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The strange and foolish rising of the Earl of Essex belongs to national history. It was, however, met and repressed in the first outbreak by the City. Not one person offered to join the Earl; he was proclaimed traitor in Cheapside; the Bishop of London raised, in all haste, the force which stopped him on Ludgate Hill.

Towards the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign there were great complaints of hawkers and pedlars—in fact we begin to hear of the London Cries. These street cries did great harm to London tradesmen. We have seen that there were no shops at all originally, except in the appointed markets; these hawkers, with their itinerant barrows and baskets, brought the market into every part of London. Steps were taken to prevent this nuisance; but they were unavailing.

In 1580 the Queen issued a Proclamation against the building of new houses and the further increase of London:—

“To the preservation of her People in Health, which may seem impossible to continue, though presently, by God’s Goodness, the same is perceived to be in better Estate universally than hath beene in Man’s Memorie; yet where there are such great Multitudes of People brought to inhabite in small Roomes, whereof a great Part are seene very poore, yea, such as must live of begging, or by worse Means, and they heaped up together, and in a sort smothered with many families of Children and Servants in one House or small Tenement; it must needes followe, if any Plague or popular Sicknes should, by God’s Permission, enter amongst those Multitudes, that the same would not only spread itself and invade the whole Citie and Confines, but that a great Mortalitie would ensue the same, where her Majesties personal Presence is many times required.