Editing History of London (section)

===Stuart London (1603–1714)===
{{main|Stuart London}}
{{Wide image|London panorama, 1616b.jpg|1000px|A [[Visscher panorama|panorama of London]] by [[Claes Jansz. Visscher]], 1616. [[Old St Paul's Cathedral]] had lost its spire by this time. The two theatres on the foreground (Southwark) side of the Thames are [[Beargarden|The Bear Garden]] and [[Globe Theatre|The Globe]]. The large church in the foreground is St Mary Overie, now [[Southwark Cathedral]].}}

London's expansion beyond the boundaries of the City was decisively established in the 17th century. In the opening years of that century the immediate environs of the City, with the principal exception of the aristocratic residences in the direction of Westminster, were still considered not conducive to health. Immediately to the north was [[Moorfields]], which had recently been drained and laid out in walks, but it was frequented by beggars and travellers, who crossed it in order to get into London. Adjoining Moorfields were [[Finsbury]] Fields, a favourite practising ground for the archers, [[Mile End]], then a common on the Great Eastern Road and famous as a rendezvous for the troops.

The preparations for [[James I of England|King James I]]’s accession to the throne were interrupted by a severe plague epidemic, which may have killed over thirty thousand people. The [[Lord Mayor's Show]], which had been discontinued for some years, was revived by order of the king in 1609. The dissolved monastery of the [[London Charterhouse|Charterhouse]], which had been bought and sold by the courtiers several times, was purchased by [[Thomas Sutton]] for £13,000. The new hospital, chapel, and schoolhouse were begun in 1611. [[Charterhouse School]] was to be one of the principal [[public school (England)|public schools]] in London until it moved to Surrey in the Victorian era, and the site is still used as a [[Barts and The London, Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry|medical school]].<ref>Sheila Hannah Williams, ''The Lord Mayor's Show in Tudor and Stuart Times'' (1959).</ref>

The general meeting-place of Londoners in the day-time was the nave of [[Old St. Paul's Cathedral]]. Merchants conducted business in the aisles, and used the font as a counter upon which to make their payments; lawyers received clients at their particular pillars; and the unemployed looked for work. St Paul's Churchyard was the centre of the book trade and [[Fleet Street]] was a centre of public entertainment. Under James I the theatre, which established itself so firmly in the latter years of Elizabeth, grew further in popularity. The performances at the public theatres were complemented by elaborate [[masques]] at the royal court and at the inns of court.<ref>Michael Berlin,  "Civic ceremony in early modern London". ''Urban History'' 13 (1986): 15–27. "Civic ceremony in early modern London". ''Urban History'' (1986) 13#1 pp: 15–27.</ref>

[[Charles I of England|Charles I]] acceded to the throne in 1625. During his reign, aristocrats began to inhabit the [[West End of London|West End]] in large numbers. In addition to those who had specific business at court, increasing numbers of country landowners and their families lived in London for part of the year simply for the social life. This was the beginning of the "London season". [[Lincoln's Inn Fields]] was built about 1629.<ref>Judith Milhous, ''Thomas Betterton and the management of Lincoln's Inn Fields, 1695–1708'' (Southern Illinois University Press, 1979)</ref> The piazza of [[Covent Garden]], designed by England's first classically trained architect [[Inigo Jones]] followed in about 1632. The neighbouring streets were built shortly afterwards, and the names of Henrietta, Charles, James, King and York Streets were given after members of the royal family.<ref>John Summerson, ''Inigo Jones'' (Penguin books, 1966)</ref>

[[File:Samuel Pepys.jpg|thumb|[[Samuel Pepys]], chronicler of [[Stuart London]]]]
In January 1642 [[five members]] of the [[Parliament of England]] whom the King wished to arrest were granted refuge in the City. In August of the same year the King raised his banner at [[Nottingham]], and during the [[English Civil War]] London took the side of the parliament. Initially the king had the upper hand in military terms and in November he won the [[Battle of Brentford (1642)|Battle of Brentford]] a few miles to the west of London. The City organised a new makeshift army and Charles hesitated and retreated.

