The strange and foolish rising of the Earl of Essex belongs to national history. It was, however, met and repressed in the first outbreak by the City. Not one person offered to join the Earl; he was proclaimed traitor in Cheapside; the Bishop of London raised, in all haste, the force which stopped him on Ludgate Hill.
Towards the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign there were great complaints of hawkers and pedlars—in fact we begin to hear of the London Cries. These street cries did great harm to London tradesmen. We have seen that there were no shops at all originally, except in the appointed markets; these hawkers, with their itinerant barrows and baskets, brought the market into every part of London. Steps were taken to prevent this nuisance; but they were unavailing.
In 1580 the Queen issued a Proclamation against the building of new houses and the further increase of London:—
“To the preservation of her People in Health, which may seem impossible to continue, though presently, by God’s Goodness, the same is perceived to be in better Estate universally than hath beene in Man’s Memorie; yet where there are such great Multitudes of People brought to inhabite in small Roomes, whereof a great Part are seene very poore, yea, such as must live of begging, or by worse Means, and they heaped up together, and in a sort smothered with many families of Children and Servants in one House or small Tenement; it must needes followe, if any Plague or popular Sicknes should, by God’s Permission, enter amongst those Multitudes, that the same would not only spread itself and invade the whole Citie and Confines, but that a great Mortalitie would ensue the same, where her Majesties personal Presence is many times required.
For Remedie whereof, as Time may now serve, until by some further good Order be had in Parliament or otherwise, the same may be remedied; her Majestie, by good and deliberate advice of her Counsell, and being also thereto moved by the considerate opinions of the Lord-Mayor, Aldermen, and other the grave wise men in and about the Citie, doth charge and straightly command all manner of Persons, of what Qualitie soever they be, to desist and forbeare from any new Buildings of any House or Tenement within three miles from any of the Gates of the sayde Citie of London, to serve for Habitation or Lodging for any Person, where no former House hath bene knowen to have bene in the Memorie of such as are now living; and also to forbeare from letting or setting, or suffering any more Families than one onely to be placed, or to inhabite from henceforth in any one House that heretofore hath bene inhabited.”
On the 6th of December 1586, a very solemn and tragic ceremony was performed, first in Cheapside; then in Leadenhall; then at the end of London Bridge, and lastly at the south end of Chancery Lane; where the Mayor with the Aldermen, and attended by many of the Nobility and eighty of the principal citizens in chains of gold, proclaimed the sentence of death passed upon the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots.
The importance of the act; the publicity given to it; the formalities attending the Proclamation,—show the desire of the Queen and her Council that the people should understand the dreadful necessity of removing this cause of endless intrigue and conspiracy.
One more trade regulation closes the history of London in the reign of Elizabeth. A practice had grown up among hucksters and others of setting up stalls in the streets in front of the shops, in consequence of which the trade of the shopkeepers was greatly injured, insomuch that many of them were obliged to employ these very people to sell their wares for them. It was therefore ordered that no one should erect any stall, or stand, before any house under a penalty of twenty shillings.
One of the last things done in the name of the Queen was the offer to all Debtors in prison of freedom if they would volunteer to serve on board the fleet newly raised for the suppression of Spanish pirates.
On the death of the Queen, the City, which was always most truly loyal and faithful to her, put up in most churches a tablet or a statue to her memory.
This brief and bald account of the relations between the Crown and the City is not proffered as a history of London during the Tudor period. This history will, it is hoped, be found in the following pages. I have only hinted at the creation of the Trading Companies and the connection of the great Sea Captains with London. The Poor Law of 1572; the granting of monopolies; the wonderful outburst of Literature; the troubles caused by the substitution of pasture for agriculture; the growth of Puritanism and the beginnings of the High Church,—all these things belong to the history of London. The diplomacy; the Court intrigues; the rise and fall of Ministers; the anxieties concerning the Succession,—these things do not belong to the history of London.