The King's City Read online

  Charles’s cavalcade lengthened as it reached the heath. But all was not unalloyed celebration. Macaulay’s History of England gives us a typically vivid insight into the other side of the King’s reception:

  Everywhere flags were flying, bells and music sounding, wine and ale flowing in rivers to the health of him whose return was the return of peace, of taw, and of freedom. But in the midst of the general joy, one spot presented a dark and threatening aspect. On Blackheath the army was drawn up to welcome the sovereign. He smiled, bowed, and extended his hand graciously to the lips of the colonels and majors. But all his courtesy was vain. The countenances of the soldiers were sad and lowering; and, had they given way to their feelings, the festive pageant of which they reluctantly made a part would have had a mournful and bloody end.6

  Macaulay’s flowery description seems at first fanciful, but it was based to some extent on the eyewitness account of Edward Hyde, the King’s loyal counsellor. Ever attentive to the political wind, Hyde detected hostility in the ranks. In more prosaic style than Macaulay, Hyde recorded that the expressions on soldiers’ faces that day made plain that ‘they were involved in a service they were not delighted in’.7

  *

  Charles reached London Bridge on his birthday, 29 May, riding a white stallion. Before him ran the River Thames, to which London owed its birth and on which it depended for its life. Beyond the river the city sloped upwards to the great cathedral, with the rooftops of the Guildhall and the other mansions of the guilds rising above close-packed streets, signifying wealth and commercial expertise reaching back hundreds of years. Above them jutted the spires of the parish churches; ninety-seven in all, with a few smaller ones besides. Outside the walls were thirty-three more, all testifying to the religious core of seventeenth-century society. Bells rang from scores of belfries. Banners fluttered everywhere.

  At the south side of London Bridge, the Lord Mayor of London, Thomas Allen, offered the King his sword of office. In return the King knighted Allen and gave him back his sword. The mayor’s act of greeting the King was no idle piece of theatre. It was based on the ancient ritual whereby in exchange for maintaining London’s liberty as a self-governing city, the mayor once a year made the journey to Westminster to swear allegiance to the king. This annual journey soon became known as the Lord Mayor’s Show, and is enacted to this day.

  The Lord Mayor rode across the bridge in front of the King, to be greeted with jubilation. Among the crowds that lined the streets was John Evelyn. Always anxious to be at the heart of things, Evelyn had travelled up the river from his estate at Deptford to see the King’s return. Wisely, he chose not to watch the King pass through the congested medieval city, instead picking the wide, modern road of the Strand, which followed the line of the river west to the King’s destination at Whitehall. On the Strand, Evelyn found a celebratory mood prevailing among the rank and file stationed along the highway as Charles’s cavalcade passed by:

  This day, his Majesty, Charles II came to London, after a sad and long exile and calamitous suffering both of the King and Church, being seventeen years. This was also his birthday, and with a triumph of above 20,000 horse and foot, brandishing their swords, and shouting with inexpressible joy; the ways strewn with flowers, the bells ringing, the streets hung with tapestry, fountains running with wine; the Mayor, Aldermen, and all the companies, in their liveries, chains of gold, and banners; Lords and Nobles, clad in cloth of silver, gold, and velvet; the windows and balconies, all set with ladies; trumpets, music, and myriads of people flocking, even so far as from Rochester, so as they were seven hours in passing the city, even from two in the afternoon till nine at night.

  I stood in the Strand and beheld it, and blessed God. And all this was done without one drop of blood shed, and by that very army which rebelled against him: but it was the Lord’s doing, for such a restoration was never mentioned in any history, ancient or modern, since the return of the Jews from their Babylonish captivity; nor so joyful a day and so bright ever seen in this nation, this happening when to expect or effect it was past all human policy.8

  Evelyn was correct – it was extraordinary and unexpected. The city that welcomed Charles II was wracked by divisions left intact by the war fought between Charles’s father and major elements of Parliament. London, formerly the bedrock of Puritan opposition to monarchy, now rose in celebration of the return of the exiled King. Writing two decades after the event, Hyde recalled that from the time the Restoration looked certain, ‘there was such an emulation in Lords, Commons and city and generally over the kingdom [on] who should make thee most lively expressions of their duty and of their joy.’9 Writing from a royalist perspective* Hyde had inadvertently put his finger on an interesting phenomenon. As if overnight, the city outwardly changed from being pro-Parliament and republican to being for the King. Monck’s purges of the upper echelons of the army had done their job, while London’s Parliament-supporting trained bands were no match for Monck’s military grip.

