The King's City
Page 46
Finally, I must say a few words about my friend and long-standing collaborator, Michael Walsh. Shortly after this book was commissioned, Mike had to bow out of what was set to be yet another enjoyable partnership when he was hit by a chronic illness. This was to have been our fifth book together. We first met more than thirty years ago when working on ITV’s investigative current affairs series World in Action. After we separately left the series, we continued to make television programmes together. From writing documentary scripts it was a natural, if daunting, progression to writing books. With his encyclopaedic knowledge of English history and a nose for a good story, Mike was always a pleasure to work with. While writing The King’s City I have missed our regular editorial meetings in the office’ - in reality, a pub halfway between our homes in West London, But Mike still enjoys a pint and it is still my pleasure to join him.
ILLUSTRATIONS
When Charles II returned to London on his thirtieth birthday, after an absence of eighteen years, he entered the ancient city by crossing London Bridge, begun in the twelfth century and partially financed by the sale of building plots on the bridge itself.(© Heritage images/Getty images)
The Royal Exchange symbolised the financial strength of seventeenth-century London. Built in the sixteenth century, it was the city’s centre of trade and commerce. Twice a day a bell summoned men of business to made deals, socialise and gossip. (© British Library. London, UK/© British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images)
Samuel Pepys exemplified Restoration success: through patronage and skill he rose from the position of private secretary to become one of the most important figures in England, creating a modern navy and. as the guitar in this painting indicates, enjoying the many delights London had to offer.(© Gstty Images)
Sir William Davenant was the foremost theatrical impresario of Restoration London. Running a theatre under a licence from Charles II, he helped restore theatre to London, brought opera to England, introduced the proscenium arch and developed innovative moveable scenery and effects – and all within eight years between the King returning and Davenant’s own death in 1668.(© Kean Collection/Getty Images)
The Duke of York’s Theatre, also known as the Dorset Gardens Theatre, was Loudon’s first tailor-made theatre in the Restoration period. Although built after William Davenant’s death, it contained all the innovations of stage machinery he wished for. The building itself was an example of the new fashion for baroque architecture, based on early classical Roman and Greek architecture. (© Mary Evans Picture Library)
One of the grandest streets in seventeenth-century London was Cheapside, lined by multi-storied medieval merchants’ houses with their gables facing the street and filled with shops offering luxury goods from around the world. Foreign visitors remarked upon its grandeur. Along with most of old London, il would be destroyed in the fire of 1666. (© Mary Evans Picture Library)
After the Great Fire of 1666, several plans were put forward to create an entirely new shape for London, built along rational, geometric lines. This plan was developed by Sir John Evelyn, a founding member of the Royal Society and a friend of the King. It bore a striking similarity to that proposed by his friend Sir Christopher Wren. Commercial and financial constraints meant that none of the new plans were implemented. (© Mary Evans Picture Library)
