CHAPTER IV

II. THE FIRE OF LONDON

If, as some hold, the cause of the long-continued Plague, which lasted, with intervals of rest, from the middle of the sixteenth century to 1665, was nothing but the accumulated filth of London, so that the ground on which it stood was saturated many feet in depth with poisonous filtrations, the Fire of 1666 must be regarded in the light of a surgical operation absolutely essential if life was to be preserved, and as an operation highly successful in its results. For it burned, more or less, every house and every building over an area of 436 acres out of those which made up London within the walls.

It began in the dead of night—Sunday morning, 3 A.M., September 2, 1666—at the shop of one Farryner, a baker, in Pudding Lane, one of those narrow lanes which run to north and south of Thames Street. All the houses in that lane were of wood, pitched throughout, and as the stories jutted out, the houses almost met at the top. The house itself was full of brush and faggot wood, so that the Fire quickly grew to a head, and then began to spread out in all directions at once, but especially to the west and north. Close to the house was an inn called the “Star,” the courtyard of which was full of hay and straw. In a very short time Pudding Lane itself was completely destroyed; it would seem as if the people were distracted and attempted little or nothing except their own escape. When day broke the fire had caught Thames Street, which was full of warehouses containing everything combustible, as butter, cheese, brandy, wine, oil, sugar, hemp, flax, tar, pitch, rosin, brimstone, cordage, hops, wood, and coal. The only means of combating a fire fed by such materials was to blow up the houses, and this the people vehemently opposed at first. As for the supply of water, there was none at all adequate to the situation, and the water machines of London Bridge were quickly destroyed with the houses on the Bridge. In order to escape and to carry away their property, every available vehicle, cart, waggon, carriage, or boat, was in requisition. Forty pounds was offered and given by many householders for the safe removal of their property, while in some cases—those of the wealthy—£400 was paid simply to get the plate and jewels and other valuables carried out of the reach of the Fire. The things were taken out into the open fields, where they were laid on the grass, and so left in charge of the owners; open and unconcealed robberies took place, as was to be expected. Some of the people placed their things for safety in the churches, fondly thinking that the fire would spare them; the booksellers of Little Britain and Paternoster Row deposited the whole of their books in the crypt of St. Paul’s; alas! they lost them all. Those who had friends in the villages near London carried away their money and their valuables and deposited them in the houses of these friends. Pepys buried his treasure in the garden of Sir W. Ryder at Bethnal Green. He afterwards describes how he dug it up again and how he lost some of the money by the decay of the bags.

A strong easterly wind carried the flames along from roof to roof, and from house to house, and from street to street. The fire raged almost unchecked. By Monday morning it had covered the area between Pudding Lane and Gracechurch Street and Lombard Street, and to St. Swithin’s in Candlewick Street, along the river as far as the Three Cranes in the Vintry. By Tuesday night it had destroyed everything as far west as St. Dunstan’s in Fleet Street. By this time the men arrived from the dockyards, and by blowing up houses the fire was stopped at a great many points at once; the Duke of York superintended the work, and gained all hearts by his powerful labours in handing the buckets and giving orders. On Wednesday the fire broke out again in the Temple, but was reduced without difficulty. The damage done by this terrible calamity was computed, to put it into figures, as follows:—of houses destroyed, 13,200; their value, £3,900,000; of streets, 400; of parish churches, 87; their value, £261,600; of consecrated chapels, 6; their value, £12,000; of wares, goods, etc., £3,800,000; of public edifices burned, £939,000; St. Paul’s rebuilt at a cost of £2,000,000. The whole loss, with other and smaller items, was reckoned at £10,730,500. The public buildings destroyed included St. Paul’s Cathedral, eighty-seven parish churches, six consecrated chapels, the Royal Exchange, the Custom House, Sion College, the Grey Friars Church, St. Thomas of Acon, the Justice House, the four prisons, fifty companies’ halls, and four gates. By this time many of the former nobles’ town houses and the great merchants’ palaces had been taken down and turned into private houses, warehouses, and shops; as, for instance, the Erber, Cold Harbour, la Riole, the King’s Wardrobe, and others. The mediæval buildings with the exception of the churches had all gone, but there was still left a great quantity of remains, walls, vaults, arches, and other parts of ancient buildings, the loss of which to the antiquary and the historian was irreparable.

