London

LONDON, the metropolis of England, and the chief town of the British empire, is situated on both banks of the river Thames, about 50 miles from its mouth, St Paul’s Cathedral being in 51° 30' 48" N. lat. and 0° 5' 48" W. long. The old City of London is wholly included in the county of Middlesex, but the town beyond the City limits extends into portions of three other counties,— namely, Surrey and Kent on the south, and Essex on the east. The area and population of the various governmental divisions of London are given below (pp. 821, 822).

Site. —A great part of London is built on sands and gravels belonging to the Drift period, marking the ancient bed of a much larger river than the present Thames. This formation, resting immediately on the London Clay, extends along both banks of the present river, with an average breadth of about 2 miles; but in some parts there is immediately adjoining the banks a considerable breadth of alluvial deposits, or occasionally of artificially constructed embankments. On the north bank the alluvial soil comprehends the greater part of Westminster; on the south bank it stretches east from Lambeth Bridge, gradually widening to a breadth of about half a mile, and from Southwark to Deptford occupying a still wider area. The sands and gravels again occur at Greenwich Hospital, but are succeeded by the Greenwich and Woolwich marshes. The Isle of Dogs opposite Greenwich is constructed wholly of artificial embankments, and at one time the area it now occupies formed part of the mouth of the Lea, along whose banks the alluvial formation runs northwards between Bow and Stratford to Stoke Newington, widening to a considerable area at the marshes of West Ham and Plaistow. At Fareham, Battersea Park, Cheapside, Victoria Park, and to the south of Stoke Newington, there are considerable areas occupied by brick earth. The London Clay crops to the surface throughout the whole of north-west London, with the exception of a small portion to the south of Regent’s Park, which is encroached upon by the sands and gravels, and the summits of Hampstead and Highgate, which are occupied by the silicious sands of the Bagshot series. In west London the Clay extends south to Kensington Gardens, and in north London it occupies part of Islington and the district north of Highbury and Stoke Newington. South of the Thames it encroaches irregularly on Wandsworth, Clapham, Camberwell, and Deptford, and comprehends nearly all the district round Sydenham. The Lower Tertiaries are represented by the Thanet sands at Greenwich and in the neighbourhood of Deptford, by the Woolwich and Reading beds, which occur at Camberwell, Dulwich, and Lewisham, and by the Blackheath beds, which are best seen at Blackheath. Chalk, the basement rock of the London basin, and the source of the water supply for the deep wells, only crops to the surface in the neighbourhood of Greenwich.

The original surface of the soil of London has been much altered in the course of generations, the depth of made earth being often very great. At one period the Thames flowed straight from Lambeth to Limehouse, and the greater part of the district now stretching south and east of the river to the range of heights in the neighbourhood of Sydenham and Greenwich was occupied by marshes or shallow lagoons. North of the Thames the greater part of London is built on several ranges of small eminences lying between the river and the northern heights of Hampstead (430 feet), Highgate, and Hornsey. The original city clustered round the eminence now crowned by St Paul’s, and formerly intersected by the ravine of the Walbrook. To the north and east it was bounded by an extensive fen, from which Finsbury takes its name. To the west was the Fleet river, which flowed from Hampstead in a southeasterly direction to King’s Cross, and then more southerly to Clerkenwell, where on account of the steepness of its banks it received the name of Holebourne or Hollowburn. It was navigable to King’s Cross, and for a long period formed a convenient and well-protected harbour for the city. A more extended elevation, included in the district now occupied by the Inns of Court, Bloomsbury, and Soho, was bounded on the west by the Tyburn, which rose near the Swiss Cottage and, after an easterly course till reaching the present Regent’s Park, flowed southwards nearly in the line of Marylebone Lane and Bond Street. Tyburn Hill was bounded on the west by the Westbourne; and to the south and west an extensive range of low ground, now included in Westminster, Pimlico, Chelsea, and Kensington, was in early times for the most part covered by water. Westwards the low ground is bounded by Notting Hill, whence an elevated region lying between the smaller eminences and the “northern heights,” and including Primrose Hill, runs in a north-westerly direction to Camden Town, Islington, and Highbury. The hilly regions in the neighbourhood of Kensington and Notting Hill formed part of an extensive forest, and St John’s Wood was originally a dense thicket.

Government and Administration. —At first the municipal constitution of London was loose and disjointed in its form, resembling that of the shire rather than the town, but even from the time of Henry I. the independence of its jurisdiction was complete, and the citizens, besides the right of inheritance and tenure not then possessed by the rest of England, enjoyed exemption from the Danegeld and from similar obligations. By the 13th century the later form of the municipality was already shaped in its main features, although at this stage residence in the borough and not membership in a trade guild was the basis of citizenship. This in some respects premature development of municipal functions has always given to London a peculiar and unique position in respect of municipal government. Its charters, which in early times served as the model for charters to new incorporations, have defied the attacks of reform. The system of government was more heterogeneous and complicated than that of other English towns. London is practically a borough by prescription, and its special rights and privileges have made those who possess them distrustful of change. The mere extent of the new city surrounding the old, and the rapidity of its growth, have also tended to postpone the attempt to grapple with the problem of its government. Until 1855, when the Metropolitan Board of Works was formed, the whole administration of the metropolis was of a mediaeval character. The City was governed by old charters, confirmed but not interpreted by a special Act of William and Mary, and the various parishes of the rest of the metropolis had each its own peculiar system of administration, regulated by local Acts which differed widely in different localities. No direct change of vital importance was made in the constitution and functions of the City corporation by the Metropolis Local Management Act of 1855, but the very existence of the Metropolitan Board implied a certain limitation of its authority, and the additional functions conferred by successive Acts on the Metropolitan Board have in some degree circumscribed its influence. As modified by the Act of 1855, the government of London within what is known as the metropolitan area consists of the City Corporation, the Metropolitan Board of Works, and thirty-eight vestries and district boards; while various authorities, to be afterwards mentioned, exercise jurisdiction in special matters over the whole area of the metropolis or in separate localities.

The City of London, which is a county in itself, and with which the borough of Southwark is assimilated, is governed by a lord mayor, twenty-six aidermen, and two hundred and six common councilmen, forming a Court of Common Council. This court has a certain independent power to enact regulations for the government of the City, is entrusted with the management of the finances and the estates of the corporation, elects most of the officials, and controls the police. The City elects a sheriff of Middlesex as well as a sheriff of London; and the lord mayor is elected by the trade guilds in common hall from among the aidermen who have served as sheriffs. He is lord lieutenant within the City, the dispenser of its hospitality, the chairman of the courts of the corporation, and holds certain other offices, the dignity of which is now almost entirely nominal. The aidermen, who hold office for life, are chosen by the several wards, each ward electing one. Since 1867 the power of election has been enjoyed by all possessing the household and lodger franchise. The Court of Aidermen has the power of appointment to certain offices, exercises judicial functions in regard to licensing and in disputes connected with the ward elections, has some power of disposal over the City cash, and possesses magisterial control over the City, each aiderman being a judge and magistrate for the whole City, and by virtue of his office exercising the functions of a justice of the peace. The common councillors were chosen originally in the reign of Edward I. as assistants to the aidermen, and in 1384 were constituted a standing committee to regulate the affairs of the City, each ward chosing four, six, or eight, according to its size. A gradual increase in their number took place until 1840, when it was fixed at two hundred and six. From the time of Richard II. the election was vested in freemen householders, but it is now regulated by the Act of 1867. The Court of Common Hally formerly the popular assembly or ancient folkmote, is now composed of the lord mayor, four aidermen, and the liverymen of the city guilds, and nominates yearly two aidermen, who must previously have been sheriffs, for the Court of Aidermen to select one for the office of lord mayor. The sheriffs are themselves chosen by the Court of Common Hall, which also appoints the chamberlain, the bridge masters, and the city auditors.

The fragmentary and indirect participation in the government of London at present exercised by the livery companies represents the remnants of an influence which was paramount from the time of Edward III., when enactments were passed which made admission to the freedom of the city dependent on membership in a trade or mystery. Originally established to afford mutual aid to members of their “craft,” the guilds of London gradually assumed a certain control over their trade or manufacture, and by the payment of large sums of money obtained various monopolies, with the power to make by-laws for the regulation of their craft. From gifts for charitable purposes, and from entrance money and fines, many of the guilds, on account of the rise in the value of property, have amassed enormous wealth. Within the limits of the City alone the gross annual rental of the land possessed by them is over £500,000, and it is believed that the land they possess outside its limits is of equal value. At one time their number was Over one hundred, but they now number seventy-six, and some represent trades which are extinct. Twelve so-called “great companies” claim precedence over the others, but of these some are not so wealthy as a few of the less highly privileged. The “livery” or dress of the companies, first formally adopted in the reign of Edward III., was ultimately worn only by a higher grade of the members called liverymen. The extension of London beyond the City limits and changes in trade maxims and in social life have now left them little more than the shadow of their formèr authority over trade and manufacture, but a few, such as the fishmongers, the stationers, the goldsmiths, and the apothecaries, still discharge certain functions in the regulation of their several crafts. Besides administering their charities, many of the companies contribute largely to benevolent objects of pressing need, and some take an interest in promoting technical instruction, and in various matters relating to their special trade or manufacture; but the business of most of them is now chiefly of a ceremonial kind. The halls of the companies number thirty-five, and many of them are of interest either from their architectural merits, their antiquarian associations, or the portraits or other objects they contain. Their annual assessed value is over £60,000. The hereditary connexion of the companies with the corporation, their large ownership of property in the City, and their control over so many charities still enable them to exercise a very great influence in municipal affairs.

The following list (Table I. ) gives details regarding the twelve great companies, and six other companies which may be ranked next to them in importance :— [table]

The corporation of the City of London still retains certain exceptional prerogatives. The lord mayor’s court still exercises civil jurisdiction, the two courts of the sheriffs’ compter survive in the City of London court, and the lord mayor exercises the functions of judge in the central criminal court, which superseded the court of oyer and terminer in 1834, and extends beyond the radius of the Metropolitan area. The corporation possesses the sole right to establish markets within 7 miles of the City; it enjoys a metage of grain, partially commuted in 1872 to a fixed duty chargeable by weight, and applied to the preservation of Epping Forest and other open spaces; and it levies coal and wine duties, continued by various Acts, for defrayment of the cost of public improvements. Most of the work of the corporation is performed by committees; and “commissioners of sewers,” under Act of Parliament, have charge of the cleaning, lighting, and paving of the streets.

A large portion of the City income is derived from rents, which have increased from £3488 in 1692 to £19,199 in 1785, £45,269 in 1825, and £117,781 in 1881. In 1692 the City markets were farmed for £8100, the profit being about £2500; in 1785 their revenue was £15,631, and the profit £2621; in 1825 these were respectively £58,958 and £52,271; and in 1881 they were £152,816 and £20,911. The total revenue of the City in 1692 was £11,658, in 1785 £59,356, and in 1881 £896,688, not including the public and trust accounts, which are regulated by various Acts of Parliament. They include the Bridge-House estate account, the sewers rate, the Metropolitan Board of Works sewers rate, the police rate, the ward rate, and the duties on coal, wine, and grain. The total charge of the government establishment in 1692 was £3947, and in 1881 it was £51,855, not including £7856 spent in pensions of officials. In 1692 the lord mayor received an annual sum of £100 for his care of the market, and an ancient fee of £80 out of the chamber. He has now an annual salary of £10,000, and in addition to this his personal expenses in 1881 amounted to £4433. The salaries of the recorder, the chamberlain, the common sergeant, the town-clerk, and some other officers have risen in a somewhat similar proportion. The City in 1692 spent nothing on special acts of hospitality or on the promotion of literature, science, or art, while its contribution to the poor rates was only £66. It now spends several thousands annually on the reception of eminent persons, while to the London almshouses it in 1881 contributed £1884, to general charitable purposes £5179, foreducation £5394, for technical instruction £2000, for the Guildhall library and museum £5398, and for music £3027. The debt of the corporation, which is solely connected with the construction of improvements and public markets, was on December 31, 1881, £5,496,150, the money spent for these purposes since 1759 being nearly £10,000,000. The rateable value of the City and liberties has since 1801 increased sevenfold, having risen from £507,372 to £3,535,494.

The Guildhall, rebuilt by Dance in 1789, contains the greater part of the walls of the old building of 1411, which was damaged by the fire of 1666, and also the crypt divided into three aisles by clustered columns of marble supporting a groined roof richly adorned with carvings. The principal front was restored in 1867 in the Gothic style. In addition to the great hall used for state banquets and receptions, the building contains the common council chamber, the aidermen’s room, and several courts of justice. Adjoining the Guildhall is the free library of the corporation, and a museum of antiquities relating to the City. The Mansion House at the east end of the Poultry, ejected in 1740 from the designs of Dance, is the official residence of the lord mayor. In addition to the justice room and various reception rooms, it contains the Egyptian hall, in which certain special banquets of the lord mayor are held.

By the Metropolis Local Management Act of 1855, the metropolis was divided into thirty-nine vestries or district boards, which elect the forty-five members who form the Metropolitan Board of Works, the city of London electing three members, each of the six great parishes of Islington, Marylebone, St Paneras, Lambeth, St George’s (Hanover Square), and Shoreditch two members, and the other districts one each or one in combination. The board was originally established for the formation and maintenance of main sewers, but later Acts have made it the administrative authority of the metropolis in a great variety of other matters, including the construction of main thoroughfares, the carrying out of great metropolitan improvements, the formation of new streets, the construction and maintenance of parks, the preservation of commons and open spaces, the maintenance of the fire brigade, and the administration of certain enactments specially applicable to the metropolitan area. The total sum raised by the board for application to its various purposes since 1856 to 31st December 1881 was <£28,689,749, and its net liability on the 31st December 1881 was <£13,437,940. The capital required for the execution of great works is raised by the issue of stock bearing interest at the rate of 3J and 3 per cent., which has the same facilities of transfer as the Government stocks, and is redeemable in sixty years from creation. The rate per pound levied by the board has varied very greatly, being 2O9d. in 1856, and as high as 6 ’ 99d. in 1867, while for 1883 it is estimated at 6 ’ 2d∙ The total net charge in 1880 was £652,213, and for 1882 it is estimated at £715,822. The rateable annual value of property in the metropolis has risen from £11,283,663 in 1856 to £27,386,086 in 1882.

The vestries and district boards are entrusted with the management of local sewers, the lighting, paving, and cleaning of their own thoroughfares, and the removal of nuisances. For paving, except in the old main thoroughfares, they have power to charge adjoining properties, and in several districts a small income is obtained from realized property. The total amount of money advanced to them on loan by the Board of Works up to 31st November 1881 was £3,631,769, of which £3,297,430 was redeemable by 1929, and £334,338 by 1941.

The School Board of London has in regard to education a rating and legislative authority over a district corresponding with that of the Metropolitan Board of Works. The metropolitan police force outside the City limits and within a radius of 12 miles of Charing Cross is under the control of the Home Secretary. The Tower of London is governed by the constable of the Tower, assisted by fifty magistrates, and the borough of Westminster is still under the nominal care of the dean and burgesses. The Metropolitan Asylums Board, the Burial Board, the Thames Conservancy Board, and the Lea Conservancy Board constitute the principal other direct governing authorities having relation to London, but the water and gas companies enjoy monopolies which imply a certain degree of irresponsible authority, and a right of taxation not sufficiently defined and limited. Within an area less than the district of the Board of Works there are ten parliamentary boroughs, which return in all twenty-two members, the City returning four members, and Southwark (from 1295), Westminster (1547), Marylebone (1832), Finsbury (1832), Tower Hamlets (1832), Greenwich (1832, extended in 1868), Lambeth (1832), Hackney, (1868), and Chelsea (1868) two each. London University (1868) returns one member.

Growth and Population. —For some centuries after the Conquest there are almost no data for an estimate of the extent and population of London, but a great impulse was given to its increase by the settlement of Normans and the opening up of intercourse with the Continent. The statement of Fitzstephen that it furnished, in the reign of Stephen, 60,000 men-at-arms and 20,000 knights cannot be accepted as applying only to the City. Peter of Blois, under Henry II., only estimated its numbers at 40,000, although he may possibly have referred only to adults (Opera, ed. Giles, vol. ii. p. 85). In any case, previous to the great plague of 1349 it must have numbered at least 90,000, for in that year, according to Stow, as many as 50,000 persons were buried in the cemetery of Spitalcroft, specially consecrated for the purpose. There were severe ravages from the same cause in 1361 and 1369; and the calculation of Chalmers (Comparative Estimate of Great Britain, 1802), founded on the Subsidy Rolls of 1377, shows a population of only 34,971; but the emperor Manuel II., who visited it in 1400, states that it was to be preferred to every city of the West for population, opulence, and luxury (Macpherson, Annals of Commerce, vol. i. p. 611). Notwithstanding the regulations of Elizabeth for checking its growth, London had by the end of the century advanced considerably beyond its old boundaries. Giovanni Botero, writing about 1590, classes it with Naples, Lisbon, Prague, and Ghent as possessing about 160,000 inhabitants more or less, while Paris was said to possess over 400,000 inhabitants. The “Bills of Mortality,” which were begun in 1592, were in 1604 extended to St Bartholomew the Great, Bridewell Precinct, and Trinity in the Minories, which were partly within the City liberties, and to St Clements Danes, St Giles-in-the-Fields, St James (Clerkenwell), St Catherine (Tower), St Leonard (Shoreditch), St Mary in Whitechapel, St Martin-in-the-Fields, and St Mary Magdalen (Bermondsey). St Mary at the Savoy was added in 1606, and Westminster in 1626. The parishes of Hackney, Islington, Lambeth, Newington, Rotherhithe, and Stepney, which were included, in 1636, were, according to Graunt (Observations on the Bills of Mortality, 1676), still country villages in 1672, and indeed occupied an isolated position up to the middle of the 18th century. The result of the census of the city taken in 1631 is given by Graunt as 130, u 8, but the sum of his details is 130,268. By 1661 he reckoned it to have increased to 179,000. He also concluded that the population within the limits of the “Bills of Mortality” was 460,000, and that from the beginning of the century it had increased from 2 to 5. The population of London and its suburbs, excluding Westminster and the distant parishes, he placed at 384,000, or about a fourth less than Paris. Notwithstanding the plague of 1665 and the fire of 1666, London towards the close of the 17th century increased with great rapidity. Evelyn, writing in 1684, states that it had nearly doubled within his own recollection. Sir William Petty, in his Essay on Political Arithmetic, estimated the population in 1683, including that of Westminster and Southwark, at 696,000, but Gregory King, in his Observations on the State of England, first published by Chalmers, allowing 5⅜ persons to every house, makes it in 1694, within the limits of the “Bills of Mortality,” only 530,000. From about this period London superseded Paris as the largest city in Europe. During the first half of the 18th century its progress was fluctuating, but on the peace of 1763 a great impulse was given to its prosperity, and after 1780 a rapid rate of progress commenced, which still shows no signs of diminution. Until 1756 there was sufficient space for the Mayfair east of Hyde Park, but by the end of the century the aristocracy had nearly all migrated west from Covent Garden and Soho. Islington was still almost disjoined from the metropolis, but the great eastern suburbs had become so consolidated as almost to absorb even Hoxton, Bethnal Green, and Stepney. The first census of 1801 included St Paneras, Marylebone, Paddington, Kensington, and Chelsea, but Chelsea was still a solitary suburban retreat, Kensington was little more than “the old court suburb,” Paddington and Westbourne were rural hamlets, and Marylebone and St Paneras had less than one-fourth of their present population. The populous city surrounding Regent’s Park had scarcely any existence before 1820, but by 1830 it as well as Somers Town had become absorbed in the metropolis, especially by additions in the neighbourhood of St Paneras church and London university. Eastwards the most rapid extension had been in the direction of Greenwich, which was now united with Lambeth by a continuous line of houses. Belgravia in the south-west, and Tyburnia to the north of Hyde Park are chiefly the product of the next twenty years. Since that period the suburban districts have in all directions become almost consolidated, and beyond the present limits of the registrar-general fringes of houses, extending in some instances outside even the 12 miles circuit from Charing Cross, connect the metropolis with populous towns which a few years ago were solitary hamlets. Within the last twenty years the rate of increase of the outer ring of this greater London has been 126 ’ 8 per cent., while that of London proper has been only 36Ό, its outer ring showing an increase of 63 ’ 8 per cent., but its central area a decrease of 13 ’ 2,—the decrease in the City being 54 , 8, in the Strand 30 ’ 5, St Giles 16*3, Holborn 9 ’ 5, Westminster 1U9, St George’s (Hanover Square) and Marylebone 4*1, and in the eastern central districts of Whitechapel, St George-in-the-East, and Shoreditch 9 ’ 6, 3 ’ 8, and 2 ’ 2 respectively. In these latter districts the decrease* has been occasioned chiefly by improvements, but in the central business districts it is almost entirely the result of the substitution of business premises for dwelling-houses. The day census of the City taken in 1866 shows that the number of persons employed daily within its limits was 170,133, and that of 1881 gives a day population of 261,061, while the night population in 1871 was 74,897 and in 1881 only 50,526. The rapidity of the growth of London is largely due to the peculiar development of its trade and commerce, and is also closely connected with the interest excited by politics and the meetings of parliament. The bonds of connexion between London and England thus pulsate daily with a manifold vitality. London is the emporium of England, the centre of its great monetary transactions, the home of its science, literature, and art, and the yearly resort of its aristocratic and landed proprietor classes. Since the beginning of the century its rate of increase has exceeded that of England generally.

The proportion of inhabitants born outside its limits amounts to one-third of its entire population. The number of the natives of European states is in excess of those born in Scotland, and that of the natives of Ireland is about double, while the natives of the counties of England and Wales amount to more than a million. Irishmen by descent may be estimated at about 250,000 persons, Scots 120,000, foreigners 200,000, viz., Asiatics, Africans, and Americans together 45,000, Europeans 155,000 (Germans 60,000, French 30,000, Dutch 15,000, Poles 12,000, Italians 7500, Swiss 5000). The number of Jews is about 40,000. The special foreign district of London is that of Soho; another foreign district lies in the neighbourhood of Ratcliff Highway, now St George Street. The lower-class Jews inhabit the neighbourhood of Houndsditch and Aidgate. The Italian street musicians and vendors of ices form a small colony near Hatton Garden.

Table II. shows the percentage of the population of London to the rest of England, the numbers before 1801 being only approximate; Table III. the areas, houses, and population of London in [table] [table]

various governmental divisions; and Table IV. the population of the several registration districts at different periods from 1801.

Streets, Bridges, <fcc.—By the non-adoption of Wren’s plans the opportunity afforded through the great fire was for ever lost of constructing a model capital, and within the City limits the streets are still in many cases confused and intricate. The total absence of plan in the construction of the nucleus of London has doubtless tended to aggravate the confusion outside the old boundaries. The growth of the immense new outer city was, moreover, for centuries totally unregulated by the control of any central authority. The principal lines of streets formed along the old public highways are insufficient as main lines of communication for the increased population, and the absence of direct connexion between important points causes traffic to be enormously impeded. The longest line of street communication in London is that which is formed by the junction of the lines of the Edgeware and Uxbridge Roads at the Marble Arch, whence it extends eastward by Oxford Street, Holborn, Newgate Street, Cheapside and other important City streets, Whitechapel Road, and Mile End Road to Bow. At Cheapside a branch from it runs westward by Fleet Street, the Strand, Haymarket, Piccadilly, and Knightsbridge to Kensington. Much of the effect of the fine architecture of the City streets is totally lost from promiscuous crowding, and the main connecting streets between the City and the West End display, at certain parts, much meanness and inβongruity. Regent Street, the most fashionable thoroughfare of London, possesses ample width, and the splendour of its shops to some extent atones for the plain monotony of its regular architecture. In Oxford Street, which ranks next to it in importance, many buildings of a more ornamental character have lately been erected. Piccadilly, the eastern half of which is occupied chiefly by shops, and the western by dwelling houses and clubs, is a medley of every species of architecture, but is to some extent effective from the variety of its contrasts, and its outlook to the Green Park. Trafalgar Square, with its fountains, its Nelson column, its statues, and its wide expanse, has an airy and pleasant effect, but the huge erections which surround it are a very miscellaneous group, and few of them are worthy of the site. The clubs and hotels in Pall Mall and its neighbourhood represent every variety of Grecian and Italian architecture. The private houses in the more fashionable regions are not remarkable for external beauty, but in summer time flowers and foliage give the West End squares and terraces a bright and pleasant aspect. A special characteristic of London is the enormous space covered by the suburban cottages and villas of the middle classes. Close to the most fashionable regions there are many mean back streets tenanted by workmen, but the principal territories of the working classes are comprehended in the dense and dreary districts east and southeast of the City. The improvements lately carried out in the City and other central districts, and the substitution of business premises for dwelling houses, have compelled large numbers of these classes to live at a long distance from their work, and also caused undue crowding in the less remote regions. The running of workmen’s trains from the suburbs and the efforts of various private building associations and of the Metropolitan Board, guided by the Artisan and Labourers’ Dwellings Improvement Act, have only partially mitigated these evils.

Since 1785 the greater part of London within the City limits has been rebuilt, and its streets have been much altered, the principal improvements being the reconstruction of the lines from London Bridge to Finsbury Pavement, and from Blackfriars Bridge to Farringdon Road, both intersecting the City from north to south; the rebuilding of Bartholomew Lane, Lothbury, Threadneedk Street, and Cannon Street from King William Street tc St Paul’s; and the construction, in conjunction with th∈ Metropolitan Board, of the Holborn Viaduct and of Queen Victoria Street from Blackfriars Bridge to the Mansion House. The Metropolitan Board now exercises a certain [table]

control over the formation of new streets, but its powers are hampered by previous circumstances and by various restrictions. The principal new thoroughfares opened up by the board, besides Queen Victoria Street and the Holborn Viaduct, are Garrick Street, Covent Garden (1861), Southwark Street (1864), Northumberland Avenue (1876), and Theobald’s Road and Clerkenwell Road, begun in 1873 to connect Oxford Street and Old Street. They have also effected extensive improvements in the neighbourhood of Whitechapel, Shoreditch, Park Lane, and Kensington. The more important schemes in contemplation are a new street from Tottenham Court Road to Charing Cross, another from Oxford Street to Piccadilly Circus, the widening of Coventry Street, of Gray’s Inn Road, and of Tooley Street, and alterations of a less extensive character at Kentish Town, Hackney, and Camberwell. A scheme has been put forth by Government to relieve the pressure at Hyde Park Corner. Altogether up to 31st December 1881 the board have expended in street improvements <£6,531,856, of which probably one-third will be defrayed by sales of property. In addition to this over £4,000,000 have been spent on the Thames Embankment and Queen Victoria Street, and the board have contributed about £626,077 to defray local improvements by district boards and vestries, as well as £1,360,500 for artisans’ dwellings.

The Thames Embankment, with its marine wall of large granite blocks facing the river, supports on the north side a spacious thoroughfare which forms one of the finest promenades in London. The total cost of the various portions of the embankment was over £3,000,000, the greater part of which is being defrayed by the coal and wine duties levied by the City corporation. By the construction (1864-70) of that portion known as the Victoria Embankment, stretching from Blackfriars Bridge to Westminster, about 37 acres of land have been reclaimed, of which 19 are occupied by carriage and footways, 7⅛ have been conveyed to adjoining proprietors, and about 8 have been formed into ornamental grounds. The Albert Embankment (1865-68), stretching on the south side of the river from Westminster Bridge to Vauxhall Bridge, includes about 9 acres, which are now chiefly occupied by St Thomas’s Hospital. The Chelsea Embankment (1871-74), which is the extension of one previously constructed between Vauxhall Bridge and Chelsea Hospital, involved the reclamation of about 9J acres of ground, now occupied partly by a roadway 70 feet wide, and partly by a flower garden.

