London

Roman London
The beginnings of London can be dated with some exactitude to the invasion of the Romans in 43AD. Prior to the Roman invasion there was no permanent settlement of significance on the site of London. Instead, the Thames River flowed through marshy ground sprinkled with small islands of gravel and sand. There were probably more mosquitoes than people inhabiting the area. The Romans established ‘Londinium' as a permanent military camp, although their principle settlement was in modern day Colchester. In 60 AD, after a failed uprising by the Iceni tribe under Boudica, Londinium was burned to the ground, only to emerge as the new commercial and administrative capital of Britannia.

The Saxons and the Danes
By the fourth century the Roman Empire was failing and in 410 the Romans officially abandoned the city. After being abandoned for perhaps 150 years, its strategic position on the Thames meant that by 600 Anglo-Saxons had revived settlement in the area.

The 7th century saw trade once more expand and the city grow once more. Early in that century, perhaps in 604 AD, the first St. Paul's Cathedral was founded, on the site now occupied by the present St. Paul's.

By the 9th century, London was a very prosperous trading centre, and its wealth attracted the attention of Danish Vikings. The Danes periodically sailed up the Thames and attacked London.

In 841 and 851 the Danish Vikings attacked and in 1016 the Danish leader Canute became King of all England. London was designated the capital, a position that it has held ever since. The brief Danish rule ended with the accession of Edward the Confessor (1042-66) whose reign saw the geographical separation of power in the capital, with royal government based in Westminster and commerce centred upstream in the City of London.

1066 to the Black Death
Edward appointed Harold, Earl of Wessex, as his successor. Harold was defeated by William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

In some ways the medieval history of London can be said to have begun on Christmas Day, 1066, when William the Conqueror was crowned king of England in a ceremony at the newly finished Westminster Abbey.

Over the next few centuries, the City waged a continuous struggle with the monarchy for a degree of self-government which culminated in the Magna Carta of 1215. London was granted the right to elect its own Lord Mayor. In 1348 the city was hit by the Europe-wide bubonic plague, the Black Death. This disease, carried by black rats, wiped out half of the capital's population in two years.

Tudor London
It was under the Tudor royal family that London began to prosper and the population increased dramatically, trebling in size during the course of the century.

By the early 12th century the population of London was about 18,000 (compare this to the 45,000 estimated at the height of Roman Britain). In 1123 St. Bartholomew's Priory was founded in the city, and other monastic houses quickly followed. Many areas that are now London parks were used as Royal hunting forests during the Tudor period. Richmond Park served this purpose, so did Hyde Park, Regent's Park, and St. James Park.

The most crucial development of the sixteenth century was the English Reformation, the separation of the English Church from Rome. Despite huge religious strife between Catholicism and Protestantism, the Tudor economy remained in good health. In the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) London also witnessed a specifically English Renaissance, especially in the field of literature, which reached its apogee in the brilliant careers of Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare.

Stuart London
In 1603, James VI of Scotland became James I of England (1603-25), uniting the two crowns and initiating the Stuart dynasty.

The history of Stuart London almost kicked off with a real bang. Catholic conspirators planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament when they opened on November 5, 1605, hoping to kill the new king, James I. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your sympathies, the plot was discovered, and a conspirator named Guy Fawkes was discovered in cellars beneath Parliament with kegs of explosives. This event, called the Gunpowder Plot, is commemorated each year with the celebration of Bonfire Night on November 5.

Under Charles I (1625-49) the animosity between Crown and Parliament culminated in full-blown Civil War. After a series of defeats, Charles surrendered to the Scots and was eventually tried and executed in 1649. London then became a Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell, and found itself in the grip of the Puritans' zealous law, until Charles II (1660-85) announced the Restoration of the Monarchy.

The Stuart period is sadly dominated by two disasters, the Great Plague and the Great Fire . In 1665 Plague broke out in the city, brought by ship from Holland. London had been no stranger to the plague since the Middle Ages, but this was something different - a strain so virulent that sufferers could catch it and die within hours. The city descended into a state of panic.

Sufferers were locked in their houses, along with their families. It was thought that dogs and cats spread the disease, so the Lord Mayor ordered them all killed. Thus, with one stroke, the natural enemies of the rats who were the true carriers were decimated.

Throughout the very long, dry summer of 1665 the plague raged in London. The court fled, most doctors and priests followed, and anyone with the means to leave, left quickly. Although the worst of the plague died by autumn, it was not until the next great calamity cleansed the filthy streets of London that the plague was truly over. Estimates of the death toll range from 70,000 to well over 100,000 lives.

The second calamity was the Great Fire. On the night of September 2, 1666 a small fire, perhaps started by the carelessness of a maid, started in the shop of the king's baker in Pudding Lane. Fanned by a strong wind, the fire soon became an inferno. For four days the fire raged through the close-packed streets of wooden houses, until the wind died.

The toll of the fire was immense. Although only 8 lives were lost, fully four-fifths of the city was completely destroyed, including 13,000 buildings, 89 churches, 52 company halls, and old St. Paul's Cathedral.

Georgian London
The early years of the 18th century saw the birth of newspapers in London. The early papers, the most notable of which was Richard Addison's Spectator , catered to the demands of an increasingly literate population. Many of the newspapers that followed Addison put up shop along Fleet Street.

London's expansion continued with the accession of George I (1714-27). The volume of trade had more than tripled and London was by now the world's largest city with a population approaching one million. Although London was wealthy, it was also experiencing the worst mortality rates since records began; disease was rife, but the real killer was gin. At its height, gin consumption was averaging two pints a week, and the burial rate exceeded the baptism rate by more than two to one. Policing the metropolis was also an increasing preoccupation for the government, who introduced capital punishment for the most minor misdemeanours. Nevertheless, crime continued unabated throughout the 18 th century so the prison population swelled and transportation to the colonies began.

In 1759 the British Museum opened its doors for the first time. The museum was based on a collection of "curiosities" collected by the packrat nobleman, Sir Hans Sloane. When Sloane died his collection, really a jumble of oddments that happened to catch Sloane's fancy, was acquired by the government and put on display to the public.

The 19 th century
During the 19th century London was transformed into the world's largest city and capital of the British Empire (and the largest of the world, just before Paris and Rome , surpass by New York about 1900) . Its population expanded from 1 million in 1800 to 6 million a century later. This was the period when London became a global political, financial, and trading capital, and hosted the Great Exhibition of 1851.

However Victorian London (the Victorian period covered most of the century) was also a city of extreme poverty, where millions lived in overcrowded and unsanitary slums . Life for the poor was immortalised by Charles Dickens in such novels as Oliver Twist .

The 20 th century
War in the first half of the 20th century destroyed many of the gains achieved by the previous century. Georgian and Victorian London was devastated by the Luftwaffe in WWII - huge swathes of the centre and the East End were totally flattened. After the war, ugly housing and low-cost developments were thrown up on the bomb sites. The docks never recovered - shipping moved to Tilbury, and the Docklands declined to the point of dereliction. In the heady 1980s, that decade of Thatcherite confidence and deregulation, the Docklands were rediscovered by a new wave of property developers, who proved to be only marginally more discriminating than the Luftwaffe.

The 21 st century
London has come a long way since the Thatcher years. Redevelopment has continued apace and a series of prestigious new millennium projects and commercial construction have changed the face of the city. There has also been large-scale investment in infrastructure. A significant political development for London has been the creation of the Greater London Assembly (GLA), along with an American-style Mayor of London, both elected by popular mandate.

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