Literary culture in Tudor-Stuart London was dominated by no single institution such as the Florentine chancery, the Roman curia, the Parisian academies, the University of Leiden, or the language societies of the German imperial cities. It was a product, rather, of the many intersecting influences that helped to make London the second-largest European metropolis by the later seventeenth century. As the seat of the court, London was frequented by the English ruling class and by nobility, scholars, and diplomats from throughout Europe. The centre of a commercial empire with outposts in the major cities of Europe and the Mediterranean, London was also home to a wealthy and socially mobile merchant class receptive to learning and religious reform. The legal proceedings of Parliament and the other chief courts of the realm, as well as the educational and social activities of the Inns of Court, drew Englishmen from throughout the realm into an orbit where eloquence was at a premium. As the main conduit for government revenue and the transfer of landed wealth, seventeenth-century London became home to the marriage market, social season, and leisure and luxury industries that attracted an urbanizing gentry for whom investment in culture was among the least expensive forms of conspicuous consumption. In keeping, then, with its political and economic pre-eminence, Tudor-Stuart London exercised a dominant influence on literary culture throughout the realm. The 1557 act incorporating the Company of Stationers of London and giving them authority over printing throughout England restricted the printing of books to London and the two presses at Oxford and Cambridge.