¹ On this subject generally see Brett-James, Norman, The Growth of Stuart London (London, 1935)Google Scholar, chaps. 2, 5, and 6. Power, M. J. (“John Stow and His London,” Journal of Historical Geography 11 [1985]: 1–20)CrossRefGoogle Scholar shows that more development occurred north of the Strand in the late sixteenth century than Brett-James and other older accounts assume. There is no doubt, however, that this district was mainly built up under the early Stuarts. The number of ratepayers on the “landside” of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields—i.e., north of the Strand and west of Charing Cross—increased by a factor of approximately eight between 1603 and 1640, from 161 to just over 1,200 (Westminster Public Library, MSS F 330, 367, microfilm).

² Greater London Record Office (RO), MSS E/BER/CG/L/1/2 and 3; Gater, George and Godfrey, Walter H., eds., London County Council (LCC), Survey of London, vol. 20, pt. 3 (London, 1910), pp. 2–4Google Scholar; Brett-James, pp. 152–55; Rosser, Gervase, Medieval Westminster (Oxford, 1989), p. 138Google Scholar; British Library (BL), Lansdowne MS 71, fols. 34r–38r and 423–43r.

³ These statements are based on aggregate totals of baptisms for the named parishes, for which see Burke, Arthur M. and Henson, H. Henley, eds.. Memorials of St. Margaret's Church Westminster: The Parish Registers, 1539–1660 (London, 1914)Google Scholar; Harleian Society Publications, Register Section (London, 19–), vol. 26Google Scholar; and the microfilms of the registers of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, St. Clement Danes, and St. Margaret's Westminster in the manuscripts room of the Westminster Public Library. Between 1634 and 1639, baptisms in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields fluctuated between 560 and 586 a year. The best recent studies do not agree on the London birthrate, which must be known to extrapolate population from baptismal figures. The most thorough demographic survey (Finlay, Roger, Population and Metropolis [Cambridge. 1981], p. 60)CrossRefGoogle Scholar adopts a low figure of thirty per thousand and a high figure of thirty-five per thousand. This would place the London birthrate near the national average, on the assumption that higher fertility among married Londoners—which resulted from the widespread practice of placing young infants with wet nurses, thus avoiding the contraceptive effects of lactation—was canceled out by a higher proportion of unmarried servants and recent migrants into the metropolis. Boulton, Jeremy L. (Neighborhood and Society: A London Suburb in the Seventeenth Century [Cambridge, 1987])CrossRefGoogle Scholar suggests a much higher and fluctuating birthrate—ranging from fortythree to more than fifty per thousand—for Southwark. A birthrate over forty per thousand seems unlikely for the West End, however, which had many servants and recent migrants. Using three-year moving averages and assuming a baptism rate of thirty-three per thousand yields estimated populations for St. Martin's-in-the-Fields of 9,600 in 1623, declining to 8,550 in 1625, then rising to 11,648 in 1630, 15,210 in 1634, 17,310 in 1635, 16,800 in 1636 (a plague year), 16,920 in 1637, 17,010 in 1638, and 17,220 in 1639. If the baptism rate was forty per thousand, the population would have been 14,425 in 1635 and 14,350 in 1639. The same methods yield high and low population estimates for St. Margaret's Westminster of 15,930 and 13,275 in 1638, and of 9,360 and 7,083 for St. Clement Danes in the same year. The three largest West End parishes would have had a combined population of 42,300 using the higher numbers and 34,533 using the lower. I have not attempted to calculate the populations of the small parish of St. Mary le Strand or the rapidly growing one of St. Giles'-in-the-Fields, but these would probably have added another 10,000 to the totals. Given the uncertainty concerning the birthrate, population estimates should be regarded as no more than rough orders of magnitude. It is clear that St. Martin's-in-the-Fields was the most rapidly growing parish, roughly doubling in population between the plague year of 1625 and the late 1630s, to overtake St. Margaret's Westminster in size.

⁴ McIlwain, Charles. ed., The Political Works of James I (Cambridge, Mass., 1918), p. 343Google Scholar.

