Introducing the world of the, Seeking Solus series of novels.
London, England, 1696 CE was a newer and more spacious city than it had been since the time of the Romans. The Great Fire of 1666, just thirty years earlier than our first novel, had forced the city to rebuild its homes, businesses, and churches out of brick and stone. Inside the old city walls, another legacy of the Romans, new roads replaced the pre-fire lattice of tiny overhung alleyways and rat-runs that had been the streets of the old city.
London, just 607 acres of land, was mostly rebuilt by the time Kit Pascoe relocated from Oxford to work as bounty collector. The focal point of the city was St Paul’s Cathedral. In the Winter of 1696 CE much of the building work was completed, and in fact, just a year later the first service was held there. However, the dome, the crowning glory of the building and the dominant feature of the whole city was still 15 years away from completion.
In and around the unfinished St Paul’s, the city thronged with business and industry of every kind. Almost everything the city needed was made by its workers or delivered via the vast, bustling docks on the tidal River Thames.
There was only one bridge that spanned the Thames, London Bridge. The bridge did more than just connect the north and south banks of the river, it acted as a gateway into the city. London Bridge was a divider between the import and export ships in the docks and the rest of London. East of the bridge, and therefore upstream, smaller vessels supplied the separate City of Westminster.
Politically, the 600,000 or so, people who lived and worked in London had freedoms and rights few it the wider country had. Freemen in London could vote, even if they did not meet the forty-shillings a year rentable property threshold. Women, regardless of wealth and status, could not vote.
Yet, many women took an active part in business and the social life of London. Before the Hanoverian governments of 1715 CE onwards reduced the roles and rights of women across the whole Kingdom, the women of London and other major cities could own property, run businesses and gain an education.
Economically, London was the centre of monetary power in England. Note: England, not the United Kingdom. Whilst the Crowns of England and Scotland rested on the head of William III, Scotland was an independent country with its own parliament until 1707 CE and the Acts of Union.
In 1696 CE, England had been a Protestant county for much of the prior one hundred and sixty years. However, religiously, it was still a land of Catholic and Anglican division. In order to avoid a Catholic king, James II, from keeping his crown, the English Parliament had invited the Dutchman William of Orange and his English Protestant wife Mary Stuart (daughter of James II) to invade England in November 1688. This invasion and the subsequent crowning of the joint monarchs is known to history as the Glorious Revolution.
The popular Queen Mary II died in 1694 CE, leaving William III as sole monarch. The King hated England and England hated the King; he was ever focused on wars with France. At the time of the first Seeking Solus story, A Filigree of Gold, the Nine Years' War was still raging. William III, to pay for the war, endlessly emptied England of money through hated taxes and costly duties on goods. Coal was taxed, bread was taxed, cider was taxed; almost everything was taxed. To make matters worse, imports from France were embargoed because of the war.
This is the world that Kit Pascoe, the First True Thief Taker, and his Blessed She, Rebecca Scott, live within. A world of opportunity, a world of danger, and a world where the landed gentry and the new merchant classes vie with each other for power.
With hundreds of thousands of people living in only one square mile, the healthy and sick share the same air. The thieves and robbers live cheek-by-jowl with the innocent and the law-abiding. The law is corrupt and corruptible. The expert manipulator of those trying to do right and those trying to do wrong is the lovable, irrepressible rogue, Edgeworth Bess.
Welcome, to the world of the Seeking Solus series of novels. Welcome to, A Filigree of Gold.
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I hope that you now have a good base knowledge of the world of the Seeking Solus series. Over the coming blogs we will look at specific historic; places, events, people and objects that feature in the first chapter of our Christmas themed Seeking Solus adventure, A Filigree of Gold.
A new blog each Sunday; Everything Else is Just Straw and Water.
P.B. Phillips - Author of the lightly spiced Historical Novel series, Seeking Solus: Life and Love as the First True Thief Taker.
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