There are twelve bridges, other than railway bridges, over the Thames within the metropolitan area, the most easterly being London Bridge and the most westerly Hammersmith Bridge. Three of these, London Bridge, Southwark Bridge, and Blackfriars Bridge, are within the City area. New London Bridge, a noble structure by Rennie, was opened in 1831, having cost £1,458,311. As populous and busy commercial districts extend for several miles to the east of it on both sides of the Thames, it is not only totally inadequate for the requirements of traffic, but is also removed beyond many convenient lines of communication. On this latter account the proposal to widen it—in itself a very unsatisfactory plan—has met with almost no support; but a bill promoted by the Metropolitan Board for erecting a high level bridge at the Tower failed also to commend itself to a committee of the House of Commons. Until 1769, when the Blackfriars Bridge was erected, London Bridge stood alone. Old Blackfriars Bridge was replaced in 1869 by the present one of five iron arches resting on granite, erected from the designs of Page at a cost of £320,000. Southwark Bridge, designed by Rennie, 1815-19, consists of three iron arches of great elegance resting on stone piers, and cost £800,000. Partly from the unsuitability of its approaches, it has not proved of very much service.

The number of passengers and vehicles passing over the London and Blackfriars Bridges in a single day of 1823 is given in the July number of the Monthly Review for that year, and in 1881 similar information was obtained, in regard to the three bridges, for the traffic in the direction of the City. Multiplying these figures by two, we find that the foot passengers crossing London Bridge in 1823 numbered 89,640, while in 1881 they were 157,886, and that the number of vehicles had increased from 6182 to 21,466; that over Blackfriars Bridge the passengers had increased from 61,069 to 87,134, and the vehicles from 4047 to 14,584, while 30,090 passengers and 3560 vehicles passed over Southwark Bridge, the increase in the number of passengers over the three bridges being thus 124,401, and of vehicles 28,381. At the earlier date Southwark Bridge was practically unused, but in 1865 the toll was abolished, and the bridge purchased by the corporation for £218,868. The Metropolitan Toll Bridges Act of 1877 required the Metropolitan Board to extinguish the tolls on all the Thames bridges and the bridge over Deptford Creek, and thereafter to repair and maintain them, the county authorities of Middlesex and Suιτey paying each £1200 a year towards their maintenance. The bridges freed by the Act were the Charing Cross foot-bridge, for which £98,540 waspaid to the South-Eastern Railway; Waterloo Bridge (1811-17), designed by Rennie in a style similar to London Bridge, constructed at a cost of £1,000,000, and purchased for £475,000; Lambeth Bridge (1862), built of iron at a cost of £40,000, and purchased for £36,049; Vauxhall Bridge(1811-16), similar inform to Southwark Bridge, erected for over £300,000, and purchased for £225,230; Chelsea Suspension Bridge (1858), designed by Page, erected by the Government for £88,000, purchased for £75,000; the Albert Suspension Bridge (1873) and Battersea Bridge, an old wooden structure, both purchased . for £300,000; Wandsworth Bridge for £52,761; Putney Bridge (1729), a picturesque old timber structure, for £58,000; and Hammersmith Bridge for £112,500. Battersea and Putney bridges are about to be re-erected, and Deptford Creek Bridge is to be widened and improved at a cost of £109,091. The total amount of money spent by the board in connexion with bridges up to 18th December 1881 was £1,479,697. The amount to be paid by the board for their maintenance in 1882 is estimated at £90,502. The river is crossed by many railway bridges, and the Thames tunnel, begun in 1825 and completed in 1843, at a cost of £468,000, for the purposes of traffic, was purchased in 1865 by the Great Eastern Company, and is now used as a railway tunnel. A subway under the Thames from Tower Hill to Tooley Street was constructed in 1869 at a cost of £16,000. The communication in the neighbourhood of the river is gr eatly facilitated by the frequent passenger steamers.

The cleaning, watering, and paving of the streets are more satisfactory than might be expected from the fact that each district depends solely on its own local authority. Several Acts for paving the Strand were passed in the 14th century, and in the 16th century for the streets outside the City. In 1614 the citizens began to pave the margins of the streets before their doors, but the middle of the streets were laid with large pebbles very unevenly. In 1661 the money obtained from hackney coach licences, £5 for each annually, was applied to keeping them in repair. The use of squared granite blocks, with raised footways, was introduced by Acts of Parliament for Westminster in 1761, and for London generally in 1766. Within the last twenty years asphalt and wooden pavement have been largely substituted for granite in the principal thoroughfares.

Hackney coaches are first mentioned in 1625, when they were kept at inns, and numbered altogether only 20. In 1652 their number was limited to 200, in 1662 to 400, in 1694 to 700, in 1715 to 800, in 1771 to 1000, and in 17S9 to 1200. In 1832 the restriction of their number was abolished. The number of cab drivers in 1871 was 10,043, and of cabs 7818, of which 3295 were hansoms and 4523 four-wheelers; in 1881 the number of driver’s was 12,630, and of cabs 9652, of which 5805 were hansoms and only 3847 four-wheelers. Omnibuses were first introduced in 1829. Many of the principal streets are too crowded for tramways, but in South London tramcars are more used than omnibuses, and there are also several routes in the northern and eastern districts. The Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railway lines, which run partly underground, and form almost a complete belt round the “inner circle” of London, with several branches intersecting it, and others communicating with various suburban lines, have proved invaluable in relieving the throng of vehicles on the streets, and in affording rapid communication between important points; but the railway system in and around London has suffered greatly in directness from the absence of a complete plan embracing proper connecting links between the lines of the several companies. The annual number of passengers on the Metropolitan Railway is now about 60 millions. The Regent, Grand Junction, and several other canals, besides connecting London with the internal navigation of England, supply a means of transport for heavy goods between various districts of the metropolis.

London is divided into eight postal districts, viz., Eastern Central (E.C.), Western Central (W.C.), Northern (N.), North-Western (N.W.), Western (W.), South-Western (S.W.), South-Eastern (S.E.), and Eastern (E.). In the E.C. district there are twelve deliveries of letters daily, in the town portions of the other districts, which extend to about 3 miles from the General Post-Office, eleven deliveries, and in the suburban portions six deliveries.

Open Spaces. —London owes the possession of its finest parks rather to accident than to intention. Eastwards and northwards no effort was made to preserve any part of the “delightful plain of meadow land interspersed with flowing streams” mentioned by Fitzstephen, or of the “immense forest of densely wooded thickets,” or of the “common fields” in the great fen, notwithstanding the riot of the citizens in the reign of Henry VIII. against the invasion of their rights by enclosure. Westward, however, the inroads of the builder were interrupted by the royal parks, which, lying adjacent to each other, cover an area of about 900 acres. St James’s Park, 80 acres, transformed from a swamp into a deer park, bowling green, and tennis court by Henry VIII., extended and laid out as a pleasure ground by Charles II., and rearranged by Nash (1827-29), possesses beautiful combinations of water and foliage. Green Park, 70 acres, lying between St James’s Park and Piccadilly, is unadorned except by rows of trees and by parterres of flowers bordering Piccadilly. Hyde Park, 390 acres, stretches westward from the district of Mayfair to Kensington Gardens. Originally forming part of the manor of Hyde, which was attached to Westminster Abbey, Hyde Park at the dissolution of the monasteries was taken possession of by Henry VIII. In 1652 the park, which then included a large portion of the ground now joined to Kensington Gardens and extended to 621 acres, was sold for £17,068, fis. 8d., but in 1660 it was rebought by the Crown, having some time before this become the great “rendezvous of fashion and beauty.” It possesses nine principal gateways, of which that at Hyde Park Corner on the south-east and the Marble Arch on the north-east present the most striking features. The former, designed by Decimus Burton and erected in 1828 at a cost of £17,000, consists of three imposing arches adorned with rilievos copied from the Elgin marbles. The Marble Arch, originally intended as a monument to Nelson, was first erected at a cost of £80,000 in front of Buckingham Palace, and was placed in its present position in 1851. With its fine expanse of grass, its bright flower beds and clumps of shrubbery, its noble old trees, its beautiful ornamental lake the Serpentine, its broad avenues crowded with equipages, its Rotten Row alive with equestrians, its walks lined with thousands of loungers of very various nationalities, professions, and grades of social position, Hyde Park in the height of the season presents a scene which in the brilliancy of its tout ensemble and its peculiarly mingled contrasts can probably be paralleled nowhere else. In the 17th and 18th centuries Hyde Park was a favourite meeting place for duellists, and in the present century has been frequently the scene of great political gatherings. To the west are Kensington Gardens, 360 acres, originally attached to Kensington Palace, and enlarged in the reign of George II. by the addition of nearly 300 acres taken from Hyde Park. They are more thickly planted than the “Park,” and also contain an avenue of rare plants and shrubs, and several walks lined with flowering trees. Regent’s Park in the north-west, 470 acres, occupying the site of Marylebone Park, which in the time of Elizabeth was used as a hunting ground, owes its. preservation to the intention of George III. to erect within it a royal palace. It contains the gardens of the Zoological Society and of the Royal Botanic Society, as well as the grounds of a few private villas. The northern half of the park is in summer devoted to cricket; in the south-east corner there is a flower garden of rather antique design; and in the south-west a portion bounded on the north by an artificial lake is let to private householders. To the north of Regent’s Park there are about 12 acres of open ground surrounding Primrose Hill, 220 feet, commanding an extensive view of London. Battersea Park, 180 acres, formed (1852-58) at a cost of £312,890, on the south side of the Thames, besides a fine promenade along the banks of the river, several walks and carriage drives bordered with parterres, and a wide expanse for cricket and other amusements, contains a subtropical garden, which during August and September possesses much of the witchery of an ideal fairy-land. East London, after the enclosure of Finsbury Fields, had no special recreation ground until the opening of Victoria Park, which was sanctioned by an Act of Parliament in 1842, and was in 1872 increased to about 300 acres. Finsbury Park, 115 acres, formed by the Metropolitan Board of Works from the grounds of Hornsey Wood House at a cost of £112,000; Southwark Park, Rotherhithe, 63 acres, formed at a cost of £111,000; West Ham Park in the extreme east, partly purchased by the City corporation; Greenwich Park (see Greenwich) ; and the gardens on the Thames Embankment, with various squares and semi-private gardens, sum up the other ornamental open spaces of London.

The Metropolitan Board, under various Acts of Parliament, have secured the exclusive right of the public in several commons and open spaces, which with the parks under their care comprise together an area of 1698 acres, giving with the royal parks and Battersea Park, Victoria Park, and West Ham Park a total of over 3000 acres, or about a twenty-fifth part of the whole metropolitan area. The principal public commons are Hampstead Heath, a wild hilly region now encroached on by buildings on all sides except the north and north-west, commanding fine views both of London and the country, and, with its clear bracing air and its unkempt and rugged beauty, breaking on the visitor with all the effect of a sudden surprise; Blackheath Common, 267 acres, a bare sandy expanse to the south of Greenwich Park, containing a good golfing course; Clapham Common, 220 acres; Wormwood Scrubs, 194 acres; the Tooting Commons, 207 acres; and Plumstead Common, 110 acres. The total sum expended by the Board of Works in the purchase, preservation, and adornment of parks and open spaces upto 31st December 1881 was £436,760. All the parks and open spaces already mentioned are included in the Metropolitan Board district, but outside this area there is in the neighbourhood of London a large number of uncultivated spaces to which the public have various rights, some of them of an obscure and undefined character. A return made to the House of Commons in 1865 gives the area of public commons within radii of 25 miles and of 15 miles of the metropolis, the area of those within the smaller circuit being 13,301 acres. Of Epping Forest 5600 acres have been secured to the public by the corporation of the City, and in 1871 an Act was passed for the preservation of Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common, but Hounslow Heath, of old the favourite resort of highwaymen, and at one time over 4000 acres in extent, is now nearly all under cultivation. Richmond Park, the grounds of Hampton Court Palace, the gardens at Kew, the fine surroundings of the Crystal and Alexandra Palaces, the cricket grounds at the Oval and Lord’s, may practically be also reckoned among the public parks of London. In addition to this the river Thames itself supplies facilities for recreation which are safe from the inroads of the builder; and all round the metropolis there are numerous footpaths through the open fields.

Water Supply. —For two centuries after the Conquest.

London obtained a sufficient supply of pure water partly from the rivers or streams which passed through it and partly from wells sunk into the sands above the chalk. Holywell, Clerk’s Well (Clerkenwell), and St Clement’s Well (near St Clement’s Inn) are mentioned by Fitzstephen as those “of most note.” In 1236 the magistrates purchased from Gilbert Sandford the liberty to convey the waters of the Tyburn from Paddington in leaden pipes to the city, and a great conduit of lead castellated with stone was begun in West Cheap in 1285. Various other conduits were built in the 14th and 15th centuries, some for the water of the Thames, from which also the inhabitants were supplied by the city company of water-bearers, who brought it in leathern panniers slung on horses. In 1582 a great step in advance was taken by Peter Moris, a Dutchman, the real originator of the Thames water compares, who erected a “forcier” on an arch of London Bridge to convey the Thames water into the houses in the east end of the city as far as Gracechurch Street; in 1594 another was erected near Broken Wharf for W r est Cheap, Fleet Street, and the district round St Paul’s, and in 1610 a third at Aldersgate without the gate. Moris, who obtained the lease of one arch of London Bridge for five hundred years at a rental of 10s. per annum, and two years later the use of another arch, erected for his purpose very ingenious machinery; and the works continued until 1701 in the possession of the family, who after amassing large wealth sold the lease to a company for £30,000 They ultimately occupied four arches, and continued till 1822, when the supply was purchased by the Southwark Company for £10,000. In 1605 an Act was passed for supplying the northern districts from springs near Ware in Herts. This enterprise was in 1609 undertaken by Hugh Myddleton, who, when his funds became exhausted in 1612, received the necessary money from James I. on condition of his sharing in the profits. With this assistance the reservoirs at Clerkenwell supplied by the New River were opened in 1613. In 1630 a scheme to bring water to London and Westminster from Hoddesden in Herts was promoted by aid of a lottery licensed by Charles I. on condition that the promoters should pay £4000 per annum into the king’s treasury. Strype, writing in 1720, mentions that “there is not a street in London but water runs through it in pipes conveyed underground, and from those pipes there is scarce a house whose rent is £15 or £20 per annum but hath the convenience of water brought into it,” while “for the smaller tenements there is generally a cock or pump convenient to the inhabitants.” In 1721 the Chelsea Water Company began to supply water from the Thames to Westminster and the parts adjacent, and in 1783 the supply of south London was supplemented by the erection of the Lambeth water-works opposite Charing Cross. The Vauxhall Company was established at Vauxhall Bridge in 1805, the West Middlesex near Hammersmith in 1806, the East London on the River Lea at Bow in the same year, the Kent on the Ravensbourne at Deptford in 1810, the Grand Junction at the Grand Junction Canal in 1811, and the Southwark at London Bridge in 1822. For several years before the interference of parliament the companies had agreed to restrict themselves to separate localities. The Acts of 1847 required the companies to provide pure and wholesome water for the use of the inhabitants in the districts supplied by them, and also to provide water for general use. An Act passed in 1852 compelled the removal of the companies beyond the tidal limits of the Thames, contained regulations as to rates, enforced thorough filtration, and endeavoured to make provision for a constant supply. The rates, which differ in the various companies, were in some respects amended by the Act of 1871; but, as it fails to guard against claims for back dividends, no sufficient guarantee is provided against the raising of the rates. These are charged chiefly on the value of the houses, but the Acts do not distinguish with sufficient clearness between the gross annual value and the rental. A proposal in 1880 to purchase the rights of the companies, whose capital was then a little over £12,000,000, for £34,160,000, failed to commend itself to a committee of the House of Commons.

Their accounts being made up at different periods, it is impossible to give comparative returns for the companies; the following are the figures (Table V.), as best they can be stated, for two years :— [table]

Within ten years the increase of capital has thus been about 24 per cent., or 2⅝ per cent, per annum, the increase of the income 54 per cent., or 5⅜ per cent, per annum, and of the expenses 57 per cent., or 5⅛ per annum. Thus, while in 1871 there was a capital of 10 millions, gaining 6 per cent, profits, in 1881 there was a capital of 12⅛ millions producing 7∣ per cent. Within the last two years the value of the property has been increasing at a more rapid ratio, and probably at the rate of £1,250,000 per annum; but, as on account of the proposals to buy up the rights of the companies they have at present special reasons for curtailing expenses and delaying the carrying out of all but essential improvements, it is impossible to know how much of the increase is temporary and artificial.

According to Dr Frankland the water of the Thames and the Lea, notwithstanding the most efficient possible filtration, are, on account of sewage pollution, becoming less and less fit for domestic use, about one-half of the water at present supplied being already grossly polluted, and a very large proportion of the remainder occasionally polluted. He therefore recommends that the supply of w·ater for domestic use should be taken from the springs of the basin before they reach the river. At the present rate of the increase of London the supply required will, however, within forty years exceed that which may be obtainable in the whole Thames basin in times of summer drought, such as may occur in any year, and thus in a future not far distant a means of storage must be provided, or a new source of supply discovered, involving an outlay which would at least double the rates on the present rental. The Kent Company, which obtains its supply from the chalk wells, is the only one possessing wholly unpolluted sources, but the New River Company also obtains about one-tenth of its supply from springs, the remainder being obtained from the Lea. The East London Company obtains its supplies from the Lea and Thames, and the other companies from the Thames alone. The following table (VL) gives certain particulars :— [table]

Lighting. —From 1416 the citizens of London were under an obligation to hang out candles between certain hours on dark nights for the illumination of the streets; and in 1661 a special Act of Parliament was passed to enforce the custom. The corporation in 1684 granted a licence to Edward Heming, the inventor of oil lamps, for the sole supply of the public lights for twenty-one years, but the duty was then once more assigned to the individual citizens. A second agreement with contractors not proving satisfactory, the corporation in 1736 obtained from parliament permission to erect lights where they thought proper, and to levy a rate, which in that year yielded £15,000. Gas-lighting was in 1807 introduced in Pall Mall by the erection of a small apparatus to supply the lamps on the one side of the street, the other being still lighted with oil. In 1810 the Gas Light and Coke Company received a charter permitting it to supply gas to any persons within “the cities of London and Westminster, and the borough of Southwark,” and as the result of their enterprise Westminster Bridge in 1813 was lighted with gas, and in 1814 the whole of the streets of St Margaret’s parish. The City of London Gas Company was formed in 1817, and soon afterwards other seven companies. After several years’ wasteful competition the companies came to an agreement in 1857 to restrict themselves to separate localities. This led to the Metropolitan Gas Act of 1860, the only effectual provisions of which were those in reference to the quality of the gas. The City of London Gas Act of 1868, limiting the price of gas within the City to 3s. 9d. ]5er 1000 feet, except in certain cases, was the only other measure of a restrictive character passed before 1876, and previous to this the companies, by amalgamation, and through the favourable terms on which they were allowed to increase their capital and to raise new shares, had enormously increased the value of their dividends. The Act of 1876, from the provisions of which the London Gas Company is exempt, adopted a sliding scale of dividends, one half of the profits, after a 10 per cent, dividend had been paid, going to the shareholders, the other being applied to reduction in the price of the gas, it being also provided that the price should not be more than 3s. 9d., and that when additions were made to the capital the shares should be put up to auction. The experimental introduction of the electric light by the commissioners of sewers of the City, and by the Metropolitan Board (for the Thames Embankment and some of the bridges), has led the gas companies to provide better lights in some of the more important streets.

The following table (VII. ) will show that the prosperity of the companies has not been affected by the legislation of 1876, and as yet has not materially suffered from the threatened competition of electric lighting :— [table]

Fire Extinction. —Until 1866 the duty of extinguishing fires was in the hands of the fire insurance companies, which in 1832 united in support of one brigade for the whole of London, but only kept a comparatively small establishment, in the central districts of the metropolis. The other districts were protected by small hand-engines kept up by the parochial authorities according to the 14 Geo. III. c. 78. Since the staff of the fire insurance companies was placed under the care of the Metropolitan Board, the number of stations has been increased from 17 to 53, with 4 floating stations, while 11 movable stations have also been provided; the number oi engines has been increased from 11 steam and 27 manual to 3 floating engines, 38 steam land engines, and 115 manual; and the number of men has been increased from 130 to 536, in addition to 68 coachmen and pilots. The board has also undertaken the duty of protecting life from fire, which previous to 1867 was discharged by a society supported by voluntary subscriptions, and they at present maintain 137 fire-escapes, which are stationed during the night in the most prominent parts of the metropolis. The total receipts of the brigade in 1880 was £91,545, and the expenses £88,980, of which £56,021 was defrayed by the board, £10,000 was paid by the treasury, and £21,464 was contributed by the insurance companies, at the rate of £35 for every £1,000,000 insured by them. In 1881 the expenses were over £100,000, of which over £60,000 was defrayed by rates. The number of persons endangered by fire during 1881 was 154, of whom 114 were saved and 40 lost their lives. The following table (VIII.) gives a classification of fires since 1874 [table]

Sanitary Arrangements. —Untd 1531 no provision was made for the construction of underground main sewers, notwithstanding that in 1290 the exhalations from the Fleet overcame the incense burnt at the altars in the neighbouring churches, and that in 1307 the river, on account of the accumulation of filth, had become inaccessible for ships. The Act of Henry III. in 1531, which provided for the appointment of a commission of sewers, was renewed in 1548 by Edward VI., and extended in its application by James I. in 1607; and subsequently separate commissions were granted as the population extended to other districts. The most important work of the old commission of sewers was the bridging over of the Fleet in 1637. In 1841 this sewer, which drained an area of over 400 acres, was widened at a cost of about £47,000, and at its mouth an iron culvert was provided which carried its discharge into the middle of the Thames. Other main sewers were constructed, but the bridging of them over was carried out slowly and in a very imperfect manner. In early times the nuisances were carried away by the scavengers and the sewage received into wells, which when full were pumped into the kennels of the streets. Until 1848 the discharge of house sewage into the main drainage was forbidden, and the construction of cesspools enforced, the majority of which were unprovided with overflow drains, but after 1810 there was considerable improvement in connexion with the introduction of better arrangements for a supply of water. Under the auspices of the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers, created by the Act of 1848, a more satisfactory system of local drainage was enforced; but its action in regard to the main sewage discharge was so dilatory that the pressure of public opinion ]ed to the Metropolitan Local Management Act of 1855 providing for the creation of the Metropolitan Board of Works, in which was vested the care of the main sewers, and to which was entrusted the construction of works for their discharge at a distance from London regarded as sufficient to prevent the pollution of the river. Works were commenced in 1859, and completed in 1865 at a cost of £4,607,000, providing three lines of intercepting sewers on the north side of the river, which convey the discharge 11 miles below London Bridge, and two lines on the south side, which convey their discharge 4 miles farther down. These works comprise 80 miles of main intercepting sewers, in addition to four pumping stations to raise the sewage from the lower levels. The total length of the main street sewers entrusted to the board was about 165 miles, one-fifth of which consisted of offensive open sewers, while many of the others were of most defective design or out of repair. The total cost of repairing these sewers, and connecting them with the new main drainage system, was estimated at £800,000, and works to the value of £750,000 have been executed. The sum expended on main drainage and main sewers up to 31st December 1881 was £5,684,470. The opinion seems to be increasing that the present method of getting rid of the sewage of London is radically wrong, and undoubtedly the sewage discharge may reach proportions which may absolutely demand a new supplemental scheme. For the four years ending 1878 the average daily sewage discharge was 122j millions of gallons, in 1878 it was 157∣ millions, and it is now estimated at 180 millions.

The conservancy of the Thames was in 1857 transferred from the corporation to a body of twelve, nominated by various authorities, and presided over by the lord mayor; and in 1867 the conservancy of the upper reaches from Staines to Cricklade was vested in a board, of which the conservators of the lower reaches formed the majority, Under the auspices of these two boards not only has the navigation of the river been very much improved, but very stringent care has been exercised to prevent its unnecessary pollution. In 1868 the Lea was also placed under the control of a conservancy board. The expenses of the boards are defrayed by tonnage dues, tolls, pier dues, fines, and licences, and contributions from the canal and water companies.

The sanitary condition of the streets and houses is under the care of vestries and district boards, but great variety exists in regard to the efficiency with which the work is performed.

An Act passed in 1845 provides for the prohibition of interment in any of the cemeteries within the metropolitan area by order in council, and forbids the construction of new burial grounds within 2 miles of the metropolis except on the approval of the secretary of state. The power of constructing cemeteries for their several districts is granted to the vestries, who may borrow money for this purpose from the Public Works Loan Commissioners, and are required to appoint a board for their management. The commissioners of sewers for the City of London are the burial board for the City parishes. The secretary of state has the power to issue regulations in regard to the construction of cemeteries and the arrangements connected with interment. Among the more important suburban cemeteries are Kensal Green (in which many eminent persons have been interred), Brompton, Hampstead, Highgate, Abney Park, Nunhead, and Norwood.

Health. —Apart from the deleterious influence of smoke and defective sanitary arrangements, London must be regarded as exceptionally healthy. Although subject occasionally to rapid alternations of temperature, the climate is generally mild and according to the seasons equable, with an early spring and a long autumn. The following table (IX.) gives a summary of Greenwich meteorology for thirty-two years, 1849-80 :— [table]

In 1306, when the population did not exceed 50,000, the citizens of London petitioned Edward I. to prohibit the use of sea coal, and he passed a law making the burning of it a capital offence. John Evelyn, in Fumifugium, written in 1661, complains that on account of the increase of coal smoke the gardens no longer bear fruit, and instances various cases in which the smoke had been prejudicial to health, but the influence of smoke in increasing fogs and intensifying their evils seems not to have been appreciable. The smoke-producing area has since then increased from about 3 square miles to over 100 square miles, and the average daily consumption of coals in domestic fireplaces has mounted to about 27,000 tons, or in winter probably to 40,000 tons, which in certain states of the atmosphere produces a cloud of smoke resting for days over the central districts of the town, and shutting out the sun, even when it does not descend in foggy weather as a thick, impenetrable, and partly poisonous mass of darkness. During the fogs of 1879-80 asthma increased 220 per cent, and bronchitis 331 per cent., and in the week ending February 13, 1882, the death-rate, owing to the dense fogs, rose from 27 , 1 in the previous week to 35 ’ 3, diseases of the respiratory organs rising to 994, the corrected weekly average of this class of diseases being 430. The evil is mainly due to the smoke of domestic fireplaces.

The death-rate of London has steadily declined since the beginning of the century, when it was first exceeded by the birth-rate. A record of the births and deaths of London entitled “Bills of Mortality” was made by the parish clerks in the plague year of 1593, and from 1603 was continued even after the returns had begun to be published by the registrar-general. Though they only included the births of persons baptized according to the forms of the Church of England, and the deaths of persons buried in consecrated ground within the parishes included in the “Bills,” and were in many cases very carelessly compiled, they place it beyond doubt that even in years when London was exempt from the plague the rate of mortality required a large immigration from the country to take the place of those who died in London. Previous to 1593 the great plague years were 1349, 1361, and 1369.

