to Shoreditch, was not a single house, and only two or three detached buildings stood in the fields beyond. The mansion called Finsbury Court, was near the upper end of Chiswell Street, between which and Whitecross Street, the houses were very few. Goswell Street was merely indicated by a road described as leading to St. Alban's;' and Islington was hardly to be seen in the distance. Clerkenwell, with the exception of the houses in St. John Street and Cow Cross, was mostly occupied by the precincts of the Monastery and the Church; and only a few detached buildings stood on the Islington Road beyond the latter edifice. From the back of Cow Cross towards the Fleet River, and beyond that towards Ely House, and Gray's-Inn Lane, the ground was either entirely vacant or occupied in gardens; aud Gray'sInn Lane only extended to a short distance beyoud the Inn. From Holborn Bridge to the vicinity of the present Red Lion Street, the houses were continued on both sides, but further up to about Hart Street, the road was entirely open; a garden wall there commenced, and continued to near Broad St. Giles's, and the end of Drury Lane, where a small cluster of houses chiefly on the right, formed the principal part of the village of St. Giles; only a few other buildings appearing in the neighbourhood of the Church and Hospital, the precincts of which were spacious and surrounded with trees. Beyond this, both to the north and west, all was country, and the Oxford and other main roads were dis tinguished only by avenues of trees. From the Oxford road, southward, to Piccadilly, called the way from Reading,' and thence along the highways named the Haymarket and Hedge Lane, to the vicinity of the Mews, not a house was standing; and St. James's Hospital, and three or four small buildings near the spot now occupied by Carleton House, were all that stood near the line of the present Pall Mall. The limits of the Mews were the same as now; but Leicester Square and all its neighbourhood were completely open fields. St. Martin's Lane had only a few houses beyond the Church, abutting on the Convent Garden (now Covent Garden) which extended quite into Drury

Lane,

Lane, and had but three buildings within its ample bounds. Not a house was standing either in Long Acre, or in the now populous vicinage of Seven Dials; nor yet in Drury Lane from near Broad St. Giles's, to Drewry House at the top of Wych Street. Nearly the whole of the Strand was a continued street, formed, however, in a considerable degree by spacious mansions, and their appropriate offices, the residences of Noblemen and Prelates: those on the south side had all large gardens attached to them, extending down to the Thames, and have mostly given names to the streets, &c. that have been built on their respective sites. The Spring Gardens were literally gardens, reaching as far as the present Admiralty; and further on, towards the Treasury, were the Tilt-Yard and Cockpit; opposite to which was the extensive Palace of Whitehall. Along King Street to St. Margaret's Church and the Abbey, the buildings were nearly connected; and from Whitehall to Palace Yard, they were also thickly clustered on the bank of the Thames. Adjacent to Abingdon Street, the site of which was then a part of the demesne attached to the Palace at Westminster, were several buildings; and some others stood opposite to the Archbishop of Canterbury's Palace in Surrey.

On the Surrey side, the Plan exhibits only a single house that stood anywise contiguous to Lambeth Palace; but more northward, near a road that took the same direction from Westminster as the present Bridge Road, and almost opposite to which was a kind of stage landing-place, were six or seven buildings. All beyond these, to the Banks of the Thames opposite to White Friars, was entirely vacant: there, a line of houses, with gardens and groves of trees behind them, commenced, and was continued with little intermission along Bankside to the vicinity of the Stews, and Winchester House. One of the most noted places in this line was the Theatre and Gardens, called Paris Gardens, the site of which is now occupied by Christ Church and its annexed parish. Further on, but behind the houses and nearly opposite to Broken Wharf and Queenhithe, were the circular buildings and inclosures

appropriated

appropriated to Bull and Bear-baiting, amusements to which Queen Elizabeth seems to have been very partial. Southwark, as far as appears in the Plan, which only extends to a short distance down the Borough High Street, was tolerably clustered with houses, and London Bridge was completely encumbered with them. Along Tooley Street to Battle Bridge, and down to the river, the buildings were closely contiguous; but along Horslydown they stood much thinner, and were intermingled with gardens to where the Plan terminates, nearly opposite to St. Katherine's.

Such then, and so contracted was London about the period of Elizabeth's accession; yet the reign of that Princess forms a splendid epoch in its advancing growth, and notwithstanding the 'dilapidating' Proclamations of the years 1580, 1593, and 1602,* both the population and the buildings continued to keep pace with the extension of commerce, and the increase of the working classes, whose numbers had been greatly augmented by the multitudes redeemed by the Reformation from the idleness of the cloister.

