The Story of London

In early 1554, there was what by all accounts was a minor rebellion against Queen Mary Tudor down in Kent. And it was a minor rebellion. Except to London. In our city it became this fraught, tense affair; with with Queen risking everything and making the best speech of her life to sway London to her side; with running battles in Fleet Street and in Whitehall, and more than that… of a city who had little if no faith in this queen.
The story of this vicious and pathetic revolt, and how it rocked the Tudor regime to its core briefly, is the subject of this weeks chapter.
Cover includes a detail from the portrait of Sir Thomas Wyatt, the Younger, by Hans Holbein the Younger, c1540-1542.

The story returns after a brief hiatus with the opening months of the reign of Queen Mary Tudor… and we examine how and why London had gone from the place that exploded in joy at her proclamation as Queen… to hundreds of armed Londoners joining an armed rebellion against her. It’s a few months where we watch the trappings of regime change as London would have seen it, of fiery pamphlets filling the streets, of suicidal judges, of the fraught relationship between the Queen and her half-sister, and the causes of a rebellion down in Kent (its always Kent).
More than that, it’s about the pageantry and splendour of when a new monarch takes the throne, and the moment when a Dutch daredevil climbed to the very top of old St. Paul’s cathedral…

Cover includes detail of St. Paul’s in 1540 by Van der Wyngarde.

Continuing and concluding the saga of the reign of Lady Jane Grey and her brief moment on the throne, the story follows the dramatic sudden twists, that were to see a London haberdasher suddenly become most important man in the kingdom for a few hours, London itself erupt into a wild two day spontaneous celebration fulled by copious amounts of booze, and the unlikely figure of a woman already known to suffer from fear induced paralysis, suddenly stare down the government of England… and seize the throne for herself.
Cover includes detail of portrait of Queen Mary I by unknown artist.

In July 1553, London witnessed a new Queen- Jane Grey, cousin of the late teenager Edward VI. her story is supposedly this tragic romantic tale of an innocent young woman placed upon the throne by an ambitious father-in-law…
But as this chapter will show? It was no such thing. To London, Jane WAS the Queen, and the regime behind her executed an almost faultless plan to make her queen, and to ensure the smooth running of the state. But one simple miscalculation made what was a smooth transition difficult… and a crisis will suddenly emerge where no crisis should have been. Around this, London carries on, starting life as loyal subjects of their new queen… over 18 days in July.

Cover includes detail of portrait of Jane Grey.

The last two years of the reign of Edward VI were VERY busy for London; there was a economic crisis to get out from under; there were brutal storms which devastated Flanders, which the cities merchants could exploit; there was the successful removal of the rights of the German merchants in the Steelyard. But it was also a time that saw a brutal epidemic of Sweating Sickness, wild expeditions to China leaving the docks of Deptford, and the rise in power of the son of a man who once ran the cities first true secret police force… but while all this was happening, the teenage King got it into his head to implement a policy to change the line of succession- suddenly dragging the nation to the brink of a civil war, and threatened the stability of the Tudor dynasty itself.
Cover includes extract of from profile of King Edward VI, holding the red rose of the royal house of Lancaster, in a portrait attributed to the court artist Guillim Scrots.