The following table (X.) shows the number of births and deaths in the great plague years of the seventeenth century, and the average annual number for every decade in the 18th century :— [table]

The average mortality of London in 1881 was 21‘6 per 1000, or 1 , 1 less than that of the twenty other large towns of England, while the rate for England was only 20 ’ 5. It is to be remembered that London contains a comparatively small proportion of working class population. Its sanitary condition is still very far in advance of that of Paris, where at present the death-rate is about 130 for 100 in London. The registrar-general calculates that according to the density of London its normal death-rate should be much lower than it -is, but, besides the fact that mortality is influenced by other causes than sanitary arrangements, the extended area augments the evil results of density, and the lesser density in some districts cannot counterbalance the excessive crowding of others. Table XI. gives the annual rate of mortality per 1000 persons living for various periods, and Table XII. the number of births and of deaths from the principal zymotic diseases and from all causes :—

[table] [table]

The mean marriage-rate for ten years 1870-79 was 19 - 2, and for 1880 it was 18'1. The percentage of children born out of wedlock in 1880 was 3'9, that for England being 4 ’ 8.

Markets and Food Supply. —A regulation passed in 1277 ordained that no market should be kept on London Bridge or elsewhere except in places specially appointed for the purpose, and that no person should buy wares in Southwark that were to be bought in the City. In 1322 a decree was issued by the mayor that none should sell fish or flesh “out of the markets appointed, to wit, Bridge Street, East Cheap, Old Fish Street, St Nicholas shambles, and Stocks market”; and in 1328 a charter was granted to the corporation by Edward III., conveying to it the sole right to establish markets within 7 miles’ circuit of the city. In 1345 a proclamation was passed that poultry instead of being sold in lanes cr hostels should be brought to Leaden Hall, and in the same year it was decreed that butchers and fishmongers should sell in the enclosed place called the “Stokkes,” and not in the king’s highway. After Acts passed in 1351 and 1382 on behalf of aliens and foreigners, all regulations formerly made in reference to the sale of provisions in London were repealed, and the dealers placed under the control of the mayor and aidermen, thus confirming a system of public markets and bazaars even for the retail trade, which remained almost inviolate till the time of Edward VI., up to whose reign there was, according to Stow, scarcely such a thing as a shop between Westminster and St Paul’s. The system, though now broken up even in regard to provisions so far as the retail trade is concerned, remains intact in regard to the vending of certain provisions wholesale, and still exercises a considerable influence on general retail. The principal markets mentioned by Stow are Smithfield, Bartholomew Fair, Leaden Hall, Grass Church (Grace Church) market, chiefly for corn, meal, and cheese; East Cheap flesh market, the adjoining alley to which, Red Rose Lane, had by this time received the less idyllic title of Pudding Lane, on account of the butchers making use of it for the disposal of the offal before transferring it to their dung-boats on the Thames; Newgate market for corn, afterwards for meat; St Nicholas shambles; Stocks market, established in 1282 on a place occupied by public stocks, and rebuilt in 1410, for flesh, fish, and poultry; and the fish market in Old Fish Street. He also states that in 1302 bread was sold in Bread Street in the open market. Before the great fire Stocks market was occupied by greengrocers, the important vegetable market at Honey Lane had also been established, and markets, chiefly for meat and fowls, were held at Holborn Bars and outside Temple Bars. The increase of the population led in 1657 to the establishment by Lord Clare of Clare market, which, though now frequented only by a very humble class of buyers, was declared a free market by a special Act of Cromwell’s parliament, and was for a long time one of the principal markets for all kinds of provisions. Other markets subsequently established were those of St James by the earl of St Albans, Bloomsbury by the earl of Southampton, Brook market by Lord Brook, Hungerford market, Newport market, Haymarket, and Mayfair. Newport market for meat still exists, but the others have been gradually superseded. The principal markets now existing are Smithfield (central meat market and poultry market), Leadenhall (poultry and game), Billingsgate (fish), Covent Garden (fruit and vegetables), the cattle markets at Copenhagen Fields and Deptford, the Bermondsey leather market, and the Cumberland, Smithfield, and Whitechapel hay markets.

A market for horses and cattle was held at Smithfield (Smoothfield) in the time of Fitzstephen, and doubtless long anterior to this. The priory of St Bartholomew in Smithfield obtained from Henry II. the privilege of a fair for drapers, which was kept three days yearly, originally in the churchyard at a considerable distance from the place occupied by the cattle market, and latterly became a scene of great riot, until it was abolished in 1853. A year later the cattle market was removed to Copenhagen Fields. There were 80 butchers in London and suburbs in 1533, each of whom killed 9 oxen weekly, which in forty-six weeks, none being killed in Lent, would amount to 33,120 yearly. In John Erswick’s Brief Note of the Benefits of Fish Days (1593), it is estimated that 60 butchers, freemen of the city, killed each 5 oxen weekly, or altogether 300 per week, and that the foreigners or non-freemen killed four times as many, or 1200 weekly, the total number of cattle annually killed being thus 69,000. By Bichard II. a law was passed enacting that no flesh should be killed in London but at Knightsbridge or such like distance from the city, but in the time of Stow the slaughterhouses of the freemen butchers were in Pentecost Lane adjoining St Nicholas shambles and near the Butchers’ Hall. Probably the arrangements in regard to slaughter-houses were then more advanced in London than they are now, for, although sufficient slaughterhouses to dispose of all the cattle sold at Copenhagen Fields have been erected adjoining the market, a very large number of cattle are still killed in underground cellars, which, notwithstanding the superintendence of the Board of Works under the Slaughter-Houses Act of 1874, are in the majority of cases totally unsuited for the purpose. The number of these slaughter-houses before the passing of the Act, when they were licensed by the justices, was 1429; but they have now been reduced to a little over 900. The following table (XIII.) gives the average yearly number of sheep and cattle sold at Smithfield at various periods from 1731 to 1854, when the market was removed :— [table]

The market at Copenhagen Fields, Holloway, covers upwards of 20 acres, and was erected at a cost of £441,000, with accommodation for 6616 bullocks, 34,980 sheep, 1425 calves, and 900 pigs. Deptford foreign market, which occupies the site of Deptford dockyard, and was bought for £100,000, has an area of 22 acres. The following table (XIV.) gives the number of cattle, sheep, and pigs sold at the metropolitan markets since 1870 :—

[table]

The Central London meat market, opened in Smithfield in 1868 at a cost of about £250,000, to supersede Newgate market, is built in the Italian Renaissance style, with towers at the four corners, and occupies about 3 acres, its length being 625 feet and its breadth 240. Below the market area there is a railway terminus. To the west of the meat market another one-third its size was opened in 1875 for poultry and provisions. From 1869 to 1875 the toll received from the meat market increased from £14,220 to £18,272, or 28⅜ per cent., and with the addition of the poultry and provision market it had increased in 1880 to £24,310, or 71 per cent The total amount of meat sold in the market in 1879 was 213,614 tons; in 1880 the total amount was 221,448 tons, of which 107,326 tons were country-killed, 80,905 town-killed, 7381 foreign, and 25,836 American, the amount of American meat in 1876 being only 5513 tons. A large quantity of meat is conveyed to the butchers direct without entering the market, and several butchers also buy their cattle and get them killed privately. As, moreover, the cattle markets and the meat market supply towns and villages beyond the metropolitan area, there is a double impossibility of forming from these sales an estimate of the actual amount of butcher’s meat consumed in London.

Leadenhall, which according to Stow belonged in 1309 to Sir Hugh Neville, and had been used as a market before it came into the possession of the city in 1411, was enlarged in 1444 by an addition for a granary in connexion with the corn market which had been removed to it from Cornhill, the clothes market also following before 1503; and before 1553 the foreign butchers who formerly stood in the High Street off Lime Street had been ordered to take stalls in it. A great part of it in the time of Stow was used as a wool market, but afterwards it became the principal provision market in the city; and, according to Pennant, the Spanish ambassador told Charles II. that he believed there was more meat sold in that market than in all the kingdom of Spain. The Leadenhall underwent improvements in 1713 and 1814; and in 1881 a newstnιcture of elegant design, with an area of 26,900 square feet, and erected at a cost of £50,000, was opened as a market for fowls and game, the principal commodities sold at Leadenhall for many years.

Billingsgate, the great fish market of the metropolis, was from an early period a harbour for small ships and boats, and in the time of Stow had almost superseded its great rival Queenhithe, which was in the possession of the Crown. As it grew in importance fish stalls were erected in its neighbourhood, but the original market for fish was in Fish Street; and Friday Street, Cheapside, which received its name from being inhabited by fishmongers who served Friday’s market, is mentioned as early as 1303. The Act of 1699, which made Billingsgate a “free market for fish,” to some extent interfered with the ancient control of the fishmongers, although the custom of selling fish there had been introduced long previously. Until 1846 Billingsgate was a mere assemblage of wooden sheds. The building erected in that year was succeeded by another in 1877, with an area of 39,000 feet instead of 20,000; but, on account of the deficiency of its communications and its defective internal accommodation and arrangements, the market is totally inadequate. Among several abortive efforts to establish other markets for fish was Columbia market, which was completed in 1869 by the Baroness Burdett Coutts for over £200,000, and presented as a fish market to the City, but failed to attract salesmen. The City authorities have the intention to utilize the vegetable market in course of erection at Smithfield as a fish market, and a scheme is also being promoted for a fish market in the parish of St Paul, Shadwell. A fish and vegetable market has been established by the Great Eastern Railway Company at Canning Town. The quantity of fish brought to London by rail is not given by the markets committee prior to 1866, but in 1848 the quantity brought by water alone was 108,739 tons. In 1866 the total brought by water and rail was 132,004, in 1870 it was 117,193, in 1875 only 94,949, but since 1877, when the new market was opened, it has gradually increased from 107,168 to 130,629, or nearly 2000 tons less than in 1866, and scarcely 12,000 more than were brought in 1848 by water alone. There has of late years been a more rapid increase in the quantity of water-borne fish, but the amount brought by rail is at present about two-thirds of the whole. Thus, with a population which since 1851 has increased by two-fifths, the fish supply has practically remained stagnant, while, owing to delay in consequence of increased pressure of traffic, the fish often deteriorate so as to be unfit for human food.

Covent Garden market, for vegetables, fruit, and flowers, which occupies the site of a convent garden belonging to Westminster Abbey, seems to have been used as a market very early in the 17th century, and it received a considerable impulse from the discontinuance of Stocks market on account of the building of the Mansion House and also of Honey Lane market, which in 1823 was superseded by the City of London school, while since the removal of Hungerford market to make way for Charing Cross station it has remained the only vegetable and flower market of importance in the metropolis, although vegetables of a cheap kind are sold at the Borough and Spitalfields markets, watercresses at Farringdon market, which superseded the Fleet vegetable market in 1824, and potatoes at the station of the Great Northern Railway. Until 1828 Covent Garden market consisted of an unsightly array of sheds. The present building, erected by the duke of Bedford, though lately much improved, is quite inadequate for its requirements, while the arrangements for the disposal of mud and refuse are very reprehensible.

Tattersall’s, Knightsbridge, established by Richard Tattersall in 1780, is one of the principal marts in England for riding and carriage horses, and may be regarded as the headquarters of the turf.

One of the principal difficulties connected with the establishment of new markets in London lies in the inconvenient railway arrangements, which render it impossible to obtain a site that shall have sufficient and direct communication with the several districts of England and with the Continent The poorer classes obtain a cheap supply of vegetables and other provisions from costermongers and itinerant vendors, who either occupy stands in special localities, especially in the East End, and in High Street (Islington), Hampstead Road, Edgeware Road, and York Road (Somers Town), or hawk them through the streets. The capital possessed in 1861 by these vendors, who then numbered 41,040, was estimated at £40,000, their gross amount of annual trade at £2,700,000, and their annual gains at £900,000. Since that period their numbers, capital, trade, and gains have probably increased at least one-third.

Commerce and Industry. —London, which was a port of some consequence in the time of the Romans, is spoken of by Bede as the “mart of many nations resorting to it by sea and land.” The Hanse merchants, protected by a clause of Magna Charta, began in the 13th century to frequent London in large numbers, and, after obtaining liberty in 1236 to land and store the wool imported by them, are supposed to have settled in the Steelyard about 1250, but as early as the 8th century they had begun to frequent Billingsgate, and in 978 King Ethelred had conferred certain privileges on them and on other traders. Probably by the time of Fitzstephen London had become the most renowned mart of the world, with the exception perhaps of Antwerp and Bruges. The foreign merchants received a special charter from Edward I. in 1303, and, notwithstanding occasional interference with their privileges, the Hanse traders, who had erected extensive factories and storehouses near their “Gildhall,” gradually absorbed the greater portion of the foreign trade of London, until the incorporation of the Merchant Adventurers of England, in 1505, for trading in wool to the Netherlands. The trade with the Levant, which had become of some importance in the 15th century, soon largely extended, and commercial intercourse was also opened up with Barbary, Guinea, and Brazil. After the abolition of the special privileges of the Steelyard merchants, the trade in wool was transferred almost entirely to the Merchant Adventurers, the annual export of English wool and drapery to Antwerp and Bruges in 1566 being estimated at over £2, 000,000. The close of the 16th century was marked by the rapid extension of maritime discovery, and the spirit of enterprise was stimulated by the grant of monopolies to those companies which should first open up communication with undiscovered countries. One of the earliest and most successful of the great maritime companies was the Russian, incorporated in 1553, which, besides establishing an extensive commerce with the ports of Russia, had an overland trade with Persia. The foundation of the Royal Exchange by Gresham in 1566 marked an era in the commercial history of London; and the destruction of Antwerp by the duke of Parma in 1585 left it without a rival as the emporium of Europe. The settlement of many of the Flanders merchants in England gave a great impetus to the manufacture of silks, damasks, and other fine cloths, but from the time of the expulsion of the Steelyard merchants by Elizabeth in 1597 the development of the maritime trade of London was solely in the hands of English companies. The incorporation of the Turkey Company in 1579, of the East India Company in 1600, of the Virginia Company in 1606, and of the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1670 must be regarded, not only as the most important events connected with the'growth of the port in the 17th and 18th centuries, but as of prime consequence in relation to the social and political history of England.

In the trade of London there is a large excess of imports over exports, arising from the fact that it is specially a mart, and is removed from proximity to any large manufacturing district. The value in 1880 of the total trade of Liverpool, £191,489,838, was nearly equal to that of London, which was £194,043,836, but the value of the imports of London exceeded those of Liverpool by nearly £34,000,000, while the exports of Liverpool exceeded those of London by about £31,000,000. London has almost a monopoly of the trade with the East Indies and China, and has thus become the chief emporium for tea, coffee, sugar, spices, and indigo, and for silks and Eastern manufactures. A great part of the overland trade of London with India has till quite recently been carried on via Southampton, which, and also Folkestone, Newhaven, and Dover, may be regarded as virtually ports of London. The value of the imports of Folkestone, Newhaven, and Dover in 1880 amounted together to £24,485,034, and their exports to only £4,432,244; the imports of Southampton were valued at £9,205,183, and its exports at £9,306,326. In the Mediterranean and Levant trade London has now a powerful rival in Liverpool. From European and Asiatic Turkey London imports corn, dried fruits, madder, and various other special products; from Greece currants and olive oil; from Italy olive oil, wine, sumach, oranges, and lemons; from Spain wine and dried fruits; from Portugal and the Azores oranges and wine. Nearly the whole of the French trade with England is concentrated in London, the imports including all the special French manufactures, and large quantities of butter, eggs, vegetables, and corn. It is, however, largely carried on through the southern ports, the value of the imports of silk to Folkestone in 1880 being £3,614,014, and those of London only £260,646, while the imports of eggs at Newhaven greatly exceed those of London, as do also the imports of butter and eggs at Southampton. London absorbs the greater part of the Baltic imports to England, especially timber, corn, cattle, wool, and provisions, the tonnage of the shipping that entered from Germany in 1881 being 634,741, from Belgium 249,161, from Sweden 416,997, from Norway 201,056, from the northern ports of Russia 401,076, and from Denmark 135,634. The tonnage that entered from the southern ports of Russia only amounted to 50,883, but much of this trade is carried on via Southampton. The chief imports from Russia are corn, tallow, timber, hemp, linseed, and wool. The fact that the staple manufacture of Lancashire is cotton has enabled Liverpool to gain a superiority over London in the United States trade, with the exception of imports of tobacco from Virginia; but the shipping that entered London from the Atlantic ports of the United States in 1881 had a burden of 670,079 tons, and from the Pacific ports of 3248 tons. From Central America London obtains its chief supply of the finer woods, and also jalap, sarsaparilla, indigo, coffee, and Peruvian bark, and from South America sugar, hides, indiarubber, coffee, diamonds, and various drugs. From Canada the port receives timber, corn, cattle, and provisions, from the Australian islands wool, oil, gold, copper, tin, provisions, and cattle; and it possesses more than half the trade of England with the West Indies, the principal imports being sugar and molasses, fruit, rum, coffee, cocoa, fine woods, pimento, and ginger.

On account of the burning of the records at the custom-house, and the absence of regular parliamentary returns, it is impossible to give a continuous summary of the progress of the shipping before 1816, but the following table (XV.) gives the returns of the shipping engaged in the foreign and colonial trade in various years from 1693 to that date, and the yearly average for subsequent periods :— [table]

Since 1873 vessels with ashes and manure have been included in the coasting trade, and therefore the figures after that date show much greater progress than has actually taken place. In 1750 the number employed was 6396, and in 1795 it was 11,964 of 1,176,400 tons. The following table (XVI.) gives details from 1855 :— [table]

The following table (XVII. ) gives the number of vessels registered in the port of London in various years from 1701: — [table]

Declared values of the exports from London have been made at various periods, and are now made annually in the statement of the trade of the United Kingdom. Since 1840 the value has more than quadrupled, being in that year £11,586,037, from which it gradually rose almost without intermission till it was £60,232,118 in 1874, but from that year it declined till in 1879 it was £47,335,753. In 1880 it again rose to £52,600,929, considerably above the average of the four years 1876-79, which wε β £49,884, 673, but as much below the average of 1872-75, which was £57,14'4,480. No return of the value of the imports is given before 1872, when they were £124,174,141. The value for 1880, £141,442,907, exceeds that of any previous year, the next being that for 1877, £140,332,773, while the average for 1872-75 was £129,449,956, and for 1876-79 £132,754,772. The following table (XVIII.) gives details of the principal imports for 1860 and 1880, and also a comparison with the United Kingdom in regard to the same articles :— [table]

In the time of Stow, Billingsgate had begun to supersede Queenhithe as the principal landing place of the port of London; but he also gives a list of other “common watergates,” and mentions that there were besides “divers private wharfs and keys all along from the east to the west end of the city, where merchants of all nations had landing places, warehouses, cellars, and stowage of their goods and merchandise.” On account, however, of the attempts made to avoid the payment of customs by the use of private landing places, a royal proclamation of Elizabeth appointed certain quays to be used as general landing places and others for special purposes. After the great fire the limits of the port were declared to be the North Foreland and London Bridge; certain wharves named “legal quays” were appointed for the general trade, and others named sufferance wharves were permitted to be used under certain conditions with the special leave of the commissioners. The frontage of the legal quays in 1795 was only 1419 feet, and of the sufferance quays about 3500 feet, and so inadequate was the storage accommodation that it would not have sufficed even for the single article of sugar. After the proposal for the establishment of wet docks was made by the West India Company the system was very rapidly extended. The West India docks at the Isle of Dogs were opened in 1802, the London docks at Wapping in 1805, the East India docks at Blackwall in 1806, St Katherine’s docks to the east of the Tower in 1828, the Victoria docks in 1850, and the Millwall docks at the Isle of Dogs in 1868. The West India Company was granted for twenty years a monopoly of the West India trade, the London Dock Company of the trade in wine, brandy, tobacco, and rice, and the East India Company of the East India and China trade, but in no case were the privileges of the companies renewed. The various docks have at different times undergone improvement and extension to meet modern necessities, the latest addition being the Albert extension of the Victoria dock, opened in 1880, which affords an additional water space of 70 acres, and is unsurpassed in the completeness of its arrangements by any other dock in the world. The St Katherine’s, London, and Victoria and Albert docks are now held by one company, and the East and West India docks by another, who are adding to their accommodation by the construction of the Tilbury docks specially for ocean steamers. All the great merchandise docks are thus on the north side of the river,— the Commercial docks, which date from 1696, and were reconstructed in 1807, and the Surrey docks (1812), on the south side of the river, being used almost exclusively for timber and grain. The position of St Katherine’s docks renders it impossible to adapt them to modern requirements; and probably, on account of the increased use of large ocean steamers, all the older docks may soon be superseded as regards the bulk of the foreign trade. The water area of the docks on the north side of the river, which in 1861 was 272 acres, will soon be 465 acres. The Surrey and Commercial dock, which, is very complicated in its construction, has a total area, including land and water, of 330 acres. The land and water area (in acres) of the several docks on the north side of the river at present completed or in process of construction is as follows (Table XIX. ) :— [table]

The bonded warehouse system was sanctioned in the port of London in 1803, and the exclusive enjoyment for several years of this privilege gave it a great advantage over the other ports of the kingdom. The warehouses of the dock companies, each occupied with their special class of goods, embrace a large portion of the City area, but the rapidity with which goods now pass into consumption renders this kind of dock property at present very unprofitable, and it is probable that very soon many of the warehouses will be turned to other uses.

The Custom-House in Lower Thames Street was built by Laing, 1814-17, but on account of the subsidence of the central part the present Corinthian façade, 490 feet in length, designed by Smirke, was afterwards added. In the building there is a museum containing various old documents and specimens of articles seized by the custom-house authorities.

Trinity House, Tower Hill, a plain building with an ornamental façade, erected in 1793 from the designs'of Wyatt, is the seat of an association of mariners which received a charter from Henry VIII.

in 1514, and gradually acquired the management of lighthouses and buoys not only on the Thames but on the whole English coast, besides the superintendence of naval arsenals and dockyards. Along with the corporation of the City it had the conservancy of the Thames, until those authorities were superseded by the Thames Conservancy Board. Its general rights and privileges have also been much curtailed since 1853, when it was put under the partial control of the Board of Trade, but it has still the sole charge of the erection and maintenance of lighthouses and buoys, the examination of pilots and of navigating lieutenants; and two of its elder brethren act as nautical advisers in the High Court of Admiralty.

The prosperity of that portion of London known as the City is largely due to its proximity to the port, but the rapid development of the trade of the port is closely connected with the increase of London outside the City limits, which is of course dependent on a great variety of causes. The uninterrupted extension of the business and financial transactions of the City, and the connexion of these with the rapid increase of the surrounding population, is sufficiently evidenced by the fact that the rateable annual value of the City has risen from about £760 an acre in 1801 to about £5300 an acre in 1881; that the net profits under the commercial and mercantile schedule D for the combined boroughs of the metropolis (1879-80) amounted to £81,088,368, of which the profits for the City alone amounted to £39,263,424, a larger sum than that of the whole seventeen next largest cities and towns of the United Kingdom; and that the number of persons entering the City daily during the sixteen hours of business has increased from 657,379 in 1866 to 739,640 in 1881.

The business centre of London is the Royal Exchange, which occupies a commanding position between Threadneedle Street and Cornhill, at the principal convergence of the City thoroughfares. The first building, erected 1565-70 by Sir Thomas Gresham and presented to the City, was destroyed by the great fire, and the second opened in 1669 was also burnt in 1838. The present exchange (1839-44), designed by Tite and erected at a cost of £180,000, is a quadrangular structure with an imposing Corinthian portico at its principal entrance, and encloses a court surrounded by an ambulatory. It is in the open central area that the commercial transactions take place—the ground floor being occupied by shops and offices, and the principal floor by insurance companies and “Lloyd’s rooms.” The principal exchanges for special articles are the corn exchange in Mark Lane, where the privilege of a fair was originally granted by Edward I.; the wool exchange in Coleman Street; the coal exchange adjoining the custom-house, erected in 1849 in the Italian style, and consisting of a rotunda surmounted by a dome; and the auction mart for landed property in Tokenhouse Yard. The metal market is a very important one; and there is also a very large consignment of precious metals and diamonds, the workers in which are chiefly concentrated in the neighbourhood of Werken well. The Royal Mint, Tower Hill, erected in 1805 on the site of the Cistercian abbey of St Mary, is the only mint in England for the fabrication of gold and silver coins, but bronze coins are chiefly made at Birmingham, and gold coinage is now also manufactured at Sidney and Melbourne.

The unique commercial position of London, and its intercourse with every quarter of the globe, have assisted to make it financially in a more complete sense than it is commercially the metropolis of the world. The stock jobbers and brokers, who according to the City census of 1881 numbered 1682, and who have their offices chiefly in the courts and alleys adjoining the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange, are nearly all members of the stock exchange, for whom the present building in Capel Street was erected in 1801; but there is also an open stock exchange in Lothbury. The earliest approximation to banking transactions in London appeared in the negotiations for loans between Elizabeth and the principal city merchants, but the general adoption of the system was due to the civil war, when the merchants, some of whom had already made use of the Royal Mint as a bank of deposit, and the landed proprietors, began to place their money for the sake of greater security in the hands of the goldsmiths. Some of the private banks now existing, such as Coutts’s and Child’s, date from the 17th century, and a new era in the financial history of London was inaugurated in 1694 by the foundation of the Bank of England, of which a full account is given in the article Banking (vol. iii. p. 316 sq.). Until 1733 the business of the bank was carried on at Grocers’ Hall. The present building, which covers about 4 acres, and was enlarged in 1770 and 1788 by Sir Robert Taylor and Sir John Soane, presents to the street a low triangular wall without windows, and almost entirely devoid of ornament except at the north-west corner, which was copied from the temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli. Until the establishment of the London and Westminster Bank in 1834, the Bank of England was the only joint-stock bank in London. The private and joint-stock banks which have offices in London now number over 150. The principal banks are members of the Clearing House near Lombard Street, where a daily exchange of drafts or cheques is effected. For the year ending April 30, 1882, the total amount of bills, cheques, &c., paid at the Clearing House was £6,382,645,000, the largest sum paid in any of the fifteen years for which statistics have been collected, the amount for the first year ending 1868 being only £3,257,411,000. The extent of the commercial enterprise of London is strikingly indicated by the large number of companies, with their field of operations chiefly in foreign countries, which have been projected in the City or have in it their headquarters. The foreign operations of these companies are however sometimes only nominal, their real business being wholly confined to London itself.

The largest manufacturing industry in London is that of brewing, the number of common brewers in 1880 being 110, who made use of 9,955,177 bushels of malt, while of the 412,192 barrels of beer exported from the United Kingdom 236,206 were from London. To supply the breweries with water, wells now require to be sunk below the chalk to the greensand. According to Stow, the brewers in 1585 in London and Westminster, who then remained “near to the friendly water of Thames,” numbered 26, some of them being foreigners, who first introduced the art of cultivating hops. Among the oldest and most important of the breweries now existing is that of Barclay, Perkins, &Co., which covers an area of 12 acres, belonged at one time to Johnson’s friend Thrale, and occupies the site of the old Globe theatre.

Silk-weaving, which received a special impulse from the settlement of foreign refugees at Sρitalfields after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, has within the last fifty years been in a stagnant condition, owing chiefly to the rivalry of Lancashire. The majority of the other manufactures are earned on in the neighbourhood of the Thames. The ships built in London in 1881, which are principally yachts, numbered 64, but their total tonnage was only 2723. The principal shipbuilding yards are at the Isle of Dogs. Boat-building is extensively carried on at Chelsea and at several other places in the upper reaches of the river. There are large engineering-works at Lambeth and Millwall, potteries and glassworks at Lambeth, Whitefriars, and Southwark, tanneries at Bermondsey, chemical-works on the Lea, paper-works on the Wandle, and sugar bakeries at Whitechapel. The cabinetmakers’ shops are situated principally in the neighbourhood of Shoreditch, but there are several adjoining Tottenham Court Road and Hampstead Road, where upholstery warehouses are very numerous. Lucifer match making gives employment to a large number of women and children in the eastern districts. There are extensive hat manufactories in Lambeth. The special manufactures in different parts of London are too numerous for mention. The principal dépôts of the carriagebuilders are in Long Acre. A large trade in second-hand clothing is done by the Jews at Houndsditch, especially on Sunday morning, and on the same day of the week there are bird and fancy animal fairs at Church Street, Bethnal Green, and at St Andrew’s Street, Bloomsbury, near the Seven Dials. The centre of the wholesale book trade is in Paternoster Row, but some of the principal publishers have their premises in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden and still farther west. Fleet Street is largely occupied with the offices of the London and the provincial daily newspapers, but the office of the Times is in Printing-house Square. The weekly newspapers have their offices chiefly in streets running off the Strand.

