ABSTRACT
The London weavers in the seventeenth century lived in and around a crowded city, bustling and noisy, lying in a crude crescent along the north bank of the Thames from Wapping to Westminster. Its length was barely six miles and it was some two miles from north to south. Along the south bank of the river, linked to the City by London Bridge-the only bridge-lay Southwark, a pulsating extension of London, in shape like a finger and thumb pointing across marshes and meadows towards Kent and the Continent. The 'Stately Thames enriched with many a flood', gliding on 'with pomp of waters unwithstood', was then the City's main highway; the most safe and speedy of routes, much used by Londoners of all classes upon all occasions, commercial, social and ceremonial; and by visitors from abroad, many of whom came upstream from Gravesend by river ferry-boats.
