



Produced by Al Haines









LONDON

IN MODERN TIMES;


Or, Sketches of

THE ENGLISH METROPOLIS

DURING THE

SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES.




New York

PUBLISHED BY CARLTON & PORTER,

SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, 200 MULBERRY-STREET.


1851




CONTENTS.

Chap.

       INTRODUCTION
   I.--LONDON UNDER THE FIRST TWO MONARCHS OF THE STUART DYNASTY
  II.--LONDON DURING THE CIVIL WARS
 III.--THE PLAGUE YEAR IN LONDON
  IV.--THE FIRE OF LONDON
   V.--FROM THE RESTORATION OF THE CITY TO THE CLOSE OF THE CENTURY
  VI.--LONDON DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
 VII.--LONDON DURING THE LATTER HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY




LONDON

IN MODERN TIMES.




INTRODUCTION.

This history of an old city opens many views into the realms of the
past, crowded with the picturesque, the romantic, and the
religious--with what is beautiful in intellect, sublime in feeling,
noble in character--and with much, too, the reverse of all this.
Buildings dingy and dilapidated, or tastelessly modernized, in which
great geniuses were born, or lived, or died, become, in connection with
the event, transformed into poetic bowers; and narrow dirty streets,
where they are known often to have walked, change into green alleys,
resounding with richer notes than ever trilled from bird on brake.
Tales of valor and suffering, of heroism and patience, of virtue and
piety, of the patriot's life and the martyr's death, crowd thickly on
the memory.  Nor do opposite reminiscences, revealing the footprints of
vice and crime, of evil passions and false principles, fail to arise,
fraught with salutary warnings and cautions.  The broad thoroughfare is
a channel, within whose banks there has been rolling for centuries a
river of human life, now tranquil as the sky, now troubled as the
clouds, gliding on in peace, or lashed into storms.

These dwelling-places of man are proofs and expressions of his
ingenuity, skill, and toil, of his social instincts and habits.  Their
varied architecture and style, the different circumstances under which
they were built, the various motives and diversified purposes which led
to their erection, are symbols and illustrations of the innumerable
forms, the many  hues, the strange gradations of men's
condition, character, habits, tastes, and feelings.  Each house has its
own history--a history which in some cases has been running on since an
era when civilization wore a different aspect from what it does now.
What changeful scenes has many a dwelling witnessed!--families have
come and gone, people have been born and have died, obedient to the
great law--"the fashion of this world passeth away."  Those rooms have
witnessed the birth and departure of many, the death of the guilty
sinner or pardoned believer, the gay wedding and the gloomy funeral,
the welcome meeting of Christmas groups around the bright fireside, and
the sad parting of loved ones called to separate into widely divergent
paths.  Striking contrasts abound between the outward material aspect
and the inward moral scenery of those habitations.  In this house,
perhaps, which catches the passenger's eye by its splendor, through
whose windows there flashes the gorgeous light of patrician luxury, at
whose door lines of proud equipages drive up, on whose steps are
marshaled obsequious footmen in gilded liveries, there are hearts
pining away with ambition, envy, jealousy, fear, remorse, and agony.
In that humble cottage-like abode, on the other hand, contentment,
which with godliness is great gain, and piety, better than gold or
rubies, have taken up their home, and transformed it into a terrestrial
heaven.

All this applies to London, and gives interest to our survey of it as
we pass through its numerous streets; it clothes it with a poetic
character in the eyes of all gifted with creative fancy.  The poetry of
the city has its own charms as well as the poetry of the country.  The
history of London supplies abundant materials of the character now
described; indeed, they are so numerous and diversified that it is
difficult to deal with them.  The memorials of the mother city are so
intimately connected with the records of the empire, that to do justice
to the former would be to sketch the outline, and to exhibit most of
the stirring scenes and incidents of the latter.  London, too, is
associated closely with many of the distinguished individuals that
England has produced, with the progress of arts, of commerce and
literature, politics and law, religion and civilization; so that, as we
walk about it, we tread on classic ground, rich in a thousand
associations.  Its history is the history of our architecture, both
ecclesiastical and civil.  The old names and descriptions of its
streets, houses, churches, and other public edifices, aided by the few
vestiges of ancient buildings which have escaped the ravages of fire,
time, and ever-advancing alterations, bring before us a series of
views, exhibiting each order of design, from the Norman to the Tudor
era.  In the streets of London, too, may be traced the progress of
domestic building, from the plain single-storied house of the time of
Fitzstephen, to the lofty and many-floored mansion of the fifteenth
century, with its picturesque gables, ornamented front, and twisted
chimneys.  Then these melt away before other forms of taste and art.
In the days of Elizabeth, churches and dwellings become Italianized.
The architects under the Stuart dynasty make fresh innovation, till,
during the last century, skill and genius in this department reached
their culminating point.  Since that period a recurrence to the study
of old models has gradually been raising London to distinction, with
regard to the elegance and beauty of its architectural appearance.