Pauperism. —London since 1867 has been divided into thirty poor-law unions, which are governed by boards of guardians, for the most part elected annually by the householders and owners of property, the number of votes possessed by each owner or householder varying from one to six, according to the value of the property. A proportion of the guardians in each union are so ex officio, or are nominated by the Local Government Board. The Act of 1867 authorized the establishment of outdoor dispensaries in any union or parish; and in twenty-seven of the thirty unions of the metropolis there are now forty-seven of these dispensaries, the number of prescriptions made up in the year 1880 being over a million. For the maintenance of lunatics and insane poor, of patients suffering from contagious diseases, and of pauper children at school, and for the relief of casual paupers, a metropolitan common poor fund is provided, through the operation of which the cost of maintaining the poor is now equalized, to the extent of 42 - 3 per cent, of the whole sum applied over the metropolitan area. The good results which have followed, both in lessening expense and diminishing pauperism, especially outdoor pauperism, form a strong argument for the complete equalization of the rates, and the creation of a united poor-law authority for the whole metropolis. The three unions which in 1880 contributed most in aid of the poorer ones were Kensington (£27,705), St George’s (£25,299), and the City of London (£61,080); and the three unions most benefited were Holborn (£21,048), Bethnal Green (£19,835), and St Saviour’s, Southwark (£23,085); but, as will be seen from Table XXI. below, great inequality still exists in the rating, and the rate is generally higher in the poorer districts. Each poor-law union possesses one or more workhouses, but the accommodation is inadequate, and difficulty in dealing satisfactorily with applicants often follows. Several unions, by the powers granted them under the Act of 1867, have combined into districts to provide infirmaries for the sick and imbecile, there being nαw only three unions—

Bethnal Green, Hampstead, and Lewisham—whose sick are not treated in establishments under medical supervision. In addition to this, the several unions and parishes are combined into one metropolitan asylums district, with a managing body of sixty members, fifteen of whom are nominated by the Local Government Board. The total number of persons relieved in establishments belonging to the managers of the metropolitan asylums district since the first was opened in 1870 has been more than 1200 in imbecile asylums, nearly 50,000 in hospitals for infectious diseases, and 1375 on board the “Exmouth” training ship, which was established in March 1876. The paupers’ schools fall to be noticed under another section (see below, p. 834). The amount of accommodation provided in the various establishments of the unions in July 1870 was 35,093 beds, and in December 1880 it was 53,332 beds. Table XX. gives a summary of the poor rate returns for 1880; Table XXL the rateable value of the different unions in 1871 and 1881, and the average pauperism, the amount of adjusted relief, and the rate in the pound for relief in 1880; and Table XXII. various particulars in reference to metropolitan pauperism for 1871 and 1880.

The annual income of the various charitable institutions in London is now over £4,000,000, of which at least three-fourths is spent in London. That of the endowed parochial charities of the City of London in 1865 was £64,500, which by 1881 had increased to £116,960, those of Westminster being in the same years £26,555 and £33,124. The income of the charities of the Livery Companies in 1869 was stated to be £99,027, and now the 1028 charities belonging to the companies have an aggregate income of £185,829, representing a capital value of £4,456,768. The amount spent on education is £65,130, and on doles £108,498. In addition, the charities of the corporation probably possess an annual income of £30,000. The parliamentary commission appointed to inquire into the endowed parochial charities of the City of London and [table]

Westminster in the report of 1880 divides them into two classes,— those that are eleemosynary and those that are ecclesiastical. In regard to the first, it states that it is impossible to effect a satisfactory combination or readjustment of them under existing circumstances, and, in regard to the second, that they are so far liberated by altered circumstances as to require reappropriation to new charitable use.

Crime. —The London police district, or “Greater London,” is divided into two police jurisdictions, that of the metropolitan police, with an area of 440,919 acres, and that of the City police, with an area of 668 acres. The Metropolitan police force, which superseded the night watch in 1830, owes its existence to a bill introduced by Sir Robert Peel, providing for the establishment of a Metropolitan police under the control of the executive government. In 1839 the old watch was abolished within the City limits and a City police force appointed, which, however, is entirely under the control of the common council. There are two police courts within the City district, viz., Guildhall and Mansion House; and thirteen within the Metropolitan district, viz., Bow Street, Clerkenwell, Great Marlborough Street, Marylebone, Westminster, Lambeth, Southwark, Thames (Stepney), Worship Street, Woolwich, Greenwich, Hammersmith, and Wandsworth. The headquarters of the Metropolitan police are at Scotland Yard. The expenses of the two City police courts in 1880 were £10,031, and those of the Metropolitan police courts were £59,009, of which £10,527 was defrayed by fines and forfeitures. The Metropolitan police have power to regulate the street traffic, to inspect and license cabs, omnibuses, and other public conveyances, to interfere in abating smoke nuisance, and to inspect common lodginghouses. From 6158 in 1861 the Metropolitan force had in 1880 increased to 10,943, or one to every 430 of the population; the City police force from 628 to 830, or one to every 61 of the population. The increase of the City police force is necessitated wholly by the increase in the number of persons who daily frequent the City, for not only has the night population greatly diminished, but the resident criminal population has become almost extinct. The number of persons belonging to the criminal classes in the whole police district of the metropolis in 1880 was 2392, or one in 1992 of the population in 1881; the number of known thieves 1385, the number in England being 17,907; the number of indictable offences was 17,835 (of which 1137 occurred in the City), the number in England being 52,427; and the number of apprehensions 5261 (City 612), the number in England being 22,231. Of indictable offences 49 were murders, 6 attempted murders, 443 attempted suicide, 1150 burglaries, 8918 simple larcenies, 1745 larcenies from the person, and 367 utterances of counterfeit coin; 47 bodies of persons found dead and unknown were photographed and not identified. The number of offences determined summarily within the area of the Metropolitan police district was 125,302, or 11 , 41 to every policeman, the proportion of indictable offences to every policeman being6 ’ 70. The number of offences determined summarily within the City area was 5649, or only 6 - 70 to every policeman, while the proportion of indictable offences was only ‘78. The total expense of the Metropolitan police was £1,168,061, or about £106 per man; £451,334 was contributed to the expense from public revenue, and £93,071 was received for special services. The expense of the City police, £90,662 in 1880, is defrayed wholly by rate, and the cost per man is about £109.

The following table (XX1IL) gives details regarding police and crime in the Metropolitan police district since 1871, by which it will be seen that, although compared with the increase of population the total number of apprehensions has diminished, there has of late years been a considerable increase in the number of felonies, and that the amount of property lost by felonies has been increasing very seriously :— [table]

The Newgate and Holloway prisons are in the hands of the Court of Aidermen. Newgate, rebuilt after the riots of 1780, is now no longer used for persons awaiting trial in the Central Court. The City prison, Holloway, which is the house of correction for City prisoners, was erected in 1851 at a cost of nearly £100,000. Bridewell, which occupied the site of a royal palace, and was granted to the city as a house of correction by Edward VI., was discontinued in 1864; the old Fleet prison was abolished in 1844, its site being now occupied by the Memorial Hall of the Congregationalists; Horsemonger Lane prison was superseded by Wandsworth prison; and the Marshalsea in Southwark, immortalized by Charles Dickens, had been discontinued long before he wrote. The house of detention for Middlesex is Clerkenwell, and its houses of correction are Coldbath Fields for male prisoners and Westminster for females. Wandsworth is the prison for Surrey. The convict prisons within the metropolitan area are Brixton, Millbank, Pentonville, Wormwood Scrubs, Woking, and Fulham.

Education. — Until the constitution of a School Board for London in 1870, the only special organizations for providing education to the poorer classes in London were the British and Foreign School Society, founded in 1808, and the National Society, founded in 1811. Many of the parish schools became amalgamated with those of the National Society, but the united efforts of these societies, and also of the Church of England, of the different denominations, and of various promiscuous charitable institutions, failed so completely to meet the necessities of the rapidly increasing population, that in 1851 the total number of scholars attending public schools was only 167,298, and that in 1871 the returns of the voluntary schools showed that there was accommodation for only 262,259 children, or 39 per cent, of the estimated population of school age. By October 1881 the School Board had supplied accommodation for 236,624 children, which with that in voluntary schools gives a total number of places sufficient for 502,095 children, in addition to which schools are in the process of erection for upwards of 100,0'00 more. Up to August 1881, 6838 children were sent to industrial schools at the instance of the board, and the board now possesses three industrial schools under its own management. The total number of children attending workhouse, separate union, and parochial and district schools in 1880 was 35,223, the amount paid to teachers in these schools being £37,110. The total expenditure of the School Board for the year ending 25th March 1881 was £1,236,360. The amount paid by rating authorities in 1881-82 was £676,579, the rate in the pound being 6T5d., a less rate than that for 1880-81, which was 6 - 28d., but in all probability there may for some years be a slight increase. The average cost of the 3129 teachers in 1880 was £123. The gross cost per child has risen from £2, 4s. 9d. in 1874 to £2, 17s. Id. in 1881, but there will probably be a considerable diminution when the schools become all fully occupied throughout a whole year. The following table (XXIV.) gives a comparison of cost between the board schools and other schools of London and of England in 1880 :— [table]

Fitzstephen mentions that in his time the three principal churches possessed by ancient privilege and dignity celebrated schools, and that other schools were permitted on sufferance. The churches referred to are supposed by Stow to have been St Paul’s Cathedral, St Peter’s at Westminster, and St Saviour’s, Bermondsey, in Southwark. The various other priories and religious houses which were afterwards founded had each its school, though of less fame than the earlier ones. On account of the suppression of the alien priories and religious houses by Henry V., Henry VI. in 1445 founded grammar schools at St Martin’s-le-Grand, St Mary-le-Bow, St Dunstan’s in the West, and St Anthony’s, and in the following year others in St Andrew’s, Holborn, All Hallows the Great, St Peter’s, Cornhill, and in the hospital of St Thomas of Aeon. The custom of school disputations mentioned by Fitzstephen was continued till the time of Stow, who states that they were restrained on account of the quarrels between the boys of St Paul’s and St Anthony’s. In his time the principal schools “repairing to these exercises” were St Paul’s, St Peter’s (Westminster), St Thomas of Aeon, and St Anthony’s. The last-named, which commonly presented the best scholars, and at which Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor Heath, and Archbishop Whitgift received their education, had, however, latterly greatly decayed. Up to the time of the dissolution of the monasteries education in England had been in the hands of the religious houses, but, though many of the grammar schools in London were then discontinued, several were re-erected and re-endowed, and others were added in subsequent years. Of these schools there are now existing St Paul’s, St Peter’s (Westminster), Christ’s Hospital (Blue Coat School), Merchant Taylors’ School, Charterhouse, Mercers’ School, and the City of London School.

St Paul’s School, St Paul’s Churchyard, was re-established in 1512 by Dean Colet, for the free education of one hundred and fifty-three poor children, and was endowed with lands whose original annual value was £122, 4s. 7⅛d., but which now yield nearly £6000 yearly. The board of governors consists of thirteen members chosen by the Mercers’ Company and nine nominated by the universities. Vacancies on the foundation are filled up by competition, and the school fee for the scholars is £20. The course of study, which formerly was chiefly classical, is now specially designed to prepare for the army examinations. The site of the school will soon be changed to West Kensington, where grounds to the extent of 16 acres have been purchased.

St Peter’s School, Westminster, re-endowed by Queen Elizabeth in 1560, provides for 40 queen’s scholars on the foundation; and the school is also attended by about 180 day pupils. Besides six junior exhibitions tenable at school, there are eight exhibitions to Oxford or Cambridge. The management of the school is regulated by the Public Schools’ Act of 1868. The school, which is in the Dean’s Yard, was formerly the dormitory of the monks of the abbey.

Christ’s Hospital (Blue Coat School), Newgate Street, founded by Edward VI. in 1533 on the site of the monastery of Greyfriars, has an annual income of over £60,000, and the number of children on the foundation is about 1180, including 440 at the preparatory school at Hertford, of whom 90 are girls. The school is under the management of a court of governor's, to which any one may be admitted on payment of a donation of £500. The education is chiefly commercial, but four boys are annually sent to the universities. Ths boys still retain their ancient dress, as well as several peculiar privileges.

Merchant Taylors’ School, which was formerly situated in Suffolk Lane, but in 1875 was removed to the Charterhouse, was founded by the Merchant Taylors’ Company in 1561, and provides for the education of 500 boys annually on payment of 12 guineas in the lower school, and 15 guineas in the upper. The site of the present building was purchased for about £90,000, and the new school-house cost £30,000. The rooms of the pensioners of Charterhouse remain entire, as well as the chapel of the date 1512, the master’s lodge, and the great chamber, the interior of which is a very fine specimen of Elizabethan work.

Charterhouse, formerly a Carthusian monastery and afterwards the seat of the Howards, was purchased by Sir Thomas Sutton, and in 1611 endowed as a school. On the foundation 80 pensioners are maintained at Charterhouse, and 60 scholars at the school at Godaiming, where it was removed in 1872.

The Mercers’ Grammar School, Collegiate Hill, Dowgate, was originally attached to the hospital of St Thomas of Aeon, which was sold in 1522 to the Mercers’ Company on condition that they maintained the school. Of the 180 scholars 25 are free.

For the City of London School, founded by the City corporation in 1835, at Milk Street, Cheapside, to supply education to sons of respectable persons, a new building is in course of erection on the Thames embankment. There are preparatory schools in connexion with University College and King’s College.

The University of London, Burlington Gardens, instituted in 1836, and removed in 1869 to its present building in the Italian Renaissance style, is a mere examining body for conferring degrees. University College, Gower Street, founded in 1828 on undenominational principles, supplies instruction in all the branches of education—including engineering and the fine arts—that are taught in universities, with the exception of theology, and is attended by over 1500 students. The buildings, the chief feature of which is the Corinthian portico at the main entrance surmounted by a dome, were enlarged by a wing in 1881, and contain a large library, and the Flaxman gallery, with original models by Flaxman. King’s College, erected by Smirke in 1828, and forming the east wing of Somerset House, provides similar instruction to University College, but with the addition of theology, and in connexion with the Church of England. At Gresham College, founded in 1597 by Sir Thomas Gresham, and removed to its present building in Basinghall Street in 1843, lectures are given on law, divinity, the seiences, music, and medicine. The lectures of the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching have been instrumental in stimulating to some degree general interest in literary and scientific subjects, and in 1881 were attended by 3030 persons. The legal lectures in connexion with the Inns of Court are noticed in the article Inns of Court, vol. xiii. p. 68 sq. Science. —The great medical schools owe their fame and success to the attraction which London presents to eminent physicians and surgeons, and to the existence of extensive medical and surgical hospitals, which afford unequalled opportunities for the study of disease. In addition to the university of London, the Royal College of Physicians, founded by Linacre, physician to Henry VΠ. and Henry VIII., is an examining body for diplomas in medicine; and the Royal College of Surgeons, which originated in the livery company of Barber-Surgeons, formed by the incorporation of the surgeons with the barbers in 1540, has similar authority in regard to the practice of surgery. The College of Physicians, originally located in the private house of Linacre in Knight-Rider Street, and afterwards in a building designed by Wren in Warwick Lane, removed to its present site in Trafalgar Square in 1825, where a Graeco-Italian structure was erected from the designs of Smirke at a cost of £30,000. The College of Surgeons, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, erected 1835-37 from the designs of Barry at a cost of £40,000, contains the Hunterian Museum, purchased by parliament in 1799 (see Hunter, vol. xii. p. 390), an extensive library, and a lecture theatre. Until the time of John Hunter the medical and surgical education obtainable in London was of a very unsystematic character, and chiefly of a private nature, the provision made for dissection being often of the meagrest kind, while the lectures on anatomy and surgery were both included in a course of six weeks. Hunter’s lectures, first delivered in 1774, had a very influential effect in the development of the medical and surgical schools connected with the hospitals, but their most rapid progress has been during the present century. A full description both of these hospitals and of the hospitals for special diseaseswill be found in the article Eng land, vol. viii. p. 253 sq., and the article Hospital, vol. xii. p. 301 sq. Among the other scientific schools of London may be mentioned the Royal School of Mines, Jermyn Street; the Normal School of Science, South Kensington; the Royal Veterinary College, Camden Town; the Royal Naval College, Greenwich; the Royal Naval School, N ew Cross; the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich; and the School of Practical Engineering at the Crystal Palace. The Guilds of London Institute for the advancement of technical education have lately founded colleges at Finsbury and South Kensington. The foundation stone of the South Kensington Institute was laid in 1882, and the building will be opened in 1884, the cost being £75,000, making a total with the Finsbury College of £102,000, in addition to £20,000 for fittings. The amount contributed by the Livery Companies to the undertaking is £23,000.

The most influential of the scientific societies is the Royal Society, incorporated by Charles II. in 1663. Originally located near Gresham College, Crane Court, it was removed in 1780 to Somerset House, and since 1857 it has occupied rooms in Burlington House, Piccadilly. In 1854 old Burlington House, built by Richard Boyle, earl of Burlington, was purchased by the Government for £140,000, and in 1872 a new building in the Renaissance style was erected for the various societies formerly accommodated in Somerset House, viz., the Chemical Society, the Geological Society (instituted 1807, incorporated 1826), the Society of Antiquaries (1707, 1751), the Royal Astronomical Society (1820, 1831), and the Linnean Society (1788,1802). The Royal Geographical Society (1830,1859), occupying a commodious building in Savile Row, has within the last forty years taken a leading part in promoting geographical discovery. The Royal Asiatic Society (1823) is in Albemarle Street. The Royal Institution of Great Britain, in the same street, established in 1799 chiefly for the promotion of research in connexion with the experimental sciences, possesses a large library, a mineralogical museum, a chemical and a physical laboratory, and a foundation for a course of lectures. The Society of Arts, John Street, Adelphi, established in 1754 and incorporated in 1847, for the encouragement of arts, manufactures, and commerce, offers rewards for new inventions and discoveries, and grants certificates and prizes for proficiency in commercial knowledge, the industrial arts, musical theory, and domestic economy. Among other scientific societies the principal are the Statistical, the Meteorological, the Anthropological, the Entomological, the Numismatic, the Zoological, the Botanic, the Horticultural, the Institute of Civil Engineers, and the Royal Institute of British Architects. The Zoological Society, instituted in 1826, rented in 1828 a portion of Regent’s Park, where they established gardens which now contain one of the finest collections of live specimens in the world. The gardens of the Botanic Society, which occupy 18 acres of Regent’s Park, are not of a strictly scientific character, being used chiefly for musical promenades and flower shows, and are to be distinguished from the Government gardens at Kew, which are noticed under Kew {q.v.) The Horticultural Society, founded in 1804, possesses large fruit and flower gardens at Chiswick, and in 1861 entered upon a lease of 22 acres of ground, formerly occupied by the Exhibition of 1851, which they laid out at a cost of £50,000, and where they now hold their flower shows and fêtes.

Of museums, London possesses two on a scale of unexampled vastness, the British Museum and the South Kensington Museum. The zoological collection of the British Museum is still at Bloomsbury, but the departments of geology, mineralogy, and botany were removed in 1881 to a new building in Cromwell Road, South Kensington, called the British Museum of Natural History. The British Museum at Bloomsbury, and the South Kensington Museum, which are more directly connected with art than science, are noticed under the section Art. The Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street, occupies a building in the Italian Palazzo style, erected in 1850 by Pennethorne at a cost of £30,000. It was founded in 1835 in connexion with the geological survey of the United Kingdom, and also contains specially fine collections illustrative of the application of the minerals and metals to the useful arts. In the Patent Office Museum at South Kensington there are many of the original examples of the greatest mechanical inventions of modern times; and the United Service Museum, Whitehall, possesses relics and models illustrative both of the art of war and of the great naval and military achievements of England.

Drama. —According to Fitzstephen, London, “instead of showes upon theatres and comical pastimes,” possessed in his time “holy plays and representations of miracles”; and Stow mentions that in 1391 a play by the parish clerks continued three days together, and that another in the year 1409 lasted eight days, and was “of matter from the creation of the world.” In the 15th century the secular began to supersede the sacred drama; its progress in London under Elizabeth and James I. will be touched on below (pp. 846 sy. ). After the Restoration the “king’s servants” who had previously occupied the Globe and Blackfriars played first at the Red Bull, then in Vere Street, Clare Market, and in 1663 removed to the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. For Davenant’s company, known as the “duke of York’s,” the Lincoln’s Inn theatre was built on an improved plan in 1662, and there for the first time women actors were introduced. The two companies received each special patents in the same year. Before 1672, when Drury Lane theatre was burned, Davenant had removed to a new house built by Wren in Dorset Gardens, at a cost of £8000, and spoken of by Dryden as “like Nero’s palace shining all withhold”; and, as the new Drury Lane was far less magnificent in its arrangements, it generally had the worst of the costly competition in which they engaged until the union of the patents in 1682. In 1695 a licence was granted to a new theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and in 1705 Haymarket theatre was opened, chiefly for Italian opera. The Dorset Gardens theatre was demolished in 1709. In 1733 the Lincoln’s Inn theatre was removed to Covent Garden. The Act of 1737, which forbade the granting of new licences, gave to the patent houses a monopoly of the legitimate drama till 1843; but in the smuller houses, such as “The Little Haymarket” (erected in 1720), the Goodman’s Fields theatre (1727), Sadler’s Wells (1764), the Lyceum (1795), the Adelphi (about 1800), the Princess’s (1830), the Strand (1831), and St James’s (built by Braham, 1835), the law was evaded by the performance of miscellaneous entertainments. The most striking feature in the dramatic entertainments of London is their variety; the old dramatic traditions of England, so closely associated with Drury Lane and Covent Garden, now exercise their influence rather in Germany than in London. London at present possesses about thirty theatres, and the plays of the older dramatists are revived only occasionally, chiefly at Drury Lane, the Lyceum, and the Princess’s. Melodrama and the domestic drama win large support, but many theatres rely chiefly on comedy, farce, or opera-bouffe.

Music. —In 1673 the chequered career of English opera in London was first definitely commenced by the performance at Dorset Gardens of Psyche, followed by the Tempest and a little later The Prophets and King Arthur. For some time after the opening of the Haymarket theatre, Italian operas were varied by performances of English opera and the spoken drama, but the increasing success of the new entertainment soon led to its exclusive establishment. Since 1847 Italian opera has also been established at Covent Garden. English opera has lately been successfully revived by Carl Rosa, and Italian opera is also threatened with formidable rivalry by the performance on a scale of unexampled grandeur of Wagner’s operas in German. The Academy of Ancient Concerts, established in 1710, had the honour in 1732 of introducing to the world that special development of Handel’s genius, the oratorio, which still excites a wider and deeper interest in England than any other form of musical composition. The Ancient Concert Society did not find a worthy successor in its special sphere till the establishment of the Sacred Harmonic Society in 1821, which, besides its annual series of performances, formerly in Exeter Hall and latterly in St James’s Hall, has organized great triennial festivals at the Crystal Palace. Oratorio performances on a larger scale than those of the Sacred Harmonic are now given at the Royal Albert Hall, but the nature of the building renders them less successful artistically. The Philharmonic Society has since its commencement in 1813 held a leading position in the performance of great instrumental works, which previous to this had been commenced at subscription concerts conducted by private enterprise, but the orchestral performances at the Crystal Palace are of equal excellence, and of late years the Richter and Halle concerts have excited a larger amount of general interest. The Monday and Saturday popular concerts for chamber music have been the special means of introducing to London audiences instrumental performers of European fame. By the formation of Henry Leslie’s choir in 1855, the standard of refinement and taste in unaccompanied partsinging has been improved throughout England, and besides reviving general interest in glees and madrigals, it has been the principal means of giving currency to the “modern part song.” The choir, after the suspension of its performances since 1880, was revived in 1882; and there are also in London several local choirs which have attained nearly equal perfection in similar performances. The Bach Society devotes itself to the study and performance of the unaccompanied music of Bach and the older composers. The earliest renderings of the great classical compositions are associated with the Hanover Square rooms, converted into a club house some years ago, and in a less degree with Willis’s rooms, built in 1765, which are now used almost solely for balls and public meetings. The only concert-room in London of a convenient size for important performances is St James’s Hall, Regent Street and Piccadilly; for since the purchase of Exeter Hall, associated with the “May meetings,” by the Young Men’s Christian Association, its use is prohibited even to the Sacred Harmonic Society, and the Royal Albert Hall is much too large for the proper realization of the finer effects either of choral, orchestral, or solo performances. This elliptical building in the Italian Renaissance style, erected from the designs of Captain Fowke, was completed in 1871 at a cost of £200,000, and has accommodation for an audience of about 9000 and an orchestra of 1000. The Crystal and Alexandra Palaces, though they present the additional attractions of fine grounds, of scientific and art exhibitions, and of various forms of out-door amusement, base their claims to support in a great measure on their theatrical and musical performances, and, besides the large central halls for promenades, possess separate concert-rooms. The Crystal Palace, Sydenham, which has a total length of 1608 feet, and a width at the nave of 312 feet, and at the central transepts of 384 feet, was designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, and constructed in 1854, chiefly of iron and glass, out of the materials of the Exhibition building of 1851, at a cost of £1,500,000, including the adornment of the grounds, 200 acres in extent. The Alexandra Palace, Muswell Hill, situated in grounds of 300 acres, was completed in 1875, after having been burned down in 1873. It is built of brick in the form of a parallelogram, covering about 7⅜ acres, and consists of a central hall 386 feet by 184, two courts on each side 260 feet in length, and a concert-room and theatre detached from the main building. Miscellaneous concerts and other entertainments are given at the Royal Aquarium, Westminster, which was opened in 1876 at a cost of about £200,000.

In London there are probably a larger number of eminent professors of the various branches of music than in any other city of the world, but almost no provision for public musical instruction has been made by the state. The Royal Academy of Music, instituted in 1822, and incorporated by royal charter in 1830, receives from Government only an annual grant of £500, and, though attended by over 400 students, chiefly professional, is hampered in its organization and plans by deficiency in funds. The Guildhall School of Music, in which instruction may be commenced at an earlier stage, was established by the corporation of the City in 1879, and is now attended by 1200 students. The National Training School at South Kensington, for which endowments for only five years were provided, is now discontinued, a proposal having been made to supersede it by a Royal College under the presidency of the Prince of Wales, and with endowments sufficient to afford free education to 50 pupils, as well as maintenance and education to 50 others. The Tonic Sol-Fa College, Plaistow, was incorporated in 1875 for the special purpose of training teachers of music for the elementary schools of the country, that method of instruction in music being now used in the majority of schools where systematic musical instruction is given.