Nell Gwyn was not the first woman to grace the London stage after Charles relaxed the Puritan ban, but she was certainly the most famous. Her personality and wit allowed her to overcome many shortcomings as an actor, to the extent that the premier playwright John Dryden wrote parts expressly for her. Here she is seen with her two children, Charles and James, both fathered by the King, whose mistress she was for many years. (©Mary Evans)
What skills Nell Gwyn lacked, Flizabeth Barry, tbe foremost female actor of the Restoration stage, had in abundance. She was not only a talented comic actor hut excelled in tragic parts. The actor-manager Thomas Betterton said of her that she could make a success of a play that would disgust the most patient reader’. (©Getty Images)
When the Royal Society published Micrographia by Robert Hooke in 1665, it caused a sensation. Its engravings of observations made under a microscope revealed a new world of discovery for Londoners. The illustration of a flea altraeted particular attention. Little did Londoners know that this little creature was even then already carrying bubonic plague into the city. (© Mary Evans Picture Library)
Robert Boyle, a member of an aristocratic family in Ireland, was the first notable scientist of the Restoration. He formulated a law on the behaviour of gases and demonstrated the properties of a vacuum to the Royal Society, using his famous vacuum pump, made in collaboration with Robert Hooke and seen here in the background. (© Mary Evans Picture Library)
Anthony Ashley Cooper seemed to have it all – an aristocratic lineage, a mansion by the Thames, a seat in the government and the foremost philosopher of the age, John Locke, as his in-house savant. But he fell out with Charles over the succession, founded the opposition Whig parly and finally had lo flee ihe country, accused of Ireason. (© Universal Images Group/Getty Images)
Sir William Petty is the forgotten genius of the age. He rose from cabin boy to academic star, founder member of the Royal Society and man of wealth. He was a proto-economist and political philosopher of note who worked out how to estimate The weallh of a nation, creating GDP – gross domestic product – that rod for the backs of politicians ever since. (© Mary Evans Picture Library)
Sir Christopher Wren’s rebuilt St Paul’s Cathedral was the finest building erected in England in the seventeenth century. Entirely alien to traditional English church architecture, it resembled not an Anglican cathedral buta great European Catholic basilica. The fact that Wren got away with it owed much lo the patronage Charles II. (© The London Metropolitan Archives)
INDEX
Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
Ac to flndulgence 134
Adams, Samuel 447
Age of Reason 106
air pollution 3, 75–7, 421
Albermarle, Duke of 64, 274
Alberti, Leon Battista 66
alchemy 60–1, no, 227–8
aldermen 9–10,188
Aldersgate no, 211, 373
Alfred the Great 41
Allen, Thomas 38
Allestry, James 160
Alsaha 19–20
Alston, Sir Edward 175
Amboina Massacre (1623) 99
American Declaration of Independence 447
Amity (ship) 127–8
amnesty (Declaration of Breda) 31, 121, 289
exceptions to 31, 50
Amsterdam x, 8, 9, 18,148
Anglicanism 35,133, 134, 308, 326,330, 409,411
Book of Common Prayer 434
Savoy Conference (1661) 198
Anglo-Dutch wars see First Anglo-Dutch War: Second Anglo-Dutch War; Third Anglo-Dutch War
Anne, Queen (Anne of Denmark) 67
anti-court faction see Country Party
Antwerp x
Burse 13
apprenticeships
guilds 94–5
merchants 10,102,126
Aquinas, Thomas 262
architecture xiv, 436–7, 438–40
baroque 198, 438
classical 66–8, 72, 204, 130, 331, 422, 439
Gothic 67, 68, 331
neoclassical 197, 439
Palladian 68, 438, 439
