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The Politics of Architecture in Tudor and Stuart London Transcript The Politics of Architecture in Tudor and Stuart London Transcript Date: Thursday, 11 February 2010 - 12:00AM Location: Museum of London The Politics of Architecture in Tudor and Stuart London Professor Simon Thurley Visiting Gresham Professor of the Built Environment 11/12/2010 Tonight, and again on the 11 March, I will be looking at the interrelation of architecture and power. The power of kings and the power of government and how that power has affected London. On the 11th I will be looking at Victorian and Edwardian London but tonight I'm going to concentrate on the sixteenth and seventeenth century and show how Tudor and Stuart Monarchs used, with varying degrees of success, the great buildings of the City of London to bolster their power. The story of royal buildings in the City starts with the Saxons. Before 1052 English Kings had had a palace in London at Aldermanbury, but principally to avoid the instability, turbulence and violence of the populace Edward the Confessor, the penultimate English King, had moved his royal palace one and a half miles west to an Island called Thorney. On Thorney Island the Confessor built the great royal abbey and palace of Westminster. And it was here, that William the Conqueror chose to be crowned on Christmas day 1066, safely away from the still hostile inhabitants of the city. London was too big, powerful and independent to be much influenced by the Norman Conquest. Business continued unabated under a deal done between the city rulers and their new king. However William left a major legacy by establishing the metropolitan geography of the English monarchy - the subject of my talk this evening. In the east he built a great tower in the corner of the Roman wall, this was balanced in the same position in the west by another and a third tower at the city's western gate. In the midst of these was founded a great new cathedral on the site of an earlier Saxon church. These buildings were designed to overawe and dominate what one contemporary chronicler called 'the fickleness of the vast and fierce populace'. The White Tower in the eastern corner of the city was more than a fortress, it was a palace - still equipped today with a magnificent chapel, fireplaces and latrines. The Conqueror was clearly intending to live closer to his people than his predecessors, but only in the most stoutly defended residence with walls 13ft thick. Norman St Paul's has, of course, gone. It was begun in 1087 and became perhaps the second largest Christian church in Europe. It was spectacularly sited on a hill and eventually crowned by Europe's tallest spire. It became the icon of London. While Westminster was to be the site of every subsequent coronation and, in due course, the royal mausoleum, St. Paul's articulated the relationship between the monarch and his subjects, the largest group of which lived under its shadow. It was the biggest covered space in England and became the setting for great national moments and the reception of dignitaries from abroad. Today it is hard to visualise how geographically separate the Tower, St. Paul's and Westminster were. Until the mid seventeenth century the city was still surrounded by a wall and a ditch, which was in places some 200ft wide. To get to it from Westminster it was necessary to set off along King street, turn right at Charing Cross and travel the mile and a quarter along the Strand and Fleet Street to cross the River Fleet and enter the city. This was a long route. Once in the city you would climb a steep hill to St. Paul's precinct before entering the bustling shopping street of Cheapside and travelling to the conduit head at poultry. This was the densest part of the city crammed with shops, halls and houses hugger mugger. From here the route passed down Lombard Street and Fenchurch Street before cutting across to Tower Street and arriving at the western approaches of the tower. This route was like the bar of a great royal dumbbell with weighty royal residences at either end. The Tower of London fitted tightly onto one end of the dumbbell. Modern Great Tower Street called 'Tower Street' in the middle ages, is theatrically aligned on the White Tower which presents one of its two architecturally enlivened facades to the city. Edward I rebuilt the whole of the western side of the Norman fortress, but continued to mark the axis down Tower Street from the city by the construction of the massive Beauchamp Tower. So the Tower of London was deliberately designed and developed to present a ceremonial front to the city and to lock itself into Tower Street. At the other end of the dumbbell was Westminster. Although Westminster developed as the largest of the royal houses from the time of the conqueror its political supremacy was not really properly consolidated before Edward the first, second and third had subdued the Scots. But by the middle of Edward III's reign the political gravity of England had moved decisively to Westminster. Henceforth this was to be the normal meeting place of parliament and the principal residence of the monarch. On 17 July 1377 King Richard II was crowned King at Westminster Abbey. This coronation marked a deliberate shift in the way the monarchy, in Westminster, presented itself to the people, in London. There were special circumstances surrounding the coronation of a ten year old boy, especially against the background of the young king's all powerful uncle John of Gaunt. But we can probably credit John of Gaunt with the invention of the coronation procession, a major feature of almost every subsequent coronation until 1661. There had been processions on the eve of coronations before, in 1236 and 1308 for instance, but never formally integrating the city Aldermen and mayor. The procession worked like this: The great magnates and Lord Mayor and Aldermen met uncrowned the new ruler outside the city and escorted him to the Tower. The monarch would then spend the night in the fortress and the next morning a great procession formed around the uncrowned king. Leaving the tower, the procession then rode through the city, along the ceremonial route that I have described, to Westminster Hall. The citizens of London would decorate their houses, hang tapestries from the windows and in later periods would sometimes create ephemeral arches and other decorations en route. The novelty of Richard II's 1377 procession was the intimate involvement of the city and the outburst of civic pageantry that accompanied it. Coronation processions acted as a bond not only between the City Corporation and the crown, but as a bond between the crown and the people. It was also one of the few public ceremonial uses of the Tower, emphasising majesty of the royal citadel. During the fifteenth and sixteenth century all monarchs and many consorts had coronation processions. By the time of Richard III's coronation in 1483 the so-called 'little device', a coronation manual, gives full instructions for the nature of the procession setting the tone for the coronation processions of the Tudor age. I have already mentioned, in passing, the role of St. Paul's cathedral lying on the royal route between the tower and Westminster. It was the Lancastrians who capitalised on the cathedral as the amphitheatre for public royal ceremonial in the city. John of Gaunt, that great promoter of royal civic ceremonial chose to be buried in the cathedral in 1399, the same year in which Richard II's body was displayed there so that all could see that he was dead; Henry V gave thanks for his victory at Agincourt in St Paul's and on his death lay in state there; following the defeat of Lambert Simnel a great celebration was held there by Henry VII. Prince Arthur and Katharine of Aragon were married at St. Paul's; in 1518 and again in 1522 Henry VIII celebrated great diplomatic alliances there. After the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Queen Elizabeth knelt before the west doors of the cathedral giving thanks to God before being escorted inside by fifty clergy in full vestments to hear a sermon. So the Lancastrians, Yorkists and Tudors used St Paul's as the public arena for the monarchy at moments of triumph or when public statements needed to be made. As often as not these occasions were accompanied by a formal entry like that at a coronation. Processions and entries into the city also increasingly became part of the structure of diplomatic protocol as the sixteenth century wore on. In fact by the middle of James I reign the royal processional route from the Tower to Westminster was an integral part of ambassadorial etiquette. Ambassadors generally arrived by sea at Gravesend and from there would proceed to Greenwich and then on to the Tower. Under James I this became a highly formalised route. At the Tower the ambassador would be met by a fleet of carriages which would transport him along the ceremonial route to Westminster. These magnificent welcomes, which utilised the king's carriages, and were performed by senior courtiers and the monarch's own entries had an international aspect. After the gunpowder plot, James I welcomed his reception in the city saying that these 'signs were the more welcome for that foreign ambassadors might see the vanity of those reports that were spread abroad in other countries of mislikes and distastes between him and his people'. So Westminster, St.
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