⁵ For the overflowing sewers located along St. Martin's Lane, see Westminster Public Library. MS F 2002, fol. 111. The threat of plague in the court's immediate vicinity was, of course, a perennial concern.

⁶ The most thorough study to date is Barnes, Thomas, “The Prerogative and Environmental Control of London Building in the Early Seventeenth Century: The Lost Opportunity,” Ecology Law Review 1 (1971): 62–93Google Scholar. Barnes is very good on royal policy, but he did not find independent evidence of building trends and practices, apart from material compiled by the crown. His assessment of the effectiveness of crown regulation should, therefore, be treated with caution. See also Brett-James, chap. 3.

⁷ Alnwick Castle, Alnwick, Northumberland, MS YIII/2/4, envelope 10; Smuts, R. Malcolm, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in England (Philadelphia, 1987), p. 128Google Scholar.

⁸ SirSummerson, John, Georgian London (London, 1946)Google Scholar, chap. 2, Architecture in Britain, 1530–1830 (Harmondsworth, 1953), pp. 134-37, 164, 384–85Google Scholar.

⁹ Fisher, F. J., “The Development of London as a Centre for Conspicuous Consumption in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Essays in Economic History, ed. Wilson, M. Carus (London, 1962), 1: 197–207Google Scholar; Stone, Lawrence, The Crisis of the Aristocracy (Oxford, 1965), pp. 385–97Google Scholar, “The Residential Development of the West End of London in the Seventeenth Century” in After the Reformation: Essays in Honor of J. H. Hexter, ed. Malament, Barbara (Philadelphia, 1980), pp. 167–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smuts, chap. 3.

¹⁰ For example, Stone, , “Residential Development,” Crisis of the Artistocracy, pp. 394–98Google Scholar, Family and Fortune (Oxford, 1973), pp. 92–115Google Scholar; Fisher; Smuts, p. 57.

¹¹ Stone, (“Residential Development” [p. 175])Google Scholar attempts to generalize on the basis of these returns, which are now among the Banks Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. A comparison with the rate books discussed below shows, however, that the Banks Manuscripts provide a very incomplete picture of the capital's armigerous population under Charles I, at least in the West End parishes. This is not surprising since the western parishes effectively declined to make a census of their gentry residents, stating that “there are diverse officers of his majesty's courts at Westminster, residing within this county, having estates in other counties, whom the churchwardens and constables have omitted to return … in respect they find the said officers to have long dwelt amongst them” (Bodleian Library [Bodl.], Banks MS 62/34).

¹² Westminster Public Library MSS F 330–67 (St. Martin's-in-the-Fields). Gl, 2 (St. Mary le Strand); E 144–50 (St. Margaret's Westminster) and B 1–24 (St. Clement Danes).

¹³ I have found no rate books for the parish of St. Giles'-in-the-Fields, which included parts of Holborn, Lincoln's Inn Fields, Great Queen Street, and Bloomsbury. A 1623 assessment of contributions toward the rebuilding of St. Giles' church shows that gentry were already living in the parish at that date.

¹⁴ For example, Inigo Jones, who is always listed as “esquire” in the rate books. Given Jones's influence with the king and his wealth—he was assessed at a level comparable to many knights—this title provides a reasonably accurate image of the status he attained.

¹⁵ My attempts to trace members of the King's Chamber, such as Bedchamber and Privy Chamber servants, in the rate books have so far proven surprisingly unsuccessful in most cases. This leads to the suspicion, which I have so far been unable to prove, that some courtiers managed to avoid paying rates.

¹⁶ Armigerous households tended to be larger than average; except for those belonging to peers, however, few seem to have been very large. Partial returns for a Westminster poll tax of 1641 suggest that the typical resident gentleman had one or two servants, while esquires commonly had three and knights four to six (Public Record Office [PRO], Exchequer [El 179/253/10). If we allow for wives and children and a few very large households belonging to peers, the average gentry household may have contained six to ten members, so that the 300 or so rate-paying armigerous households of 1640 could have included as many as 3,000 individuals, or over one-sixth of the population (see n. 3 above). Transient gentry lodgers would have added to this total but probably not very significantly since lodgers tended to have fewer dependents. Even more than population totals, estimates for gentry households should be treated with caution as indicating orders of magnitude rather than precise totals. It is clear, however, that the gentry and their direct dependents constitute a rather substantial minority of the whole population, perhaps on the order of 15–20 percent.