Painting, Sculpture, and the Applied Arts. —The most influential and the oldest institution in London connected with painting and sculpture is the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, founded in 1768, which, besides its annual exhibition of art in its new buildings in Burlington Gardens, Burlington House, erected in 1868-69, in the Italian Renaissance style from the designs of Smirke, has also organized classes for art instruction. The Society of Painters in Water-Colours, established in 1804, the Society of British Artists, founded in 1822 and incorporated in 1847, and the Institute of Painters in Water-Colours, hold each an annual exhibition. The National Gallery of Paintings originated in the purchase by parliament in 1824 of the collection of J. J. Angerstein for £57,000. The present Grecian building by Wilkins in Trafalgar Square (1832-38) was enlarged in 1860 and 1869, and in 1876 a new wing was added by Barry at a cost of over £80,000. The collection has received many additions both by purchase and bequest, and besides many noble examples of the old masters, contains some of the finest picture^ of the English school, including the magnificent Turner collection. The National Portrait Gallery, the nucleus of which was formed in 1858, was removed to Exhibition Road, South Kensington, in 1870. In the Grosvenor Gallery, New Bond Street, erected oy Sir Coutts Lindsay in 1877, there are annual exhibitions of works of art, and occasionally other special exhibitions. Several of the mansions of the nobility contain art galleries, which are open to the public on certain conditions. The most famous of these are perhaps the Grosvenor Gallery in the residence of the duke of Westminster, and the Bridgewater Gallery in the residence of the earl of Ellesmere.

The British Museum, Bloomsbury, originated in the purchase by Government in 1753 of the collection and library of Sir Hans Sloane, and occupies the site of Montague House. For the reception of the Egyptian antiquities presented by George I. (1801), of the Townley marbles (1805), and of the Elgin marbles (1816), a new wing was added to the building in 1823, but after the presentation of the king’s library by George IV. in the same year, it was resolved gradually to reconstruct the whole building, the first portion being finished in 1828, and the work (except the new reading-room) completed in 1852. The exterior of the building is plain, with the exception of the massive Ionic portico at the principal entrance. The contents of the museum are divided into departments, which are under the charge of a keeper and one or more assistant keepers. The departments still at Bloomsbury are those of Printed Books, Manuscripts, Oriental MSS., Zoology, Oriental Antiquities, Greek and Roman Antiquities, Coins and Medals, British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography, and Prints and Drawings. The collection both as a whole and in several departments—especially Greek and Roman Antiquities and Engravings—is unequalled in the world, and in all the departments a very high degree of completeness has been attained. For the library and reading-room, see Libraries, p. 515.

South Kensington Museum, which is under the direction of the Committee of Council on Education, was originated by the late Prince Consort in 1852. The present building, to which the collection was removed from Marlborough House in 1857, is erected of red brick and terra cotta in the Italian Renaissance style, and, though still in process of construction and development, includes a fine range of apartments, the interior consisting of courts and corridors of graceful proportions, and decorated with various designs. It contains a collection of objects of ornamental art, both ancient and modern, as applied to manufactures, a national gallery of British art, in addition to the Foster and Dy ce collections, and a fine collection of water-colour paintings, an extensive art library, a collection of sculpture chiefly of the Renaissance period, reproductions of ancient sculptures and paintings, and collections of animal products employed in the arts, of substances used for food, and of materials used for building and construction. Some of the rooms are occupied chiefly by articles on loan. In connexion with the institution there is a National Art Training School, as well as a School of Science and a School of Cookery. The Bethnal Green Museum, a branch of South Kensington Museum, opened in 1872, besides a permanent food collection, and a collection of animal products, is occupied with various collections on loan. The India Museum, which was removed in 1880 from the India Office to a building in Exhibition Road, South Kensington, and placed under the care of the South Kensington Museum directors, contains a magnificent collection of every variety of Indian art and manufacture. The Soane Museum, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, bequeathed to the nation by Sir John Soane in 1837, contains an architectural library, various models of famous ancient buildings, antique sculptures, gems, vases, and bronzes, and several fine paintings. The Royal Architectural Museum, Westminster, founded in 1851, is intended specially to advance the art of architecture by examples of the works of various nations and times, and by courses of lectures, and drawing and modelling classes.

Clubs. —See Club, vol. vi. p. 41.

Ecclesiastical Buildings.— Fitzstephen states that in his time there were in London and its suburbs thirteen larger conventual churches besides one hundred and twenty-six lesser parochial ones. Stow gives a list of churches existing when he wrote, mentioning those which he knew to be suppressed or united to others. He gives the names of 125 churches, including St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey; 89 of these were destroyed by the great fire, and only 45 were rebuilt.

St Paul’s cathedral occupies the site of a church founded in 610 by Ethelbert. After the destruction of the church by fire in 1087, a new edifice in the Norman style was commenced, which was forty years in building, and according to William of Malmesbury “could contain the utmost conceivable multitude of worshippers.” In 1240 a new Pointed Gothic choir was added, and the erection of a lofty tower begun. The work of renovation and adornment was continued until 1315, when the cathedral was declared complete. Its dimensions as given by Stow were as follows :— height of steeple 520 feet; total length of church 720 feet; breadth 130; and height of the body of the church 150 feet. In 1561 the spire was struck by lightning, and the roof of the church partly destroyed by the fire that ensued. From this time it remained in a dilapidated condition until the reign of Charles I.; and the work of restoration under the direction of Inigo Jones, who added to the west front a Corinthian portico, had not been completed when the building was destroyed by the great fire of 1666. St PauΓs cross, which stood at the north-east corner of the cathedral, was rebuilt by Bishop Kemp in the 15th century, but was removed in 1643, its place being now occupied by a fountain. At the cross great religious disputations were held and papal bulls promulgated, and in its pulpit sermons were preached before the court. The present St Paul’s, erected in 1675-97 from the designs of Sir Christopher Wren at a cost of £747,954, is built in the form of a Latin cross, the length being 500 feet, the breadth at the transepts 250 feet, and of the choir and nave 125 feet. The dome, which separates the two transepts and the nave and choir, rises to a height of 365 feet, or of 404 feet to the top of the cross by which it is surmounted, the height of the interior dome being 225 feet. The principal front to the west consists of a double portico of Corinthian pillars flanked by campanile towers 120 feet in height. The transepts are bounded by semicircular rows of Corinthian pillars. St Paul’s is remarkable chiefly for its massive simplicity and beautiful proportions. The interior is imposing from its vastness, but the designs of Wren for its decoration were never carried out. Some of the monuments of the old building are preserved in the crypt, where are also the tombs of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Dr Samuel Johnson, J. M.W. Turner, Lord Nelson, the duke of Wellington, and other distinguished men, especially admirals and generals.

Westminster Abbey, as the coronation church of the sovereigns of England from the time of Harold, and on account of its proximity to the seat of English government, has acquired a fame and importance which in a certain sense outvie those of St Paul’s. It occupies the site of a chapel built by Siebert, in honour of St Peter, on a slightly elevated spot rising from the marshy ground bordering the Thames. A church of greater pretensions was erected by King Edward about 980; but, this church being partly demolished by the Danes, Edward the Confessor founded within the precincts of his palace an abbey and church in the Norman style, which was completed in 1065, and of which there now only remain the pyx house to the south of the abbey, the substructure of the dormitory, and the south side of the cloisters. The rebuilding of the church was commenced by Henry III. in 1220, who erected the choir and transepts, and also a lady chapel, which was removed to make way for the chapel of Henry VII. The building was practically completed by Edward I., but the greater part of the nave in the Transition style, and various other improvements, were added down to the time of Henry VII., including the west end of the nave, the deanery, portions of the cloisters, and the Jerusalem chamber; while the two towers at the west end were erected by Wren, who had no proper appreciation of Gothic. The length of the church, including Henry VII.’s chapel, is 531 feet, or, excluding it, 416 feet, the breadth of the transepts 203 feet, the height of the church 102 feet, and of the towers 225 feet. The choir, where the coronation of English sovereigns takes place, is a fine specimen of Early English, with decorations added in the 14th century, and contains among other tombs those of βiebert, king of the East Saxons, Anne of Cleves, and Edmund Crouchback, earl of Leicester. The north transept is occupied principally with monuments of warriors and statesmen, and in the south transept the “poet’s corner” contains memorials of most of the great English writers from Chaucer to Thackeray and Dickens. The nave, with its clustered columns, its beautiful triforium, and its lofty and finely proportioned roof, is the most impressive portion of the interior. The monuments in its north and south aisles are of a very miscellaneous character, and commemorate musicians, men of science, travellers, patriots, and adventurers. The monuments in the chapels of St Benedict, St Edmund, St Nicholas, St Paul, St Erasmus, St John the Baptist, and the Abbot Islip are chiefly to ecclesiastics and members of the nobility. Henry VII.’s chapel, which is remarkable for the fretted vault work of the roof, with its magical fan tracery, contains besides the monument of Henry VII. the tombs of many English sovereigns and their children, and also of various other personages of historic fame. In the chapel of Edward the Confessor are the shrine of Edward the Confessor in Purbeck marble, the altar tomb of Edward I., the coronation chairs of the English sovereigns, and the stone of Scone, the old coronation seat of the Scottish kings. In the chapter-house (1250) the meetings of the Commons took place before they were transferred to St Stephen’s Chapel; and in the Jerusalem chamber (1376-86), where Edward V. is said to have been born and Henry IV. was brought to die, the sittings of the lower house of convocation of the province of Canterbury are now held.

Among the conventual churches existing in the time of Fitzstephen, there were destroyed by the fire three, those of St Thomas of Aeon, St John the Baptist, and St Martin-le-Grand, founded in 700. Of the other churches there still remain the choir, part of the nave, and portions of the transepts of the old church of St Bartholomew the Great dating from the foundation of the monastery by Rahere, minstrel to Henry I., included in the present church, restored 1865-69, which also contains the tomb of its founder; a pointed pier of the old church of St Catherine Cree, which was the conventual church of St Austin’s priory of the Holy Trinity, founded in 1108, but was rebuilt by Inigo Jones; the vaults and some of the old monuments of the old. church of St James’s, Clerkenwell, built in connexion with the Benedictine nunnery 1100, and replaced by the present structure 1788-92; the east wall and Norman crypt of the building which in the 15th century replaced the old church of the priory of St John’s of Jerusalem, Clerkenwell, founded in 1100, and of which the south gate in the Perpendicular style, built in 1504, still remains; and the Temple church, noticed in the article Inns of Court. Of the ancient church of St Saviour’s, Southwark, belonging to the priory of St Mary Overy, a few seemingly Anglo-Saxon portions were incorporated in the building in the Early English style erected in the 13th century, which has been much disfigured by reconstractions and additions, although the beautiful choir, lady chapel, and transepts remain almost entire. The church of St Katherine’s Hospital was removed in 1825 to make way for St Katherine’s docks.

Of the other churches which escaped the fire the principal are the Chapel Royal, Savoy, rebuilt by Henry VII. on the site of Savoy Palace in connexion with the hospital of St John the Baptist, from 1564 till 1717 used as the parish church of St Maryle-Strand, constituted a chapel royal in 1773, and restored in 1865 by Smirke after partial destruction by fire; All Hallows, Barking, founded in connexion with the Benedictine convent of Barking, Essex, some time before Richard I., chiefly Perpendicular, and containing several brasses; St Andrew’s Undershaft (1520-32), in the Perpendicular style, with a turreted tower, and containing among other tombs that of Stow the chronicler; St Giles’s, Cripplegate, founded 1090, rebuilt in the Gothic style after destraction by fire in 1545 (with the exception of the fine tower, added in 1660), where Cromwell was married, and Milton and Fox the martyrologist were buried; St Helen’s, Bishopsgate Street, founded in connexion with a priory of nuns (1216), chiefly in the Third Pointed style, and containing many brasses and monuments of city dignitaries; St Margaret’s, Westminster, founded by Edward the Confessor, re-erected by Edward I., and frequently restored, containing a window originally executed by Gouda for Waltham Abbey, and possessing a large number of monuments to eminent persons; St Olave’s, Hart Street, in the Gothic style, belonging to the 15th century, but much altered by restoration, containing a large number of brasses and monuments; the small church of Trinity in the Minories, formerly connected with a convent founded by Blanche, wife of Edmund Plantagenet, second son of Henry III., containing in a state of complete preservation the head of the duke of Suffolk, father of Lady Jane Grey.

That the only important external feature of Wren’s churches is the tower or steeple is a peculiarity to be explained by the fact that the merit of his style consisted more in beauty of general outline than in elaboration of details, that from the amount of money placed at his disposal he was generally compelled to concentrate his chief attention on a special part of the building, and that on account of the crowding of surrounding buildings the steeple was often the only part of the church that could be made effective. His interiors, however, are finely proportioned. Among his more important churches are St Bride’s, Fleet Street, which possesses one of his finest steeples, and contains the grave of Richardson the novelist; St Dunstan’s-in-the-East, of which the only portion by Wren now remaining is the steeple, resting on quadrangular columns with a mural crown copied from St Nicholas’s, Newcastle; St James’s, Piccadilly, only remarkable for its elaborate interior and a white marble font by Gibbons; St Lawrence, Jewry; St Mary-le-Bow, containing the Norman crypt of the old building, which was the first church in the city built on arches (hence the name), and adorned with one of the finest of Wren’s steeples, in which are the proverbial “Bow Bells”; St Michael’s, Cornhill, with Perpendicular tower imitated from that of Magdalen College, Oxford; St Mary, Alderrnary, rebuilt by Wren on the Gothic model of the old church; St Stephen’s, Walbrook, with an interior similar to St Paul’s; St Swithin’s, Cannon Street, in a wall of which the famous “London Stone” is built; and St Clement Danes, in which Dr Samuel Johnson was accustomed to worship.

Of the churches of the period succeeding that of Wren, the most notable are St George’s, Hanover Square (1724), by James, with Classic portico and tower, and three painted windows of the 16th century made at Mechlin; St Giles-in-the-Fields (1734), by Flitcroft, with tapering spire, and containing the graves of Flaxman the sculptor and Andrew Marvel; St Martin-in-the-Fields (1726), by Gibbs, with a fine Corinthian portico, behind which the spire is awkwardly placed; St Mary-le-Strand (1717), by Gibbs, occupying the site of the old Maypole; St Mary-le-Bone (1817), by Hardwicke, in the Classic style, containing altarpiece presented by Wren to the old church; St Paneras (1822), with a steeple in imitation of the Temple of the Winds, and a very elaborate interior copied from the Erectheum at Athens; St Paul’s, Covent Garden, originally designed by Inigo Jones, and restored after a fire in 1795. The more modern churches are chiefly in the Gothic style.

Of the religious buildings connected with the numerous denominations and nationalities, few possess exceptional interest either of an antiquarian or architectural character. St George’s Cathedral, Southwark (1848), designed by Pugin, is said to be the largest Roman Catholic building erected in England since the Reformation; and Ely Chapel, Holborn, the only remaining relic of the palace of the bishops of Ely, has lately been purchased and restored by the Roman Catholics. Among the chapels belonging to the Protestant dissenters the best known are perhaps Mr Spurgeon’s Tabernacle, the City Temple, and Christ Church, Newington. The Dutch Church in Austinfriars was presented by Edward VI. to Dutch residents in London in 1550; the nave is in the Decorated style of the 13th century.

Lambeth Palace, situated near one of the old hithes or landingplaces of the Thames, came into the possession of the archbishops of Canterbury in 1197. The oldest portion of the present building, including the chapel in the Early English style, was erected by Archbishop Boniface (1244-70), but the Lollards’ Tower, in which the Lollards were tortured and the earl of Essex was imprisoned, was built in 1434, and the great hall with an elaborate timber roof in 1663. The inhabited portion was erected 1828-48 from the designs of Blore. The adjoining church of St Mary, the oldest part of which dates from the 14th century, contains the tombs of several archbishops, as does also the palace chapeh The library is noticed in Libraries, p. 516.

Royal Palaces and Government Buildings. —Stow mentions that in his time there was a large building called the Old Wardrobe in the Old Jewry, very ancient, but of which all that he knew was that it had been alluded to by Henry VI. as his principal palace in the Old Jewry. The palace of Westminster existed at least as early as the reign of Canute, but the building spoken of by Fitzstephen as an “incomparable structure furnished with a breastwork and a bastion is supposed to have been founded by Edward the Confessor, who built what was afterwards known as the Painted Chamber, and also the apartment afterwards used by the House of Lords. The palace was probably enlarged by William the Conqueror, and William Rufus built the great hall in 1097. The palace suffered severely from fire in 1263 and 1299, and after the great fire of 1512 it was no longer used as a royal residence, and was allowed for a time to fall into decay, with the exception of the great hall. Subsequently it was fitted up and made use of for the meetings of parliament until 1835, when again the whole, with the exception of the great hall, fell a prey to the flames. The apartment in which the House of Commons met was the beautiful St Stephen’s chapel, originally built by Stephen. Westminster Hall, which is 290 feet long, 68 feet wide, and 90 feet in height, with a carved timber roof remarkable for its beauty and the ingenuity of its construction, is used as the vestibule of the law courts and the Houses of Parliament. According to Stow the “princes” after the destruction of Westminster Palace “lodged in other places about the city, as at Bay-narde’s castle (which was destroyed in the great fire), at Bridewell, and Whitehall, sometime called York Place, and sometime at St James’s.” It was at Bridewell, which occupies the site of an old Norman tower, and was for a long time the occasional residence of the kings of England, that Henry VIII., who, according to Stow, built there “a stately and beautiful house of new,” was staying, on account of the destruction of Westminster Palace, when the interview took place in 1528 between him and his nobles, commemorated in the third act of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. After the fall of Wolsey, York House, which from 1248 had been the residence of the archbishops of York, came into the possession of the crown, and obtained the name of Whitehall. The palace was almost reconstructed by Henry VIII., who made it his principal residence, and employed Holbein in its decoration; but a new banqueting hall, erected by James I. in place of the old one burned down in 1615, was the only portion of the building which escaped the destruction caused by fire in 1691 and 1697. This hall, converted into a royal chapel by George I., is a fine specimen of Palladian architecture, and its ceiling is adorned with allegorical paintings by Rubens. Through the banqueting hall Charles I. passed on his way to execution beneath its windows, and Cromwell breathed his last within an apartment of the palace.

St James’s Palace, which after the destruction of Whitehall continued to be the principal royal residence until it was nearly all destroyed by fire in 1809, with the exception of the old gateway, the chapel adjoining, and the presence chamber, was built by Henry VIII. for a country residence instead of Kennington, on the site of an old hospital for lepers founded in the 12th century.

Buckingham Palace, the town residence of Queen Victoria, occupies the site of Buckingham House, purchased by George III. in 1761. The present building in the Classic style was erected 1825-35 by Nash, a west wing with a dull façade 460 feet in length, facing St James’s Park, being added in 1846, and a large ball-room in 1856. The picture gallery contains a specially fine collection of pictures by the great Dutch masters.

Kensington Palace, a favourite residence of several English sovereigns, is noticed under Kensington. Marlborough House, built by the first duke of Marlborough in 1710 from the designs of Wren, came into the possession of the crown in 1817, and has been occupied by the Prince of Wales since 1863.

The Tower of London, to the east of the city on the left bank of the Thames, called by Fitzstephen the Palatine Tower, was, according to tradition, originally built by Julius Caesar, but the nucleus of the present building was begun in 1078 by William the Conqueror, who erected the part now known as the White Tower to take the place of a portion of the walls and towers of the city which had been washed away by the Thames. This tower was completed in 1098 by William Rufus, who also began the St Thomas Tower and the Traitor’s Gate. Additions were made at various periods, especially by Henry III., who used it frequently as a residence; and it now occupies an area of 13 acres surrounded by a moat, constructed in 1190, enclosing a double line of fortifications, behind which is a ring of buildings consisting of various towers, and the barracks and military stores, while in the centre is the massive quadrangular White Tower, with Norman arches and windows, and adorned with a turret at each corner. The St John’s chapel in this tower is one of the finest and most complete specimens of Norman architecture in England. The Tower of London has an extensive collection of armour, and is the repository for the regalia of England. The execution of the long list of important political prisoners confined in the Tower took place on the neighbouring Tower Hill, and most of them were buried in the chapel of St Peter Ad Vincula.

The new palace of Westminster (1840-67), built at a cost of about £3,000,000 from the designs of Barry, for the Houses of Parliament, on the site of the old palace destroyed by fire in 1835, is a vast and. ornate building in the Tudor-Gothic style, covering altogether an area of about 8 acres. Towards the river it presents a very richly adorned and effective façade. At the north-east corner is the clocktower, 320 feet in height, resembling the clock-tower at Bruges; above the dome over the central hall a spire rises to the height of 300 feet; and the Victoria tower, 340 feet, surmounts the royal entrance at the south-west corner. The central hall, which is entered by St Stephen’s Porch and St Stephen’s Hall, built above St Stephen’s Crypt, a portion of the old building, separates the House of Peers, which, along with the royal rooms, occupies the western portion of the building, from the House of Commons, to which the eastern portion is assigned.

The Government offices, situated in Whitehall and Downing Street, form several miscellaneous groups erected at different periods and in very various styles of architecture. The Treasury, Whitehall (1737), containing the official residence of the premier, the Education Office, the Privy Council Office, and the Board of Trade, was improved in 1847 by the construction of a new façade designed by Barry. The Horse Guards, the headquarters of the commander-in-chief, an insignificant building with a central clockturret, was erected in 1753 on the site of a guard-house built in 1631 for the security of Whitehall. The Admiralty, a plain structure with a Grecian façade, was erected in 1726. The new Public Offices, a fine range of buildings in the Italian style, erected from the designs of Sir Gilbert Scott at a cost of over £500,000, contain the Home, Foreign, Colonial, and Indian Offices, and various other departments. Somerset House, Strand (1776 86), a large quadrangular structure, the finest façade of which is that towards tho river, occupies the site of a palace founded by Protector Somerset in 1547. It contains the Exchequer and Audit Office, the Inland Revenue Office, the Office of the Registrar-General, the Admiralty, Register, and the Prerogative Will Office, removed from Doctor’s Commons in 1874. The other Government offices at present occupy unpretentious buildings in various streets, chiefly in the neighbourhood of Whitehall and Westminster. Heralds’ College (College of Arms), the authority in regard to pedigrees and armorial bearings, is located in Queen Victoria Street, in a building re-erected in 1683 from the designs of Wren. The General Post-Office, St Martin’s-le-Grand, City (1825-29), designed by Smirke in the Grecian style, and occupying the site of St Martin’s church and abbey, will probably soon be removed farther westwards. The General Telegraph Office, opposite the Post-Office, was erected 1870-73 at a cost of £450,000. The new Record Office in the Tudor style (1851- 56) is situated in Fetter Lane.

The law courts, which are described in the article England, vol. viii. p. 261, and were accommodated in Lincoln’s Inn and in buildings adjoining Westminster Hall, where they were first established in 1224, will soon be all removed to the New Law Courts in the Strand, designed by Street, and estimated to cost about £500,000.

Memorials and Statues. —The principal monuments are The Monument (1671-77), a fluted Doric column designed by Wren, and erected in commemoration of the great fire, at a cost of £13,700; the Nelson Column, Trafalgar Square, by Railton, erected (1843) at a cost of £46,000, a copy in granite from the Temple of Mars Ultor, 145 feet in height, crowned with a statue of Nelson by Barry, and having at its base four colossal bronze lions modelled by Sir Edwin Landseer; the Duke of York Column, Carlton House Terrace (1833), an Ionic pillar 124 feet, designed by Wyatt, surmounted by a bronze statue by Westmacott; Westminster Column, erected to the memory of the old pupils of Westminster school who died in the Russian and Indian wars of 1854-59; the Guards Memorial, Waterloo Place, erected in honour of the foot guards who died in the Crimea; the Albert Memorial, Hyde Park, a highly decorated Gothic structure adorned with numerous rilievos and statues, erected from the designs of Sir Gilbert Scott at a cost of £120,000; Cleopatra’s Needle, presented to the Government by Mehemet Ali in 1819, brought from Alexandria in 1878, and erected on the Thames embankment on a pedestal of grey granite. Temple Bar, erected by Sir Christopher Wren (1670-72), was removed in 1877, but its site is at present occupied by an erection surmounted by a griffin.

The following is a list of the principal public statues :— [table]

British and Roman (to 449 a.d.). —Bishop Stillingfleet, writing of London, stated that after the fullest inquiry ne was inclined “to believe it of a Roman foundation, and no older than the time of Claudius” {Origines Brik, 1685, p. 43); and several antiquaries and historians hold the same opinion. Although Geoffrey of Monmouth’s vision of a great British city of Troynovant, founded by Brut, a descendant of Aeneas, must be relegated to the limbo of myths, we need not necessarily dispute the existence of a British London. There can be little doubt that the name of London has a Celtic origin, and therefore there is probably a grain of truth in Geoffrey’s fanciful description. The place was probably very small, but it must have been chosen for its commanding position on the banks of a fine river, and there may be some truth in the assertion that one Belinus formed a port or haven on the site of the present Billingsgate, although it does not follow that “he also made a gate of wonderful structure,” or “over it built a prodigiously large tower” (Historia, lib. iii. cap. x.). What a British town was like we learn from Julius Caesar, who tells us that it “was nothing more than a thick wood, fortified with a ditch and. rampart, to serve as a place of retreat against the incursions of their enemies” (De Bello Gallico, v. 21). We may therefore imagine a clearing out of the great forest of Middlesex, extending probably from the site of St Paul’s Cathedral to that of the Bank of England, with the dwellings of the Britons spread about the higher ground looking down upon the Thames. The late Mr Thomas Lewin believed that London had attained its prosperity before the

Romans came, and held that it was probably the capital of Cassivellaunus, which was taken and sacked by Julius Caesar. Not satisfied with affirming the existence of a British London, he went further, and indicated its extent. On the hill situated between the river Flete on the west and the Wallbrook on the east was seated the British town. The western gate was Ludgate and. the eastern Dowgate, and much of Mr Lewin’s argument rests upon the fact that these two names are of British origin (Archaeologia, vol. xl. p. 59). The origin of London will probably always remain a subject of dispute, for want of decisive facts. A negative fact is that few if any remains of an earlier date than the Roman occupation have been discovered; but, on the other hand, London could scarcely have come to be the important commercial centre described by Tacitus if it had only been founded a few years previously, and after the conquest of Claudius. Now there can be no doubt that the Britons made considerable progress during the period between Julius and Claudius, and it seems upon the whole highly probable that London as a British settlement may have come into existence then. There is some reason to believe that there were two settlements, one on the north and the other on the south bank of the Thames. If so they would be within the territories of distinct and possibly hostile tribes. There might be a ferry, and even, as we shall mention presently, a bridge of some description towards the close of the period, but this point will come before us again.

