Middlesex

The city of Westminster, as the administrative capital of the kingdom, the principal residence of the sovereign, and the usual venue of Parliament, enjoyed a peculiar status. The dean of Westminster appointed a high steward, who for most of the period was the loyal Duke of Ormonde, and together they nominated the corporation, consisting of 12 ‘burgesses’ and 12 assistants, and the high bailiff, who acted as returning officer. The high steward also appointed a deputy for judicial purposes.

The city of Westminster, composed of the parishes of St. Margaret and St. Martin-in-the-Fields, was beginning to lose its separate identity in the Elizabethan period: a continuous line of buildings along the Strand connected it with London. Many of its inhabitants were employed in the royal services or in various government offices. Municipal development had been limited, the dean and chapter of the collegiate church of St. Peter having inherited from the abbots the civil as well as ecclesiastical government of the city and its liberties.

Westminster was given the status of a city by the letters patent of December 1540 which reconstituted the former abbey as a cathedral, but neither then nor later was it incorporated. Between 1540 and 1550 the bishop exercised the powers, including the right to appoint a steward (otherwise under steward) of Westminster, which earlier had been vested in the abbey, and after the suppression of the bishopric these were transferred to the dean and chapter of the collegiate church set up by Edward VI.

Westminster’s economy revolved largely around the retail trades, beer-brewing and the letting of residential property. Cf. G. Rosser, Medieval Westminster, 43-165. The law courts in Westminster Hall, and the king’s Court at Whitehall, brought a steady stream of people to the city. Whenever Parliament met business also boomed, as Members of both Houses, along with their wives and servants, descended on Westminster’s numerous inns and hostelries, Croft estimates the number to have been at least 1,000: P.

Westminster, the most prestigious borough constituency in the United Kingdom, was, in the words of its most recent historians, ‘the hegemonic centre of political, professional, consumerist and cultural life’. Harvey, Green and Corfield, ‘Continuity, change and specialization within metropolitan London: the economy of Westminster, 1775-1820’, EcHR (ser. 2), lii (1999), 490. Its northern boundary was Oxford Street and its southern the Thames.