The principal ground upon which Elizabeth and her Ministers had recourse to this restraining policy, was the danger of Pestilence; and notwithstanding the continued injunctions for the 'voiding of inmates' from the Capital, it is most certain that if London was at any time "overthronged with inhabitants, it appears rather to have had its population decreased by pestilential diseases, than spread over a wider district by civic precaution." In despite, however, as well of plague as of proclamations, the Suburbs were greatly extended before the end of Elizabeth's reign; and many of the large mansions of the Nobility and others within the City itself, which now began to be deserted for the more courtly air of Westminster, were either separated into divers tenements, or pulled down to make way for streets of houses. †

E

See preceding Volume, p. 287 and 302.

The

The first Proclamation issued by Elizabeth will serve as a specimen of the whole. It furnishes abundant evidence of the increase of the people;

an

The diffusion of wealth, through the enlargement of commercial intercourse, was accompanied in London by its usual con comitant, luxury, and particularly in dress; so much so, indeed, that

an increase which all the authority of the Crown, strengthened as it was in the following century, by Parliamentary Statutes, proved wholly inadequate to check.

"Proclamation against NEW, BUILDINGS and INMATES.

“THE QUEEN'S MAJESTY perceiving the state of the City of London, being anciently termed her Chamber, and the Suburbs and confines thereof, to increase daily by access of people to inhabit the same, in such ample sort as thereby many inconveniences are seen already, but many greater of necessity like to follow, being such as her Majesty cannot neglect to remedy, having the principal care under Almighty God to foresee, aforehand, to have her people in such a City and confines, not only well governed by ordinary justice, to serve God and obey her Majesty, which by reason of such multitudes, lately increased, can hardly be done without devise of more new Jurisdictions and Officers for that purpose, but to be also provided of sustentation of victual food, and other like necessaries for man's life, upon reasonable prices, without which no City can long continue and finally, to the preservation of her people in health, which may seem impossible to continue, though presently by God's goodness the same is perceived to be in better estate universally, than hath been in man's memory; yet where there are such great multitudes of people brought to inhabit in small rooms, whereof a great part are seen very poor, yea, such as must live of begging or by worse means, and they heaped up together, and in a sort smothered, with many families of children and servants in one house or small tenement; it must needs follow, if any plague or popu lar sickness should, by God's permission, enter amongst these multitudes, that the same would not only spread itself and invade the whole City and confines, but that a great mortality would ensue to the same, where her Majesty's personal presence is many times required, besides the great confluence of people from all parts of the realm, by reason of the ordinary Terms for justice there holden, but would be also dispersed through all other parts of the realm, to the manifest danger of the whole body thereof, out of which neither her Majesty's own person can be, but by God's special ordinance, exempted, nor any other whatsoever they be. For remedy whereof, as time may now serve, until, by some further good order to be had in Parliament or otherwise, the same may be remedied: her Majesty

by

that several sumptuary laws were at different times enacted to restrain the wear of costly and inordinate' apparel, or at least to confine it to the superior ranks. Elizabeth, as well as her E 2

predecessors,

by good and deliberate advise of her Counsel, and being also thereto moved by the considerate opinions of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and other the grave wise men in and about the City, doth charge and straightly command all manner of persons, of what quality soever they be, to desist and forbear from any new buildings of any house or tenements within three miles from any of the gates of the said City of London, to serve for habitation or lodging for any person, where no former house hath been known to have been, in the memory of such as are now living; and also to forbear from letting or setting, or suffering any more families than one only to be placed or to inhabit from henceforth, in any house that hereto fore hath been inhabited. And to the intent, this her Majesty's royal com. mandment and necessary provision may take place, and be duly observed, for so universal a benefit to the whole body of the realm, for whose respects all particular persons are bound by God's law and man's, to forbear from their particular and extraordinary lucre: her Majesty straightly chargeth the Lord Mayor of the City of London, and all other Officers having authority in the same, and also all Justices of Peace, Lords, and Bailiffs of Liberties, not being within the jurisdiction of the said Lord Mayor of London, to forsee that no person do begin to prepare any foundation for any new house, tenement, or building, to serve, to receive, or hold any inhabitants to dwell or lodge, or to use any victualling therein where no former habitation hath been in the memory of such as now do live; but that they be prohibited and restrained so to do. And both the persons that shall so attempt to the contrary, and all manner of workmen that shall, after warning given, continue in any such work, tending to such new buildings, to be committed to close prison, and there to remain without bail, until they find good surities with bonds for reasonable sums of money to be forfeitable and recovered at her Majesty's suit, for the use of the Hospitals in and about the said City, that they shall not at any time attempt the like. And further, the said Officers shall seize all manner of stuff, so, after warning given, brought to the place where such new buildings shall be intended, and the same cause to be converted and employed in any public use for the City or Parish where the same shall be attempted. And for the avoiding the multitudes of families heaped up in one dwelling house, or for the converting of any one house into a multitude of such tenements for dwelling or victualling places, the said Lord Mayor, and all

other