¹⁷ Stone, (“Residential Development” [pp. 186–89])Google Scholar argues that landed and monied elites became increasingly segregated from each other over the course of the seventeenth century. My own sample of trades and occupations culled from recognizances taken before Westminster justices of the peace in the 1630s (pp. 127–28 below) indicates that merchants were already very uncommon in the western suburbs in that decade.

¹⁸ Compare Cressy, David, “Occupations, Migration and Literacy in East London, 1580–1640,” Local Population Studies 5 (1970): 53–60Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Gervase Rosser has recently shown that Westminster was already attracting migrants, including foreign nationals, from a large catchment area in the Middle Ages. The Welsh population increased in the early Tudor period, probably because the Tudors had connections with Wales (Rosser [n. 2 above], pp. 184-93). Barnes (n. 6 above), p. 65, states that Welsh, Irish, and continental immigrants were common in the western suburbs in 1590. A number of Scots appear to have followed James VI south in 1603. According to John McMaster (A Short History of the Royal Parish of St. Martin's-inthe-Fields [London, 1916], p. 46), the Charing Cross area was sometimes called New Edinburgh during James I's reign because a large number of Scots had settled there.

²⁰ PRO, State Papers (SP) 16/414/97.

²¹ These figures are again based on the population figures given in n. 3 above. There was normally a surplus of deaths over baptisms in the parish on the order of fifty per year, not counting plague years. There was one medium-sized plague epidemic in 1636.

²² Barnes (p. 68) states that “by the 1630s the majority of West End developers were very substantial persons.” This claim overlooks the fact that Covent Garden was actually built up not by the earl of Bedford but by individuals with very different backgrounds, including some gentlemen but also many tradesmen. The building surveys examined below show that, before 1630, at any rate, most of the housing stock was constructed on a more or less ad hoc basis for habitation by tradesmen and laborers. Even after 1630, this remained true of many new houses. The most convenient source of information concerning the developers of Covent Garden in the 1630s is the LCC Survey of London, vol. 36 (London, 1970)Google Scholar.

²³ See, in particular, Beier, A. L., “Engine of Manufacture: The Trades of London,” in The Making of London: 1500–1700, ed. Beier, A. L. and Finlay, Roger (London, 1986)Google Scholar, pp. 141–67; Boulton (n. 3 above); Rappaport, Steven: Worlds within Worlds: Structures of Life in Sixteenth Century London (Cambridge, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Rappaport, pp. 96–104.

²⁵ See Boulton, p. 167, for a discussion of the importance of a main thoroughfare to retailers in Southwark.

²⁶ Rosser, esp. chap. 5.

²⁷ For the Strand, see BL Harleian MS (Harl.) 6850, fols. 31–32, which lists inns and other major landmarks in 1620, and PRO, E 317/Mx81, a parliamentary survey of tenements belonging to Somerset House in January 1649. Thirty-three of the thirty-four houses surveyed appear to have been of sixteenth-century construction. In 1649, three were taverns, and the others included shops of two milliners, two chandlers, two saddlers, an apothecary, a confectioner, a cutler, a goldsmith, a tailor, a seamster, a shoemaker, and a spectaclemaker. One was occupied by a Dr. Nisbett. and two may have been tenanted by gentry; the trades or occupations of the remaining residents were not given.

²⁸ Acts of the Privy Council (APC), 7 vols. (London, 1906–1960), vol. 6, 1628-29 (1958), pp. 269Google Scholar. Cundall was ordered to restore the king's foundations and demolish his ale houses. In 1637, however, he was again in trouble with the Privy Council for erecting “diverse sheds” in “Palace Yard … near Parliament stairs” on new foundations and then turning them into “dwelling houses” (PRO, SP 16/274/80). He appears in the poll tax returns for Old Palace Yard of the early 1640s, with no listed occupation, assessed for the substantial sum of £5. His story does not inspire confidence in the crown's ability to enforce its orders.