The Roman occupation of Britain extended over a period equal to that which has elapsed since Henry VIII.’s reign. During these centuries (43-409 A.D. ) there was ample time for cities to grow up from small beginnings, to overflow their borders, and to be more than once rebuilt. The earliest Roman London must have been a comparatively small place, but it probably contained a military fort intended to cover the passage of the river. The mouth of the Thames was then only a few miles off, large portions of what are now the counties of Kent and Essex being marshes overflowed with water. The original investigations of Sir Christopher Wren led him to take this view, and he expressed the opinion that “the whole country between Camberwell Hill and the hills of Essex might have been a great frith or sinus of the sea, and much wider near the mouth of the Thames, which made a large plain of sand at low water, through which the river found its way. This mighty broad sand (now good meadow) was restrained by large banks still remaining, and reducing the river into its channel; a great work, of which no history gives account; the Britons were too rude to attempt it, the Saxons too much busied with continual wars; he concluded therefore it was Roman work” (Wren’s Parentalia, p. 285). The opinion that these embankments are Roman work is the one generally held, but so greatly does opinion vary on all these points that some have supposed that they were not built until the reign of Henry VI. Neither Strabo nor the elder Pliny alludes to London, although they wrote on Britain, and the name does not occur in literature until used by Tacitus. That author distinctly says that London had not in 61 a.d. been dignified with the name of a colony (Annal. , xiv. 33). The Roman general Paullinus Suetonius, after marching rapidly from Wales to put down a serious insurrection, found Londinium unfitted for a basis of operations, and therefore left the place to the mercy of Boadicea, who entirely destroyed it and killed the inhabitants in large numbers. When Tacitus wrote, Verulamium and Camulodunum possessed mints, but Londinium was not so distinguished. Subsequently, however, it became a place of mintage. When the British power was finally destroyed London again grew into importance, and we find it holding an important position in the Itinerary of Antoninus, Londinium being either a starting-point or a terminus in nearly half the routes described in the portion devoted to Britain. Ptolemy mentions Londinium, but places it on the south side of the Thames; this may merely be a mistake on Ptolemy’s part, but it seems more probable that he referred more particularly to Southwark, which, as has been already pointed out, may have had a distinct origin from the Londinium of the north bank of the river. Londinium was plundered in the reign of Diocletian and Maximian by the army of the usurper Allectus, but before the Franks who chiefly formed this army could fly Constantius sailed up the Thames and disembarked under the walls of the city, thus taking them by surprise. Under Julian London was the headquarters of Lupicinus in his campaign against the Scots and Picts; and in the reign of Valentinian, Ammianus tells us, Theodosius came to London from Boulogne to mature his plan for the restoration of the tranquillity of the province. It is on this occasion that Ammianus speaks twice of Londinium as an ancient town, to which the title of Augusta had been accorded. By the anonymous chorographer of Ravenna it is called Londinium Augusta. As Theodosius is said to have left Britain in a sound and secure condition, with its dilapidated places restored, it has been supposed that to him was due the wall of the later Londinium. According to old tradition, however, Constantine the Great walled the city at the request of his mother Helena, who was said to be a native of Britain. In spite of these various references we should know very little of Roman London if it had not been that a large number of excavations have been made in different parts of the city, which have disclosed a considerable amount of early history. These go to prove that the early city occupied a somewhat small area, for it has been discovered that the site of the Royal Exchange was originally a gravel-pit, and had then become a dirty pond outside the walls used as a receptacle for refuse. Cemeteries also once existed in Cheapside, on the site of St Paul’s, close to Newgate, and various other places known to have been included in the later Roman London. As it was illegal in Roman times to bury within the walls, these places must at one time have been extra-mural. Among the large number of important sepulchral remains lately found by Mr Taylor in Newgate Street were several ossuaria, or leaden vessels for the reception of the calcined bones of the dead. Little attention had been paid to these objects until Mr Roach Smith specially alluded to them in an article on “Roman Sepulchral Remains discovered near the Minories, London” (Collectanea Antigua, iii. 45-62). Subsequently Mr Smith wrote a very elaborate article on “Roman Leaden Coffins and Ossuaria” (7δi<Z.,'vii. 170-201), in which he refers to the wealth of the British mines as one of the chief incentives to the conquest of the country by the Romans, and points out that the large use of the costly metal, lead, “manufactured with such skill and so profusely as to supply not only the inhabitants of the towns, but those of villages and villas, with one of the daily requisites of advanced civilization,” proves the prosperity and even luxury of the province. When Sir Christopher Wren was making excavations for his building of Bow Church he sunk about 18 feet deep through made ground, when he came upon “a Roman causeway of rough stone, close and well-rammed, with Roman brick and rubbish at the bottom for a foundation, and all firmly cemented.” In consequence of this discovery the great architect came to the conclusion, which was corroborated by other reasons, that the causeway he had found continued for the whole length of the town, and formed the northern boundary —“the breadth then north and south was from the causeway now Chcapside to the river Thames, the extent east and west from Tower Hill to Ludgate, and the principal middle street or Praetorian Way was Watling Street” (Parentalia, p. 265).

Although it is generally agreed that this early Roman city was comparatively small, and in form an oblong square (a Londinium quadratum), its exact situation must be a matter of conjecture. The late Mr Arthur Taylor marked out a district which should be bounded on the west by the Walbrook, on the east by Billingsgate, and on the south by the elevation of the bank of the Thames,— the northern boundary to be a line drawn below Lombard Street and Cornhill. Cannon Street and East Cheap would pass straight through the centre of this enclosure, with the other streets north and south (Archaeologia, xxxiii. 101). In corroboration of his views, Mr Taylor lays stress on the fact that no funereal urns have been discovered in the district he has marked out. Mr Roach Smith agrees generally with Mr Taylor, but includes a rather larger area. He writes—“I should be inclined to place the northern wall somewhere along the course of Cornhill and. Leadenhall Street; the eastern, in the direction of Billiter Street and Mark Lane; the southern, in the line of Upper and Lower Thames Street; and the western, on the eastern side of Walbrook. This suggested plan will give the form of an irregular square, in about the centre of each side of which may be placed the four main gates corresponding with Bridge Gate, Ludgate, Bishopsgate, and Aidgate ” (Illust. of Roman London, p. 14). The late Mr W. H. Black, like his predecessors, takes the Walbrook as a boundary, but, instead of making it the western limit, he makes it the eastern boundary, and places his western line at Ludgate. Newgate Street and Cheapside form the main thoroughfare of his city (Archaeo- logia, xl. 41). Although Mr Black argues his case with ability, his view is open to two principal objections,—(1) it leaves the site of London Bridge outside the enclosure, and (2) cemeteries have been discovered within the proposed limits. As to the date when the limits of this early London were lost sight of in the larger area of the better known Roman city, we have hardly sufficient data even to hazard a conjecture. There is reason to believe, as already stated, that the site of the Royal Exchange was outside the city until the early part of the 3d century, because coins of Vespasian, Domitian, and Severus have been found among the refuse of the gravel-pit. Mr Roach Smith suggests, however, that as no coins of the period between Domitian and Severus were found it is just possible that the plated denarius of the latter emperor may not have been found in the pit itself, but in the vicinity of the houses which were built over the pit in subsequent years. On the other hand, Sir William Tite, in describing the tesselated pavement found in 1854 on the site of the Excise Office (Bishopsgate Street), expresses the opinion that the finished character of the pavement points to a period of security and wealth, and fixes on the reign of Hadrian (117-138 A.D.), to which the silver coin found on the floor belongs, as the date of its foundation. Of course this is not conclusive, as the pavement might have belonged to a villa outside the walls, but Sir William Tite places it within them. When the line of the walls which continued until the great fire was first planned out it is impossible to say with any certainty. Some antiquaries hold the opinion that these walls were post-Roman; but this is not the view of Mr Roach Smith, one of our greatest authorities. Mr J. E. Price, after describing “a bastion of London wall” discovered in Camomile Street, Bishopsgate, arrives at “the*conclusion that these interesting relics are portions of a Roman sepulchral monument which, falling into decay, became, as years rolled on, a suitable quarry for mediaeval builders, providing from its position on the spot convenient materials for the erection of a structure requiring such solidity and strength as would a bastion to the city wall.” In describing the outline of the Roman city it is impossible to make ourselves intelligible unless we use names adopted subsequently. The line of the wall runs straight from the Tower to Aidgate, where it bends round somewhat to Bishopsgate. It is bordered on the east by the Minories and Houndsditch. One of the finest remaining portions of the old wall was hidden from view a few years ago when some large buildings were erected round it. The line from Bishopsgate ran eastward to St Giles’s churchyard, where it turned to the south, as far as Falcon Square, again westerly by Aldersgate under Christ’s Hospital towards Giltspur Street, then south by Ludgate, and then down to the Thames. Mr Roach Smith points out that this enclosure gives dimensions far greater than those of any other Roman town in Britain. In 1843 a portion of the old wall was exposed to view in Playhouse Yard, Blackfriars, when a Roman monument erected to a “speculator” of the second legion, named Celsus, was discovered. On the same line further north Sir Christopher Wren, while building St Martin’s, Ludgate, found a similar sepulchral monument “in the vallum of the praetorian camp” to the memory of Vivianus Marcianus, a soldier of the second legion (Parentalia, p. 266). In the year 1276 the old wall south of Ludgate was pulled down and a new one built to enclose a larger circuit further west for the benefit of the Black Friars. There appear to be strong reasons for believing that a wall ran along the south, and that the Romans did not consider the river sufficient protection. William Fitzstephen, a monk of the 12th century, who wrote the earliest description of London, mentions the walls and tower in the south, and Sir Christopher Wren also alludes to the colony being walled next the Thames (Parentalia, p. 265). The line from Lower Thames Street to Temple Street has been retrieved from the river by embankments, and in certain parts of the line the embankment was formed by substantial walling, such being found at the foot of Fish Street Hill, at the end of Queen Street, and from Broken Wharf to Lambeth Hill (Tite’s Catalogue of Antiquities found in the Excavation at the New Royal Exchange, 1848, p. xxiv). Mr Roach Smith writes—“It was from 8 to 10 feet thick, and about 8 deep, reckoning the top at 9 feet from the present street level, and composed of ragstone and flint, with alternate layers of red and yellow, plain and curve-edged tiles, cemented by mortar as firm and hard as the tiles, from which it could not be separated. For the foundation strong oaken piles were used, upon which was laid a stratum of chalk and stones, and then a course of hewn sandstones from 3 to 4 feet long, by 2⅛ in width” (Archaeological Journal, i. 114). The names of the gates give us no clue as to which of them existed in Roman times, but we cannot doubt that the chief traffic was carried through the city from Ludgate to Aidgate, although some antiquaries have supposed that Newgate was the chief gate on the west side, leading as it would to Holborn, where Roman remains have been discovered. Bishopsgate must have been the principal outlet to the north. Mr Roach Smith has suggested that outside Newgate there was an amphitheatre built into a hill on the rising ground near what was lately the Little Old Bailey. He had often noticed the precipitous descent from Green Arbour Lane opposite Newgate into Seacoal Lane and the level space by Fleet prison, and he presumed it to have been an excavation in the side of the hill. Many a smaller town than Londinium possessed a theatre in Roman times (Middle- sex Arch. Trans., i. 33). The name Newgate is significant of its recent erection, ami it has been remarked that it stands alone among the gates as not being attached to a ward bearing the same name. 11 is mentioned in an ordinance of Edward I., where it is connected with Ludgate.

A question arises as to the arrangement of the area included within the walls, the course of which has already been traced. There is a strong preponderance of evidence against the belief that the present line of streets follows that of Roman London to any considerable extent. Sir William Tite gave reasons for believing that Bishopsgate Street was not a Roman thoroughfare (Archaeo- logia, xxxvi. 203), and in the late excavations in Leadenhall Mr Loftus Brock found remains of a building which he supposed to be a basilica, apparently crossing the present thoroughfare of Gracechurch Street. Sir William Tite agreed with Dr Stukeley’s suggestion that on the site of the Mansion House (formerly Stocks market) stood the Roman forum, and he states that a line drawn from that spot as a centre would pass by the pavements found on the site of the Excise Office. Besides the forum, Dr Stukeley suggested the sites of seven other public buildings,—the Arx Palatina, guarding the south-eastern angle of the city, where the Tower now stands, the grove and temple of Diana on the site of St Paul’s, an episcopal residence, &c. No traces of any of these buildings have been found, and they are therefore purely conjectural. As to the temple of Diana, Wren formed an opinion strongly adverse to the old tradition of its existence (Parentalia, p. 266). Although we know thatthe Christian church was established in Britain during the later period of Roman domination, there is little to be learnt respecting it, and the Bishop Restitutus who is said to have attended a council on the Continent is a somewhat mythical character.

After the walls the most important points for consideration in relation to Roman London are (1) the existence of a bridge, and (2) the purpose of the London Stone.

1. Dion Cassius, who lived in the early part of the 3d century (Hist. Rom., lib. lx. c. 20), states that there was a bridge over the Thames at the time of the invasion of Claudius (43 A.D.), but he places it a little above the mouth of the river (“higher up”). The position is vague, but, as already stated, the mouth of the Thames in these early times may be considered as not far from where London Bridge now stands. Sir George Airy holds that this bridge was not far from the site of London Bridge (Proceedings of Institut. Civil Engineers, xlix. 120), but Dr Guest was not prepared to allow that the Britons were able to construct a bridge over a tidal river such as the Thames, some 300 yards wide, with a difference of level at high and low water of nearly 20 feet. He therefore suggested that the bridge was constructed over the marshy valley of the Lea, probably near Stratford. It needs some temerity to differ from so great an authority as the late Dr Guest, but it does strike one as rather surprising that, having accepted the fact of a bridge made by the Britons, he should deny that these Britons possessed a town or village in the place to which he supposes that Aulus Plautius retired. It may be considered certain that there was no bridge over the Thames in the time of Julius Caesar; for he would not have marched his troops all the way to Coway Stakes in search of a ford if he could have crossed by a bridge at London.

As the Welsh word for “bridge” is “pont,” and this was taken directly from the Latin, the inference is almost conclusive that the Britons acquired their knowledge of bridges from the Romans. Looking at the stage of culture which the Britons had probably reached, it would further be a natural inference that there was no such thing as a bridge anywhere in Britain before the Roman occupation; but, if Dion’s statement is correct, it may be suggested as a possible explanation that the increased intercourse with Gaul during the hundred years that elapsed between Julius Caesar’s raids and Claudius Caesar’s invasion may have led to the construction of a bridge of some kind across the Thames at this point, through the influence and under the guidance of Roman traders and engineers. If so, the word ‘ ‘ pont” may have been borrowed by the Britons before the commencement of the Roman occupation. Much stronger are the reasons for believing that there was a bridge in Roman times. Remains of Roman villas are found in Southwark, which was evidently a portion of Londinium, and it therefore hardly seems likely that a bridge-building people such as the Romans would remain contented with a ferry. Mr Roach Smith is a strong advocate for the bridge, and remarks, “It would naturally be erected somewhere in the direct line of road into Kent, which I cannot but think pointed towards the site of Old London Bridge, both from its central situation, from the general absence of the foundations of buildings in the approaches on the northern side, and from discoveries recently made in the Thames on the line of the old bridge” (Archaeologia, xxix. 160). Mr Smith has, however, still stronger arguments, which he states as follows “Throughout the entire line of the old bridge, the bed of the river was found to contain ancient wooden piles; and, when these piles, subsequently to the erection of the new bridge, were pulled up to deepen the channel of the river, many thousands of Roman coins, with abundance of broken Roman tiles and pottery, were discovered, and immediately beneath some of the central piles brass medallions of Aurelius, Faustina, and Commodus. All these remains are indicative of a bridge. The enormous quantities of Roman coins may be accounted for by consideration of the well-known practice of the Romans to make these imperishable monuments subservient towards perpetuating the memory, not only of their conquests, but also of those public works which were the natural result of their successes in remote parts of the world. They may have been deposited either upon the building or repairs of the bridge, as well as upon the accession of a new emperor” (Archaeological Journal, i. 113).

2. The ‘ ‘ London Stone” has very generally been supposed to be a “milliarium” or central point for measuring distances, but Sir Christopher Wren believed it was part of some more considerable monuments in the forum, and his reason for this belief was that “in the adjoining ground on the south side (upon digging for cellars after the great fire) were discovered some tesselated pavements and other extensive remains of Roman workmanship and buildings” (Parentalia, pp. 265, 266). King, in his Munimenta Antigua, writes—“Loudon Stone, preserved withsuch reverential care through so many ages, and now haying its top encased within another stone in Cannon Street, was plainly deemed a record of the highest antiquity of some still more important kind; though we are at present unacquainted with the original intent and purport for which it was placed. It is fixed at present close under the south wall of St Swithin’s Church, but was formerly a little nearer the channel facing the same place,— which seems to prove its having had some more ancient and peculiar designation than that of having been a Roman miUiary, even if it were ever used for that purpose afterwards. It was fixed deep in the ground, and is mentioned so early as the time of Athelstan, king of the West Saxons, without any particular reference to its having been considered as a Roman milliary stone.” Holinshed (who was followed by Shakespeare in 2 Henry VI., act 4 sc. 6) tells us that when Cade, in 1450, forced his way into London, he first of all proceeded to London Stone, and having struck his sword upon it, said in reference to himself and in explanation of his own action, “Now is Mortimer lord of this city.” Mr H. C. Coote, in a paper published in the Trans. London and Middlesex Arch. Soc. for 1878, points out that this act meant something to the mob who followed the rebel chief, and was not a piece of foolish acting. Mr G. L. Gomme (PrimitiveFolk-Moots, pp. 155,156) takes up the matter at this point, and places the tradition implied by Cade’s significant action as belonging to times when the London Stone was, as other great stones were, the place where the suitors of an open-air assembly was accustomed together together and to legislate for the government of the city. Corroborative facts have been gathered from other parts of the country, and, although more evidence is required, such as we have is strongly in favour of the supposition that the London Stone is a prehistoric monument.

Saxon (449-1066).—At the beginning of the 5th century the Roman legions left Britain. From this period to the arrival of the Saxons there was a space of time when the Briton was left alone, and there is no reason to believe that London ceased to be the important commercial town which it had grown to be. After the Saxon invasion we do not hear of the city being ravaged, and it possibly held its own under the various vicissitudes it had to pass through, although Dr Guest writes that “good reason may be given for the belief that even London itself for a while lay desolate and uninhabited” (Archaeological Journal, xix. 219). About 449 or 450 the iuvaders first settled in Britain, and in 457 Hengist and Aesc fought against the Britons at Crayford, driving them out of Kent. The vanquished fled to London in great terror, and apparently found a shelter there. The Saxons disliked walled towns, and in many instances they destroyed those which they conquered. This was not done in London, and it is just possible that the Britons may have been able to purchase their freedom from destruction. We have, however, little or no data upm which we can form an opinion. Mr Kemble wrote of towns generally that the Saxons neither cared to take possession of them nor took the trouble to destroy them. They enslaved the inhabitants or expelled them, as a mere necessary precaution and preliminary to their own peaceable possession (Saxons in England, ii. 296). The only question is whether London, being an exceptional city, had an exceptional fate. Along the banks of the Thames are several small havens whose names have remained to us, such as Rotherhith, Lambhith (Lambeth), Chelehith (Chelsea), and it is not unlikely that the Saxon who would not settle in the city itself associated himself with these small open spots. Places were thus founded over a large space which otherwise might have remained unsettled. At what time the Saxons got over their repugnance and settled in London we cannot say, but the city is described by Bede as being in 604 the metropolis of the East Saxons, and an emporium of many peoples who came to it by sea and land. The relics of Roman London are, as we have already seen, very numerous; but we know nothing of the inhabitants. There is little human interest in the history. When we come to Saxon London this position is reversed. There are no remains worthy of notice, but there is abundance of life. London appears to have held a very exceptional position, and to have been somewhat like a German free city. The Londoner within his strong walls defied the invader, and the Dane frequently attempted to conquer the city in vain. Mr Freeman does justice to the stout heart of the Londoner, and calls London during this period “the stronghold of English freedom.” The Saxon Chronicle has little to tell of London between the 5th and 9th centuries. The great change accomplished by Augustine, in converting the Jutes and the Saxons to Christianity, is recorded in a few short lines; and'we are told that in the year 604 Augustine consecrated two bishops, Mellitus and Justus, and that Ethelbert, king of Kent, gave Mellitus a bishop’s see at London, then a part of the kingdom of the East Saxons, whose king, Siebert, was a tributary of his uncle the king of Kent. What became of the cathedral which we may suppose to have existed in London during the later Roman period we cannot tell, but we may guess that it was destroyed by the heathen Saxons. Bede records that the church of St Paul was built by Ethelbert, and from that time to this a cathedral dedicated to St Paul has stood upon the hill looking down on Ludgate. Mellitus became archbishop of Canterbury, and was succeeded in the see of London by Cedda, who was succeeded by Wina. Then came Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, better known as the sainted Erkenwald, whose shrine was one of the chief glories of old St Paul’s. He died on April 30, 693, a day which was kept in memory in his cathedral by special offices. We must now pass over nearly a century and a half to the time when the Danes were harassing the country after the death of Egbert. The chronicler records that in the year 839 there was a great slaughter at London, but he gives no particulars. In 851 the Danes plundered the city and made themselves masters of it. Sharon Turner quotes a conveyance of a place in London dated 857, which gives a slight piece of local information (Anglo-Saxons, ii. 575). The name of the place was Ceolmandingehaga, and it was situated not far from the West Gate. We cannot tell whether Ludgate was meant or some other gate which marked the extent of the liberties on the west. In 871 the chronicler affirms that Alfred fought nine great battles against the Danes in the kingdom south of the Thames, and that the West Saxons made peace with them. In the next year the Danes went from Reading to London, and there took up their winter quarters. Then the Mercians made peace with them. In 886 Alfred overcame the Danes, restored London to its inhabitants, rebuilt its walls, reannexed the city to Mercia, and committed it to Ethelred, aiderman of Mercia. Then, as the chronicler writes, ’ ‘ all the Angle race turned to him (Alfred) that were not in bondage of the Danish men.” In 896 the Londoners came off victorious in their encounters with the Danes. The king obstructed the river so that the enemy could not bring up their ships, and they therefore abandoned them. The Londoners broke up some, and brought the strongest and best to London. In 912 Ethelred, the aiderman of the Mercians, who had been placed in authority by Alfred, died, and Edward the Elder took possession of London and Oxford, “and all the lands which thereto belonged.” Again we find a break in the continuity of the history, and pass on to the year 959, when King Edgar· gave Dunstan the bishopric of Worcester, and afterwards that of London. In 962 there was a great fever and mortality in London, and St Paul’s was burnt. It was, however, founded again in the same year. In the reign of Ethelred II. the Danes were more successful in their operations against London, but the inhabitants resisted stoutly. Snorre the Icelander tells us that the Danes fortified Southwark with ditch and rampart, which the English assailed in vain. In 982 London was burnt, and in 994 Olaf and Swein (the father of Canute) came with ninety-four ships to besiege it. They tried to set the city on fire, but the townsmen did them more harm than they “ever weened.” The chronicler piously adds that ‘ ’ the holy Mother of God on that day manifested her mercy to the townsmen, and delivered them from their foes.” The Danes went from the town and ravaged the neighbourhood, so that in the end the king and his witan agreed to give sixteen thousand pounds to be relieved of the presence of the enemy. In the year 1009 the Danes frequently attacked London, but they had no success, and fared ill in their attempts. The Londoners withstood Swein in 1013, but in the end they submitted and gave him hostages. Three years after this, Ethelred died in London, and such of the witan as were there and the townsmen chose Edmund Ironside for king, although the witan outside London had elected Canute. Canute’s ships were then at Greenwich on their way to London, where they soon afterwards arrived. The Danes at once set to work to dig a great ditch by Southwark, and then dragged their ships through to the west side of the bridge. They were able after this to keep the inhabitants from either going in or out of the town. In spite of all this, after fighting obstinately both by land and by water, the Danes had to raise the siege of London, and take the ships to the river Orwell. After a glorious reign of seven months Edmund died in London, and Canute became master of England. The tribute which the townsmen of London had to pay was £10,500, about one-seventh of the amount which was paid by all the rest of the English nation. This shows the growing importance of the town. From this time there appears to have been a permanent Danish settlement in London. There is but little more to be said of the history of Saxon London than that Edward the Confessor held his witanagemôt there, and built and consecrated the Abbey of Westminster. During the later part of the Saxon period Westminster (originally Thorney Island) had been growing into some importance. Tradition affirmed that on the site of Westminster Abbey a temple of Apollo once stood, which was destroyed by an earthquake in the reign of the emperor Antoninus Pius. Out of the rains King Lucius founded a church, 170 a.i>. Sir Christopher Wren imagined that the monks, finding that the Londoners pretended to a temple of Diana where St Paul’s now stands, did not wish to be behind hand in antiquity (Parentalia, p. 296). The figment respecting King Lucius is of about equal authority. There is more reason for believing that Siebert, king of the East Saxons, may have built, as Stow says he did, ‘ ‘ a church to the honour of God and St Peter, on the west side of the city of London.” His sons relapsed into idolatry, and left the church to the mercy of the Danes. In a charter of King Edgar, dated 951, the original boundary of Westminster is clearly defined. This charter is marked by Kemble as doubtful (Codex Dipl., dlxix.); but, if not of the date given, it is believed by competent authorities to be of great antiquity. Edward the Confessor took a particular interest in Westminster, and occupied much time in superintending the erection of a new church there. On Childermas Day (December 28) 1065 the monastery was consecrated, and on the following “twelfth mass eve” the king died, being buried on the next day in the new church. The abbot of Westminster’s manor is fully described in Domesday, but there is no mention of a palace, so that it has been conjectured that the Confessor lived in the monastery itself. With regard to the buildings of London we are left to conjecture. As several of the Saxon kings lived in the city, we must conclude that they possessed a palace of some kind, and around this other buildings would arise. A port such as London naturally drew foreigners from all parts, and various communities of these strangers are believed to have settled here as early as the 8th century. With regard to the government of the city it is generally supposed that many of its institutions are due to Alfred the Great, although Mr Coote with great ingenuity traces them back to the ordinances of the Roman municipium. The famous dooms of the city of London (Athelstan) are stated in the preamble to be the ordinance of “the bishops and the reeves belonging to London.” William the Conqueror’s charter, which he granted soon after his accession, is addressed to William the bishop and Godfrey the portreeve. The office of portreeve had then been long established, although we know but little of its origin. It was usually an office of popular election, but the king often interfered in the appointment. Considerably more than a century had elapsed after the Conquest before the title of portreeve gave way to that of mayor, as the designation of the chief officer of the city of London.

Norman (1066-1154).—After the battle of Hastings certain of the defeated chiefs retired upon London and urged the men in power to resist the Norman, and set up Edgar Atheling as king, which, as the Saxon chronicler says, “was indeed his natural right.” On hearing of this action William marched towards London, and was attacked by the Saxon party at Southwark, who were repulsed by the Norman horse, but with such loss to the latter that William thought it imprudent to lay siege to the city at that time. The Londoners began now to see the hopelessness of their cause, and Archbishop Eldred, and Edgar, and Earls Edwin and Morkere, and “the best men of London” repaired to Berkhampstead, where they submitted themselves and swore fealty to the Conqueror. One of the earliest acts of the Conqueror was to commence the erection of a citadel which should overawe the citizens and give him the command of the city. Some writers have supposed that King Alfred erected a palace or castle on the site of the Tower, but without sufficient authority, and a writer in the Quarterly Review (art. “Middlesex,” vol. cl. p. 48 note) says, “the Tower almost certainly stands on foreshore which was not dry land before the Conquest.” As the Tower was situated at the eastern limit of the city, so not far from the western extremity was built a strong fortification called Baynard’s Castle after its founder Baynard, one of the followers of the Conqueror. In the second year of his reign William granted the remarkable charter written in Anglo-Saxon which still exists among the archives of the city of London. There are but four lines and a quarter, and the size of the slip of parchment is only 6 inches by 1 inch. It runs thus—“William the king greets William the bishop, Godfrey the portreeve, and all the burgesses within London, both French and English. And I grant that they be all law-worth, as - they were in Edward the king’s days. And I will that each child be his father’s heir after his father’s days. And I will not suffer that any man do you wrong, God keep you.” William Stigand, the bishop of London, was a Norman, and possibly had some influence with the king in obtaining this charter. A wonderful improvement in the appearance of the cities of the country almost immediately followed the advent of the civilizing Norman. Within a few years the whole area of London must have been changed, and handsome buildings arose as if by magic in all parts of the city. Many Normans had settled in London during the reign of Edward the Confessor, but after the Conquest they swarmed in and naturally became the dominant party. In August 1077 occurred a most extensive fire, such a one, says the Chronicle, as “never was before since London was founded.” This constant burning of large portions of the city is a marked feature of its early history, and we must remember that, although stone buildings were rising on all sides, these were churches, monasteries, and other public edifices; the ordinary houses remained as before, small wooden structures. The White Tower, the famous keep of the Tower of London, was commenced by Gundulph, bishop of Rochester, about the year 1078. In 1083 the old cathedral of St Paul’s was commenced on the site of the church which Ethelbert is said to have founded in 610. But four years afterwards the chronicler tells us ‘ ‘ the holy monastery of St Paul, the episcopal see of London, was burnt, and many other monasteries, and the greatest and fairest part of the whole city.” In this same year (1087) William the Conqueror died. In 1090 a tremendous hurricane passed over London, and blew down six hundred houses and many churches. The Tower was injured, and a portion of the roof of the church of St Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside, was carried off and fell some distance away, being forced into the ground as much as 20 feet, a proof of the badness of the thoroughfares as well as of the force of the wind. William Rufus inherited from his father a love for building, and in the year 1097 he exacted large sums of money from his subjects with the object of carrying on some of the undertakings he had in hand. These were the walling round of the Tower, the rebuilding of London Bridge, which had been almost destroyed by a flood, and the erection of the great work with which his name is most generally associated, Westminster Hall. In 1100 Rufus was slain, and Henry I. was crowned in London. This king granted to the citizens their first real charter, in which he promised to observe the laws of the Confessor and to redress many special grievances; but he paid little attention to his engagements, and constantly violated the articles of his charter. When Stephen seized the crown on the death of Henry I., he tried successfully to obtain the support of the people of London. He published a charter confirming in general terms the one granted by Henry, and commanding that the good laws of Edward the Confessor should be observed. The citizens, however, did not obtain their rights without paying for them, and in the year 1139 they paid Stephen one hundred marks of silver to enable them to choose their own sheriffs. In this reign the all-powerfulness of the Londoners is brought very prominently forward. Stephen became by the shifting fortune of war a prisoner, and the empress Matilda might, if she had had the wisdom to favour the citizens, have held the throne, which was hers by right of birth. She, however, made them her enemies by delivering up the office of justiciary of London and the sheriffwick to her partisan Geoffrey, earl of Essex, and attempting to reduce the citizens to the enslaved condition of the rest of the country. This made her influential enemies, who soon afterwards replaced Stephen upon the throne. The Norman era closes with the death of Stephen, 1154.

