The problems of the overcrowded cities of today had their parallels in sixteenth-century London, and Elizabeth and the Council struggled with them during the greater part of the reign. Persistent attempts to check the growing population are recorded in the Acts of the Privy Council in memorandums for letters chiefly to the Lord Mayor, the Master of the Rolls, and the Justices of the Peace for Middlesex and Surrey. These entries give a wryly amusing account of conditions familiar in our own time—high rents, relief rolls, emergency legislation, evasions of the law, and possible favoritism in administering it. They suggest one other point of interest—that the Queen felt very strongly about the situation. Though it may be rash to see an immediate expression of her personal attitude in the communications of the Council, it is difficult to do otherwise.

A An unknown work by Antonio del Pollaiuolo for the Monastery of S. Gaggio near Florence

On the back of a simple reliquary crucifix of c. 1500, which comes from the Augustinian monastery of S. Gaggio near Florence and is now preserved in the Museo Nazionale in Florence, there are six obviously somewhat older translucent silver enamel plaques. Their quality is striking when compared to the simple craftlike work of the crucifix itself. The senseless iconographic arrangement of Mary and John at either side of St. Gaggio also attests to the fact that these smalti are not in their original setting.