This appalling calamity is without parallel in history except, perhaps, the earthquake of Lisbon. Once before there had been a fire which swept London from east to west, but London was then poor; there were few merchants, and the warehouses were small and only half-filled. In 1665 the warehouses were vast and filled with valuable merchandise. There still stands south of Thames Street a warehouse[9] built immediately after the Fire, evidently in imitation of its predecessors. It consists of seven or eight stories, all low; there are still small gables, a reminiscence of the old gables; looking upon this warehouse and remembering that there was a long row of these facing the river with lanes and river stairs between, we can understand the loss to the merchants caused by the conflagration. Considering also the rows of shops along Cheapside, Eastcheap, Ludgate Hill, and Cornhill, we can understand the ruin that fell upon the retail dealers in that awful week. All they had in the world was gone save the right of rebuilding on the former site. The master craftsmen lost their tools and their workshops; the bookseller lost his books; the journeyman lost his employment as well as his sticks. I quote here certain words of my own in another book:—

“The fire is out at last; the rain has quenched the last sparks; the embers have ceased to smoke; those walls which have not fallen totter and hang trembling, ready to fall. I see men standing about singly; the tears run down their cheeks; two hundred years ago, if we had anything to cry about, we were not ashamed to cry without restraint; they are dressed in broad-cloth, the ruffles are of lace, they look like reputable citizens. Listen—one draws near another. ‘Neighbour,’ he says, ‘a fortnight ago, before this stroke, whether of God or of Papist, I had a fair shop on this spot.’ ‘And I also, good friend,’ said the other, ‘as you know.’ ‘My shop,’ continued the first, ‘was stocked with silks and satins, kid gloves, lace ruffles and neckties, shirts, and all that a gentleman or gentlewoman can ask for. The stock was worth a thousand pounds. I turned it over six or seven times a year at least. And my profit was four hundred pounds.’ ‘As for me,’ said the other, ‘I was in a smaller way, as you know. Yet such as it was, my fortune was all in it, and out of my takings, I could call two hundred pounds a year my own.’ ‘Now is it all gone,’ said the first. ‘All gone,’ the other repeated, fetching a sigh. ‘And now, neighbour, unless the Company help, I see nothing for it but we must starve.’ ‘Must starve,’ the other repeated. And so they separated, and went divers ways, and whether they starved or whether they received help, and rose from the ashes with new house and newly stocked shop, I know not.”

It is generally believed that the Fire left nothing standing where it had passed. This was not the case. Many of the church towers were left in part. Only the other day in building offices in the City on the site of a church—St. Olave’s, Old Jewry—it was discovered that the lower part of the tower with the stone turret outside belonged to the old church. Many crypts escaped; the walls where they were of brick remained standing in part; in one case a whole court survived the Fire. This case is very curious. On the north-east of Apothecaries’ Hall, with an entrance from Castle Street, was, until a year or two ago, a court called Fleur de Lys Court. At the time of the Fire there stood close beside the court, on the east side, the church and churchyard of St. Anne’s, built after the Dissolution upon part of the old Blackfriars. Remember that the wind was easterly and strong during the Fire. When the roof of St. Anne’s caught fire, therefore, the flames were driven across this court and over it. It would appear that the roof had been injured and part of the upper stories, but not the lower part. The court looked strangely out of keeping with the other buildings. I took my friend Mr. Loftie to see it. He gave it as his opinion at once that the mullions of the windows were of earlier date than the Fire. I afterwards took Mr. J. J. Stevenson, the architect, who made one or two sketches and came to the same conclusion. A few weeks later I found that they were pulling the court down.

The causes of the Fire and the conditions which made its existence possible are thus enumerated by Strype:—

“First, They consider the time of the night when it first began, viz. between one and two of the clock after midnight, when all were in a dead sleep.

Secondly, it was Saturday night when many of the most eminent citizens, merchants, and others were retired into the country and none but servants left to look to their City Houses.

