Coffee, Satire and Bubbles

London Revisited

This episode explores London's transformation following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Great Fire, focusing on how coffee houses catalyzed a financial revolution and a new

Key takeaways

• The Glorious Revolution of 1688 shifted power from the crown to Parliament, establishing an unwritten constitution centered on the 'crown in Parliament'.
• Scottish banker William Paterson founded the Bank of England in 1694, creating a national debt backed by future tax revenue rather than royal credit.

Main topics

• Glorious Revolution & Constitutional Shift
• Financial Revolution & Bank of England

Notable quotes

The coffee they were drinking was not the sort of thing that you'd get in Café Nero today... likened to burnt shoes and charcoal.

Conclusion

The episode demonstrates how London's post-1688 political and architectur

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Hello and welcome back to London Revisited, a close readings podcast from the London Review of Books. I'm Rosemary Hill. In our last episode we saw London survive the plague and begin to rebuild after the Great Fire of 1666 and we ended with a crisis of royal succession with the Catholic James II defying attempts to exclude him and he finally took the throne in 1685 but as we'll see today James's reign was not destined to be long. I'm joined today by Markman Ellis, Professor of 18th Century Studies at Queen Mary University of London. Hello, Markman. Speaker 4 (0:39) Hello, Rosemary. Speaker 3 (0:40) And we're going to watch as the city becomes a centre of financial revolution, which grows out of a network of coffeehouses, where a new flow of caffeinated enterprises create political debate. financial chaos from time to time, the exchange of news and gossip, the first daily newspapers, reviews, advice columns, the ever-emerging voice of public opinion. Luckily for us, we have one of the great writers of London, Daniel Defoe, and we're going to start with an extract from his novel, Malfounders, published in 1722. Speaker 2 (1:15) i went out now by daylight and wandered about i knew not whither and in search of i knew not what when the devil put a snare in my way of a dreadful nature indeed and such a one as i have never had before or since Going through Aldersgate Street, there was a pretty little child who had been at a dancing school, and was going home, all alone. And my prompter, like a true devil, set me upon this little creature. i talked to it and it prattled to me again and i took it by the hand and led it along till i came to a paved alley that goes into bartholomew close and i led it in there the child said that was not its way home i said yes my dear it is i'll show you the way home Speaker 2 (2:01) The child had a little necklace on of gold beads, and I had my eye upon that, and in the dark of the alley I stooped, pretending to mend the child's clog that was loose, and took off her necklace, and the child never felt it, and so led the child on again. Speaker 2 (2:19) Here, I say, the devil put me upon killing the child in the dark alley, that it might not cry. but the very thought frighted me so that I was ready to drop down. But I turned the child about and bade it go back again, for that was not its way home. The child said so she would, and I went through into Bartholomew Close and then turned round to another passage that goes into St John's Street, then crossing into Smithfield, went down Chick Lane and into Field Lane to Hoban Bridge, when, mixing with the crowd of people usually passing there, it was not possible to have been found out. And thus, I enterprised my second Sally into the world. Speaker 3 (3:02) Defoe's Moll Flanders comes somewhere between fiction and journalism. Defoe knew a lot of criminals, partly because he spent some time in prison himself, and he wrote down what they said. I think that's what gives her such an authentic sounding voice. And also Defoe's descriptions are very evocative of a period in which the life in the streets becomes ever more important, ever more vital, ever more bustling. Speaker 4 (3:28) Street life in this period, it's really interesting that it's not simply, streets are not simply a place for people to move from one place to another, but they're full of people who are literally selling things in the street. Items like fish or cherries or newspapers are being vended in the street and the streets themselves are also encrusted with shops along the edge. It might have been anything from a watchmaker's shop to a really stinky butcher. So the life in the street has become, as Defoe shows, an incredibly rich and varied kind of experience with crowds of people, some of whom are intoxicated and some of whom are going to school. Speaker 3 (4:08) These street sellers, street life, behind it all in 1688 is a great moment of national and ultimately international crisis. for London, for England, because after Charles II's death, James II, who everyone's been trying to keep off the throne because he was a Roman Catholic, and the fact that by now James had an heir, that was what made those who feared for Catholic influence in England decide that something had to be done to challenge James. The plan was that James would be asked to resign. and the Dutch Protestant William of Orange, who was his son-in-law, invited to come as king. So William of Orange landed in Devon in November 1688. And depending on who was writing history, this was either an invasion by a foreign power, or it was the Glorious Revolution. And this Glorious Revolution, as it's become known, And part of what is sometimes slightly misleadingly referred to as the weak version of history is always painted as a very peaceful, not always, but it is painted as a very peaceful, reasonable, thoroughly English sort of a revolution. But in fact, it was very, very turbulent. William arrived with an enormous army and he immediately thereby involved England in the nine years war that he was healing on the continent. James was not going to give up without a fight. So he was in Ireland. England was surrounded by hostile Catholic powers in Spain and France and Ireland. And James lost the Battle of the Boyne and retreated to the continent from where there would be constant Jacobite threats for, well, hundreds of years, really, in a more or less viable form. Parliament decided that