  Lucy Hutchinson, a Latin scholar whose husband had been a Roundhead officer, wrote that Charles enquired, ‘where were all his enemies?’. No wonder, she asked, Tor he saw nothing but prostraitive expressions of all the love that could make a prince happy’. ‘Indeed,’ she added, ‘it was a wonder that day to see the mutability of some and the hypocrisy of others and the servile flattery of all.’10

  Both the statesman and the army officer’s wife alluded to the great divisions in the nation that had prevailed during the previous twenty years. The country had been split into opposing religious and political factions. In such conditions, where one came from and what one’s parents’ religion was were matters of great concern. Each person’s upbringing defined how they lined up during the taking of sides that led to civil war in 1642, and where they stood afterwards. Now, with the return of the King, many found it in their interests either to change sides or to keep their mouths shut.

  The key to why a city that had been staunchly nonconformist and Presbyterian during the Cromwellian years put on such a splendid show for a returning member of the hated House of Stuart lay in its ancient structures. The origins of London’s self-governing charter were lost in time, but it may have first been granted by William the Conqueror. The city’s rights were subsequently written into the Magna Carta in 1215. The livery companies, the ancient guilds regulating individual trades, also traced their power back to royal charters, the oldest of which was that granted to the mercers, or cloth merchants, by Richard II in 1394. Charles II and his advisors understood this and knew that support in London was vital to the success of his return. Therefore, the King had written a letter from Breda to the mayor, sheriffs and aldermen asserting the city’s ancient rights to self-government by a corporation, and the renewal of its royal charter. The members of the livery companies saw royal acceptance as vital to their ability to protect their interests. Those at the forefront of corporate and commercial life in London were hardly supporters of the House of Stuart, but they knew they required validation from the King in order to perpetuate their ancient systems of independent governance and freedom to trade. A good show was one way of ensuring the returning King would look upon them kindly.

  In this way, the city that greeted Charles was shaped by a dynamic past bound up with that of the monarchs of England. Its ancient origins lay in Roman settlement in AD 47, with its walls built in the time of the Emperor Constantine. Subsequently, it was sacked by Queen Boudicca, rebuilt and then abandoned by the Romans, before resettlement by Alfred the Créât in the ninth century. All this explains why the city was a medieval jumble of streets inside Roman walls. By the seventeenth century its confined and twisted medieval heart was a far from ideal cradle for the creation of the modern world. But London was more than that; though the walled city was its core, its royal hub was to the west, with the ‘West End’ developed during the reign of Charles I. Thanks to the ribbon development that snaked along both the south bank of the Thames to the shipyards and the main roads out of t
he city, London was already in the process of turning itself into the multi-centred metropolis we see today.

  The population was young; attracted by the chance of a job or a fortune, people flooded in from all over the country. Marriage took place comparatively late among the labouring classes (it was generally delayed until people were in their late twenties), so the greater part of the workforce was unattached and full of youthful vigour. This was a population ready to cast off Puritan shackles and have fun. Tavern keepers and street entertainers were ready to provide the sport they needed. At night there was no street lighting, so citizens had to beware of robbers. No gentleman of rank would venture out without a sword, and would preferably go in company.

  Almost everything made in England was either sold or finished in London. The city’s chief industry in the r6oos was cloth finishing – the messy and smelly business of cleaning, bleaching and dyeing woollen cloth into a finished product for domestic and foreign markets. Along with that went the trades making domestic items and luxury goods for home and abroad, and the shipbuilding trade along the Thames. This huge concentration of industry required large amounts of coal, brought by sea from Northumberland, and a banking system based around the goldsmith-bankers to finance it all.