²⁹ A few examples, culled from depositions in a single Westminster Quarter Sessions roll, illustrate migratory patterns. John Dowdinge was a blacksmith, normally resident in East Smithfield, who “many times resorted and lodged in the house of Richard Beard in the City of Westminster.” Thomas Underhill confessed to being a “masterless man” with no settled trade, who had lived “about London” for two years before he was examined in 1620, and for six months “at the Swan in the Strand by the means of a chamberlain there who was his countryman.” Thomas Griffin, aged twenty-five, stated in 1620 that he was a tailor and a married man, who had lived “at diverse places, as at Newmarket, Cambridge, Roiston and Oxford, and that he came from Newmarket when the King came from thence, and so went to Oxford where his abode was five days, and from Oxford … came to Beconsfield where he did long live and work until this day he came to Westminster.” Greater London RO, MS WJ/SR/4. The 1664 poll tax returns for St. Martin's-in-the-Fields list married couples in lodgings, some with adolescent children (younger children were not subject to the tax). There is no reason to suppose that this was a new phenomenon at that date. Westminster Public Library MS F 3354.

³⁰ For Southwark, see Boulton's superbly detailed analysis, esp. chap. 7. Valerie Pearl first emphasized the importance of the social distinction between street dwellings and dwellings in yards and alleys in seventeenth-century London in “Change and Stability in Seventeenth-Century London,” London Journal 5 (1979): 3–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The evidence from building surveys produced below shows that the western suburbs conformed to the pattern Pearl and Boulton describe (pp. 137–40 below). Rosser (pp. 78–81) argues that demand for cheap accommodation first became significant in shaping the Westminster housing market in the late fifteenth century.

³¹ For example. Hartshorn Lane and Spur Alley, which adjoined Suffolk (later Northumberland) House. See LCC, vol. 17, pp. 29–31.

³² Greater London RO, Calendars for WJ/SR/1–50. The sample may be biased since it is likely that members of some trades—e.g., victuallers, who were regulated by the J.P.s—were more prone to take out recognizances than other inhabitants. It is also probable that poorer inhabitants were less likely to be asked to post bonds in support of friends and acquaintances. If so, they would be underrepresented in the sample. The recognizances do, however, undoubtedly give an accurate general impression of the kinds of occupations represented in the West End. It is certainly significant that the sample contained fewer merchants than coachmakers and fewer clothworkers than carpenters, bricklayers, or coachmen.

³³ For the medieval economy see Rosser. chap. 5. A comparison of Rosser's occupational analysis with my own data suggests a fairly smooth evolution of the local economy. The range of occupations broadened, and the food and drink trades declined in relative importance as other consumer industries developed in the Tudor and Stuart periods. But the essential characteristics of the local economy in the neighborhood of the royal court remained unchanged, with the fourteenth-century occupational structure still recognizable three centuries later. In the mid-eighteenth century, St. Martin's-in-the-Fields remained essentially a commerical quarter with some gentry residents, in contrast to more aristocratic neighborhoods farther west, like St. James Square. See Rogers, Nicholas, “Aristocratic Clientage, Trade and Independency: Popular Politics in Preradical Westminster,” Past and Present, no. 61 (1973), esp. pp. 80–84Google Scholar.

³⁴ Greater London RO, MS WJ/SR/22, item 5. examination of Edward Moore by Peter Heywood, July 13, 1628.

³⁵ For example, Cook, Ann Jennalie, The Privileged Playgoers of Shakespeare's London (Princeton, N.J., 1981)Google Scholar. Here I also disagree with Rosser (pp. 221–24), who sees a marked polarization of wealth developing from the late fifteenth century and persisting thereafter. It is conceivable that economic conditions improved in the early seventeenth century, or that St. Martin's-in-the-Fields had a more buoyant economy than St. Margaret's Westminster. M. J. Power's finding that 47.6 percent of the inhabitants of Old Westminster were too poor to pay the hearth tax in the 1660s, compared to 19.3 percent in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields and only 10.1 percent in the (by then) separate parish of St.Paul's Covent Garden (“East and West in Early Stuart London,” in Wealth and Power in Tudor England, ed. Ives, E. W.et al. [London, 1978], pp. 181, 182)Google Scholar, tends to support the second hypothesis.