Thirdly, it was in the long vacation, being that particular time of the year when many wealthy citizens and tradesmen are wont to be in the country at Fairs, and getting in of Debts, and making up accounts with their Chapmen.

Fourthly, the closeness of the Building, and narrowness of the street in the places where it began, did much facilitate the progress of the Fire by hindering of the Engines to be brought to play upon the Houses on Fire.

Fifthly, the matter of which the Houses, all thereabouts were, viz. Timber, and those very old.

Sixthly, the dryness of the preceding season: there having been a great drought even to that very day and all the time that the fire continued, which has so dried the Timber, that it was never more pat to take Fire.

Seventhly, the Nature of the Wares and Commodities, stowed and vended in those Parts, were the most combustible of any other sold in the whole City: as Oil, Pitch, Tar, Cordage, Hemp, Flax, Rosin, Wax, Butter, Cheese, Wine, Brandy, sugar, etc.

Eighthly, an easterly wind, which is the driest of all others, had blown for several days together before, and at that time very strongly.

Ninthly, the unexpected failing of the water thereabouts at that time: for the engine at the North end of London Bridge, called the Thames Water Tower, was out of Order, and in a few hours was itself burnt down, so that the water pipes which conveyed the water from thence through the streets were soon empty.

Lastly, an unusual negligence at first, and a confidence of easily quenching it, and of its stopping at several probable places afterwards, turning at length into a confusion, consternation, and despair: people choosing rather by flight to save their goods, than by a vigorous opposition to save their own houses and the whole City.”

This dry reasoning would not satisfy the people. They began to whisper among each other that this was the work of an incendiary and a stranger; a Dutchman, or, more likely, a Roman Catholic. Divers strangers, Dutch and French, were arrested on suspicion of firing the City, but as there was no evidence they were released. What gave some colour to the suspicion was that, in April of that year, certain old officers and soldiers in Cromwell’s army, eight in number, were tried for conspiracy and treason, their design having been to surprise the Tower, to kill the Lieutenant, and then to have declared for an equal division of lands. After taking the Tower their purpose was to set fire to the City. They were all found guilty, condemned, and executed. After the fire there was brought to the Lord Chief Justice a boy of ten, who declared that his father and uncle, Dutchmen both, were the persons who set fire to the house in Pudding Lane with fire-balls. This little villain appears to have been sent off as an impostor.

Then, however, followed Robert Hubert’s confession, which was far more important. The man Hubert confessed or declared that about four months before the Fire he left his native town of Rouen with one Piedloe, and went with him to Sweden, where he stayed four months; that they came together in a Swedish ship to London, staying on board till the night when the fire began; that Piedloe then took him to Pudding Lane and gave him a fire-ball, which he lighted and put through a window by means of a long pole, waiting till the house was well alight. One Graves, a French merchant, resident in London, said that he knew both Hubert and Piedloe; that the former was a mischievous person, capable of any wickedness, while the latter was a debauched fellow, also apt to any wickedness. Next, in order to try the man’s story, they took him to Pudding Lane and bade him point out Farryner’s house—or the site of it. This he did very readily. Then they questioned Farryner, who declared that no fire could possibly have broken out in his house by accident. On the other hand, the Swedish captain swore that Hubert did not land until after the Fire, and his confession was full of contradictions; also he declared himself a Protestant, yet died a Catholic; in the opinion of many he was a man of disordered mind; moreover, why should Piedloe take him as companion when he might just as well have done the job himself? And how should a complete stranger taken into the dark streets of London for the first time in the dead of night be able to recognise again the street or the house?

In any case Hubert was hanged; and as he died a Catholic, it was of course abundantly clear that the whole thing was a Catholic conspiracy, a fact which was accordingly inscribed on the new monument when it was erected, so that

“London’s column pointing to the skies, Like a tall bully lifts its head and lies.”

The inscription was removed on the accession of James the Second, but put up again on the arrival of William the Third. It remained on the monument till the year 1830, when it was taken down by order of the Common Council.

