ABSTRACT
We have spoken at some length of the immense and ever-spreading growth of London during the period under study. That growth was in a true sense a function of the great gains in wealth and power of the merchant aristocracy of the city, a class small in numbers but possessing a remarkable cohesion of purpose, aspiration, and vigour. We shall consequently be especially concerned with this remarkable and powerful group of men, who played such an important role in framing and founding those institutions and those attitudes upon which the modern society may be said to depend. Yet, at the same time, substantial contributions were being made to the rapid development of the life and institutions of the city by other classes of men whose charitable concerns must be noted and assessed against the background of the dominant social achievement of the merchant leaders of this great urban complex. We shall therefore seek to examine the structure and nature of the aspirations of the several classes of men which together constituted this society.
