Fashionable Society in 'these our cloudy days' If Westminster had been famously a 'royal city', it was also renowned, as James Howell noted, as the residence of 'most of the Nobility and Gentry', and increasingly as a focus for a fashionable 'season' that embraced many more elite visitors. Historians have traditionally seen the 1640s and 1650s as a time when, with the royal court abandoned and the neighbourhood subjected to the years of wartime disruption followed by those of puritan regulation, the gentry season and fashionable society of the West End largely disappeared, only to re-emerge in 1660. Given that the rise of an aristocratic West End is one of the key cultural developments of urban society in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, its apparent demise requires further exploration. Some features of this gloomy picture have been undermined by specialist studies examining the broad cultural tastes of prominent puritans and parliamentarians, while aspects of luxury consumption have also been documented for the capital in this period. 1 In fact, as this chapter will make clear, many traits of fashionable society are visible in the Westminster of these decades. But an exclusive emphasis on such features risks being as distorting as an account that focuses solely on restrictions and a puritan glumness only dispelled by the Restoration. There was no uncomplicated return of earlier fashionable society and the period saw considerable fluctuation. As other chapters have already demonstrated, the area around Westminster could prove a potentially antipathetic environment for fashionable living, not least with the strong military presence and the regular security clamp-downs in a locality where royalist sentiments were justly suspected to linger. This chapter is less concerned to examine whether fashionable society was going 'up' or 'down', but rather to explore the contours and shifting character of such a society. A study of some of the ways in which fashionable society --which was so indelibly associated with this specific locality --adapted and responded to these unique conditions can therefore offer us further important insights into the impact of the changing regimes on social and cultural relations, and the continuing de-stabilizing role of royalism in the area.
The 1640s: wartime disruptionOn the eve of the civil war, the town of Westminster was the legal and administrative centre of the nation and home to the royal court. It had also during the course of the early seventeenth century gradually emerged as the centre of a fashionable and aristocratic West End. Members of the gentry developed the habit of coming to the capital, where they not only vied for court patronage, pursued law suits, and looked for suitable marriage partners, but also participated in an increasingly rich cultural life which extended beyond the precincts of Whitehall. Visits from the country now frequently involved family parties, and more generally sociable activities, luxury consumption and conspicuous display became th...