It is generally stated that the houseless people took refuge in Moorfields. This is only partly true. There were 13,200 houses destroyed and 200,000 people turned out into the streets. One remarks that if these figures are correct the crowding in the City must have been very great. For these figures give fifteen persons to every house, great and small, one with another. They did not all lie out on Moorfields simply because there was no room for them. Upper and lower Moorfields covered an area of about 840,000 square feet, or a square of 900 feet, very nearly. If we allow 15 feet × 20 feet for each hut to accommodate five people, we can find room for 2800 such houses without counting the lanes between them; so that Moorfields would contain about 14,000 people only. Evelyn says that the people were dispersed about St. George’s Fields, Moorfields, and as far as Highgate. “I then went towards Islington and Highgate, where one might have seen 200,000 people of all ranks and degrees dispersed and lying along by their heaps of what they could save from the Fire.”

“Pitiful huts,” Maitland says, “were erected for their accommodation, and for their immediate needs the King sent a great quantity of bread from the Navy Stores to be distributed, and neighbouring Justices of the Peace were enjoined to send in all manner of victuals.

It was reputed that the loss of life was only six, but I venture to think that this loss must be greatly understated. When one considers the rapid spread of the fire, the way in which the people lingered to the last to save a little more, and when one remembers how Evelyn noticed on his first visit to the ruins the “stench from some poor creatures’ bodies,” we cannot but feel persuaded that the losses were more than six.

On Moorfields temporary chapels also were built. But when the fire ceased, and before the embers were cooled, the people began to creep back and the rebuilding of the City began. As there was still remaining that part of the City east of Billingsgate with the river and the shipping, business went on, though with broken wings. For the Royal Exchange they used Gresham College; the same place became their Guildhall; the Excise Office was removed to Southampton Street, near Bedford House; the General Post Office was taken to Brydges Street, Covent Garden; the Custom House to Mark Lane; Doctors’ Commons to Exeter House, Strand. For temporary churches the authorities appropriated the meeting-houses which had not been destroyed. They began to rebuild their City. Within four years, ten thousand houses, twenty churches, and a great many companies’ halls had been put up again. It took thirty years to complete the building of the fifty-one churches which were put up in place of the eighty-seven destroyed.

One effect of the Fire was to drive out of the City many of the shopkeepers. Thus Maitland says that before the Fire, Paternoster Row was chiefly occupied by mercers, silkmen, lacemen; “and these shops were so much resorted unto by the nobility and gentry in their carriages that ofttimes the street was so stopped up, that there was no room for foot-passengers.” After the Fire, however, the tradesmen settled themselves in other parts; one supposes that they opened temporary shops, and, finding them convenient, they stayed where they were. They went to Henrietta Street, Bedford Street, and King Street, Covent Garden. Ludgate Hill, however, remained for a long time the principal street for the best shops of mercers and lacemen.

Were so great and overwhelming a calamity to befall a City in our times, we should have abundant materials for estimating not only the total value of the destruction, but also its effect upon individuals. We learn next to nothing of the Fire as it affected classes, such as merchants, shopkeepers, or craftsmen. The Plague ruined its thousands by slaying the breadwinner; the Fire ruined its tens of thousands by destroying everything that the breadwinner possessed, warehouse, goods, and all. Credit remained, one supposes; by the aid of credit many recovered. Yet, one asks, what amount of credit could possibly replace the trader’s stock? What amount of credit could once more fill the great warehouse crammed to the very roof with commodities? Those who were debtors found their debts wiped off; one supposes that all prisoners for debt were enlarged; those who were creditors could not collect their amounts; rents could neither be asked nor paid; the money-lender and the borrower were destroyed together; almshouses were burnt down—what became of the poor old men and women? The City charities were suspended—what became of the poor? In such a universal dislocation, revolution, and cessation of everything, the poor man lost all that he had to lose, and the rich were sent empty away. Would that some limner of the time had portrayed for us a faithful picture of the first meeting of the Common Council after the Fire! Dryden speaks of the Fire:—

“Those who have homes, when home they do repair To a last lodging call their wandering friends: Their short uneasy sleeps are broke with care To look how near their own destruction ends.

Those who have none sit round where it was, And with full eyes each wonted stone require: Haunting the yet warm ashes of the place, As murdered men walk where they did expire.

The most in fields like herded beasts lie down To dews obnoxious on the grassy floor, And while their babes in sleep their sorrow drown, Sad parents watch the remnant of their store.”

