Tudor London By David Nash Ford

Tudor London
By David Nash Ford

Henry Tudor, who seized the English throne as Henry VII in 1485, and married Elizabeth of York, thus putting an end to the Wars of the Roses, was a resolute and efficient monarch that centralised political power on the crown.

The first monarch of the Tudor dynasty had a great impact on London architecture in the form of 'Henry VII's Chapel,' the addition he made to the eastern end of Westminster Abbey. It is certainly a triumph of renaissance architecture. Henry VII planned it as a shrine-chapel for the body of his half-uncle, the pious King Henry VI. But the Pope would not canonize him and the place became Henry VII's own mausoleum. His main residence was Baynard's Castle which he rebuilt in a more palatial style than its predecessor. He was the last monarch to have a permanent residence within the city walls. He also rebuilt the Palace of Sheen, when it burnt to the ground in 1498, and had it renamed as Richmond Palace. He died there in 1509.

His son, Henry VIII, was another great palatial builder. He expanded York House, the London residence of the Archbishop of York, to become the Palace of Whitehall, joining Westminster with Charing Cross. He also erected Bridewell Palace (the name derives from an ancient holy well), south of Fleet Street just west of the city, when the Royal apartments at Whitehall were wrecked by fire. Henry also built St. James' Palace and the now lost Palace of Nonsuch. Henry's favourite residence was Greenwich Palace, where he had been born; and it thus became the scene of many important historical episodes during his reign.

Like the Archbishops of York at Whitehall, the prelates from Canterbury had a London home across the river at Lambeth Palace. The complex was originally established in 1197 and a medieval chapel crypt survives where the hearings for Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn's divorce were heard. Most of the present building is Tudor including the Gatehouse and Great Hall.

The Reformation produced little bloodshed in London, with most of the higher classes co-operating to bring about a gradual shift to Protestantism. Before the Reformation, more than half of the area of London was occupied by monasteries, nunneries and other religious houses, and about a third of the inhabitants were monks, nuns and friars. Thus Henry VIII's "Dissolution of the Monasteries" had a profound effect on the city as nearly all of this property changed hands. The process started in the mid 1530s, and by 1538 most of the larger houses had been abolished.

In social and economic, as well as architectural terms, theReformation was to be the defining event of the Tudor period in the capital. At the start of Henry VIII's reign, London was filled with splendid religious buildings, the treasures of previous centuries. During the Dissolution of the Monasteries, vast numbers of these were destroyed or adapted to secular use and the damage was still widely visible in Elizabeth I's time. Most of the monastic orders and friars quickly submitted to the will of the King and lost their great and long-established buildings. However, the Carthusian Church of Charterhouse, in Smithfield, was more reluctant than most to surrender. Its Prior was dragged through the streets on a hurdle and hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn. His severed arm was nailed to the Priory Gate as a warning to the rest of the community, but they held out for three years before the execution of fifteen of their number persuaded them to leave. The buildings were incorporated into a great town house for one of the King's Royal Courtiers.

Much of the plunder of the church was used to the advantage of private citizens in this way, and conversions continued into the reign of Edward VI. In 1547, the Duke of Somerset used stone from Clerkenwell Priory and St. Paul's Charnel House to build himself a magnificent Renaissance Palace on the Strand. The Strand Inn and the Church of the Nativity, as well as the houses of the Bishops of Chester and Worcester, were torn down to make way for this new Somerset House. The losses of the church presented great opportunities for the City Livery Companies too and they claimed many fine buildings for themselves from those left redundant.

More benevolent foundations were established by King Henry VIII himself. He claimed to be the (re-)founder of the medical hospital of St. Bartholomew, which still survives today; as do large parts of the adjoining priory and church of the same name. Similarly, he claimed to have refounded St. Thomas's Hospital, also still extant, though it was moved, in the 19th century, from the Southwark side of London Bridge to Lambeth. The refoundation of the Bethlehem Hospital for the mentally ill (Bedlam), outside Bishopgate, was also laid at Henry's door.

These changes meant that the poor of the city were no longer able to gain help from the monasteries. In the final years of Elizabeth I's reign, the first realistic Poor Law Act was introduced. Until then, the poor had largely been oppressed. The fall of the monastic way of life also left a void in the city's education system, such as it was. King Edward VI gave Bridewell Palace to the city as a boys' training house for industry (and also a penitentiary). Similarly, Christ's Hospital School for the education of poor children, was created from the Greyfriars' buildings at Newgate. However, it was largely the efforts of the rising merchants which helped the situation by their establishing new educational foundations. Many well-known public schools, founded through the generosity of city merchants, date from this time, including: Charterhouse, St. Paul's, the City of London School, the Merchant Taylors' and Mercers' Schools. Though the Inns of Chancery were in decline, the Inns of Court continued their educational role in the city and their great halls are a magnificent survival from the Tudor age. The Old Hall at Lincoln's Inn dates from 1490, Gray's Inn from 1556 (though much restored in 1951) and Middle Temple from 1573. Shakespeare performed several of his plays in them.

There were two significant rebellions against the monarch in London during the Tudor period. The first was against Queen Mary, a catholic, the second was against Elizabeth I, a protestant in 1601, but neither held much chance of success as the Londoners were not willing to support them.

Elizabeth I's accession to the throne eventually brought more relaxed times to the people of London. It was the heyday of the English theatre, and Londoners flocked to Southwark as the entertainment capital of the city. Here were the Hope, the Swan, the Rose and the Globe: great theatres all. The latter two were the work places of William Shakespeare who spent most of his life in this area of London. Less official performances were executed at the many galleried inns in the nearby streets. There were also more base entertainments available such as bear baiting or cock-fighting.

The late 16th century, when William Shakespeare and his contemporaries lived and worked in London, was one of the most notable periods in the city's cultural history. There was considerable hostility to the development of the theatre however. Public entertainments produced crowds, and crowds were feared by the authorities because they might become mobs, and by many ordinary citizens who dreaded that large gatherings might contribute to the spread of plague. Theatre itself was discountenanced by the increasingly influential Puritan strand in the nation. However, Queen Elizabeth loved plays, which were performed for her privately at Court, and approved of public performances of " 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."

A 1596 sketch of a performance in progress at The Swan

Nonetheless the theatres were mostly built outside of the City boundaries, beyond its jurisdiction. The first theatrical district was located north of the City wall, in Shoreditch. Here The Theatre and The Curtain were built, in 1576 and 1577 respectively. Later the south side of the river, which was already established as an area where less salubrious entertainments such as bear-baiting might be seen, became the main centre. Theatres on Bankside included The Globe, The Rose, The Swan, and The Hope. The Blackfriars Theatre, although within the walls, was also outside of the City's jurisdiction.

After the attempted invasion of Britain by the Spanish Armada in 1588, when the loyal Londoners raised a large band of men to help defeat the invaders, England became more politically stable. There was a marked increase in prosperity and the population of London grew accordingly. The core of the city was built around the lands seized from the church and we begin to see the richer citizens moving out to country estates to the west of the city along the Thames where many of the old bishops' palaces were rebuilt for use by the nobility. The detailed maps, give a much clearer picture of the layout of the city than we have from previous times.

John Norden's map of London in 1593.

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