We have already alluded to the great number of ecclesiastical foundations which marked the Norman period, and will here note some of the chief of these, to show how completely the new buildings must have changed the whole appearance of London, and raised it from a mean congregation of houses to the rank of a city, having features of considerable architectural merit. The college of St Martin-le-Grand within Aldersgate was founded in the year 1056, and its rights were confirmed by the Conqueror in the second year of his reign. He gave the dean and secular priests more land, and added to their privileges. A nunnery of the Benedictine order, dedicated to^St Leonard, near Bromley, was founded in the reign of William the Conqueror by William, bishop of London, for a prioress and nine nuns, and in Stephen’s reign Sir William Mountfitchet founded an abbey at Stratford Langton, which was subsequently known as West Ham Priory. In 1082 a convent of monks dedicated to St Saviour was founded at Bermondsey by Alwin Child, a wealthy citizen, and seven years afterwards some Cluniae monks came from France and settled in the new convent, of which one of them was chosen the first prior. In 1094 William Rufus added the manor of Bermondsey to the other benefactions of this fortunate monastery, which became very powerful, and was frequently used as a royal residence. At Clerkenwell two religious houses were established in the year 1100, viz., the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem and the prioιy of St Mary for nuns of the Benedictine order. It was said that the number of monasteries built in the reign of Henry I. was so great that almost all the labourers became bricklayers and carpenters, and there was some discontent in consequence. Matilda or Maud, the wife of Henry I., was much interested in the foundation of these religious houses. She established the priory of Holy Trinity, called Christ Church, which was situated to the north of Aidgate, in 1108, and about 1110 two hospitals, one for lepers at St Giles’s-in-the-Fields, and the other for cripples at Cripplegate. The priory of St Bartholomew was founded a few years earlier, and the Benedictine nunnery of St John the Baptist at Halliwell near Shoreditch soon afterwards. The Knights Templars made their first habitation in the neighbourhood of London in 1118, and did not remove from Holborn to Fleet Street until nearly seventy years afterwards. The royal hospital of St Katherine’s at the Tower was originally founded by Matilda, wife of King Stephen, and the famous St Stephen’s chapel at Westminster owes its origin to the king himself. It was, however, rebuilt by Edward II. It will be seen from the above list that a large proportion of these buildings were outside the walls, and this shows how extensive the outskirts of the city had become in Norman times. No doubt many of these religious persons sought out somewhat quiet neighbourhoods, but around each of them would naturally grow up villages formed by those who were chiefly dependent upon the monks and nuns.

Plantagenet (1154-1485).—Henry II. appears to have been to a certain extent prejudiced against the citizens of London on account of their attitude towards his mother, and he treated them with some severity. On several occasions he exacted large sums from the city, which, although they were euphemistically styled dona, cannot be considered as free gifts. The severity appears to have been necessary, and was attended with good results. The streets were in a most dangerous condition at night, and bands of a hundred and more would sally forth to rob the houses of the wealthy. In 1175 some of these men were taken prisoners, and one of them was found to be a citizen of good credit and considerable wealth named “John the Olde.” He offered the king five hundred marks for his life, but Henry was inflexible, and after the man had been hanged the city became more quiet. In 1176 the rebuilding of London Bridge with stone was commenced by Peter of Colechurch. This was the bridge which after much subsequent tinkering was pulled down early in the present century. It consisted of twenty stone arches and a drawbridge. There was a gatehouse at each end and a chapel or crypt in the centre, dedicated to St Thomas of Canterbury, in which Peter of Colechurch the architect was buried in 1205. In 1184 the Knights Templars removed from Holborn to the New Temple in Fleet Street, and in the following year the beautiful Temple church was built. All this activity of building proves that the citizens were wealthy and their city handsome. This is corroborated by the interesting work of Fitzstephen, the monk of Canterbury, which was written at this time. Fitzstephen has left us the first picture of London, and a very vivid one it is. He speaks of its wealth, commerce, grandeur, and magnificence,—of the mildness of the climate, the beauty of the gardens, the sweet, clear, and salubrious springs, the flowing streams, and the pleasant clack of the watermills. Even the vast forest of Middlesex, with its densely wooded thickets, its coverts of game, stags, fallow deer, boars, and wild bulls is pressed into the description to give a contrast which shall enhance the prosperous beauty of the city itself. Fitzstephen’s account of the sports of the people is particularly interesting. He tells how, when the great marsh that washed the walls of the city on the north (Moorfields) was frozen over, the young men went out to slide and skate and sport on the ice. Skates made of bones have been dug up of late years in this district. This sport was allowed to fall into disuse, and was not again prevalent until it was introduced from Holland after the Restoration. In the first year of Richard I. the court of aidermen ordained that for the future houses should not be built of wood, but that they should have an outside wall of stone raised 16 feet from the ground, and be covered with slate or baked tile. This ordinance must have fallen into desuetude, for the houses continued largely to be built of wood. We learn that most of the houses were plastered and whitewashed. One of the earliest objections which the Londoners made to the use of sea-coal was that the smoke from it blackened the white walls of their buildings. The first mayor of London was Henry Fitz Alwin, who was elected in 1189, and held the office until 1212.

London had to pay heavily towards Richard’s ransom; and, when the king made his triumphal entry into London after his release from imprisonment, a German nobleman is said to have remarked that had the emperor known of the wealth of England he would have insisted on a larger sum. The Londoners were the more glad to welcome Richard back in that the head of the regency, Longchamp, bishop of Ely, was very unpopular from the encroachments he made upon the city with his works at the Tower. The first charter by which the city claims the jurisdiction and conservancy of the river Thames was granted by Richard I. John granted several charters to the city, and it was expressly stipulated in Magna Charta that the city of London should have all its ancient privileges and free customs. The citizens opposed the king during the wars of the barons. In the year 1215 the barons having received intelligence secretly that they might enter London with ease through Aidgate, which was then in a very ruinous state, removed their camp from Bedford to Ware, and shortly after marched into the city in the night-time. Having succeeded in their object, they determined that so important a gate should no longer remain in a defenceless condition. They therefore spoiled the religious houses and robbed the monastery coffers in order to have means wherewith to rebuild it. Much of the material was obtained from the destroyed houses of the unfortunate Jews, but the stone for the bulwarks was obtained from Caen, and the small bricks or tiles from Flanders. The church of St Mary Overy (now St Saviour’s), Southwark, was begun in the year 1208, and in 1221 the foundation stone of the lady chapel at λVestminster Abbey was laid by Henry III. We have alluded to the great change in the aspect of London and its surroundings made during the Norman period by the establishment of a large number of monasteries. A still more important change in the configuration of the interior of London was made in the 13th century, when the various orders of the friars established themselves there. The Benedictine monks preferred secluded sites; the Augustinians did not cultivate seclusion so strictly; but the friars chose the interior of towns by preference. The Black, Preaching, or Dominican Friars settled near Holborn, in what was afterwards Lincoln’s Inn, in 1221, and removed to the ward of Castle Baynard in 1276, when the city wall was rebuilt to enlarge their boundaries. The district where the friary was built still retains its name. In 1224 John Iwyn or Ewin made over to the Grey Friars (or Franciscans) an estate situated in the ward of Farringdon Within and in the parish of St Nicholas in the Shambles, and on this site the first convent of the order was erected. The site is now occupied by the Blue Coat School. In 1241 the White Friars or Carmelites settled in a precinct or liberty between Fleet Street and the Strand which still retains their name. In 1253 the Austin Friars or Friars Eremites were founded in Broad Street ward, and the last of these friaries to be established λvas that of the Crutched or Crossed Friars in 1298. By the establishment of these religious houses two-thirds of the entire area of London was occupied by convents and hospitals. This is the most marked characteristic of Plantagenet London. We have no record of the date at which Temple Bar first marked out the extent of the liberties of the city, but as late as the end of the 14th century Fleet Street was described as being in the suburbs. During the Norman period the road from the city to Westminster was quite open, but soon afterwards a commencement was made in building. The Savoy was built in 1245 by Peter, earl of Savoy and Richmond, uncle of Eleanor, wife of Henry III.; and in this king’s reign the friars of the order of St Mary de Arena are supposed to have established themselves near the site of Durham House (now the Adelphi). About the same time William Marshal, earl of Pembroke, founded and endowed a hospital and convent called St Mary Rouncivale at the village of Charing, so that in Henry III.’s reign there must have been several houses on the line of route to Westminster. Fitzstephen describes the latter place as follows :—“On the west also, higher up the bank of the river, the royal palace rears its head, an incomparable structure, furnished with a breastwork and bastions, situated in a populous suburb, at a distance of two miles from the city.” In the reign of Edward I. the mayor offended the king, and the citizens were for a time deprived of their right of electing their chief magistrate. Gregory de Rokesley the mayor, the sheriffs, the aidermen, and other dignitaries of the city were summoned to appear on the 29th June 1285 before John de Kirkeby, treasurer, and the other justiciars of the king in the Tower of London for the purpose of holding inquests there. Now the mayor held that he was not bound to answer such a summons as this unless he had forty days’ notice, so he resigned his mayoralty at Allhallows, Barking, and delivered the common seal of the city to Stephen Aswy and other aidermen, and then entered the Tower with the rest as an aiderman only. This action incensed the king greatly, and John de Kirkeby was commanded to take over the mayoralty, a warden being appointed by the royal authority. This arrangement continued until 1297, when Edward granted the prayer of the citizens, and allowed them again to elect a mayor. Royal wardens had filled the mayor’s seat from 1265 to 1268, but in the first charter of Edward I. the following concession was made :—“Also that the liberties of the city of London shall not be taken into the hand of his lordship the king for any personal trespass or personal judgment of any officer of the said city; and that no warden shall in the same on such pretext be appointed” (Liber Albus, translated by Riley, pp. 14, 131). In 1285 the first attempt was made to supply London with water artificially, and the great conduit in West Cheap (or Cheapside) was commenced. This lead cistern, which was castellated with stone, was supplied with water conveyed in leaden pipes from Tyburn. Soon afterwards a nobler building was erected in Cheapside. In 1290 the beloved Eleanor of Castile died, and her husband erected stone crosses where her body had rested. Two of these crosses were in London, and there is some little difficulty in understanding why the two stations were so near each other. It has been suggested that the body really rested at St Paul’s Cathedral. Cheapside Cross was erected by Michael of Canterbury, and cost £300, and Charing Cross, the most sumptuous of the series, cost £450. It was commenced by Richard de Cπιndale, and completed after his death by Roger de Crundale. In this same year (1290) the Jews were expelled from England. The district in London in which they had lived since William the Conqueror’s day came to be called the Old Jewry, but when the Jews returned to England after many centuries of exile most of them settled in the neighbourhood of Aidgate.

Smithfield is mentioned by Fitzstephen as a market for horses, and from this writer we obtain its correct etymology (the smooth field). As early as the reign of Henry III. it had become known as the place for executions. Close by a grove of elm trees that gave their name to the place Sir William Wallace was executed in the year 1305, and there also Mortimer experienced a similar fate five and twenty years afterwards. The history of Smithfield from that day has been a record of executions, jousts, and markets.

In 1313 the celebrated order of the Knights Templar fell, and Edward II. gave their house in Fleet Street to Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke. At the earl’s death the property passed to the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, who leased the Inner and Middle Temples to the students of the common law and the Outer Temple to Walter Stapleton, bishop of Exeter, and lord treasurer. The Charterhouse stands on a piece of ground which had been used in 1349 as a burial-place for the thousands who died in that year of the plague. In 1371 Sir Walter Manny founded there a priory of Carthusian monks.

One of those pageants for which the streets of London were so famous took place in 1356 when Edward the Black Prince brought the French king John a prisoner from the battle of Poitiers. It is not necessary to do more than allude to this here, as the incident is a part of English history.

We have now arrived at the period of one of the greatest Londoners that ever lived. The life of Geoffrey Chaucer throws a living interest around the several places with which he was associated. His father was a vintner in Thames Street, the garden of whose house was bounded by the Wall Brook. In 1374 Chaucer was appointed comptroller of the customs, and in the same year he went to live in the dwelling-house above the gate of Aidgate. In 1389 he was appointed clerk of the works at Westminster, the Tower of London, and other places. In March 1390 we find him on the Thames bank repair commission, and in May of the same year he was employed in setting up scaffolds in Smithfield for Richard II. and his queen (Anne of Bohemia) to see the jousts at that place. His duties took him to the mews for the king’s falcons at Charing Cross, and in 1390 he was robbed of some of the king’s money on the high road at Westminster. We thus see that traces of the “morning star of English poetry” are to be found in all parts of London.

In 1381 another of the stirring incidents of English history occurred in London. The threatening insurrection of Wat Tyler was suppressed when the leader was killed by Sir William Walworth in Smithfield. Before that the rebels had done great damage to property in London and Southwark. About this time two very important public works were commenced. Westminster Hall was repaired by Richard II. in 1397; the walls were carried up 2 feet higher, the windows were altered, and a new roof constructed. In 1411 the Guildhall was built, and the courts were removed from Aldermanbury.

During the troubles of the 15th century the authorities had seen the necessity of paying more attention to the security of the gates and walls of the city, and when Thomas Nevill, son of Thomas, Lord Fauconbergh, made his attack upon London in 1471 he experienced a very spirited resistance. He first attempted to land from his ships in the city, but the Thames side from Baynard’s Castle to the Tower was so well fortified that he had to seek a quieter and less prepared position. He then set.upon the several gates in succession, and was repulsed at all. On the 11th of May he made a desperate attack upon Aidgate, followed by 500 men. He won the bulwarks and some of his followers entered into the city, but the portcullis being let down these were cut off from their own party and were slain by the enemy. The portcullis was drawn up, and the besieged issued forth against the rebels, who were soon forced to fly.

When Richard, duke of Gloucester, laid his plans for seizing the crown, he obtained the countenance of the lord mayor, Sir Edmund Shaw, whose brother Dr Shaw praised Richard at Paul’s Cross. Crosby Hall, in Bishopsgate Street, then lately built, was made the lodging of the Protector. There he acted the accessible prince in the eyes of the people, for the last of the Plantagenets was another of the usurpers who found favour in the eyes of the men of London. His day, however, was short, and with the battle of Bosworth ends Plantagenet London.

Tudor (1485-1603).—It was during this period that the first maps of London were drawn. No representation of the city earlier than the middle of the 16th century has been discovered, although it seems more than probable that some plans must have been produced at an earlier period. The earliest known view is the drawing of Van den Wyngaerde in the Bodleian Library (dated 1550). The so-called Aggas map is a few years later in date; Braun and Hagenberg’s map was published.in 1572-73; and Norden’s maps of London and Westminster are dated 1593. These maps were pasted upon walls, and must have been largely destroyed by ordinary wear and tear. It is curious that the only two existing copies of Aggas’s map were published in the reign of James I., although apparently they had not been altered from the earlier editions of Elizabeth’s reign which have been lost. By the help of these maps we are able to obtain a very clear notion of the extent and chief characteristics of Tudor London. Henry VII. did little to connect Ids name with the history of London with the exception of the erection of the exquisite specimen of florid Gothic at Westminster Abbey, which is known by his name. Soon after this king obtained the throne he borrowed the sum of 3000 marks from the city, and moreover paid it at the appointed time. The citizens were so pleased at this somewhat unexpected occurrence that they willingly lent the king £6000 in 1488, which he required for military preparations against France. In 1497 London was threatened by the rebels favourable to Perkin War beck, who encamped on Blackheath on the 17 th of June. At first there was a panic among the citizens, but subsequently the city was placed in a proper state of defence, and the king himself encamped in St George’s Fields. On June 22 he entirely routed the rebels; and some time afterwards Perkin Warbeck gave himself up, and was conducted in triumph through London to the Tower.

About this time and in several subsequent years the sweating sickness raged in London. This disease (Sudor Anglicus) was considered peculiar to England. The sanitary condition of the houses at the time must have been most deplorable, and the plague and other diseases were constantly reappearing until the great fire cleared away all the abominable buildings that formed centres of infection.

During the reign of Henry VII. as well as during that of his son London was constantly the scene of gorgeous pageants. In 1512 the greater part of the palace of Westminster was burnt, and Henry VIII. had no suitable residence until 1529, when he obtained Wolsey’s magnificent house called York Place, and named it Whitehall. That much of the present London was at this time in a wild and uncultivated condition is proved by a proclamation of Henry VIII., the object of which was “to preserve the partridges, pheasants, and herons from his palace at Westminster to St Giles’sin-the-Fields, from thence to Islington, Hampstead, and. Hornsey Park.”

As the chief feature of Norman London was the foundation of monasteries, and the chief feature of Plantagenet London was the establishment of friaries, so Tudor London was specially characterized by the suppression of the whole of these religious houses, and also of the almost numberless religious guilds and brotherhoods. When we remember that about two-thirds of the area of London Was occupied by these establishments, and that about a third of the inhabitants were monks, nuns, and friars, it is easy to imagine how great must have been the disorganization caused by this root and branch reform. One of the earliest of the religious houses to be suppressed was the hospital of St Thomas of Aeon (or Acre) on the north side of Cheapside, the site of which is now occupied by Mercers’ Hall. The larger houses soon followed, and the Black, the White, and the Grey Friars, with the Carthusians and many others, were all condemned in November 1538.

Love of show was so marked a characteristic of Henry V∏I. that we are not surprised to find him encouraging the citizens in the same expensive taste. On the occasion of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon the city was gorgeously ornamented with rich silks and tapestry, and Goldsmiths’ Row (Cheapside) and part of Cornhill were hung with golden brocades. When on the eve of St John’s Day, 1510, the king in tire habit of a yeoman of his own guard saw the famous march of the city watch, he was so delighted that on the following St Peter’s Eve he again attended in Cheapside to see the march, but this time he was accompanied by the queen and the principal nobility. The cost of these two marches in the year was very considerable, and, having been suspended in 1528 on account of the prevalence of the sweating sickness, they were soon afterwards forbidden by the king, and discontinued during the remainder of his reign. Sir John Gresham, mayor in 1548, revived the march of the city watch, which was made more splendid by the addition of three hundred light horsemen raised by the citizens for the king’s service.

The best mode of utilizing the buildings of the suppressed religious houses was a difficult question left unsolved by Henry VIII. That king, shortly before his death, founded St Bartholomew’s Hospital, “for the continual relief and help of an hundred sore and diseased,” but most of the large buildings were left unoccupied to be filled by his successor. The first parliament of Edward’s reign gave all the lands and possessions of colleges, chantries, &c., to the king, when the different companies of London redeemed those which they had held for the payment of priests’ wages, obits, and lights at the price of £20,000, and applied the rents arising from them to charitable purposes. In 1550 the citizens purchased the manor of Southwark, and with it they became possessed of the monastery of St Thomas, which was enlarged and prepared foι∙ the reception of “poor, sick, and helpless objects.’’ Thus was founded St Thomas’s Hospital, which was moved to Lambeth in 1870-71. Shortly before his death Edward founded Christ’s Hospital in the Grey Friars, and gave the old palace of Bridewell to the city ‘ i for the lodging of poor wayfaring people, the correction of vagabonds and disorderly persons, and for finding them work.” On the death of Edward VI. Lady Jane Grey was received at the Tower as queen, she having gone there by water from Durham House in the Strand. The citizens, however, soon found out their mistake, and the lord mayor, aidermen, and recorder proclaimed Queen Mary at Cheapside. London was then gay with pageants, but when the queen made known her intention of marrying Philip of Spain the discontent of the country found vent in the rising of Sir Thomas Wyat, and the city had to prepare itself against attack. Wyat took possession of Southwark, and expected to have been admitted into London; but finding the gates shut against him and the drawbridge cut down he marched to Kingston, the bridge at which place had been destroyed. This he restored, and then proceeded towards London. In consequence of the break down of some of his guns he imprudently halted at Turnham Green. Had he not done so it is probable that he might have obtained possession of the city. He planted his ordnance on Hay Hill, and then marched by St James’s Palace to Charing Cross. Here he was attacked by Sir John Gage with a thousand men, but he repulsed them and reached Ludgate without further opposition. He was disappointed at the resistance which was made, and after musing a while “upon a stall over against the Bell Savadge Gate” he turned buck. His retreat was cut off’, and he surrendered to Sir Maurice Berkeley. We have somewhat fully described this historical incident here because it has an important bearing on the history of London, and shows also the small importance of the districts outside the walls at that period.

We now come to consider the appearance of London during the reign of the last of the Tudors. At no other period were so many great men associated with its history; the latter years of Elizabeth’s reign are specially interesting to us because it was then that Shakespeare lived in London, and introduced its streets and people into his plays. In those days the frequent visitation of plagues made men fear the gathering together of multitudes. This dread of pestilence, united with a puritanic hatred of plays, made the citizens do all they could to discountenance theatrical entertainments. The queen acknowledged the validity of the first reason, but she repudiated the religious objection provided ordinary care was taken to allow “such plays only as were fitted to yield honest recreation and no example of eviL” On April 11,1582, the lords of the council wrote to the lord mayor to the effect that, as “her Majesty sometimes took delight in those pastimes, it had been thought not unfit, having regard to. the season of the year and the clearance of the city from infection, to allow of certain companies of players in London, partly that they might thereby attain more dexterity and perfection the better to content her Majesty” (Analytical Index to the Rememhrancia). When theatres were established the lord mayor took care that they should not be built within the city. The “Theatre” and the “Curtain” were situated at Shoreditch; the “Globe,” the “Rose,” and the “Hope” on the Bankside; and. the Blackfriars theatre, although within the walls, was without the city jurisdiction.

In 1561 St Paul’s steeple and roof were destroyed by lightning, and the spire was never replaced. This circumstance allows us to test the date of certain views; thus Wyngaerde’s map has the spire but Aggas’s map is without it. In 1566 the first stone was laid of the “Burse,” which owed its origin to Sir Thomas Gresham, and in 1571 Queen Elizabeth changed its name to the Royal Exchange, “so to be called from thenceforth and no otherwise.”

A proclamation was issued in 1580 prohibiting the erection within 3 miles of the city gates of any new houses or tenements “where no former house hath been known to have been.” In a subsequent proclamation the queen commanded that only one family should live in one house, that empty houses erected within seven years were not to be let, and that unfinished buildings on new foundations were to be pulled down. In spite of these restrictions 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 aidermen, 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 today. 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. 0n Norden’s map, 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 Aiderman Roe lived at Muswell Hill, and we know that Sir Thomas Gresham built a fine house and planned a beautiful park at Osterley.

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 kin" 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 Protestants and Roman Catholics had gathered together one Sunday evening at the house of Count de Tillier, the French ambassador, to hear Father Dnιry (a converted Protestant) preach. As many as were able crowded into the room on the upper floor for that purpose, but those who could not get in were fain to remain on the floor below and listen to a preacher on the sacrament of penance. The floors both gave way, and a large number of persons were precipitated to a great depth and killed, both preachers being among the dead. With the death of James I. in 1625 the older history of London may be said to have closed. During the reign of his successor the great change in the relative positions of London within and without the walls had commenced. Before going on to consider the chief incidents of this change it will be well to refer to some features of the social,life of James’s reign. Ben Jonson places one of the scenes of Every Man in his Humour in Moorfields, which at the time he wrote the play had lately been drained and laid out in walks. Beggars frequented the place, and travellers from the village of Hoxton, who crossed it in order to get into London, did so with as much expedition as possible. Adjoining Moorfields were Finsbury Fields, a favourite practising ground for the archers. Mile End, a common on the Great Eastern Road, was long famous as a rendezvous for the troops. These places are frequently referred to by the old dramatists; Justice Shallow boasts of his doings at Mile End Green when he was Dagonet in Arthur’s Show. Fleet Street was the show-place of London, in which were exhibited a constant succession of puppets, naked Indians, and strange fishes. The great meeting-place of Londoners in the day-time was the nave of old St Paul’s. Crowds of merchants with their hats on transacted business in the aisles, and used the font as a counter upon which to make their payments; lawyers received clients at their several pillars; and masterless serving-men waited to be engaged upon their own particular bench. Besides those who came on business there were gallants dressed in fashionable finery, so that it was worth the tailor’s while to stand behind a pillar and fill his table-books with notes. The middle or Mediterranean aisle was the Paul’s Walk, also called the Duke’s Gallery from the erroneous supposition that the tomb of Sir Guy Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, was that of the “good” Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. After the Restoration a fence was erected on the inside of the great north door to hinder a concourse of rude people, and when the cathedral was being rebuilt Sir Christopher Wren made a strict order against any profanation of the sacred building. Another of the favourite haunts of the people was the garden of Gray’s Inn, where the choicest society was to be met. There, under the shadow of the elm trees which Bacon had planted, Pepys and his wife constantly walked. Mrs Pepys went on one occasion specially to observe the fashions of the ladies because she was then ‘ ’ making some clothes.”

In those days of public conviviality, and for many years afterwards, the taverns of London held a very important place. The Boar’s Head in Great Eastcheap was an inn of Shakespeare’s own day, and the characters he introduces into his plays are really his own contemporaries. The “Mermaid” is sometimes described as in Bread Street, and at other times in Friday Street and also in Cheapside. We are thus able to fix its exact position; for a little to the west of Bow church is Bread Street, then came a block of houses, then Friday Street. It was in this block that the “Mermaid” was situated, and there appear to have bean entrances from each street. What makes this fact still more certain is the circumstance that a haberdasher in Cheapside living “’ twixt Wood Street and Milk Street,” two streets on the north side opposite Bread and Friday Streets, described himself as ‘ ‘ over against the Mermaid tavern in Cheapside.” The Windmill tavern occupies a prominent position in the action of Every Man in his Humour. The Windmill stood at the comer of the old Jewry towards Lothbury, and the Mitre close by the Mermaid in Bread Street. The Mitre in Fleet Street, so intimately associated with Dr Johnson, also existed at this time. It is mentioned in a comedy entitled Ram Alley (1611), and Lilly the astrologer frequented it in 1640. At the Mermaid Ben Jonson may be supposed to have had such rivals as Shakespeare, Raleigh, Beaumont, Fletcher, Carew, Donne, Cotton, and Selden, but at the Devil in Fleet Street, where he started the Apollo Club, he was omnipotent. Herrick, in his well-known Ode to Ben, mentions several of the inns of the day.