Subsequently, an extensive system of fortifications was built to protect London from a renewed attack by the [[Cavalier|Royalists]]. This comprised a strong earthen rampart, enhanced with bastions and redoubts. It was well beyond the City walls and encompassed the whole urban area, including Westminster and Southwark. London was not seriously threatened by the royalists again, and the financial resources of the City made an important contribution to the [[Parliamentarians (English Civil War)|Parliamentarians]]' victory in the war.

The unsanitary and overcrowded City of London has suffered numerous outbreaks of the plague many times over the centuries, but in Britain it is the last major outbreak which is remembered as the "[[Great Plague of London|Great Plague]]". It occurred in 1665 and 1666 and killed around 60,000 people, which was one-fifth of the population. [[Samuel Pepys]] chronicled the epidemic in his diary. On 4 September 1665 he wrote "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."<ref>{{cite book|author=Peter Hampson Ditchfield|title=Memorials of Old London|publisher=Bemrose & sons, limited|url=https://archive.org/details/memorialsoldlon01ditcgoog|year=1908|page=[https://archive.org/details/memorialsoldlon01ditcgoog/page/n116 76]}}</ref><ref>Walter George Bell, ''The Great Plague in London'' (Bracken Books, 1995).</ref>

====Great Fire of London (1666)====
{{main|Great Fire of London}}
The Great Plague was immediately followed by another catastrophe, albeit one which helped to put an end to the plague. On the Sunday, 2 September 1666 the [[Great Fire of London]] broke out at one o'clock in the morning at a bakery in [[Pudding Lane]] in the southern part of the City. Fanned by an eastern wind the fire spread, and efforts to arrest it by pulling down houses to make firebreaks were disorganised to begin with. 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. [[The Monument]] was built to commemorate the fire: for over a century and a half it bore an inscription attributing the conflagration to a ''"popish frenzy"''.<ref>Peter Ackroyd, ''The great fire of London'' (U of Chicago Press, 1988)</ref>

[[File:John Evelyn's plan for the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire.JPG|thumb|350px|[[John Evelyn]]'s plan for the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire]]
The fire destroyed about 60% of the City, including [[Old St Paul's Cathedral]], 87 parish churches, 44 [[livery company]] halls and the [[Royal Exchange, London|Royal Exchange]]. However, the number of lives lost was surprisingly small; it is believed to have been 16 at most. Within a few days of the fire, three plans were presented to the king for the rebuilding of the city, by [[Christopher Wren]], [[John Evelyn]] and [[Robert Hooke]].<ref>Thomas Fiddian Reddaway, ''The rebuilding of London after the great fire'' (Arnold, 1951).</ref>

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 12 chief livery companies into one regular square annexed to the [[Guildhall, London|Guildhall]], and to make a fine quay on the bank of the river from [[Blackfriars, London|Blackfriars]] to the [[Tower of London]]. Wren wished to build the new streets straight and in three standard widths of thirty, sixty and ninety feet. Evelyn's plan differed from Wren's chiefly in proposing a street from the church of [[St Dunstan's in the East]] to the St Paul's, and in having no quay or terrace along the river. These plans were not implemented, and the rebuilt city generally followed the streetplan of the old one, and most of it has survived into the 21st century.

[[File:London - Richard Blome's map of 1673.JPG|thumb|350px|[[Richard Blome]]'s map of London (1673). The development of the West End had recently begun to accelerate.]]

Nonetheless, the new City was different from the old one. Many aristocratic residents never returned, preferring to take new houses in the West End, where fashionable new districts such as [[St. James's]] were built close to the main royal residence, which was the [[Palace of Whitehall]] until it was destroyed by fire in the 1690s, and thereafter [[St. James's Palace]]. The rural lane of [[Piccadilly]] sprouted courtiers mansions such as [[Burlington House]]. Thus the separation between the middle class mercantile City of London, and the aristocratic world of the court in [[Palace of Westminster|Westminster]] became complete.<ref>Timothy Baker, ''London: rebuilding the city after the great fire'' (Phillimore & Company, 2000)</ref>

In the City itself there was a move from wooden buildings to stone and brick construction to reduce the risk of fire. Parliament's [[Rebuilding of London Act 1666]] stated ''"building with brick [is] not only more comely and durable, but also more safe against future perils of fire"''. From then on only doorcases, window-frames and shop fronts were allowed to be made of wood.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Thomas Robert Way|author2=Henry Benjamin Wheatley|title=Reliques of Old London|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vjZAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA10|year=1896|page=10}}</ref>

