Influence of Proclamation on Greater London

While much of the face of Britain took shape during the rule of peers with their expansive estates, much of London's growth evolved rather differently due to proclamation - a law which forbade as far as possible any country gentleman who was not in Parliament from residing in London. This had a profound effect on the way London developed.

In "The Curiosities of Literature", Isaac D'Israeli states that this law even made the overgrown metropolis more appealing in some ways: "Proclamations warned and exhorted; but the very interference of a royal prohibition seemed to render the metropolis more charming".

However from Elizabeth to Charles II, proclamations were continually issued against new buildings. James I wrote of "those swarms of gentry who, through the instigation of their wives, did neglect their country hospitality, and cumber the city: a general nuisance to the kingdom."

But though for some the proclamations made London all the more irresistable, others were not so at ease. Palmer, a Sussex nobleman was fined £1,000 for residing in London rather than on his own estate in the country, even though his country mansion had been burned less than two years before his trial took place. We are told that this sentence struck terror into the London sojourners; and it was followed by a proclamation for them to leave the city, with their "wives and families, and also widows."

Consequently it is easy to understand why there are so many large mansions in small country towns, yet far fewer around London. The habit of making the best of a hard lot influenced the gentry even long after it would have been safe to have followed Palmer’s example. Up to the Hanoverian period, large old-fashioned houses in some small country towns, as Dickens says, look as if they had lost their way in infancy, and grown to their present proportions.

For more about London's history see the London history section.