A London Gild of Musicians, 1460–1530

Abstract

London in 1500 was not the vast metropolis that we know to-day; it was a small walled city only about one square mile in area. Within that square mile was concentrated much of the wealth of the whole kingdom. The city's prosperity reached a peak in Tudor times when foreign wars closed up avenues of foreign trade upon which Norwich and Bristol relied; as a result of this, London alone, which had built up strong commercial ties with the Netherlands, was able to maintain any substantial continental trade; and here it naturally expanded rapidly. It is important to emphasise this accumulation of wealth in the City, for at a time when the uses of money were much more restricted than they are to-day, the effect was an ever-increasing splendour of religious observances and secular entertainment.