One thing is certain: for the working man there was no lack of employment; thousands were wanted to clear away the rubbish, to get the streets in order, to take down shaky walls, to make bricks, to dig out foundations, to do carpenter’s work and all those things required for the creation of a new London. And as for the artificers, they were wanted to restore the stocks of the traders as quickly as might be. Labour was never in such request before in all the history of London.

Twenty-five years later they were congratulating themselves on the changed and improved condition of the City. The writer of _Anglia Metropolis_, or _the Present State of London_,[10] says:—

“As if the Fire had only purged the City, the buildings are infinitely more beautiful, more commodious, more solid (the three main virtues of all edifices) than before. They have made their streets much more large and straight, paved on each side with smooth free stone, and guarded the same with many massy posts for the benefit of foot passengers: and whereas before they dwelt in low dark wooden houses, they now live in lofty, lightsome, uniform, and very stately brick buildings.”

Of the wooden houses commonly found in London before the Fire you will find one or two specimens still left—fifty years ago there were many. One such is in the Churchyard of St. Giles, Cripplegate. As to the total destruction of the houses I am in some doubt; I have already mentioned one court called the Fleur de Lys, Blackfriars, which escaped the Fire. The same fact that probably saved this Court may have saved other places. Strype, for instance, mentions a house in Aldersgate Street which survived the Fire. There were, again, many houses partially destroyed, some accident arresting the Fire, and there were many walls which could be used again. These considerations are confirmed by an examination of Hollar’s minute picture of London immediately after the Fire. In this picture all the churches are presented as standing with their towers; they are roofless and their windows are destroyed, but they are standing. It would be interesting to learn how much of these old walls and towers were used in the new buildings. Half the houses on London Bridge are gone, and the Bridge is evidently cleared of rubbish. Part of the front of Fishmongers’ Hall is still standing; All Hallows the Less, which appears to have been quite a small church, has no tower, but its walls are standing. Between that church and the river is a space covered with ruins, in the midst of which stands a pillar. The Water Gate remains at Cold Harbour; part of the front and the quay of the Steelyard, and a small part of the roof at the east end of St. Paul’s still remain, melancholy to look upon; the square port of Queenhithe is surrounded by fallen houses; the steeple of the Royal Exchange stands over the ruins; the river front of Baynard’s Castle still stands, but the eastern side is in ruins; the place is evidently gutted. In all directions there are walls, gables, whole houses standing among heaps and mounds of rubbish.

Two circumstances must be reckoned fortunate: the Fire, while it burned down the churches and reduced the monuments to dust, also penetrated below the surface and transformed the dreadful mass of putrefaction caused by the Plague a year before into harmless dust. It also choked most of the numerous wells, whose bright and sparkling waters charged with malarious filtrations the people had been accustomed to regard as sweet and healthy.

The King issued a Proclamation on the rebuilding of the City. No houses of wood were to be put up; cellars, if possible, were to be strongly arched; the principal streets were to be made broader and no narrow lanes to remain; the river was to have a fair quay or wharf running all along, with no houses except at a certain distance; trades carried on by means of fire and causing smoke to be placed in certain quarters where they would be neither dangerous nor noisome; a survey of the whole area covered by the Fire was to be made. There were also Acts passed by the Court of Common Council for the enlargement and the pitching and levelling of the streets. These Acts will be found in Appendix V.

Three plans were sent in to the Common Council for the laying out of the City in a more convenient manner; they were drawn up by Christopher Wren, who was appointed architect and surveyor-general, Sir John Evelyn, and Dr. Newcourt. The scheme of Wren was considered very carefully. It proved impossible, however, on account of the unwillingness of the people to give up their right of building on their old foundations. The scheme of Evelyn provided an embankment along the river, broad streets, piazzas round the churches, in which were to be shops; a Mansion House; a footway on London Bridge instead of houses; the churchyard of the whole City was to be a strip of ground under the old wall; opposite to the churchyard was to be a street set apart for inns and stations for carriers. It was, in short, a scheme quite impossible, yet remarkable for anticipating so much of what has since been carried out.

