnessed within the city itself. The feudal lords had departed, and built themselves mansions outside the city. The precincts of the dissolved religious establishments had been converted into residential quarters, and a large proportion of the old monastic gardens had been built upon. The outlines of society had become blurred. Formerly, the noble, the priest, and the citizen were the defined social strata. Around each of these was grouped the rest of the social units in positions of dependence. A new type of denizen had arisen, belonging to none of the old categories—the typical Elizabethan Londoner.

The outward aspect of Elizabethan London reflected this social change. On the south of the city, along the line of Thames Street, the wall had entirely disappeared. On the east and west it was in decay, and was becoming absorbed in fresh buildings. Only on the north side of the city, where it had been re-edified as late as 1474, did the wall suggest its uses for defence. In the map of Agas, executed early in the reign of Elizabeth, this portion of the wall, with its defensive towers and bastions, appears singularly well preserved. Thus the condition of the wall suggested the passing of the old and the coming of the new order. The gates which formerly defended the city, where the chief roadways pierced the wall, still remained as monuments, and they were admirably adapted to the purpose of civic pageantry and ceremonial shows. Indeed, the gateway on the Oxford road was rebuilt in 1586, and called Newgate, "from the newness thereof," and it was the "fairest" of all the gates of London. It is reckoned that this was the year that Shakespeare came to London from Stratford-on-Avon; and the assumption is generally allowed that he entered the city by Newgate, which would be his direct road. A new gate, of an artistic and ornamental character, set in the ancient wall, was a sign and a symbol of the new conditions in London, of which Shakespeare himself was destined to become the chief result.

With the characteristics of London as a great mart and port is included the foreign elements in its population. In Lombard Street the merchants of Lombardy from early mediæval times had performed the operations of banking and foreign exchange; and around them were assembled the English merchants of all qualities and degrees. Business was conducted in the open street, and merchants merely adjourned into the adjoining houses to seal their bonds and make their formal settlements. Henry VIII. tried to induce the city to make use of the great building of Leadenhall for this purpose; but the innovation was resisted, and Lombard Street continued to be the burse of London till long after the accession of Elizabeth. The name of Galley Key remained in Tower Street ward to mark the spot on the river bank "where the galleys of Italy and other parts did discharge their wines and merchandises brought to this city." The men of the galleys lived as a colony by themselves in Mincing Lane; the street leading to their purlieus was called, indifferently, Galley Row and Petit Wales. Here was a great house, the official territorium of the Principality. The original of Shakespeare's "Fluellen" may very possibly have been a denizen of this quarter.

Above the bridge, in Thames Street, was the territorium of the Hanse merchants, alluded to by Stow as "the merchants of Almaine," and by Camden as "the Easterlings or Dutch merchants of the Steelyard." Their position in the city was one of great importance: the export trade of the country in woollen goods was chiefly in their hands, and they had their own Guildhall in Upper Thames Street, called the Gilda Teutonicorum. The special privileges accorded to this foreign commercial community carried the obligation to maintain Bishopsgate in repair, and "to defend it at all times of danger and extremity." When the house of the Augustine Friars, Old Broad Street, was dissolved, and its extensive gardens became cut up and built upon, the Dutch colony settled there in residence, and the church of Austin Friars was specially assigned to them by Edward VI. Towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth the privileges of the Hanse merchants were revoked, and their guildhall was confiscated to the use of the navy. But the Dutch element continued as a part of the commercial life of the city, and the church of Austin Friars is still the "church of the Dutch nation in London."

West of the Steelyard was the Vintry. Here the merchants of Bordeaux had been licensed to build their warehouses of stone, at the rear of a great wharf, on which were erected cranes for unloading the lighters and other boats which brought the casks from the ships below bridge. The trade of these foreign merchants gave the name of Vintry Ward to one of the divisions of the city. In Bishopsgate Ward, near the church of St. Botolph, was a French colony, their purlieus forming a quadrant, called Petty France.

Elizabethan London was more cosmopolitan than many European capitals. In Lombard Street the merchants of Germany, France, and Italy were conspicuously differentiated by the varieties of costume. On the site of the present Royal Exchange, Sir Thomas Gresham laid the first stone of his great Bourse in 1566; the design was in imitation of the Bourse at Antwerp; the materials of its construction were imported from Flanders; the architect and builder was a Fleming, named Henryke. The opening of this building by Queen Elizabeth in state in January, 1571, when Her Majesty commanded it to be proclaimed by herald and trumpet that the Bourse should be called The Royal Exchange from that time henceforth, is a familiar story, because it is, in fact, one of the most striking and significant events in the history of London. The trumpet of that herald, on January 23rd, 1571, announced a new era.