John Colet Goes To Oxford: London: 1483

John Colet was an English humanist. Born in London and eldest son of Sir Henry Colet - an alderman who later became Lord Mayor of London twice - John would use his substantial inheritance to become founder and dean of the School of St Paul's in London. Along the way he was also chaplain to King Henry VIII. Colet was a friend and teacher of Erasmus, a friend to Thomas More, he wrote sermons, gave lectures on divinity and preached at the ceremony when Thomas Wolsey became Cardinal. He was also a traveller of Europe. When he came of age, probably in 1483, he went to Oxford to study.

That year King Edward IV had died and his brother Richard of York, Duke of Gloucester became Lord Protector of Edward's son and heir. This Richard's first duty was to escort the prince to London and make arrangements for the prince's coronation. This coronation never happened. Instead, Edward's Queen, Elizabeth Woodville was deemed incompetent by a court who annulled the marriage. Conveniently for Richard, this also made Edward's heir no longer fit to be king. Richard assumed the role, was crowned in July and became history's Richard III. The prince who would be Edward V was never seen again in public after August, 1483. By October, a number of his brother's men began moving against Richard.

For decades, what is now called the Wars of the Roses had ravaged Britain. Even so, London was a bustling, busy city, full of excitement and intrigue. This was the year that Edward died, that Richard was crowned and young John Colet went to Oxford. The following is a description of the city in that year by a modern day author who wrote the widely acclaimed biography of Richard III, first published 1955. The title of his chapter is "England: 1483".

"Though the walls and spires of London stood in Richard's [III] sight as they had for centuries, new forces and transformations, decay and fresh growth of which Richard could only sense the first effects, coursed in the blood of the giant that, beyond the east windows of Westminster Palace, lay sprawled beside the tidal water that gave it life.
The London of King Richard more nearly resembled, perhaps, the town of Edward III than the city of Elizabeth, since the daily pageantry of the Church was yet to be shorn and suburbs would blot out environing fields and farms; but in its riches, energy and self-esteem London was far more like what it was to become under Gloriana than what it had been. It was the principle home of the king; it was now the seat of Parliament, which at the bidding of the house of York had ceased to wander from town to town; it housed the great lawyers in their inns, courtiers, bishops, foreign merchants and envoys despatched by the European princes. All the highways of the island led to the capital; its broad estuary enticed the traffic of the Channel and the seas; around it lay some of the most fertile lands in the kingdom. To the marvel of continental visitors, London blazed on the far perimeter of civilization the Queen City of the Oceans. If Paris was the largest and Rome or Venice the grandest, London was the richest and busiest of towns.
It was a filthy, crowded, clamorous hive of human activity -- its narrow streets, many unpaved, running all hugger-mugger, darkened by the leaning upper storeys of gilt and gabled houses and thick with refuse which was left to be scavenged by flocks of kites and ravens. . . .
dirty the city certainly was. It was also an architectural hodgepodge. So thought Italian visitors, accustomed to their sharply defined cities of stone. They found the homes quaint and crazy, comfortable and often opulent on the inside but built every which way as fancy and convenience dictated -- houses with ground floor of stone supporting wooden eaves and 'pentices'; houses of half-timber and whitewashed plaster; here and there a building of brick, or a thatched roof, or a stone mansion. London architecture was like the English law: traditional, eccentric and mysterious. Yet, despite themselves, these visitors were impressed, even awed. A double wonder invests their comments: their marvelling at London and their marvelling at their own enchantment.
The heart of the city -- its chief highway and its means of life -- was the clear flowing river. Small boats plied up and down like restless water bugs. The barges of the great glided westward to Westminster or down to Greenwich, floating caravans of carved wood and gilding, gay with banners, with the liveries of the oarsmen, with burnished armour or scarlet gowns. The barges slid between the traffic of the seas. The greatest vessels -- carracks of Genoa or the Flanders galleys -- had to tie up five miles below the city; but ships of a hundred tons -- and many whose prows split the oceans were no larger -- sailed up past the Tower to the city's heart. On many of these the old leg-of-mutton sail had given way to a rigging of several sails which permitted them to navigate closer to the wind and to hold their courses in heavy weather. A forest of masts and tackle grew thick along the river bank. Great cranes -- amazing to the Italians -- swung bales from ship to shore. From the Tower to Blackfriars stretched the wharves and warehouses, broken by the battlements of Baynard's Castle and by the stone bulk of the Steelyard, the shop-warehouse-legatine compound of the Easterlings which stood where Cannon Street Station stands now.
The crown of the river was the Bridge, known throughout Christendom as one of the wonders of the world. It was grander, longer and more exciting than the Rialto, the Ponte Vecchio, the Pont Neuf. With stone gates at both ends and a towered gate in the middle from which the drawbridge was worked (kept permanently lowered after 1481), London Bridge supported on its twenty pillars of bright white stone a piece of the city itself. Its ancient roadway was hemmed on both sides by the ground-floor shops of mercers and haberdashers who dwelt in the storeys above. Underneath, the current rushed with a low roar through nineteen arches; 'shooting the bridge' was only for the experienced waterman. The dwellings and the drawbridge still bore scars of the great night battle the citizens had fought with Jack Cade's rabble in the summer of 1450 and of the Bastard of Fauconberg's attack in the spring of 1471.
By present-day standards London was neither large nor populous. It housed between fifty and seventy-five thousand inhabitants -- four times the number of its nearest rivals, York and Bristol, and, in the opinion of an Italian visitor, no fewer than Florence or Rome. It stretched little more than a mile along the river and less than that from the river to its northern walls. Its extent is recalled today in the names of streets and Underground stations." bk ii, ii, I

Paul Murray Kendall, Richard III, Folio Society, St Edmondsbury Press, Bury St Edmonds, UK 2005