The history of London is the history of our commerce.  Here is seen
gushing up, in very early times, that stream of industry, activity, and
enterprise, which from a rill has swelled into a river, and has borne
upon its bosom our wealth and our greatness, our civilization, and very
much of our liberty.

The London guilds and companies; the London merchant princes; the
London marts and markets; the London granaries for corn; the public
exchanges, built for the accommodation of money-brokers and traders
long before Gresham's time; the London port, wharfs, and docks, crowded
with ships of all countries, laden with treasures from all climes; the
London streets, many of which still bear the names of the trades to
which they were allotted, and the mercantile purposes for which they
were employed:--all these, which form so large a part of the materials,
and supply so great a portion of the scenes of London history, are
essentially commercial, and bring before us the progress of that
industrial spirit, which, with all its failings and faults, has
contributed so largely to the welfare and happiness of modern society.

The history of London is a history of English literature.  Time would
fail to tell of all the memorials of genius with which London abounds;
memorials of poets, philosophers, historians, and divines, who have
there been born, and lived, and studied, and toiled, and suffered, and
died.  No spot in the world, perhaps, is so rich in associations
connected with the history of great minds.  There is scarcely one of
the old streets through which you ramble, or one of the old churches
which you enter, but forthwith there come crowding over the mind of the
well-informed, recollections of departed genius, greatness, or
excellence.

The history of London is the history of the British constitution and
laws.  There thicken round it most of the great political conflicts
between kings and barons, and lords and commons; between feudalism and
modern liberty; between the love of ancient institutions and the spirit
of progress, from which, under God, have sprung our civil government
and social order.

The history of London is the history of our religion, both in its
corrupted and in its purified forms.  Early was it a grand seat of
Romish worship; numerous were its religious foundations in the latter
part of the mediaeval age.  Here councils have been held, convocations
have assembled, controversies were waged, and truth exalted or
depressed.  Smithfield and St. Paul's Churchyard are inseparably
associated with the Reformation.  The principles proclaimed from the
stone pulpit of the one could not be destroyed by the fires that blazed
round the stakes of the other.  The history of the Protestant
Establishment ever since is involved in that of our city; places
connected with its grand events, its advocates, and its ornaments, are
dear to the hearts of its attached children; while other spots in
London, little known to fame, are linked to the memory of the Puritans,
and while reverently traced out by those who love them, are regarded as
hallowed ground.

In London, too, have flourished many of the excellent of the earth; men
who, amidst the engrossing cares and distracting tumults of a large
metropolis, have, like Enoch, walked with God, and leavened, by virtue
of their piety and prayers, the masses around them.  Here also have
flourished, and still flourish, those great religious institutions,
which have made known to the remotest parts of the earth the glad
tidings of the gospel, that "God so loved the world, that he gave his
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish,
but have everlasting life"--truths more precious than the merchandise
of silver, and the gain whereof is greater than pure gold.

Some of the early chapters of London history we have already
written;[1] we have given some sketches of its scenes and fortunes,
from the time when it was founded by the Romans to what are called,
with more of fiction's coloring than history's faithfulness, "the
golden days of good queen Bess."  We now resume the story, and proceed
to give some account of London during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.



[1] See "London in the Olden Time," No. 492 Youth's Library.




CHAPTER I.

LONDON UNDER THE FIRST TWO MONARCHS OF THE STUART DYNASTY.

