Although the chief city and commercial capital of England, London City since Canute has never been the political capital. Alfred and other Anglo-Saxon rulers of England made Winchester their capital; the Confessor's royal palace was at Westminster. When Winchester ceased to have that use, in the 12th century, the kings established themselves at Westminster, where William Rufus had begun the building of a great Norman palace, of which Westminster Hall survives as a glorious relic. The royal courts of justice and the exchequer became established at Westminster, where later the parliaments assembled in the Abbey chapter-house and at St. Stephen's chapel. Henry VIII. built Bridewell, in the City's western liberty, and Henry VII. lodged at Baynards Castle ; but no king of England chose to live permanently in London.
Lacking the royal palace and most offices of State, London's greatest buildings throughout the middle ages, as was to be ex pected, were those of the Church. The Guildhall vied with some of these in spaciousness, but the existing Guildhall was not built till the early 15th century. It stood alone, and about it were ecclesiastical buildings of unsurpassed splendour. Old St. Paul's was, when erected, not only England's greatest cathedral; it was the greatest in Europe. Its wooden steeple, destroyed in Queen Elizabeth's reign (1561), rose as high as the present cross, and was accounted a world's wonder. St. Martin-le-Grand, of Saxon origin, had been refounded by William the Conqueror. Rahere's priory and hospital of St. Bartholomew, Smithfield, was founded in 1123. What remains of the church, a fragment notable for its beautiful late Norman work, is merely the chancel and transepts and the restored Lady chapel; all the vast nave has gone. Con ventual houses within the city or upon its confines included the Priory of Holy Trinity, just within Aldgate, of which no trace remains; the nunnery of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, the nuns' nave forming part of the existing church; the Abbey of the Poor Clares (Minoresses), a fragment of which survives in one wall of the old church of Holy Trinity, Minories; St. Mary Grace, east of Tower Hill ; the Carthusian Monastery, to-day's Charterhouse; the priory of St. Mary Overy, Southwark, represented by South wark Cathedral; and the priories at Bermondsey and Clerkenwell and the Augustinian nunnery of Holywell, in Shoreditch, and St. Mary Spital.
The coming of the friars in the 13th century had marked in fluence upon London's life in the middle ages, and was destined to give to the city many imposing religious buildings. They came in poverty, and for many years their work was amongst the poor and the outcast. First to arrive in England were the Domini cans, in 1221. From their settlement in Holborn they moved down, in 1276, to the Thames-side district still known as Black friars, having obtained authority from King Edward I. to pull down the city wall from Ludgate to the river and in its rebuild ing to enclose their precinct. The Franciscans reached London in 1224, and established themselves within Newgate. The Carmel
ites (1241) built their house in Fleet street. Last of the chief mendicant orders were the Austin Friars (1253). Of all their buildings there remains only the nave of Austin Friars church, which for over three centuries has served for the worship of the Dutch Protestant congregation in London.
Wealth came to these religious orders, and with its accumula tions they raised churches which were the largest in London, rivalled only by the cathedral. The arrogant magnificence of the Blackfriars' church, its "gay glittering glas glowing as the sun," provoked bitter denunciation in Piers Plowman's verse. The Franciscan (Greyfriars) church, begun in 1306 under royal patronage, was largest of all. Two English Queens, Margaret, second wife of King Edward I., and Isabella, wife of his successor, were interred there.
The normal peace of the city was twice broken by risings : first, the peasants' revolt under Wat Tyler (q.v.) in 1381, and secondly, Jack Cade's (q.v.) rebellion in 145o.
Throughout the middle ages the trades and crafts of London were highly organized in a guild system, the memory of which is perpetuated in the existing City Livery Companies, though their powers have long since lapsed, and to-day their energies and funds are mostly devoted to educational and philanthropic pur poses. Fellowships of craftsmen are traced back to a remote past, and in the late 13th and the 14th centuries many of these obtained incorporation for the better development of the indus tries. The weavers had royal permission as early as Henry I. to hold their guild; Henry II. in ii6o imposed fines upon no fewer than 18 London guilds for having been set up without the king's licence. Membership of a guild, which gave the coveted City freedom, became almost universal.
London enjoyed a great and increasing trade. It was by far the most populous city in England, needing large imports to meet its own wants, and it was also a principal distributing centre for the country. Vessels drew up at the little Thames ports of Queen hithe and Billingsgate, and the receipt and storage of Continental goods further necessitated the provision of many wharves along the river. The Hansa merchants were settled in London by 1157. As late in the 14th century the fairs in the country began to lose their original importance, the bulk of commerce fell to the London merchants, many of whom, like Richard Whitting ton, the famous mayor, John Pounteney, John Philpot and other Mayors, made great fortunes. The cloth industry in the 15th century also created a large export trade from London. The ac cumulation of so much of the nation's wealth in the capital enabled London to finance the wars of Edward III. and Henry V. for the conquest of France.
The long internecine struggles of the Wars of the Roses had no marked effect upon London. Disillusioned by the mismanage ment of affairs and costly extravagance under the Lancastrian king, Henry VI., London transferred its allegiance to the Yorkist Edward IV., with whom the mediaeval period ended.