After the Tudor period it was no longer a defensible barrier against foreign or home-grown marauders; instead, it became London’s open space, a combination of highway and arena. Elaborate pageants were staged on its surface, especially by London Mayors. An early seventeenth-century show, which celebrated the burgeoning trade with the East India Company’s newly established ports, featured five artificial floating islands complete with exotic fruit and spice trees. The great world was opening up and the Thames was England’s gateway to it. But essentially the river was the main road running between one end of the City and the other, or between the cities of London and Westminster, or up river further to Richmond, or down river to Deptford and Greenwich and eventually to the sea. The town streets were narrow, either muddy or dusty according to the weather, choked in many places with stalls and cryers of wares, with workmen plying their trades and with clamorous crowds.