Christopher Wren's plan for a new model London came to nothing, but he was appointed to rebuild the ruined parish churches and to replace [[St Paul's Cathedral]]. His domed [[baroque]] cathedral was the primary symbol of London for at least a century and a half. As city surveyor, [[Robert Hooke]] oversaw the reconstruction of the City's houses. The [[East End]], that is the area immediately to the east of the city walls, also became heavily populated in the decades after the Great Fire. London's docks began to extend downstream, attracting many working people who worked on the docks themselves and in the processing and distributive trades. These people lived in [[Whitechapel]], [[Wapping]], [[Stepney]], and [[Limehouse]], generally in [[slum]] conditions.<ref>Michael Alan Ralph Cooper, ''A More Beautiful City: Robert Hooke and the Rebuilding of London After the Great Fire'' (Sutton Pub Limited, 2003)</ref>

In the winter of 1683–1684, a [[Thames frost fairs|frost fair]] was held on the Thames. The frost, which began about seven weeks before Christmas and continued for six weeks after, was the greatest on record. The [[Revocation of the Edict of Nantes]] in 1685 led to a large migration of [[Huguenots]] to London. They established a silk industry at [[Spitalfields]].<ref>{{cite book|author=William Andrews|title=Famous Frosts and Frost Fairs in Great Britain: Chronicled from the Earliest to the Present Time|url=https://archive.org/details/famousfrostsand00andrgoog|year=1887|publisher=G. Redway|pages=[https://archive.org/details/famousfrostsand00andrgoog/page/n30 16]–17}}</ref>

At this time the [[Bank of England]] was founded, and the British East India Company was expanding its influence. [[Lloyd's of London]] also began to operate in the late 17th century. In 1700, London handled 80% of England's imports, 69% of its exports and 86% of its re-exports. Many of the goods were luxuries from the [[Americas]] and [[Asia]] such as silk, sugar, tea, and tobacco. The last figure emphasises London's role as an [[entrepot]]: while it had many craftsmen in the 17th century, and would later acquire some large factories, its economic prominence was never based primarily on industry. Instead it was a great trading and redistribution centre. Goods were brought to London by England's increasingly dominant merchant navy, not only to satisfy domestic demand, but also for re-export throughout Europe and beyond.<ref>{{cite book|author=Miles Ogborn|title=Spaces of Modernity: London's Geographies, 1680-1780|url=https://archive.org/details/spacesofmodernit0000ogbo|url-access=registration|year=1998|publisher=Guilford Press|page=[https://archive.org/details/spacesofmodernit0000ogbo/page/206 206]|isbn=9781572303652}}</ref>

[[William III of England|William III]], a Dutchman, cared little for London, the smoke of which gave him [[asthma]], and after the first fire at the [[Palace of Whitehall]] in 1691, he purchased [[Nottingham House]] and transformed it into [[Kensington Palace]]. [[Kensington]] was then an insignificant village, but the arrival of the court soon caused it to grow in importance. The palace was rarely favoured by future monarchs, but its construction was another step in the expansion of the bounds of London. During the same reign [[Greenwich Hospital (London)|Greenwich Hospital]], then well outside the boundary of London, but now comfortably inside it, was begun; it was the naval complement to the [[Chelsea Hospital]] for former soldiers, which had been founded in 1681. During the reign of [[Anne, Queen of Great Britain|Queen Anne]] an act was passed authorising the building of 50 new churches to serve the greatly increased population living outside the boundaries of the City of London.<ref>Jason R. Ali and Peter Cunich. "The Church East and West: Orienting the Queen Anne Churches, 1711-34". ''The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians'' (2005): 56–73. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/25068124 In JSTOR]</ref>

[[File:City of London Ogilby and Morgan's Map of 1677.jpg|thumb|center|500px|Ogilby & Morgan's map of the City of London (1673). "A Large and Accurate Map of the City of London. Ichnographically describing all the Streets, Lanes, Alleys, Courts, Yards, Churches, Halls, & Houses &c. Actually Surveyed and Delineated by [[John Ogilby]], His Majesties Cosmographer."]]