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The aristocratic "season" came into existence not only to further the marriage market but to entertain the upper classes while they carried out their political duties. By the 1770s modern London was envied throughout Europe for its glass-fronted shops and spacious roads that easily accommodated two lanes of traffic. Speculators widened country lanes into streets, turned fields into smart squares, and built shops, arcades, and churches on previously empty spaces. There was a frenzy of building as the capital spread out westwards. By the mid-eighteenth century one in ten Englishmen had lived in London at some point in his life. The concentration of so much wealth and power transformed the city. The aristocracy had to be in London for much longer periods of time, and in a location convenient for both the Houses of Parliament at Westminster and the Palace of St. James's Palace when Parliament was in session. Parliament no longer met at the King's command but according to a set calendar, while the court resided permanently at St. Before the eighteenth century the grand nobility lived in private palaces along the Strand, overlooking the river Thames, but after the Glorious Revolution in 1688, when William and Mary, the Protestant rulers of Holland, sailed to England at the Whig party's request and helped to depose the Catholic King James II, the nature of political life changed. Devonshire House lay in London's western end, known as the "polite" end, encompassing Piccadilly, St.
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