36 • Beginningsgain with the king’s father. Bedford could employ the royal architect Inigo
Jones to create breathtaking Covent Garden Piazza, with its redbrick row
houses in imitation of London’s Royal Exchange and the Rialto in Venice. In
return, Bedford was to maintain a major east-west route, Long Acre, a little
to the north. Bedford kept only one part of the bargain; Long Acre, which he
had agreed to “pave and keep... as well as any street in London,” began to
deteriorate. By the 1660 s it had attracted brothels and coachmakers, and
newly constructed ramshackle dwellings lay just out of sight in alleys.^48
A new market on the south side of the Piazza was one of the rare sub-
urban supply points for food. At the western end stood another landmark,
the Inigo Jones–designed church of Saint Paul Covent Garden. The classical
façade was not especially appealing, but inside one heard the most edifying
sermons in London. The new minister, Symon Patrick, enjoyed powerful pa-
trons led by the Bedfords, an ability to stir the consciences of his wealthiest
parishioners, and a rare knack for understanding the plight of the parish
poor. Patrick was a thirty-eight-year-old bachelor, seemingly at the peak of
his career. Some of his parishioners with influence at court were grooming
him for even greater things.
As Greater London entered the sixth year of the Restoration monarchy, it
continued the tumultuous growth that had thrust it into the top rank of Eu-
ropean cities. To economic dynamism and geographic expansion was added a
remarkable flourishing of the arts and sciences. John Dryden’s first rhymed
heroic play,The Indian Emperour,with Montezuma battling Cortez, was set
for a spring opening. Attendance at plays in Westminster had never been
better. Charles II’s future mistress, Nell Gwyn, titillated courtiers and people
of Samuel Pepys’ rank with a new kind of farce, pitting a rakish hero against
an independent-thinking heroine. On January 4 , Pepys attended The Comi-
cal Revenge, or Love in a Tub,which wittily probed Restoration manners. On
the fourteenth Pepys saw Ben Jonson’s comedy of 1606 ,Volpone, or the Fox,
and declared it “a most excellent play—the best I think I ever saw, and well
acted.”^49
The great Puritan thinker of the late revolution, John Milton, was finish-
ingParadise Lostin the poor suburban parish of Saint Giles Cripplegate. On
the cusp of the scientific revolution, Robert Hooke and other members of
the new Royal Society in the heart of the old city were engaged in ground-
breaking scientific experiments. Some were fanciful, others daring. In a
memorable treatise William Harvey, not long before, had described the cir-
culation of blood. William Sydenham and other physicians were distinguish-
ing different fevers, from the simple kind to spotted fever and the dreaded