  The city that greeted the returning King was a mixture of the luxurious and the squalid. John Graunt thought it overcrowded. ‘The old streets are unfit for the present frequency of coaches,’ he wrote. Graunt considered overpopulation to be the cause of Londoners’ ill-health. Tuberculosis was common, with an astounding 10,000 people per year dying from it. Plague returned with appalling regularity. Infections spread easily as the poor lived in houses of multiple occupancy, several families often inhabiting a space built for one. They shared latrines inadequate even for the original number for which they were intended. Basic hygiene was difficult for the poor, who could not afford piped water and had to depend upon public standpipes and pumps. In such households, coal to heat water for washing the body was a luxury.

  On the late spring day of 29 May, however, London’s usually filthy streets had been cleaned, flowers scattered along the royal route, flags and banners roped from house to house and rich tapestries hung from balconies. The King paused his horse continually; he kissed the beautiful wife and newborn baby of a tavern owner; he watched a spectacular pageant laid on by the Corporation in St George’s Fields. Deep into the night giant bonfires burned, some two or three storeys high. Cavalier songs were sung and fountains reportedly flowed with wine. There was no let-up in the following weeks as nobles, courtiers and city grandees vied with one another to entertain the King and his brothers. To welcome the King, the city’s livery companies put on grand banquets in their ancient guildhalls, each competing to be more lavish than the others. The poet John Dryden, who had walked in Cromwell’s funeral cortège beside fellow poets Andrew Marvell and John Milton, now wrote a long panegyric to the King, entitled Astraea Redux:†

  Oh Happy Age! Oh times like those alone

  By Fate reserv’d for great Augustus throne!

  Dryden celebrated what he perceived as the return of justice and order. Most of all, what the poet was looking for was political stability. He was not alone.

  The return of monarchy after eleven years’ absence caused those of a reflective turn of mind to wonder exactly what might be in store. Charles II was something of an unknown quantity, a cipher onto whom great things were projected. But would an untested king have the personality and character to carry the people with him and heal the fractured kingdom? In the minds of the people of London, and in those of many who laid plans for his return, the unproven and largely unknown Charles was the perfect exemplar of a traditional king: a man who embodied God’s rule on earth and was a regal symbol of that power. What most did not know – for how could they? – was that he was a playboy, carrying hardly a jot of statecraft within him‡

  Though obsessed with carnal pleasure, this unlikely ruler was set to become a catalyst to whom London reacted favourably. The lives of a great many of its inhabitants would undergo radical changes – those of Montagu and his secretary, William Rider and other merchants, the experimenters in the new field of natural philosophy, at least one of the daughters of Mrs Gwyn the brothel-keeper, John Graunt, John Evelyn and many, many others. Under Charles II, London would enter an age of transformation.

  * Henry was to die three months later of smallpox.

  † Astraea was the Greek goddess of justice, hence ‘Justice Returned’.

  ‡ According to his boyhood friend, the 2nd Duke of Buckingham, Charles had no statecraft at all.

  CHAPTER 3

  THEATRUM REDUX!

  The lavish arrival ceremony for the returning King signalled a return to London of crowd-pleasing spectacle. During the tight grip of Puritanism all grand public displays had been banned. With the return of the monarchy, public pageants atrd the playhouse were also set to make a comeback. Prominent among those anxious to bring the theatre back to London was the former theatrical impresario Sir William Davenant. Once a leading light in the world of the English stage, Davenant had been running a semi-clandestine theatre in the back salon of his rented home, Rutland House in Aldcrsgate, near Smithfield livestock market. Now that the Cromwellian ban had been lifted, he was keen to resume business.

  With advanced ideas on staging, Davenant was to play a decisive role irr the story of English theatre, changing the style of productions and the form of plays. Davenant’s important role in the revival of the London theatre grew out of his colourful pre-Rcstoration career. lake many of those who were to make their mark in Restoration London (the polymath Christopher Wren being a good example – his father having been Dean of Windsor, young Christopher spent some of his childhood living at Windsor Castle, where he would undoubtedly have met the King), Davenantwas an important link between the Restoration and the pro-royalist antebellum.

