I doubt many will starve this year;
If you see not to this
Some of you will speed amiss.
Our souls they are dear,
For our bodies have some care.
Before we arise
Less will suffice.”
One of the advantages of keeping all the shops of one trade in the same quarter is illustrated by the story of the Queen’s loss by robbery. It was in the year 1631 that a part of her plate and jewels was stolen. The purchasers of the stolen property must have been the goldsmiths, and unless the stolen plate had been sent abroad, it might be recovered by finding to what goldsmith it had been offered on purchase. Until the beginning of the seventeenth century all the goldsmiths lived together in Cheapside. As early as 1623 it was observed that many of them were leaving their old quarters and setting up shops elsewhere. They were ordered to go back to their old quarters, but, as generally happened with such orders, there were no means of enforcing them, and the goldsmiths continued to scatter themselves about the town. Then came the Queen’s loss, and it was found that the order had been entirely neglected. The Lords in Council, therefore, renewed the order on the ground that by leaving Cheapside and setting up their shops in other places, they offered facilities for “passing away of stolen plate.” This order of Council was issued in 1635. As very little attention was paid to the order, which was certainly vexatious, it was renewed on May 24, 1637, and was followed by an order of the Court of Star Chamber that if any other tradesmen besides goldsmiths should keep shop in Cheapside or Lombard Street, the Alderman should be imprisoned for permitting it. As little attention was paid to this order, a fourth, to the same effect, was issued in January 1638. In the last the names of some offenders were given; there were two stationers, a milliner, a bandseller, a drugster, a cook, and a girdler. This interference with the conduct of trade was part of a general and systematic attempt to make the King master in everything. He could not possibly have made a greater mistake than to interfere with the trading interests or to meddle with the way in which a money-making community conducted its affairs. The goldsmiths who had left Cheapside had done so in their own interests; by scattering, each shop formed its own circle; to give up that circle would be to give up the shopkeeper’s livelihood; they had found out by this time that in a great city of 150,000 people, trade is more successful when the shops of the same kind are scattered. Imagine the wrath of Cheapside at the present day if all the shops except those of one trade were ordered to depart!
The business of the ship money is by some historians considered the greatest of all the King’s mistakes; but that of the Cheapside tradesmen touched a lower level, and therefore a wider area. To bleed the rich merchants was one thing, to deprive an honest tradesman of his shop was more serious, because of tradesmen there were more than of merchants. A charter confirming the City liberties produced no change in the King’s policy. It was signed while the disputes concerning ship money, Irish Estates, and interference with trade were at their height, and it cost the City £12,000.
When we read of ships being fitted out by London, of the fleet equipped by Sir John Philpott, of the solid support given to the fleet which engaged the Spanish Armada, and of other occasions, it is difficult to understand the objections of London to raise the ship money, save on the supposition that they now perceived that the King meant to go as far as he could in the way of despotic power, and that it behoved them to make a stand and to fight every inch of ground. This they prepared to do. First they set their law officers to hunt up charters and Acts of Parliament. The case complete, they presented a petition to the King, stating that by certain Acts recited the City was exempt from such obligations. However, the City got nothing by its petition except a peremptory order to raise the £30,000 wanted, and to raise it at once. The City gave way and proceeded to obey and to fit out seven ships.