³⁶ Slack, Paul, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1988), pp. 173–82Google Scholar.

³⁷ For example, Whitehart and Vinegar Yards, discussed below, p. 138, where twenty-five of eighty-two households were rated.

³⁸ APC, 1601-1604 (London, 1907), pp. 46, 47Google Scholar.

³⁹ On this subject see esp. Cogswell, Thomas, The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621–1624 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 20–36Google Scholar; Smuts (n. 7 above), pp. 78-79; Pearl, Sara, “Sounding to Present Occasions: Jonson's Masques of 1620–1625,” in The Court Masque, ed. Lindley, David (Manchester, 1984), pp. 60–77Google Scholar; Levy, F. J., “How Information Spread amongst the Gentry,” Journal of British Studies 21 (1982): 1–24Google Scholar; and Cust, Richard P., “News and Politics in Early Seventeenth Century England,” Past and Present, no. 111 (1986), pp. 60–90Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ McIlwain (n. 4 above), pp. 343–44.

⁴¹ See. in particular, Herrup, Cynthia, The Common Peace: Participation and the Criminal Law in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ingram, Martin, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570–1640 (Cambridge, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Recent work has repeatedly demonstrated the subtle interplay between the operation of both criminal and ecclesiastical law and the more informal social and moral pressures toward conformity generated within communities.

⁴² For a good recent discussion of this phenomenon in a rural context, see Herrup, pp. 178–79, 183. Hill, Christopher (The World Turned Upside Down [New York, 1972], chap. 3)Google Scholar provides an evocative portrait of the period's fear of geographically mobile “masterless men.”

⁴³ For a late-Elizabethan elaboration of this fear, see BL, Landsdowne MS 190, esp. fol. 95. As Herrup points out, organized criminal activity involving several individuals was invaribly treated much more harshly by early Stuart juries than individual offenses that appeared spontaneous. Society could cope with individuals of weak character and tended to forgive them occasional lapses; criminal subcultures and groups that systematically plotted lawless activities were another matter altogether.

⁴⁴ Hughes, P. L. and Larkin, J. F., Tudor Royal Proclamations (New Haven, Conn., 1964–1969). 3: 232Google Scholar. Essex's rebellion, war with Spain and the prospect of a disputed succession at the queen's death help explain why the government was so worried at this date. But the existence of a large population of recent migrants very close to the court itself compounded fears of political instability throughout our period.

⁴⁵ V. Pearl (n. 30 above), pp. 3–34; Rappaport (n. 23 above), chaps. 2, 6–9.

⁴⁶ See Rosser (n. 2 above), pp. 225–37.

⁴⁷ Rosser (pp. 236–37) states that the wards and the system of aldermen and assistants had come into existence informally at some date around the middle of the century, almost certainly after 1540. The statute therefore gave legal sanction to arrangements that already existed.

⁴⁸ BL, Harleian 1831, fol. 8.

⁴⁹ Westminster Public Library, Manuscripts Division, Court of Burgesses Register Book, passim.

⁵⁰ Barnes (n. 6 above), p. 73.

⁵¹ Ibid., pp. 73–74.

⁵² McClure, N. E., ed., The Letters of John Chamberlain (Philadelphia, 1939), 1:153Google Scholar.

⁵³ Rappaport, pp. 157–59.

⁵⁴ Barnes (pp. 75–79) again provides a good summation.

⁵⁵ Barnes, p. 76; APC, 1613-14, p. 589; PRO, SP 14/80/101, 111.

⁵⁶ For what follows see the commissioner's report to the Privy Council, PRO, SP 14/109/125.

⁵⁷ PRO, SP 14/99/56.

⁵⁸ As the parish registers show, the number of births was higher in 1618 than in subsequent years until 1628.

⁵⁹ PRO, Privy Council (PC) 2/43/81. The council complained that local constables were remiss in enforcing the proclamations concerning buildings and ordered the commissioners “to be more vigilant and careful in seeing his Majesty's said proclamations put in execution than heretofore you have been, and to give present order, that all offenders without favor … may be severely punished.” In addition, “some competent number of commissioners” were to “meet at the end of every sessions, to receive informations” about new buildings. The aldermen of London and the justices of the peace of Westminster were also to instruct the constables to be more vigilant.

