In the seventeenth century London again, as in mediaeval times, took part in a struggle in which the fortunes of the nation were at stake. But the city played a role very different from that assigned to her in earlier days. Then she had been one among other forces of the country, a unit, almost in the position of an independent city state for whose support rival combatants treated. Now she was the leader of the more progressive section of the whole ... Read More

The government of Queen  Elizabeth was, even more than that of the earlier Tudors, characterised by a disregard, in the interest of the crown, of local rights and customs. The reign began a new period of incorporation of companies in London, and these grants of charters gave rise to considerable friction.    The action of the crown originated both in the policy of fostering the middle classes, and in the obvious attraction of the sums of money for which incorporating  charters were bought.     ... Read More

In the Tudor Period English local history ceased to have capital interest. It was at this date that the centralizing process, which forms so critical an epoch in the history of great nations, took place in England. It occurred in Spain in much the same period; its effects have been witnessed, in comparatively recent times, in Germany and in Italy. In France it produced in the eighteenth century all the disaster which has often attended the very theoretical political genius of the ... Read More