[2] The city also expanded to take up more physical space, further exceeding the bounds of its old medieval walls to reach as far west as St. Giles by the end of the period.

In futile attempts to check urban sprawl, repeated ordnances forbade the building of new houses on less than 4 acres (16,000 m2) of ground in 1580, 1583, and 1593, applying to land as far as Chiswick or Tottenham.

[12] The Palace of Westminster was severely damaged by fire in 1512, and ceased to be a home for the royal family, being instead used as offices or chambers for the monarch to summon Parliament.

[23] Henry also acquired York Place from Wolsey, which he massively enlarged into Whitehall Palace,[24] with a tiltyard and tennis court,[12] and a royal mews for horses, carriages and hunting falcons close to Charing Cross.

[31] Its officers were given the authority to roam alehouses, cock-fighting pits, gambling dens and skittle-alleys, seizing homeless, unemployed or disorderly people and detaining them in Bridewell.

[49] Plague hit so badly in 1563 in London that the local authorities began to compile death statistics for the first time in the Bills of Mortality.

[51][52] Nearly 25% of foreigners lived in villages outside London, inside the city French hatters stayed in Southwark, silk-weavers in Shoreditch and Spitalfields; whereas Dutch printers based themselves in Clerkenwell.

[55] Aside from Blanke, a few black people appear in written records, such as the "blakemor" who arrived with Philip II of Spain when he came to London to marry Mary I, and an African needlemaker who worked on Cheapside.

[56] In 1600, an ambassador arrived in London from modern-day Morocco called Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud, seeking an alliance between the King of Barbary and Elizabeth I.

[75] In the monastery of London Charterhouse, the Carthusian monks refused to acknowledge Henry as head of the church, and four of them including their prior, John Houghton, were hanged, drawn and quartered.

[77] Other monastic houses were dissolved in a less bloody fashion, but their considerable lands and buildings were still given or sold off to aristocrats and politicians- for example, Lord Cobham acquired Blackfriars Priory; the Marquess of Winchester built Winchester House on the site of Holy Trinity Aldgate, and Lord Dudley acquired St. Giles' Hospital.

[78] Some monastic sites Henry seized for himself, such as the hospital that became St. James's Palace, and land belonging to Westminster Abbey which he turned into Hyde Park.

[26] After 1550, the building of new churches in London stopped for over 70 years, with St. Giles-without-Cripplegate being finished in 1550, and the next new construction being after the end of the period in 1623 with the Queen's Chapel near St. James' Palace.

The parson of St. Ethelburga's, John Day, twice was put in the pillory and his ears nailed to it for speaking ill of the new queen, and in 1554 a dead cat dressed in the robes of a Catholic priest was found hanging on the gallows in Cheapside.

[84] During the Tudor period, London was rapidly rising in importance amongst Europe's commercial centers, and its many small industries were booming, especially weaving.

In 1565, Thomas Gresham founded a new mercantile exchange- a sort of early shopping centre-[87] which was awarded the title the "Royal Exchange" by Queen Elizabeth in 1571.

[89] It was visited by the German tutor Paul Hentzner in 1598, who described the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors gathering at the Hand and Shears pub in preparation for checking the measures of the goods on sale at the fair.

[101] London lagged behind other European cities in health measures, leading Soranzo to write that there was "some little plague in England well nigh every year, for which they are not accustomed to make sanitary provisions".

In 1561, a butcher in Eastcheap was fined £20 for killing three cows during Lent, and in 1563, two women were put in the stocks at St. Katherine's by the Tower for refusing to abide by the rule.

In 1560, two men and three women were put on the tumbrel in London for fornication, and in 1563, a physician called Christopher Langton was carted down Cheapside for being caught "with two young wenches at once".

She predicted that Henry would die within six months of his marriage to Anne, and although her prophecy did not come true, she was executed at Tyburn in 1534 and her head put on a spike at London Bridge.

A man called Thomas Appletree confessed to the crime, saying that he had been showing off to some friends by firing randomly and hadn't meant to hit the royal barge.

[54] As well as advising the monarch on affairs of state, the privy council also acted as a law court called Star Chamber, meeting in the Palace of Westminster.

It tried people who had breached the privy council's orders, duellists, conspirators, rioters, libellers, etc., and had the distinction of being the only body with the power to authorise the use of torture.

Thomas Platter wrote that "rarely does a law day take place in London in all the four sessions pass without some twenty to thirty persons, both men and women, being gibbeted".

[146] These companies began by performing at galleried coaching inns and upper-class houses before beginning to build their own permanent theatres in London, the first known example being the Red Lion in Whitechapel.

In 1587, the satirist Stephen Gosson wrote that "London is so full of unprofitable pipers and fiddlers that a man can no sooner enter a tavern than two or three cast of them hang at his heels to give him a dance ere he depart.

"[148] Important composers who lived in London include Thomas Tallis, William Byrd and John Bull, all of whom were employed by Elizabeth I at the Chapel Royal despite being Catholics.

[109] Fencing schools to teach young gentlemen the art of the duel existed across the city, including at Ely Place, Greyfriars, Bridewell, Artillery Gardens, Leadenhall and Smithfield.

[154] Popular cockfighting rings existed in Whitehall Palace, Jewin Street, Shoe Lane and St. Giles in the Fields, with large amounts of money being gambled every Sunday.