The Web of Parishes

London was throughout our period a city in process of rapid growth and, as we have indicated, was an urban complex already burgeoning out of its ancient limits as it encroached deeper and deeper into the county in which it was geographically situated. It was likewise a city extraordinarily fluid in its social structure, without permanently fashionable precincts, in which the very rich lived side by side with, or more often above, the very poor. We have sought at least to chart the tangled and complex parochial structure of the city in order to determine the sources of charitable giving and to set out the residences of men of the various classes who made contribution to the social needs of the city and nation. We have counted in all 117 London parishes in the course of our period, or about the same number as reported by Peter of Blois in 1199 ¹ and by John Stow in 1598. ² If the Abbey Church may be counted as one, there were likewise six Westminster parishes, all of which were essentially suburban by the middle of the seventeenth century. And there were as well seventy additional parishes from which benefactions have been noted in the remainder of Middlesex, the social and occupational complexion of which by 1660 would suggest that at least half were in the early stages of urban absorption.