3 - THE GROWTH OF POPULATION

Summary

‘Soon London will be all England’

Returning to the question posed earlier – why did London, subject to many of the same pressures which produced serious instability in cities on the continent, not suffer similar consequences? – let us examine first the nature and effects of what most historians agree were the principal threats to London's stability in the sixteenth century: social problems resulting from the enormous increase in population, the steep and rapid rise in prices, and pervasive inequality. Although there is some disagreement about their overall impact, none deny that gross inequality can be a serious threat to social stability or dispute the contention that increased population and severe inflation exacerbated this potential source of tension and thus of instability in Tudor London.

When Henry VII, the first of the Tudors, arrived at St Paul's cathedral to claim his throne on 3 September 1485 he rode into a city where not quite 50,000 people lived. Though first among England's cities, London was dwarfed by continental cities such as Paris, Venice, Naples, and Milan. Roughly 120 years later when Henry's grand-daughter, Elizabeth, lay on her deathbed London's population had tripled in size and then it was one of only a handful of cities in Europe with at least 120,000 inhabitants. By the end of the seventeenth century London had become the largest city in all of Europe.