This excessive love for eating was not, however, confined to Henry's time, for about two centuries previous to this, (Edward III.) feasting was endeavoured to be restrained by a law, though Edward himself did not follow his own law, for when his "son, Lionel, of Clarence, married Violentes, of Milant there were thirty courses, and the fragments fed 1,500 persons." The formation of London was but tardy and very irregular until the reign of Henry VIII. at which time, some extensive buildings and improvements were made. On the other hand, building seems at length to have gone on too rapidly, and caused such alarm, that about a century after Henry's reign, a proclamation was issued by James I. after mature deliberation, forbidding all new buildings within ten miles of London; and commanding if any were built after this they should be pulled down, though no notice was taken of them for seven years. It is somewhat singular, that though the population in these early days were but a handful in comparison to the present number, the _redundancy_ of population was as bitterly complained of as it ever has been in modern days. About thirty years after Henry's reign (Elizabeth) we learn from one Harrison, who wrote in 1577, that "a great number complain of the increase of povertie, laying the cause upon God, as though he were in fault for sending such increase of people, or want of wars that should consume them, affirming that the land was never so full. Some affirming that youth by marrying too soon do nothing to profit the countrie; but fill it full of beggars, to the hurte and utter undooing, they say, of the common wealth. The better minded doo forsake the realme for altogether, complaining of _no room to be left for them at home_." If there was no room in Elizabeth's time, what must be our present situation? Indeed the present crowded state of the metropolis, and the general closeness of the buildings, has frequently been a subject for regret, as tending to render it unhealthy and impure; but on referring to its state, when in comparison it was but a village, the old writers state that in the city, and all round it were a great number of pits and ditches, and sloughs, which were made the receptacle of all kind of filth, dead and putrid horses, and cattle, &c. In the time of Henry VIII. many parts are described as "exceedingly foul and full of pits and sloughs, and very noisome," and some years after (1625) in a tract, the author says, "Let not carkasses of horses, dogs, cats, &c. lye rotting and poisoning the aire, as they have done in _More_ and _Finsbury_ Fields, and elsewhere round about the cittie. Let the ditches towards Islington, Olde-street, and towards Shoreditch and Whitechapel, be well cleansed." In another tract published in 1665, it states, that "there are all sorts of unsavoury stenches, proceeding either from carrion, ditches, rotten dung-hills, vaults, sinks, nasty kennels, and streets, (strewed with all manner of filth) seldom