Free The King's Mistress: The True & Scandalous Story of the Woman Who Stole the Heart of George I by Claudia Gold

population, or roughly 600,000, equal to the entire population of Hanover. Public houses and coffee houses with their swinging, creaking signs were numerous. The accompanying chatter outside competed with the cries of tradesmen, soldiers, footmen and the fashionable promenaders. Livestock were driven through the streets, dogs roamed free, and the swarms of the populace were joined by horses and coaches. Puppet shows and theatre took place on street corners, as did gambling and fights at the cockpits, while the rich meandered in the city’s gardens and down the Mall.
    London’s story is marked by purgings by fire; the most recent, the year before Melusine’s birth in 1666 – the ‘Great Fire of London’ – destroyed seven-eighths of the city as thirteen thousand buildings burned. Sir Christopher Wren was appointed ‘Principal Architect’ for the rebuilding, but although his plan for a marvellous new metropolis with the broad streets typical of many European cities was grand – it was apparently sketched while the city still smouldered – it was never realized. London’s ancient geography asserted itself and development of the devastated areas took place principally along the existing street plans. The year after the fire, Dryden glorified London in his poem Annus Mirabilis: the Year of Wonders :
More great than human now, and more August,
New deified she from her Fires does rise:
Her widening Streets on new Foundations trust,
And, opening, into larger parts she flies. (verse 295)
    But Wren actually had little part in the rebuilding of the city as a whole. His most significant achievement was the reconstruction of St Paul’s Cathedral, which the fire had reduced to rubble. Wren began work nine years after the fire; it was completed thirty-five years later, in 1710. Its stunning dome remains an icon of the London skyline.
    The beginning of the eighteenth century saw a blossoming of architectural brilliance in London. In 1711 Queen Anne commissioned the building of ‘fifty new churches’ to mark the electoral victory of her last High Church Tory ministry. Although only twelve materialized, they were designed by the ‘greats’ of the English baroque – Wren, Nicholas Hawksmoor, James Gibbs, John James, Thomas Archer and Henry Flitcroft. Their beautiful white steeples and porticoes added to the elegance and grace of early Georgian London.
    London was a city in which elegant villas and vile, foul-smelling slums coexisted side by side. It was a city of light and dark, with dingy alleys for the poor and smart, broad streets leading into stylish squares for the rich. Only one bridge spanned the Thames – London Bridge. The next crossing was some 30 miles away by river, at Kingston-upon-Thames. (London Bridge remained the only crossing until Westminster Bridge was completed in 1750.) The river and the docks were the financial lifeblood of the city. Numerous churches dotted the cityscape, one for each tiny parish. It was a city where Palladian, baroque and medieval architecture sat together. Throughout George’s reign the city’s surrounding fields were gradually developed, a continuation of the building boom that had exploded in the wake of the Peace of Utrecht and the ending of the war. Georgian London was very much the creation of independent master builders, property speculators and architects. George’s reign was marked by constant building activity, particularly in the capital.
    The grand Italianate Piazza of Covent Garden, built to designs by Inigo Jones between 1631 and 1637, was no longer fashionable and was already degenerating into seediness. It was only moments away from the newer houses favoured by the aristocracy and the recently wealthy. Building sites and the accompanying chaos and noise were everywhere; passers-by must tread carefully around them. The mass of building work added to the vitality and chaos of the city, bursting with an ever-expanding population.
    Jonathan Swift beautifully described