Astonishing how late London was getting into the University game. (Last major European city to do so? Paris was 1150 ...)

I imagine that proximity to Oxford and Cambridge affected that.

Wasn’t London a hot bed of plague?

No more so than anywhere else. The primary reason was Oxbridge blocked the attempts at forming universities elsewhere and the early centralisation of state authority aided them in this. There were several other universities in England in the middle ages but none survive. Stamford is one. Northampton founded in 1261 but was banned in 1265 due to a mix of its patron having become an enemy of the King and Oxford supporters taking advantage of it. When the local polytechnic wanted to become a uni in the early 2000s they had to specifically request it be repealed.

Thanks for sharing this. I attended UCL a decade ago so it is fascinating to read about its founding, 200 years ago.