ABSTRACT
In the century or so before the outbreak of the English Civil War London underwent massive changes. This is mostly clearly evident in the rapid growth of the population. The population of the City of London and Southwark more than doubled between the mid-sixteenth century and the early 1630s, rising from less than 70,000 people to about 145,000. Moreover by the early seventeenth century London had expanded beyond the boundaries of the Corporation. Westminster, which in the Middle Ages had been a separate town, had grown to form a continuous urban area with the City, and new suburbs were growing up to the east in Tower Hamlets and to the north and north west in Holbom and Finsbury.1 At the beginning of the seventeenth century the population of London was about 200,000, it doubled in the next half century: by which time at least half of all Londoners were living in the suburbs.2
