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Soho the city ranged, and already streets were appearing between there and Tottenham Court and Marylebone, beyond Clerkenwell and Hoxton to the north and Bethnal Green and Mile End to the east. Old houses might collapse, like thunder, even new ones fall, but the growth in numbers continued. The fields and the farms were beginning to yield to the great houses, while to the west, Hyde Park’s fences were under siege to builders voracious in their hunger for land, egged on by great landowners who served both King and Parliament and ignored the laws which had been passed to try to prevent London from growing too large and so beyond control. Even Knightsbridge, even the south bank of the Thames was being developed far beyond the Borough of Southwark. And there was much talk of more bridges, one at Westminster and one at Charing Cross, to speed the stagecoaches and the riders.
    Nothing, it seemed, could stop London from extending its boundaries beyond the limits set by King and government. These laws were circumvented in two ways: by the wealthy who, believing in the future of London as the heart of Britain, bought great tracts of land, bribing officials for permits to build; and by small merchants and houseowners who, too frightened to break the law, built onto existing houses.
    The jealousies and animosities between the City of London itself and Westminster grew worse, not better. Within the City walls was the greatest concentration of families and businessmen, including the guilds of all crafts and most professions. Beyond the walls and the seven gates was the two-mile highway which led to Westminster. Once nothing but a road between open farmland running down to the Thames on the south, this was now built up to the north with inns, alehouses and brothels, and the great terror of the Strand was the highwaymen who lurked there after dark, making the journey deadly dangerous unless one travelled with a group or a strong escort.
    Within the City, divided into wards and parishes, there was some pretext of law and safety, but most responsible citizens were too careful to trust the watchmen patrols and so paid for their own peace officers. The profession of thief-taker, so abominated by John Furnival, arose because anyone could charge a man with a crime punishable by death, and anyone could bear false witness, often to his advantage, since he received a reward for his service to the community. And he could be even better rewarded, for if he arrested a man and had him committed, then he received a certificate which exempted him from any otherwise compulsory service in his parish, from jury duty and many such tasks. ‘A thief-taker is a thief-maker,’ Charles Hitchins had said more than twenty years earlier, and that was as true as ever.
    Rich landowners built the nuclei of small towns in and beyond the villages, where there were no restrictive laws. As these spread they drew closer to the permitted limits of London and so the day came when the gaps closed and they were virtually part of the city. These building projects slowly changed the face of London, and while some took over green fields by which the city breathed, others tore down rat-infested slums and did much good.
    From the forbidding walls of the City of London, at that time a free port for the goods of all nations of the earth, the Strand led to the City of Westminster, which was without walls and proud of its position.
    Both places crawled with beggars; with the destitute, the sick, the frightened; and with criminals who lurked by night and sometimes were bold enough to strike for a rich prize by day.
    The Strand became more infested with highwaymen every week.
    The Thames, the other great means of communication between the two cities, was infested with thieves and footpads and ‘mudlarks’ and was crowded with shipping from across the world as well as from the coasts of Britain and of Europe.
    Thirty watermen plied their little wherries for hire, and the calls of