⁶⁰ PRO, SP 16/355/198.

⁶¹ Barnes, p. 81. According to Barnes, the attorney general brought a total of 175 prosecutions for illegal building between 1631 and 1642, with the heaviest concentration between 1632 and 1636. About forty cases came to trial.

⁶² Alnwick Castle MS YIII/2/4/10 is a map of this division.

⁶³ PRO, Chancery (C) 115/m.36/8445.

⁶⁴ Greater London RO, MS E/BER/CG/E41/1. As early as the late 1630s the name, Covent Garden, was coming to mean only the new streets in the inner portion of the estate, a usage reinforced in the 1650s, when inner Covent Garden became a separate parish. Most accounts have not recognized that Covent Garden was originally much larger than its present size. An exception, which provides a good summary of the estate's early history, is LCC, vol. 40.

⁶⁵ Stables, workhouses, and sheds—of which there were many—are not included in this count, except when the survey indicated that they had been partially or wholly converted into a dwelling.

⁶⁶ Several were of mixed construction, typically with a brick front and the remainder timbered.

⁶⁷ In a few cases it was necessary to supply the name of the tenant by comparing the survey with the overseers accounts, a procedure that introduces a small element of uncertainty. A few of the large buildings appear to have been inns.

⁶⁸ For example, John Greene's tenement behind Drury Lane, “a poor old building of two rooms” measuring eight and one-half by fifteen feet and renting for £3. About a half-dozen lodging rooms in larger houses have been counted as poor tenements.

⁶⁹ These figures were arrived at by counting subdivided houses as multiple tenements and dividing the rental value accordingly. In some cases, it was necessary to estimate rents when the survey lumped several tenements together. For example, a house worth £20 divided into five tenements would be counted as five dwellings worth £4 each, unless there was some indication that the tenements were of different values, in which case estimated valuations were based on information about the tenements' sizes and locations. This procedure has undoubtedly introduced some element of inaccuracy, though errors will tend to cancel each other out since an overvaluation of one tenement will be matched by an undervaluation of its neighbor. The great majority of tenements were given individual valuations by Bedford's surveyor. Stables, coach houses, and work buildings—of which there were many—were not counted unless the survey indicated unmistakably that they were being used as dwellings. The only exceptions were several buildings behind the Strand and other main streets which appear from the surveyor's description to have been tenements even though no tenant was mentioned. It was invariably necessary to estimate the rental value of these structures and to adjust the rental of a street-front house downward in compensation. The count of tenements would be raised or lowered slightly by different judgments about whether certain outbuildings were used as dwellings. Most tenements were clearly identified, however, reducing the margin of error to about 2–3 percent of the total.

⁷⁰ V. Pearl (n. 30 above); Boulton (n. 3 above).

⁷¹ Most of the low-rent tenements were units in subdivided houses. Subdivision was sufficiently uncommon, however, to make relatively little difference in the overall distribution. For tabulation of house rents only, see table 3.

⁷² The survey records a playhouse measuring thirty-one by forty feet in the vicinity of Whitehart and Vinegar Yards, probably on or very near the site of the Restoration and modern theaters.

⁷³ The name is variously spelled as Cockerman, Cuckram, etc., in the records.

⁷⁴ For the parliamentary surveys see PRO, E 317/Middlesex 22, 27, 82, 86, etc. For the poll tax return—which covers the Round Woolstaple, New Palace Yard, part of St. Margaret's Lane, Old Palace Yard, and the Mill Way—see n. 16 above.

⁷⁵ For Salisbury's houses, see p. 144 and n. 86 below. Three of Basil's houses—probably including the one in which his successor, Inigo Jones, lived—are surveyed in PRO, E 317/75. The parliamentary surveys were used by M. J. Power (n. 35 above). Power correctly noted the mixed composition of old Westminster, a conclusion the 1641 poll tax returns, which he did not use, amply confirm. He misleadingly argued, however, that the Strand was a more uniformly wealthy district. This is correct for the Strand itself but not for immediately adjacent streets and alleys that Power's sources did not cover but whose existence is clear from other documents.