see also entries for individual architects
arrstocracy
marriage 332
patronage system 20
playwrights 85, 297
public crime and misbehaviour 272, 273, 274–8
‘Wits’ 83, 276, 337, 364
Aristotle 62
Arlington, Henry Bennet, rst Earl of 132, 170, 259, 2S9
and Treaty of Dover 286
army
di
sbanding of Cromwellian regiments 37
Monek’s purge of 36–7, 40
art
cultural isolation of England 345–6
intrinsically English 346 fn
native baroque 346
see also painters
Arundel, Henry Howard, 6th Duke of 217
Asante people 61, 62
Ashburnham, William 304–5
astrology 179–80, 390, 426
astronomy 74, 105, 108–9, 167, 337–8, 341
Aubrey, John 5, 47, 132, 335, 367
Bacon, Francis 111, 165, 181
Bacon, Nathaniel 361
Bacon’s Rebellion (1676) 360, 361
balance spring watch 446
Bank of Amsterdam 469
Bank of England 469–72
banking
banker-scriveners 373–4
effects of the Great Stop 311–12
fractional reserve hanking 374
goldsmith-bankers 42, 94, 93, 102, 103, 220, 244, 308, 313, 373, 374
India 323
loans to the Crown 103, 244, 308
merchant bankers 374
modern banking system, start of 374
national hank idea 219–20, 313, 448
Thompson-Nelthorpe affair 373–5
see also interest rates
Banks, Sir John 312–14, 326
Banqueting House 4, 67, 339
Barbados 90, 122, 126, 127, 128, 141, 170, 260, 288, 304, 305, 413, 428
indentured servants 360
slave uprisings 360
Barbary pirates 141
Barber-Surgeon s’ Company 180
Barbon, Nicolas 333–4, 424, 425, 440
Barebone, Praise-God 333 fn
Barkstead, Sir John 5
Barnardiston, Sir Samuel 266
Barnes Common 277
Barry, Elizabeth xiv, 234, 235, 293–4, 296, 441
Bartholomew Close 395
Bath, Earl of 64
bawds 281
Bay of Biscay 171
Beale, Mary 343, 344–5
Beaumont, Francis 84
Bedlam (Bethlehem Hospital) 368
Behn, Aphra xiv, 287–93, 294–7, 357, 372, 402
The Dutch Lover 294
early life 287–8
The Forced Marriage 287, 291
intelligence work 288, 289–90
and Nell Gwyu 292
Oroonoko 279, 290
poetry 292—3
The Rover 294–6
writings 287, 290–1, 292–3, 294–6
Bell Tavern 403
‘benefit of clergy’ 280–1
Bennett, Alan 307 fn
Berkeley, George 447
Berkeley, Lord John 130
Berkeley, Sir William 130, 361–2
Bermuda 140
Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 197–8
Bethel, Slingsby 327–8
The Principal Interest of England Stated 328
Bethnal Green 17
Betterton, Thomas 81, 85, 296, 300, 301, 371, 416, 441
bezoar stones 178
Bight of Benin 127
Bill of General Pardon, Indemnity and Oblivion 32
bills of mortality 6, 131–2, 172, 282, 422–3
Bishopsgate 104, 210, 334
Black Death see plague
Blackamore (ship) 127
Blackheath 36, 37
Blake, Captain William 419
bloodletting 179
Bloodworth, Sir Thomas 26, 33, 206, 207–8, 211, 212 .
Bloomsbury 333
Board of Green Cloth 344 fn
Boehme, Jacob 427
Bombay 120, 266, 324, 450
booksellers and publishers 143–4, 160, 278, 400, 403, 405
Boothby, Frances 291–2
Marcelin, or, the Treacherous Friend 292
Borromini, Francesco 198
Boudicca 41
Bow Street 275–6
Bowles, Captain 127
Boyle, Robert xiv, 22–3, 105, 106, 113, 222, 223
Boyle’s Law 112, 116–17
desiderata 165, 451, 461–2
interest in alchemy 227–8 .
New Observations and Experiments in order to a History of Cold 167
patron of Heinrich Oldenburg 164
patron of Robert Hooke 159
Royal Society member 113–14, 115, 226
satiric treatment of 365–6
vacuum pump 114, 115–16, 226, 446
word coinage 445
Breda 30–1
see also Declaration of Breda
Bridewell prison 19, 273, 400, 408
Bridgeman, Sir Orlando 53
Bristol 8, 91, 307, 449
British Empire 436, 450
Britten, Benjamin 440
Brogbill, Lord, Mustapha 297
brothel-keepers 281, 394, 595, 399–400, 403–6
brothels 22, 233, 274, 281, 288, 394, 395, 405
Brauncker, Viscount 105, 117, 119, 160
Brunelleschi, Filippo 67
bubonic plague see plague
