Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Charles attempted unsuccessfully to arrest several of their number at Westminster.
Acting on a tip-off, the MPs fled by river to the City, which sided with Parliament.
Charles withdrew to Nottingham, where he raised his standard, the opening military
act of the
Civil War
. London was the key to victory, and as a
Parliamentarian stronghold
it came under attack almost immediately from Royalist forces. Having defeated the
Parliamentary troops to the west of London at
Brentford i
n November 1642, the way
was open for Charles to take the capital. Londoners turned out in numbers to defend
their city, some 24,000 assembling at
Turnham Green
. A stand-off ensued, Charles
hesitated and in the end withdrew to Reading, thus missing his greatest chance of
victory. A complex system of fortifications was thrown up around London, but was
never put to the test. In the end, the capital remained intact throughout the war, which
culminated in the execution of the king outside Whitehall's Banqueting House in
January 1649.
For the next eleven years England was a
Commonwealth
- at first a true republic,
then, after 1653, a Protectorate under
Oliver Cromwell
, who was ultimately as
impatient of Parliament and as arbitrary as Charles had been. London found itself in
the grip of the Puritans' zealous laws, which closed down all theatres, enforced
observance of the Sabbath and banned the celebration of Christmas, which was
considered a papist superstition.
Plague and fire
Just as London proved Charles I's undoing, so the ecstatic reception given to
Charles II
(1660-85) helped ease the
Restoration
of the monarchy in 1660. The “Merry
Monarch” immediately caught the mood of the public by opening up the theatres,
and he encouraged the sciences by helping the establishment of the
Royal Society
for
Improving Natural Knowledge, whose founder members included
Christopher Wren
,
John Evelyn
and
Isaac Newton
.
The good times that rolled in the early period of Charles's reign came to an abrupt
end with the onset of the
Great Plague
of 1665. Epidemics of bubonic plague were
nothing new to London - there had been major outbreaks in 1593, 1603, 1625, 1636
and 1647 - but the combination of a warm summer and the chronic overcrowding of
the city proved calamitous in this instance. Those with money left the city (the court
moved to Oxford), while the poorer districts outside the City were the hardest hit. The
extermination of the city's dog and cat population - believed to be the source of the
epidemic - only exacerbated the situation by allowing the flea-carrying rat population
to explode. In September, the death toll peaked at twelve thousand a week, and in total
an estimated hundred thousand lost their lives.
A cold snap in November extinguished the plague, but the following year London
had to contend with yet another disaster, the
Great Fire
of 1666. As with the plague,
outbreaks of fire were fairly commonplace in London, whose buildings were
predominantly timber-framed, and whose streets were narrow, allowing fires to spread
rapidly. However, this particular fire raged for five days and destroyed some four-fifths
of the City of London (see box, p.452).
Within five years, nine thousand houses had been rebuilt with bricks and mortar
(timber was banned), and fifty years later
Christopher Wren
had almost single-handedly
1588
1599
1605
1642-51
1643
Defeat of the
Spanish Armada
Globe Theatre
opens on Bankside
Gunpowder
Plot foiled
Civil War
Cheapside Cross torn
down by iconoclasts