  Davenant was born in 1606, the year Ben Jonson’s Volpone was first performed and William Shakespeare’s King Lear was presented before James I. He was the son of a wine merchant who rose to be mayor of Oxford. Shakespeare was a family friend, often staying with the Davenant’s at the Crown Tavern.* The playwright reportedly took a shine to young William, who in later life liked to suggest that he might be the great man’s son.1 There is no proof of this, but the boy’s life was to take on the semblance of a Shakespearian tragicomedy, with the protagonist suffering many misfortunes and misadventures before gaining his heart’s desire. What Davenant desired was his own playhouse and company of players. By the age of seventeen or eighteen he was married, soon becoming a father. Ignoring his own father’s wishes that he apprentice himself to a London merchant, he took service in aristocratic houses, learning the manners of the upper classes while pursuing literary ambitions. By the age of twenty-four he would be a published poet and dramatist.

  On his way to achieving success young Davenant gained an enviable patron in Endymion Porter, the arch-courtier of the age, becoming a favourite of the Queen and part of her energetic social and cultural scene at court. Henrietta Maria loved to watch and take part in court masques. The chief designer and writer of these entertainments were respectively Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson. When Jonson tired of writing for the court, Davenant was ready to take his place, writing masques with parts written specifically for the Queen.

  At the age of twenty-two, Davenant was appointed the Queen’s vice-chamberlain. The King’s Men performed his comedy The Wits, which was a success. All was going well with the young man’s swift upward climb until he found himself in a horizontal position in Axe Yard, Westminster, with a black handsome wench’ from whom he told John Aubrey he caught the pox.2 Davenant was treated by the Queen’s physician, Sir Thomas Cademan, undergoing expensive treatment with that ‘devil mercury’.3

  Though mercury possibly helped cure the initial onslaught of the disease, it may have contributed to the severe ill-health Davenant suffered for the next two years. He dropped out of his fashionable circle. Rumou
rs circulated that he had died, and he had to write to his friends to assure them he had not.4 When he returned to view, Davenant’s physical appearance had changed dramatically. His nose was curiously flattened and upturned, giving him an unfortunately comical look. The syphilis bacteria had eaten away the cartilage supporting the bridge of his nose, causing it to collapse and create what is known as a saddle-nose deformity.

  Davenant resumed work, and upon the death of Ben Jonson in 1638 became de facto poet laureate, writing masques performed at court, one of which included both the King and the Queen among its cast. The outbreak of civil war saw Davenant’s fortunes decline disastrously. The King’s Men joined the Royalist army en masse. Although some of the players saw action, the company became in essence an entertainment troop, giving performances at Oxford, where the King had his wartime headquarters.5 Davenant fought on the Royalist side in the early stages of the war and went on to raise money for the purchase of guns; he was knighted for this service, but his personal money soon ran out.

  The Puritans’ closure of London’s playhouses threw players, prompters, costume makers and the rest into a hand-to-mouth existence, ‘Cause they can’t work, but live by play.’6 Despite the ban and the threat of public floggings, illicit performances were staged.7 One way around the ban was to disguise plays as something else. As there was no prohibition on other forms of staged events, including music, actors rather cunningly put on what were known as ‘drolls’, a form of comic musical revue. Parliament passed ordinances against the players, branding them ‘rogues’.

  Davenant attempted to build a playhouse, but when the plan crashed and the investors lost their money, he decided he must hold theatrical events at his home. So he installed a temporary theatre in a long, narrow salon at the rear of the house. The small group of adventurous theatre fans who turned up on 23 May 1656 saw not a play in any conventional form but an assemblage of music, song and dramatic scenes, described by Davenant as opera’ (but being more like a collection of set pieces resembling Davenant’s court masques of old), at a stroke both referring to Italian musical theatre and distancing his work from the banned form of the play.8 A government spy paid his five-shilling entrance fee and reported back to Cromwell’s espionage chief, John Thurloe, that he had seen and heard nothing that smacked of the hated theatre.