⁷⁶ Alnwick Castle MSS YIII/2(3), YIII/2(3.3).

⁷⁷ Many of these are preserved among the Covent Garden deeds in the Greater London RO. For example, an indenture of November 16, 1631, between Bedford and one Thomas Turney stipulated that the latter was to spend £150 on dwelling houses that were to take up the entire 100-foot frontage of his lot. The fronts of the houses were to be built in a straight line and were to be uniform. All houses were to be of three stories with frontages of at least twenty feet, and they were to extend back from the street at least thirty-five feet. The windows were to be of greater height than breadth and were not to jut out from the building. The timber used in construction was to be “well seasoned and sound” and was not to be installed within a foot of the chimneys. Turney was also to make a drain four feet deep and he was not to erect any stables without permission. See Greater London RO, E/BER/CG/L18.

⁷⁸ PRO, PC 2/43, fol. 201.

⁷⁹ Six of these actually fronted along the newly developed Bridget Street, which followed the line of the old wall (as is shown by Alnwick Castle MS YIII/2 [3]), so that houses along its western edge were technically in outer Covent Garden even though they were really part of the post-1630s neighborhood. The remainder were distributed throughout the northern and western portions of outer Covent Garden, i.e., Long Acre, Drury Lane, and Russell Street.

⁸⁰ Greater London RO, E/BER/CG/E/4/4.

⁸¹ PRO, SP 16/250/51.

⁸² As John Strype remarked in the early eighteenth century, describing Covent Garden as a place “well inhabited by a mixture of Nobility. Gentry and Wealthy Tradesmen … scarce admitting of any Poor, not being pestered with mean courts and alleys.” Quoted by Brett-James (n. 1 above), p. 174.

⁸³ By the eighteenth century, and probably long before, open spaces within urban neighborhoods were regarded as healthy because they provided “ventilation.” See Chalkin, C. W., The Provincial Towns of Georgian England (London, 1974), p. 61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁴ For Holborn, see BL, Add. MS 22,060.

⁸⁵ Stone, , Family and Fortune (n. 10 above), pp. 109–12Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ Most of these armigerous households were, moreover, contiguous. The only house not tenanted by a peer or gentleman on the section of the street developed by Salisbury belonged to a wealthy French apothecary. The courtly and cosmopolitan character of the residents of St. Martin's Lane appears to provide further evidence that the impulse toward greater social segregation came mainly from the court—and perhaps especially from figures who had lived abroad—rather than from country peers and gentry seeking accommodation in London.

⁸⁷ The original license gave Bedford permission not only to build on vacant land but also to demolish and rebuild older houses. The 1634 Star Chamber suit may have been intended to force him to redevelop outer Covent Garden—or simply as retaliation for his failure to have done so on his own. If so, however, Charles allowed himself to be bought off for another £2,000, in return for which he confirmed the original building license and dropped the suit. Even so, Charles did not entirely give up. For example, in February of 1640, the Privy Council ordered Bedford to widen Half Moon Alley, which led out of the Strand into Covent Garden, “demolishing the buildings which hinder the same, and making that part of the street both for breadth and uniformity of building answerable to the rest” of Bedford Street in inner Covent Garden (Privy Council Registers Preserved in the Public Record Office Reproduced in Facsimile, 12 vols. [London, 1967–1968], vol. 8, 1639-40 [1968], p. 295)Google Scholar.

⁸⁸ PRO, SP 16/327, piece 53.

⁸⁹ PRO, SP 16/344, piece 109.

⁹⁰ Alnwick Castle MS YIII/2 (3).

⁹¹ Privy Council Registers 8:103Google Scholar.

⁹² Borsay, Peter, The English Urban Renaissance (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar.

⁹³ PRO, E 179/253, piece 10.

⁹⁴ PRO, SP 16/402, piece 75.

⁹⁵ For a concise discussion of the French place royale, see Bernard, Leon, The Emerging City: Paris in the Age of Louis XIV (Durham, N.C., 1970), pp. 16–17Google Scholar.