London in the Time of the Tudors

London in the time of the Tudors was a city in relentless transformation, and Besant captures it all: the narrow streets thick with the smell of tallow and the cries of hawkers, the austere new Protestant services echoing through former monasteries, the extravagant court of Henry VIII where princes were made and unmade, the tense underground masses for Catholics, and the powerful guildsmen who truly governed the City. Originally published in 1904, when Victorian scholars still had access to records and buildings now lost, this work carries an irreplaceable immediacy. Besant walks the reader through Smithfield's horse-trading, the Tower's political dramas, the playhouses rising in Shoreditch, and the intricate machinery of Tudor government and trade. For anyone who has walked through Covent Garden or stood in Westminster and wondered what Tudor London looked like, smelled like, felt like, this is the book.