Meantime the rebuilding went on rapidly; in a few cases a street was widened; but the narrow lanes running north and south of Thames Street show that little regard was paid to the regulations. No wooden houses were built, and the old plan of high gables and projecting windows was exchanged for a flat façade and square coping. The churches were rebuilt, for the most part slowly. Some were not rebuilt at all. The last was finished thirty years after the Fire. Of the general character of Wren’s churches this is not the place for an estimate. It is sufficient here to explain that Wren was guided first by the sum of money at his disposal, and next by the extent of ground; that many of the old churches were quite small buildings standing in small churchyards; but he extended the foundations and increased the area of the church; that he built in every case a preaching-house and not a mass-house, so that nearly all the churches are oblong halls instead of cruciform buildings; that he studied the interior instead of the exterior, and that some of his finest churches inside present no feature of interest on the outside.

The builders, all over the City, used as much as possible of the old foundations. Thus the Heralds’ College preserves the court of Derby House; Wardrobe Square is the inner court of the King’s Wardrobe Palace; while the narrow streets on either side of Cheapside preserve exactly the old lines of the streets burned down. It would be interesting to ascertain, if possible, where Wren’s churches were built upon the older foundations; the north wall of the Holy Trinity Minories, for instance, belongs to the ancient convent there; the vestry of Allhallows in the Wall is on a bastion of the wall.

They altered the levels of many streets. Thames Street, “to prevent inundations,” which shows that, in parts at least, it was lower than the old embankment, was raised three feet, and the streets leading out of it raised in a proper proportion; many streets were ordered to be widened, but it does not appear that the order was in every case carried into effect; several new streets were constructed; a duty on coals, one shilling at first, and afterwards two shillings on every ton, was granted to the City for the express expenses of the rebuilding; a Court of Judicature was established for the purpose of deciding quickly all disputes as to rents, boundaries, debts, etc., that might arise; the Court sat in the Hall of Clifford’s Inn; rules were laid down concerning the materials, thickness of party walls, etc., rules so minute that it is perfectly certain that they could not be carried out; they divided the City into four quarters; they ordered each quarter to provide 800 buckets with brass hand squirts and ladders of various lengths; they appointed a bellman for every ward, whose duty was to walk up and down the streets all night long from Michaelmas to the Annunciation of St. Mary; that on the alarm of fire every householder was to hang up a lantern over his door and provide an armed man: that every householder should keep at his door a vessel filled with water; with a great many more regulations which may be omitted, the whole showing the terrible scare into which they had all fallen. Forty years after the Fire, Dr. Woodward of Gresham College thus wrote to Wren (_Strype_, vol. i. p. 292) in a private letter that

“The Fire of London, however disastrous it might be to the then inhabitants, had proved infinitely beneficial to their Posterity, and to the increase and vast improvement as well of the riches and opulency as of the buildings. And how by the means of the common sewers, and other like contrivances, such provision was made for sweetness, for cleanness, and for salubrity, that it is not only the finest and pleasantest, but the most healthy City in the world. Insomuch that for the Plague, and other infectious distempers, with which it was formerly so frequently annoyed, and by which so great numbers of the inhabitants were taken off, but the very year before the Fire, viz. Anno. 1665, an experience of above forty years since hath shewn it so wholly freed from, that he thought it probable it was no longer obnoxious to, or ever again likely to be infested by those so fatal and malicious maladies.”

In May 1679 the people were thrown into a panic by the discovery of a so-called plot to burn down the City again. The house of one Bird in Fetter Lane having been burned, his servant, Elizabeth Oxley, was suspected of wilfully causing the fire; she was arrested and examined. What follows is a very remarkable story. The woman swore that she had actually caused the fire, and that she had been persuaded to do so by a certain Stubbs, a Papist, who promised her £5 if she would comply. Stubbs, being arrested, declared that the woman’s evidence was perfectly true, and that Father Gifford, his confessor, incited him to procure the Fire, saying that it would be a godly act to burn all heretics out of their homes. The Irishmen were also implicated; the Papists, it was said, were going to rise in insurrection in London and an army was to be landed from France. Five Jesuits were executed for this business, and so great was the popular alarm, that all Catholics were banished from the City and ten miles round.