Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
cooped up in the Tower. For this particular favour, London was granted the right to
elect its own sheriff, or lord mayor, an o
ce that was o
cially acknowledged in the
Magna Carta of 1215.
Occasionally, of course, Londoners backed the wrong side, as they did when they
turned up at Old St Paul's to accept
Prince Louis of France
(the future Louis VIII) as
ruler of England during the barons' rebellion against King John in 1216, and again with
Simon de Montfort, when he was engaged in civil war with
Henry III
(1216-72) during
the 1260s. As a result, the City found itself temporarily stripped of its privileges. In any
case, London was chiefly of importance to the medieval kings as a source of wealth, and
traditionally it was to the Jewish community, which arrived in 1066 with William the
Conqueror, that the sovereign turned for a loan. By the second half of the thirteenth
century, however, the Jews had been squeezed dry, and in 1290, after a series of
increasingly bloody attacks,
London's Jews
were expelled by Edward I (1272-1307),
who turned instead to the City's Italian merchants for financial assistance.
From the Black Death to the Wars of the Roses
London backed the right side in the struggle between Edward II (1307-27) and his
queen, Isabella, who, along with her lover Mortimer, succeeded in deposing the king.
The couple's son Edward III (1327-77) was duly crowned, and London enjoyed a
period of relative peace and prosperity, thanks to the wealth generated by the wool
trade. All this was cut short, however, by the arrival of the Europe-wide bubonic plague
outbreak, known as the
Black Death
, in 1348. This disease, carried by black rats and
transmitted to humans by flea bites, wiped out something like two-thirds of the
capital's 75,000 population in the space of two years. Other epidemics followed in
1361, 1369 and 1375, creating a volatile economic situation that was worsened by
the financial strains imposed on the capital by having to bankroll the country's
involvement in the Hundred Years' War with France.
Matters came to a head with the introduction of the poll tax, a head tax imposed in
the 1370s on all men regardless of means. During the ensuing
Peasants' Revolt
of 1381,
London's citizens opened the City gates to Wat Tyler's Kentish rebels and joined in the
lynching of the archbishop, plus countless rich merchants and clerics. Tyler was then
lured to meet the boy-king Richard II at Smithfield, just outside the City, where he was
murdered by Lord Mayor Walworth, who was subsequently knighted for his treachery.
Tyler's supporters were fobbed off with promises of political changes that never came,
as Richard unleashed a wave of repression and retribution.
After the Peasants' Revolt, the next serious disturbance was
Jack Cade's Revolt
, which
took place in 1450. An army of 25,000 Kentish rebels - including gentry, clergy and
craftsmen - defeated King Henry VI's forces at Sevenoaks, marched to Blackheath,
withdrew temporarily and then eventually reached Southwark in early July. Having
threatened to burn down London Bridge, the insurgents entered the City and spent
three days wreaking vengeance on their enemies before being ejected. A subsequent
attempt to enter the City via London Bridge was repulsed, and the army was dispersed
with yet more false promises. The reprisals, which became known as the “harvest of
heads”, were as harsh as before - Cade himself was captured, killed and brought to the
capital for dismemberment.
1290
1305
1337-1453
1380
1415
Jews expelled
from London
William Wallace
executed at
Smithfield
Hundred Years'
War
Chaucer's Canterbury
Tales published
Henry V wins the Battle
of Agincourt
