Government in early modern London: the challenge of the suburbs.

TO JUDGE FROM THE CONTENT OF RECENT LITERATURE on the government of early modern London, an exercise in word association among historians would probably produce the result ‘Government of London: Stability’. The key components of the explanation for the fundamental orderliness of the capital are (with varying degrees of emphasis among the contributors to the debate): the concentration of central authority in a unitary monied élite combined with dispersal of power among local units of parishes, wards and guilds, high levels of participation in local and guild government, a fruitful symbiotic relationship with the Crown, and the elaboration of sophisticated social policies to tackle the capital’s problems.1 A major problem with the emerging consensus, however, is that it rests overwhelmingly on evidence drawn from the area under the jurisdiction of the lord mayor and aldermen of London, and much of it is elusive about what it means by ‘London’. As the metropolitan area expanded, the proportion of its population subjected to the authority of the city authorities declined dramatically. Whereas about three-quarters of the population of the metropolitan area in 1560 resided in the city, by 1700 the proportion was only one-quarter.2