The Politics of Stability: The Rulers of Elizabethan London: 1 (Royal Historical Society Studies in History) - Hardcover

By the fifteenth century, although ultimate authority over London rested in the crown's hands, the City's autonomy was no longer in dispute. The aldermen were the true rulers in London, and they further strengthened their hold on civic government. What had seemed an emerging democracy in the mid-fourteenth century was modified and reassembled around what proved to be the stabilizing influence of an elitist merchant oligarchy.