A Scottish monarch stepped up to the throne as King James I. of England in 1603. There came in his train the first large migration of Scots to London. It continued in succeeding centuries, and by their characteristic enterprise, in dustry and ability the capital has largely benefited both in com merce and in culture. Inigo Jones began under James and Charles I., to introduce town planning; but the first experi ments at Covent Garden and Lincoln's Inn Fields had made small progress when the Civil War intervened. Two notable civic enterprises mark James I.'s reign. First was the New River scheme, which gave to the capital a much-needed supply of pure water. It was in origin a City Corporation project, carried out, when the Corporation did nothing, by Hugh Myddelton, a wealthy citizen, with financial assistance from the king. The second enterprise was the plantation of the Irish province of Ulster, and its development by funds raised by the London Livery Companies. The link survives in the Irish Society.
London history under Charles I. is chiefly that of struggles with the king, whose financial expedients of forced loans, ship money, tonnage and poundage estranged the City. Monopolies and trade restrictions further incensed the merchants, and Charles had few friends in London when the Civil War became inevitable. The five members whom the king attempted to arrest in the House of Commons on Jan. 4, 1642, on accusation of treason, took refuge in the City. "The birds are flown," he remarked, look ing round the benches ; and next day he went in person to Guild hall to demand their surrender. Again he met with no success, and as he left the Council Chamber cries of "Privileges of Parlia ment !" rang in his ears. London became the natural capital of the king's enemies.
It was but once in military peril, in Nov. 1642, when three weeks of ter the opening battle at Edgehill Charles and his army, moving south, occupied Brentford 9m. distant. At Turnham Green the King found Lord Essex's troops, augmented by a large body of Londoners, arrayed against him, and after a reconnaissance he retired to Reading and Oxford. London saw nothing of the king until his trial and execution at Westminster in Jan.
Cromwell's Protectorate witnessed the readmission of Jews. They had been banished from the kingdom by Edward I. in 1292, and for three and a half centuries thereafter, very rarely is a Jewish name found. A small but definite settlement of Spanish and Portuguese Jews in London occurred in Charles I.'s reign, refugees from the terrors of the Inquisition, who crossed from the Netherlands via Amsterdam. Charles no doubt found them useful in his financial negotiations with Amsterdam. Crom
well utilized them in his secret service, giving "endenization" to their leader, Abraham Israel Carvajal, thus making him the first English Jew. A conference, at which Rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel was the chief spokesman, was held at Whitehall in 1655, with the ultimate result of wresting an admission that English laws did not forbid the settlement of Jews. A synagogue was opened undisguised at Creechurch lane in the City in 1657, and a burial ground obtained at Mile End.
London suffered two vast calam ities early after Charles II.'s restoration, by the great plague in 1665, followed by the great fire next year. Bubonic plague had scourged London for centuries. It is an error to regard the great plague of 1665 as an isolated event, or as a foreign importation. It began in London's suburb of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. Compara tively few deaths occurred in the walled city. The greatest dev astation was in the town's outskirts, at Stepney, Shoreditch, Clerkenwell, Cripplegate, St. Giles's and Westminster, quarters wherein the poor were densely crowded. It was known as "the poor's plague." The king and court fled from London in June, and did not return till the following February; Parliament kept a short session at Oxford, where a legal term was held, lasting a few days only. The duke of Albemarle alone among Charles's ministers remained in London, and with the assistance of magistrates whom the king directed to stay exercised authority in the out-parishes, the lord mayor (Sir John Lawrence) accepting responsibility for the City. Defoe's vivid narrative in his Journal of the Plague Year is valu able as a picture of the time, but is historically inaccurate by reason of his assumption that the lord mayor's orders were faith fully carried out, which was not the case. The bills returned 97,306 deaths in London in 1665; 68,596 were attributed to plague.
Plague had not actually disappeared from London when the great fire occurred. A baker's shop in Pudding lane, near London bridge, was alight about one o'clock on the morning of Sunday, Sept. 2. The flames spread among crowded wooden houses down to the Thames wharves, whereon were stored quantities of inflammable goods. The water-wheel by the bridge was early destroyed, and thereby the water supply to neighbouring parts of the City was cut off. In the night the fire burnt up into the City, and in the afternoon of the second day was raging about the Royal Exchange, Lombard street and Cornhill, amongst the dwellings and shops of the richest brokers and merchants.