But the capital is not just a commercial and trading centre. It is a gambler’s paradise. In the inns, bets are taken on brutal, bloody sports: bull-baiting, bear-baiting and cock-fighting, the vicious pastimes of a nation frequently at war. One German visitor to London in 1710 notes, with surprise, the aggressive nature of the English crowds:
In the afternoon we went to see the cockfighting. This is a sport peculiar to the English … a special building has been made for it near ‘Gras Inn’. The people, gentle and simple, act like madmen, and go on raising the odds to twenty guineas and more. It is amazing to see how the cocks hack with their spurs. Their combs bleed terribly and they often slit each other’s crop and abdomen with the spurs … they belong to great Lords who have brought them from Kent and other places and win a great deal of money by their wagers. Towards evening we drove to see the bull-baiting. First a young ox or bull was led in and fastened by a long rope to an iron ring in the middle of the yard; then about thirty dogs, two or three at a time, were let loose on him. Then they brought out a small bear and tied him up in the same fashion. As soon as the dogs had at him, he stood up on his hind legs and gave some terrific buffets. But the worst of all was a common little ass who was brought out saddled with an ape on his back. The ape began to scream most terribly for fear of falling off.
Later the same traveller watches two men fighting for money at the Bear Garden at Hockley in the Hole, on the outskirts of town by Clerkenwell Green, cheered on by spectators who crowd into the galleries of raised seats.
They went for each other with sword and dagger and the Moor got a nasty wound in his hand, which bled freely. When they had attacked each other with broadsword and shield, the good Moor received such a dreadful blow that he could not fight any longer. He was slashed from the left eye right down to his cheek to his chin and jaw with such force that one could hear the sword grating against his teeth. Straightaway not only the whole of his shirt front but the platform too was covered with blood. The onlookers began to cheer and threw down vast quantities of shillings and crowns.
London is a brutal, dirty, lively, joyous place. Plague and fire, and civil war, have done their worst and departed; fear of God is subsiding. Life is rushing back.
But there are warning signs that the established order can still be threatened, that England may not yet be built on firm foundations. Behind the remains of the Palace of Whitehall, torched by a recent fire, lie the marks made by the scaffold where Charles I was beheaded. And despite the splendour of Wren’s church-building, the view from Somerset House is deceptive: a thin layer of dirt has gathered upon his stonework. Already his masterpiece is tarnished, blackened by the smoke from the sea-coal, shipped from the northern mines. The coal, named from its journey rather than its origins, is taxed when it is unloaded at the Port of London in order to raise money to rebuild the city. But it is slowly eating into it instead, discolouring its buildings, clogging the nostrils of its people, coating their tongues and clouding their eyes.
Wren’s professed aim was to defy the corrosive elements and stretch across the centuries, ignoring fashion to appeal to an ideal, immutable form of design. He insisted: ‘Architecture aims at Eternity; and is therefore the only Thing uncapable of Modes and Fashions.’ His great vision was of a cathedral dome that would be grander than any other, capping not only St Paul’s, but his career. It would signify, architecturally, the might of the capital and the grandeur of England. It would lift spirits. And it would celebrate the stability of the country, its monarchy and people, after the trials of the Civil War and then the Glorious Revolution of the previous century.
For all his splendid dreams, however, it was as hard for Wren to raise money for his great project as it was to quarry the blocks of stone for the cathedral’s construction. The Act of 1670 which allotted St Paul’s four and a half pennies in tax for every chaldron, or twenty-five hundred-weight of coal, brought it only some £4,000 a year, and in 1677 the cathedral’s commissioners were forced to mount an appeal to the nation. Even the monarch was enlisted to the cause. Sermons were preached around the country, collections taken, and gradually the ordinary people sent in their pennies and their pounds to the rebuilding fund. Still, the greatest building the country had seen was in danger of being left uncompleted – until the workmen themselves came up with the solution: they suggested that their wages should be considered as a loan to the building project, and they would work instead for the interest on the money they were due. By the end of 1697, more than £24,000 was owed to them, including £1,500 to the master carver Grinling Gibbons. The cathedral slowly rose.
Thirty years after he first started, Wren’s task is nearly done. Above the Derbyshire lead and Kentish timber of his dome, a ball and lantern top out his mighty work, three hundred and fifty-five feet above the streets. His is the largest, most beautiful cathedral in England, a fitting homage to the patron saint of the City of London whose wealth has helped make the country one of the grandest on the globe. Out of a total of three-quarters of a million pounds, it has cost Sir Christopher Wren £2,000 of his own money, a small fortune for the times.
Soon, however, such a sum will appear to be a trifle. The financial world is about to be turned upside-down in the streets below.
Ten years after Wren completed his cathedral, to mark his vision of eternity, a city which had survived plague and fire to prosper as a mercantile centre – a city which, to the untrained eye, had risen gloriously from its ashes – was beginning to live only for the moment, chasing financial liberation by buying shares in extraordinary new projects that had no foundation. The Age of Reason, which held that science could explain all, was giving way, indeed was being unceremoniously elbowed aside, by the Age of Insanity. The country was rushing headlong into enterprises founded on little more than an understanding of human greed and corruptibility. By speculating on the stock market, a humble bookseller trading near the cathedral churchyard would win a third of the total cost of building St Paul’s.
An age inspired by the genuine achievement of men like Christopher Wren and Isaac Newton had the misfortune to collide at full speed with the age of the moneyed-men. Hundreds of projects were launched in these vertiginous times. Here was invention, inspiration and downright fraud, all merging in a pot-pourri of frenzied activity. Schemes arose thick and fast with just enough scientific credibility to fool the layman. ‘Projectors’ – as such speculators were known – were held to want money
For a wheel for perpetual motion
For extracting silver from lead
For carrying on a trade in the river Oronooko
For trading in hair
For paving the streets of London
For furnishing funerals to any part of Great Britain
For insuring and increasing children’s fortunes
The country appeared to have discovered a new industry with new rules of credit which held out the prospect of immense riches, removing traditional class barriers to wealth. It was an exciting, vibrant era in which huge fortunes could be created overnight by a simple share launch.
One of the most famous projects was launched by James Puckle, who designed a flintlock machine-gun for making a ‘total revolution in the art of war’. The Puckle gun was mounted on a tripod and fired nine shots a minute, one after the other and three times faster than a soldier’s musket. Puckle had two versions of his design. One weapon, intended for use against Christian enemies, fired conventional round bullets. The second, designed to be used against the Muslim Turks, fired square bullets, which were believed to cause more painful wounds.
But some of the schemes were not half as sensible as this. There was even said to be a ‘Company for carrying on an undertaking of Great Advantage but no-one to know what it is’. Crowds of investors were reported to have surrounded the company’s office in Cornhill, snapping up shares at £2 each. Some of the schemes were swindles, others were hoaxes – not with a view to making money but simply to illustrate the