Under James I. the theatre, which established itself so firmly in the latter years of Elizabeth, had still further increased its influence, and to the entertainments given at the many playhouses may be added the masques so expensively produced at court and at the inns of law. In 1613 “The Masque of Flowers” was presented by the members of Gray’s Inn in the Old Banqueting House in honour of the marriage of the infamous Carr, earl of Somerset, and the equally infamous Lady Frances, daughter of the earl of Suffolk. The entertainment was prepared by Sir Francis Bacon at a cost of about £2000.

Charles I. and his councillors were filled with the same fear of the increasing growth of London which showed itself in the prohibitory proclamations of his two predecessors. In 1630 a proclamation was issued in which “the erection of any building upon a new foundation, within the limits of 3 miles from any of the gates of the City of London, or palace of Westminster,” was forbidden. The privy council in the following year put this question to the lord mayor—“What number of mouths are esteemed to be in the City of London and the liberty? ”—the answer to which was 130,268. These prohibitions were not allowed to remain a dead letter, and in 1632 Mr Palmer, a large landholder in Sussex, was fined by the Star Chamber in the sum of £1000 for living in London beyond the period prescribed in the proclamation of June 20th of that year. In April 1635 information was filed against Sir John Suckling the poet and others in the Court of Star Chamber for continuing to reside in London and Westminster. It was during this reign that the first great exodus of the wealthy and fashionable was made to the West End. The great square or piazza of Covent Garden was formed from the designs of Inigo Jones about 1632. The neighbouring streets were shortly afterwards built, and the names of Henrietta, Charles, James, King, and York Streets were given after members of the royal family. Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, was built about 1629, and named in honour of Henrietta Maria. Lincoln’s Inn Fields had been planned some years before.

When the civil war broke out London took the side of the parliament, and an extensive system of fortification was at once projected to protect the town against the threatened attack of the royal army. A strong earthen rampart, flanked with bastions and redoubts, surrounded the City, its liberties, Westminster and Southwark, making an immense enclosure. Mount Street, Grosvenor Square, marks the spot of one of these fortifications called Oliver’s Mount. In 165Q Cromwell allowed the Jews to return to England after a banishment of centuries, and those who settled in London mostly chose the neighbourhood of Aidgate as a place of residence. With the Restoration the separation of fashionable from city life became complete, and the West End grew into a formidable rival of the older London. In 1635 the game of pall mall was played in St James’s Fields, on the site of St James s Square and Pall Mall, but during the Commonwealth this was discontinued, and some houses were built round about. The square was planned out in 1663, and it soon became the most fashionable place in London. A mall was then prepared in St James’s Park which still retains its name. About the -same time the great houses in Piccadilly were built. Clarendon, Berkeley, and Burlington Houses all appeared on the north side of that street about 1665.

London had been ravaged by plague on many former occasions, but the pestilence that commenced in December 1664 will ever live in history as “the Plague of London.” On the 7th of June 1665 Samuel Pepys for the first time saw two or three houses marked with the red cross and the words “Lord, have mercy upon us,” on the doors. The deaths daily increased, and business was stopped. Grass grew in the area of the Royal Exchange at Whitehall, and in the principal streets of the city. On the 4th of September, 1665, Pepys writes an interesting letter to Lady Carteret from Woolwich:—“I have stayed in the city till above 7400 died in one week, and of them about 6000 of the plague, and little noise heard day or night but tolling of bells.” . . . The plague was scarcely stayed before the whole city was in flames, a calamity of the first magnitude, but one which in the end caused much good, as the seeds of disease were destroyed, and London has never since been visited by such an epidemic. On the 2d of September 1666 the fire broke out at one o’clock in the morning at a house in Pudding Lane. A violent east wind fomented the flames, which raged with fury during the whole of Monday and great part of Tuesday. On Tuesday night the wind fell somewhat, and on Wednesday the fire slackened. On Thursday it was extinguished, but on the evening of that day the flames again burst forth at the Temple. Some houses were at once blown up by gunpowder, and thus the fire was finally mastered. Many interesting details of the fire are given in Pepys’s Diary. The distress of those who were made houseless by this calamity was great. The river swarmed with vessels filled with persons carrying away such of their goods as they were able to save. Some fled to the hills of Hampstead and Highgate, but Moorfields was the chief resort of the houseless Londoner. Soon paved streets and two-story houses were seen in that swampy place. The people bore their troubles heroically, and Henry Oldenburg, writing to the Hon. Robert Boyle on September 10, says,“the citizens, instead of complaining, discoursed almost of nothing but of a survey for rebuilding the city with bricks and large streets.” Within a few days of the fire three several plans were presented to the king for the rebuilding of the city, by Christopher Wren, John Evelyn, and Robert Hooke. Wren proposed to build main thoroughfares north and south, and east and west, to insulate all the churches in conspicuous positions, to form the most public places into large piazzas, to unite the halls of the twelve chief companies into one regular square annexed to Guildhall, and to make a fine quay on the bank of the river from Blackfriars to the Tower. His streets were to be of three magnitudes—90 feet, 60 feet, and 30 feet wide respectively. Evelyn’s plan differed from Wren’s chiefly in proposing a street from the church of St Dunstan’s in the East to the*cathedral, and in having no quay or terrace along the river. In spite of the best advice, hoλvever, the jealousies of the citizens prevented any systematic design from being carried out, and in consequence the old lines were in almost every case retained. But, though the plans of Wren and Hooke were not adopted, it was to these two fellows of the Royal Society that the labour of rebuilding London was committed. Wren’s great work, which has covered his name with renown, was the erection of the cathedral of St Paul’s, and the many churches ranged round it as satellites. Hooke’s task was the humbler one of arranging as city surveyor for the building of the houses. He laid out the ground of the several proprietors in the rebuilding of the city, and had no rest early or late from persons soliciting him to set out their ground for them at once. The first great impetus of change in the configuration of London was given by the great fire, and Evelyn records and regrets that the town in his time had grown almost as large again as it was within his own memory. Although for several centuries attempts had been made in favour of building houses with brick or stone, yet the carpenters continued to be the chief housebuilders. As late as the year 1650 the Carpenters’ Company drew up a memorial in which they “gave their reasons that tymber buildings were more commodious for this citie than brick buildings were.” The Act of Parliament ‘ ‘ for rebuilding the city of London,” passed after the great fire, gave the coup de grace to the carpenters as house-builders. After setting forth that ‘ ‘ building with brick was not only more comely and durable, but also more safe against future perils of fire,” it was enacted “that all the outsides of all buildings in and about the city should be made of brick or stone, except doorcases and window frames, and other parts of the first story to the front between the piers,” for which substantial oaken timber might be used “for conveniency of shops.” A third severe blow in addition to the plague and the fire overtook London in the reign of Charles II. The king and his brother had long entertained designs against the liberties of the city, and for the purpose of crushing them two pretexts were set up—(1) that a new rate of market tolls had been levied by virtue of an act of common council, and (2) that a petition to the king, in which it was alleged that by the prorogation of parliament public justice had been interrupted, had been printed by order of the Court of Common Council. Charles directed a writ quo warranto against the corporation of London in 1683, and the Court of King’s Bench declared its charter forfeited. Soon afterwards all the obnoxious aidermen were displaced and others appointed in their room by royal commission.

A new lord mayor and recorder and new sheriffs were appointed in the same manner. This decision of the Court of King’s Bench was reversed in 1690. In the winter of 1683-84 a fair was held for some time upon the Thames. The frost, which commenced about seven weeks before Christmas and continued for six weeks after, was the greatest on record; the ice was 11 inches thick.

The revocation of the edict of Nantes in October 1685, and the consequent migration of a large number of industrious French Protestants, caused a considerable growth in the east end of London. The silk manufactories at Spitalfields were then established.

During the short reign of James II. the fortunes of the city were at their lowest, and nowhere was the arrival of the prince of Orange more welcomed. One of the first acts of James was to cause an indictment for high treason to be prepared against Aiderman Cornish, who had been a zealous supporter of the Exclusion Bill. Sir John Eyles, who had never been sheriff nor was even a freeman of the city, was appointed lord mayor by the king in 1688 in succession to Sir John Shorter. When James found the danger of his position, and learned that William had landed, he sent for the mayor and aidermen and informed them of his determination to restore the city charter and privileges.

William III. cared little for London, the smoke of which gave him asthma, and when a great part of Whitehall was burnt in 1691 he purchased Nottingham House and made it into Kensington Palace. For convenience of communication with London he had a broad road made through Hyde Park, which was lighted by lanterns at night. Kensington was then an insignificant village, but the arrival of the court soon caused it to grow in importance.

Although the spiritual wants of the city were amply provided for by the churches built by Sir Christopher Wren, the large districts outside the City and its liberties had been greatly neglected. The Act passed in the reign of Queen Anne for building fifty new churches (1710) not only helped to supply this want, but also gave a special architectural character to the suburbs.

Eighteenth Century. —With the accession of George I. a considerable change in the habits of all classes was introduced. At no previous time probably was public taste so low or manners more depraved. These two evils naturally were felt over the whole kingdom, but nowhere was their baneful influence more apparent than in the capital. Public buildings of the most tasteless character were raised, and streets of private houses were built that were positively painful in their ugliness. London thus grew to be the ugliest of cities, a character which it is only now beginning to throw off. London had gradually grown up by the side of the Thames and extended itself along the river’s banks, which were skirted by a succession of handsome palaces. The inhabitants moved from place to place in boats, and the river was the chief highway. In the 18th century this state of things had ceased, and other parts of the town were more largely built upon. The inhabitants used coaches and chairs more than boats, and the banks of the river were neglected. London could no longer be seen as a whole, and it grew into a mere collection of houses. In spite of all this the 18th century produced some of the most devoted of Londoners,—men who considered a day lived out of London as one lost out of their lives. Of this class Dr Johnson and Hogarth are striking examples. The exhibitions of vice and cruelty that were constantly to be seen in the capital have been reproduced by Hogarth, and had they not been set down by so truthful an observer it would have been almost impossible to believe that such enormities could have been committed in the streets of a great city. A few days after his accession George I. addressed the representatives of the city in these words—“I have lately been made sensible of what consequence the city of London is, and therefore shall be sure to take all their privileges and interests into my particular protection.” On the following lord mayor’s day the king witnessed the show in Cheapside and attended the banquet at Guildhall. Queen Anne and the first three Georges were all accommodated, on the occasions of their visits to the City to see the show, at the same house opposite Bow church. In the time of Queen Anne and George I. David Barclay (the son of the famous apologist for the Quakers) was an apprentice in the house, but he subsequently became master, and had the honour of receiving George II. and George III. as his guests. There was a large balcony extending along the front of the house which was fitted with a canopy and hangings of crimson damask silk. The building, then numbered 108 Cheapside, was pulled down in 1861. In September 1720 the bursting of the South Sea Bubble created the most fearful panic that London has ever seen. Trade was at a standstill, and many of the chief merchants, goldsmiths, and bankers stopped payment, thus causing ruin to numberless families.

Early in the 18th century there was a considerable extension of building operations in the West End. About the year 1716 the earl of Burlington commenced building on the Ten Acres Field at the back of the gardens of Burlington House, and shortly afterwards the City authorities, who were proprietors of the Conduit Mead (containing 27 acres), followed his example. On June 1, 1717, the Weekly Journal announced that “the new buildings between Bond Street and Mary-le-Bone go on with all possible diligence, and the houses even let and sell before they are built.” The parish of St George’s, Hanover Square, was constituted in 1725. In 1715 Cavendish Square and the neighbouring streets had been planned out, but it was several years before the plan was completed. The foundation stone of Harcourt House (duke of Portland’s) on the west side of the square, which is now about to be destroyed, was laid in 1722; and the north side, which was originally intended to be occupied by the mansion of the duke of Chandos, was still unfinished in 1761. St Peter’s chapel in Vere Street, originally Oxford chapel, was built by Gibbs about 1724.

Still, however, the north of London remained unbuilt upon, and the open character of this part is well shown in the map given above. In 1756 and for some years subsequently the land behind Montague House (now the British Museum) was occupied as a farm, and when in that year a proposal was made to plan out a new road the tenant and the duke of Bedford strongly opposed it. In 1772 all beyond Portland Chapel in Great Portland Street was country. Portman Square was laid out about 1764, but it was nearly twenty years before the whole was finished. It was built on high ground with an open prospect to the north, which gave it a name as a peculiarly healthy part of London. Mrs Montagu called it the Montpellier of England, and said she “never enjoyed such health as since she came to live in it.” In a map of London dated 1773 the villages of Hackney, Stepney, Islington, Hoxton, Paneras, Marylebone, Paddington, Knightsbridge, and Chelsea are all shown as country outskirts of the town. Bedford House in Bloomsbury Square had its full view of Hampstead and Highgate from the back, and Queen’s Square was built open to the north in order that the inhabitants might obtain the same prospect. Dr Heberden recommended South Lambeth as a health resort on account of its situation on the banks of a tidal river with the south-west wind blowing fresh from the country and the north-east softened by blowing over the town.

In 1737 the Fleet ditch between Holborn Bridge and Fleet Bridge was covered over, and Stocks market was removed from the site of the Mansion House to the present Farringdon Street, and called Fleet market. On October 25, 1739, the first stone of the Mansion House was laid. Previously the first magistrates lived in several different houses. In 1750 Westminster Bridge was opened for passengers, and London Bridge ceased to be the only means of crossing the Thames at London. Blackfriars Bridge followed in 1769. A frost almost as severe as the memorable one of 1683-84 occurred in the winter of 1739-40, and the Thames was again the scene of a busy fair. In 1758 the houses on London Bridge were cleared away, and in 1760-62 several of the city gates were taken down and sold. Moorgate is said to have fetched £166, Aldersgate £91, Aidgate £177, Cripplegate £90, and Ludgate £148. The statue of Queen Elizabeth which stood on the west side of Ludgate was purchased by Aiderman Gosling and set up against the east end of St Dunstan’s church in Fleet Street, where it still remains.

The need of improving and opening out many of the streets of London was felt in the 18th century, but little or nothing was done, and the work was left to be accomplished in the present century. John Gwynn, a friend of Dr Johnson, paid considerable attention to this subject, and published in 1766 a work entitled London and Westminster Improved, Illustrated by Plans. Many of the author’s suggestions have not been carried out, although they would often have been improvements upon what has been since attempted. Of such alterations as have subsequently been executed we may note here the widening of Swallow Street, a much-needed improvement, which was not carried out until the beginning of the present century, a square where Trafalgar Square now stands and some straight streets on the site of Durham House now the Adelphi, and a bridge where Waterloo Bridge was afterwards built.

Robert Adam and his brothers, Scotsmen who came to London under the protection of the earl of Bute, made a considerable improvement in the appearance of certain parts of London during the second half of the 18th century by the adoption of a combined system of architecture, in which several separate houses were grouped together to give the appearance of a continuous building. The Adelphi and Portland Place still remain good examples of their system. The brothers Adam were leaders in the revival of taste, and the interiors of their buildings are executed with much elegant detail. We have now come to a period when London outside the City may be considered as more important in many points than London within the liberties. “Why sir,” said Dr Johnson to Boswell, “Fleet Street has a very animated appearance, but I think the tide of human existence is at Charing Cross.” This speech was made in 1775, and in spite of the vast increase of London in every direction Charing Cross still retains this pre-eminent position.

The latter years of the 18th century were somewhat troublous ones for London, but it is only necessary here to barely mention the divisions between the court and the City relating to the election of Wilkes, and the Gordon riots of 1780, when the gates of Newgate were thrown open, and much property was destroyed by the mob.

Nineteenth Century. —It is impossible to give here anything like a full account of the history of London during the 19th century. Since 1800 the City itself has been almost entirely rebuilt, and the suburbs on all sides have been vastly extended. Russell Square was built about 1804, and the district north of Bloomsbury was laid out at the same time. Bloomsbury Square had been built in 1665, and Bedford Square at the end of the 18th century. Alexander Gibson Hunter, in a letter to Constable the publisher written in March 1807, says, “Young Faulder and I walked over all the duke of Bedford’s new feuing grounds, Russell Square, Tavistock Place, Brunswick Square, &c. The extent of them, and the rapidity of the buildings, is beyond all comprehension.” Bedford and Russell Squares were for some years the favoured place of residence for the judges. To show how late has been the growth north of the New Road we may mention that at the beginning of the century grapes were ripened by the sun in the open air in gardens in Gower Street, and twenty five dozen of nec tarines were gathered in 1800 from three completely exposed trees in a garden in Upper Gower Street. Still later the richest flavoured celery was gathered in abundance in the same place. When duelling was in fashion the duellists naturally chose out the most unfrequented places, and we thus obtain an idea where these places were situated. Chalk Farm for some years rivalled in popularity Wimbledon Common, where the duke of York fought Colonel Lennox in 1789, Battersea Fields, where the duke of Wellington fought the earl of Winchelsea in 1829, and Putney Heath, where Pitt met Tierney in 1798, and Castlereagh and Canning fought in 1809. As late as 1843 a duel was fought at Chalk Farm between Lieutenant Monro and Colonel Fawcett, when the latter was killed.

In 1806 London saw the public funerals of three of England’s greatest men. On the 8th February the body of Nelson was borne with great pomp from the Admiralty to St Paul’s Cathedral, where it was interred in the presence of the prince of Wales and the royal dukes. Pitt was buried on 22d February, and Fox on the 10th October, both in Westminster Abbey.

The first exhibition of Winsor’s system of lighting the streets with gas took place on the king’s birthday (June 4) 1807, and was made in a row of lamps in front of the colonnade before Carlton House. Finsbury Square was the first public place in which gas lighting was actually adopted, and Grosvenor Square the last. On October 11, 1811, the first stone of Waterloo Bridge was laid, and on June 18, 1817, it was publicly opened. Southwark Bridge was opened in April 1819, and new London Bridge, the first stone of which had been laid on June 15, 1825, on August 1, 1831. .Westminster and Blackfriars Bridges have been rebuilt within the last few years, and thus not one of the London bridges dates back farther than the present century. One of the greatest improvements in the West End Was the formation of Regent Street, intended as a communication between Carlton House and the Regent’s Park, which had been planned in 1812. An Act of Parliament was obtained in 1813 for the purpose of carrying out Nash’s design. In the winter of 1813-14 the Thames was again frozen over. The frost commenced on the evening of December 27, 1813, with a thick fog. After it had lasted for a month, a thaw of four days, from the 26th to the 29th of January, took place, but this thaw was succeeded by a renewal of the frost, so severe that the river soon became one immovable sheet of ice. There was a street of tents called the City Road, which was daily thronged with visitors. The fashionable Belgravia was built about 1825, over the squalid Five Fields, long known as a dangerous district. Belgrave Square was commenced in 1825, and Eaton Square was set out in 1827, but not wholly completed until 1853. It was about 1829, soon after Carlton House was pulled down, that the line of palatial club-houses in Pall Mall was commenced. In 1827 the Turnpike Act came into operation, and twenty-seven turnpikes were removed in one day. In 1838 the second Royal Exchange was destroyed by fire; and on October 28, 1844, the Queen opened the new Royal Exchange, which was built by Mr (afterwards Sir William) Tite. On April 27, 1840, the first stone of the new Houses of Parliament to be erected by Charles Barry was laid on the site of the old buildings which had been burnt in October 1834. An Act of Parliament was passed in 1847 for the purpose of widening and lengthening Cannon Street, and subsequently the street was extended to St Paul’s Churchyard. In 1848 London was in danger from the threatened attack of the Chartists, and defensive preparations were extensively arranged. On the 10th of April, the mob having met on Kennington Common, was prevented from returning to London over the bridges, and no more was heard of any rising. The Great Exhibition of 1851 brought a larger number of visitors to London than had ever been in it before at one time. In 1852 the duke of Wellington’s lying in state at Chelsea Hospital, and his public funeral at St Paul’s, were two of the grandest London sights of the present century. On the occasion of the marriage of the Prince of Wales, the streets of London were illuminated as they never had been before. In 1864 Queen Victoria Street, a new thoroughfare from Blackfriars Bridge to the Mansion House, was begun, and in 1870 the northern shore of the river was embanked. The erection of the Thames Embankment, which was carried out at great expense, has shown itself to be the greatest improvement ever made in London. The river, which had been too long neglected, was again raised to its natural position as the chief ornament of London as well as the cause of its prosperity.

Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of London life in the latter half of the 19th century is the rush of Londoners which takes place each day after business hours from the centre of the town to the outskirts. This daily exodus has been chiefly caused by the facilities offered by the various railway companies. The first emigration of the London merchants westward was about the middle of last century, but only those who had already secured large fortunes and possessed the highest reputations ventured as far as Hatton Garden. At the beginning of the present century it had become common for the tradesmen of the City to live away from their businesses, but it was only about thirty years ago that it became at all usual for those in the West End to do the same.

One point worthy of special mention in connexion with the modern growth of London is the larger use of stone in building than at any previous period. The reason of this is that the increase in the value of land has made it worth the builder’s while to spend more money on the building ho raises. We might parody the remark on Augustus’s influence in Rome and say—the 19th century found London brick and will leave it stone.

Literature.— The books written upon London are so numerous that they would form a library by themselves; it is impossible here to do more than indicate some of the most important. The earliest description of London is that written by Fitzstephen, in the reign of Henry ∏., but first printed with Stow’s Survey in 1598. Arnold’s Chronicle, or the Customs of London, was first published in 1502. The first history was A Survey of London, by John Stow, 1598, 1603. The author died in 1605, and his work was continued by Anthony Munday and others (1618,1633), and in the next century by J. Strype (1720, 2 vols, fol.; 1754-55, 2 vols. fol.). This last edition remains the standard history, and the remarks of Strype are very often quoted as those of Stow. E. Hatton’s New View of London (1708) is very useful on account of its alphabetical list of streets, <fcc. Maitland’s History of London was first published in 1 vol. folio in 1739, and was republished in 1756, 1760,1769, and 1775—each edition in 2 vols, folio, the last being edited by the Rev. J. Entick. Entickhad himself published previously A History and Survey of London, <fcc., 1766. A New and Complete History and Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, <fcc., by a society of gentlemen, revised by H. Chamberlain, appeared in 1770, and again, revised by W. Thornton, <fcc., in 1784; A New History of London, by J. Noorthouck, in 1773; and A New and Universal History, Ac., of London and Westminster, <fcc., in 1775, fol. The first edition of Pennant’s London, the most popular book ever written upon the subject, appeared in 1790. It has been frequently reprinted, and an index to the 4th edition was compiled by T. Downes, and published in 1814. A German translation was published at Nuremberg in 1791. Antiquities of London and its Environs, by John T. Smith, appeared in 1791-1800. Smith also published Antiquities of the City of Westminster, 1807, new edition, 1837, 4to; Ancient Topography of London. 1815; Vagabondiana, 1815-17; Cries of London, 1839; and Antiquarian Rambles in the Streets of London, edited by C. Mackay, 1846. Other works are J. P. Malcolm’s Londinium Redivivum, or an Ancient History and Modem Description of London, 1803-7; Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the 18fΛ Century, 1808, 1810; and Anecdotes from the Roman Invasion to 1700, 1811; David Hughson’s [E. Pugh’s] London, 1806-9, and Walks through London, 1817; B. Lambert's History and Survey of London, 1806; Microcosm of London, 1808-9; H. Hunter’s History of London, 1811, 4to; Beauties of England and Wales, 1814-16, vol. x., “London and Middlesex”; R. wilkinson’s Londina Illustrata, 1819; Thomas Alien’s History and Antiquities of London, Westminster, and Southwark, 1827-29, a most valuable work, with much information not to be found elsewhere; and E. W. Brayley's Londiniana, 1829. London (edited by Charles Knight, 1841-44; revised by E. waiford, 1875-77) contains articles of considerable interest, but these are badly arranged, and the whole work is incomplete. L·igb Hunt’s The Town (1848; new ed., 1859) is an interesting work, but without original research. A Handbook for London (by Peter Cunningham, 1849; new ed., 1850) is an indispensable work of the highest value; a new edition has been promised by Mr Murray for many years. The various works on London by J. H. Jesse and John Timbs are interesting, but wanting in accuracy. The Curiosities of London by the latter is of value. Cassell’s old and New London (1873-78, in 6 vols. 8vo; vols, 1.-11. by waiter Thombury, vols, iii.-v‰ by E. Walford) is of special value on account of the illustrations, many of them copied from Mr Crace’s collection. Dickens’s Dictionary of London is a useful handbook for London as it is. Besides these general works there are several Chronicles of London at various periods, some of which have been published by the Camden Society. The Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society contain papers on various places in London. Newcourt’s Repertorium Ecclesiasticum Parochiale Londinense (1708-10) still contains the best history of the parishes of London. On Roman remains the chief works are An Account of some Roman Ums digged up near Bishopsgate, by J. Woodward, 1713; and Illustrations of Roman London, by C. Roach Smith, 1859.

The best books on the envir ons as a whole are D. Lysons’s Environs of London, 1792-96; Parishes in Middlesex not included in the Environs, 1800; James Thorne’s Handbook to the Environs of London, 1876; and W. Howitt’s The Northern Heights of London, 1869.

The titles of the leading works on special subjects are subjoined under the several heads :— Charities. —A. Highmore, Pietas Londinensis—History of Public Charities in London, 1814; and Herbert Fry, Royal Guide to the London Charities (annual). Churches.— The Churches of London, by George Godwin, assisted by J. Britton, 1839; and Guide to the Churches of London and its Suburbs, by Charles Mackeson (annual). Climate.— Luke Howard, The Climate of London, 1818-20; 2d ed., 1833. Companies. —William Herbert, History of the Twelve Great Livery Companies of London, 1837. Separate histories have been also written of the following companies :—Artillery (Highmore, 1804; Raikes, 1878); Carpenters' (Jupp, 1848); Coopers’(Firth, 1848); Founders’ (Williams, 1867); Grocers’ (J. B. Heath, 1829, 1854); Ironmongers’ (Nicholl, 1866); Leathersellers’ (Black, 1871); Merchant Taylors’ (Clode, 1875). Inns op Court. —William Herbert, Antiquities of the Inns of Court and Chancery, 1804. Municipality. —J. F. B. Firth, Municipal London, 1876,8vo. Parks. —Jacob Larwood, The Story of the London Parks,1872. Police. —Patrick Colquhoun, Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis, 1796; 8th ed., 1806. Poor. —H. Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, 1851; Greenwood, The Wilds of London, 1874. Population.— Graunt's observations on the Bills of Mortality, 1876. Prisons. —Hepworth Dixon, London Prisons, 1851. Theatres.— E. W. Brayley, Historical and Descriptive Accounts of the Theatres of London, 1826. water. —W. Matthews, Historical Account of the Waterworks of London, 1835; J. Prestwich, Geological Inquiry respecting tke Water-bearing Strata of the Country round London, 1851.

There is no complete catalogue of books relating to London, but useful lists wi 1 be found in Anderson’s Book of British Topography, 1881, and in Lowndes s Bibliographers Manual, 1860.