Buckingham, George Villiers, 2nd Duke of 35, 44 fn, 64, 327, 364
duel 277–8
imprisoned in the Tower 373
pimping for the King 281
playwright 85
relations with the King 35, 277, 373
suggests the King should divorce Catherine of Braganza 329
and Thomas Osborne 327
and Treaty of Dover 285, 326
Bunyan, John, Pilgrim’s Progress 279
Burbage, Richard 81
Burlington, Earl of 439
Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop of Salisbury 312, 345, 443
Burse, Antwerp 13
Cade, Jack 36
Cademan, Sir Thomas 47
Calvinism 181
Canadian fur trade 255–9
see also Hudson’s Bay Company
Cape Castle, Ghana 63–4
Cape Verde Isles 88
Caravaggio 344
Carisbrooke Castle, Isle of Wight 69
Carlyle, Joan 344
Carolina 129–30, 260, 261, 262
Carteret, Sir George 130
Cartwright, Colonel George 256
Catherine of Braganza 120
Catholicism 120, 382
childlessness 155, 329, 387
dowry 120, 266, 324
marries Charles II 120
Popish Plot and 382, 385
smallpox 155
Catholicism 347
anti-Catholic sentiment 330, 334, 352, 378, 379, 382, 383, 385, 387, 389, 407
Barbara Palmer 407
Catherine of Braganza 120, 382
countcr-Reformation 198
education and employment exclusions 112, 335, 347
Henrietta Maria 151
James, Duke of York 326, 328–9, 379, 387, 389, 410, 418
Jesuits 377–8, 379, 380, 3812
King’s deathbed conversion 433
Louise de Kérouaille 352, 382
Popish Plot 376, 377–82, 377–86, 394, 4l5
and succession issue 386–7, 388–9, 391, 395, 415, 419
censorship 278, 351, 376, 389, 403–4
Chapel Royal 372
charcoal 96, 156
Charing Cross 334
Charles I 65–6, 248
canonisation 35
Civil War ii-xiii
and colonialism 130
coronation 372
court portraits 261
execution of xi, xiii, 4–5, 22, 31, 35, 68
imprisonment 69
patron of the arts 21
see also regicides
Charles II
absolutism xi, 382, 391, 434–5
alchemical interests 110, 227
antipathy to the Dutch 87, 150, 151
antipathy to Parliament 309, 351–2
architectural interests 134
on Bacon’s Rebellion 361
banishes Duke of Monmouth 384
Battle of Worcester (1651) 209
&n
bsp; birth and early life xii
character of xv, 134, 209–10
Civil War xii-xiii
colonial ambitions 129–30, 260
commercial ventures 63–4, 89, 99, 100, 110–11, 123–4, 455
coronation 93–4, 95–8, 101–3
court portraits 261–2, 345
crowned King of Scotland xiii
death of 384 fn, 432–3
deathbed conversion to Catholicism 433
Declaration of Breda 31–2, 50, 121
defaults on loans 310
desire for Britain’s dominance in Europe 150
dismissal of Clarendon 250, 327
exclusion crisis and 386–7, 388–9, 389, 391, 395, 417, 419
and execution of regicides 55
exile in Fiance xiii, 151
exile in Holland xiii, 30–1, 33–4, 150–1
failed invasion of England xiii
financial needs 59, 100, 124, 195, 215, 308,
Charles II - continued 309, 392, 435
Great Fire and 207, 208, 209, 212
ill health 384, 421, 430
illegitimate children 135, 155, 299, 387
interest in foreign exploration 118, 258
leaves London during the plague 173
legacy 433–7
marries Catherine of Braganza 120
and Medway raid 245–7, 31?
Merry Monarch 57
mistresses see Kérouaille, Louise dc; Mancini, Hortense; Palmer, Barbara; Stuart, Frances
personal bravery 209–10
plans new palace at Winchester 430–1
pleasure-seeking 134
Popish Plot and 376, 377–82
promises support for French expansionist policies 285, 392
prorogues Parliament 334, 376, 381
and the rebuilding of London 215, 217, 220
religious tolerance 57, 133, 134, 409, 434
Restoration see Restoration
Rye House Plot (1683) 418–20
satiric attacks on 387, 388
scientific interests 105, 108, rro, 342, 435
sells Dunkirk to the French 135
sexuality, slurs on 387
statement of intent 30, 31
subsidies from Louis XIV 285, 328, 381
succession question 391, 433, 434
syphilis 397, 430
and tax farming 195