CHAPTER XII

FIRE, PLAGUE, AND FAMINE

“London at that time was built of wood, consequently there was continual danger of fire.” This is a commonplace among historians. Let us examine into the statement. There were two great fires in London between the ninth and the seventeenth centuries, _i.e._ in 800 years—two fires, which swept the town almost from end to end, namely that of 1135 and that of 1666: between these two fires there were several others of considerable magnitude, one of which burned down the greater part of Southwark, then no more than a causeway and an embankment; and another the houses on the Bridge, and another which made a large gap among the streets; but there were only these two fires which devoured any considerable part of the City. Yet there was constant danger, we are told.

But was London built of wood? When we speak of a wooden house we begin to think of a frame-house with thin deal planks nailed across, as in the backwoods of Canada. But such was not the way of our ancestors. They erected a frame of massive oaken beams, square and strong; between the beams they filled up the spaces with plaster, thick and incombustible; there was but one fire in the house of the ordinary citizen, and that was on a thick hearthstone; the hot ashes every night were swept up and placed within a _couvre-feu_. The Curfew or Couvre-feu was an instrument used in the days when the fire was made upon the flat hearth. It was a bell-shaped vessel with a portion cut off. When it was desired to extinguish the fire, or to preserve some fire in the embers until the next day, the ashes and wood were all raked together at the back of the hearth and the Curfew placed over them; the part cut out enabled the vessel to stand against the wall, so that no air could reach the fire. The specimen from which Grose drew this engraving was in the Antiquarian Repository; it was ten inches high, sixteen inches broad, and nine inches deep. It was of copper riveted together, for solder would have melted in the heat. Now such a house as that described above was nearly as safe as a house built with bricks, unless there was some other point of weakness in it. The often-repeated edict which ordered the building of every house to be of stone to a certain height was certainly never enforced; like the rest of the mediæval ordinances, it could not be enforced for want of a Police. The weak point of the house was often the roof: sometimes wood of a lighter and cheaper kind was used for the support of the roof, and sometimes—against the Laws—the material was even thatch, though generally of tiles. Moreover, one suspects that in the poor quarters, those south of Thames Street, where the narrow lanes still contain a population of working people, the framework was not of oak, but of a more inflammable kind of wood. The danger was not so much from the houses themselves as from the stores containing oil, tallow, and similarly combustible goods, and from the furnaces and smithies standing about among the houses. Whatever the danger might have been, the fact remains that during a thousand years there were only two great fires, and but a few others which could be called considerable. And the chief reason why the wooden City was not burned a hundred times was that a framework of oak does not readily catch fire. All classes, moreover, were deeply sensible of the danger: in every house, great or small, before going to bed, the householder carefully raked together the embers and covered them with a pot, so that they should not be blown about and should retain their fire till the morning.

When, by acts of carelessness, drunkenness, or other mishap, fires did occur, they understood how to stop the spreading of the flames by pulling down the adjoining houses with hooks and grappling-irons. There were also laws passed from time to time—with the curious mediæval faith in the efficacy of laws without police to enforce them—ordering various preventive measures, and one especially, namely, that partition walls were to be of stone up to a certain height. But it is certain that in the poorer parts the law could not be enforced; moreover, above this height it was allowable to build in wood; and, in addition, the thatched roof, though constantly threatened and ordered to be removed, still remained in obscure places.

But it was from plague, of various kinds, that London had more to fear than from fire. There was hardly a generation which neither witnessed nor remembered some visitation of plague. And it was almost always of one type. The outbreak of the sixth century, which overran the whole of the Roman Empire, and spared England, perhaps did so because at the time there was scarcely any communication between the Island and the Continent.

The plagues of London followed each other at irregular intervals. Occasionally, as in the thirteenth century, the City remained a long time without any unusual mortality. At other times, as in the fifteenth century, plague or pestilence of some kind was continually in the City. The following are the dates of the plagues recorded of London, not including the doubtful one of 430:—There were plagues in 952, 1094, 1111, 1349, 1361, 1367, 1369, 1407, 1478, 1485, 1499, 1506, 1517 to 1521 (during which years the plague was never entirely absent), 1528, 1543, 1551, 1603, 1625, and 1665. That is to say, in seven hundred years there were about twenty outbreaks of pestilence, an average of one for every thirty-five years, although, as stated above, and as can be observed in the list, there were long periods—one of 238 years—without any plague at all.

The great pestilence of the fourteenth century, most fearful, most deadly, most incurable, called the “Black Death,” the “Great Mortality,” which desolated three continents, came to us from the East. It is conjectured that the disease was in some way caused by certain strange disturbances of the earth in China, where there were droughts, famines, thunderstorms, torrents of rain, earthquakes, and inundations. In China there was a plague of some kind which carried off, it is said, millions of the people. It was reported that a thick, stinking mist advanced from the East, and covered one part of Europe, namely Italy (Hecker’s _Epidemics of the Middle Ages_). There were many earthquakes. There was one in January 1348, felt in Greece and Italy, in which castles, churches, houses were overthrown, and villages were swallowed up; the same earthquake was felt in other countries: in Carinthia thirty villages were overthrown. These earthquakes continued to recur until the year 1360, being felt over the whole of western and northern Europe. Fireballs were observed in the heavens, filling the people with terror. There were torrents, floods of rain, with the failure of the harvest, so that famine set in. All these things preceded the plague.

It broke out in Constantinople, whither it had been brought by the lines of trade from China, India, and Persia, in the year 1347. In the same year it appeared at Cyprus, Sicily, Marseilles, and some of the seaports in Italy. Sardinia, Corsica, Majorca were visited in succession. In January 1348 it appeared at Avignon and the South of France. In Florence it appeared in April of the same year. In England it first appeared in the town of Dorchester, whence it spread, but not rapidly, till it reached London in the autumn. It is quite impossible to over-estimate the mortality caused by this fearful plague, the worst, certainly, that ever afflicted the human race. The figures, indeed, as given by Hecker, may be mostly disregarded. For instance, in one line he tells us that India was depopulated, and in another that twenty-three millions perished in all the East. It would take many times twenty-three millions to depopulate India. Italy is said to have lost half its population; in the city of Padua two-thirds of the population died. In France there were places in which only two or three people remained alive out of a whole village. And so on, one might go on for pages to show the wholesale slaughter caused by the scourge. In England it lasted until August 1349, a period of ten months. There was a plentiful harvest, but there were no labourers to reap the corn; there was abundance of cattle, but the plague seized them, and they wandered about without herdsmen until they died. As for London, the disease was beyond the skill of physicians. Very few of those who were attacked recovered; the symptoms were the well-known ones belonging to this virulent disease; we have but a scanty record of London during this most terrible time; we can see, later on, by the history of another plague, how the life of the City was affected by such an event; we shall note the dislocation of the machinery, the stoppage of work and trade, the destitution of the poor, the madness of some, the repentance and contrition of some, the despair of some, the callous fatalism of some, the reckless profligacy of some. (See _London in the Time of the Stuarts_.) It was no use to fly into the country; the poor country folk were lying dead in every village, and almost in every field; one might as well sit down in the house overlooking the City lanes, and watch the carrying away of the dead, and wait one’s own time. The City churchyards became too crowded to allow any more burials. Then other cemeteries were opened outside the walls. The Bishop of London bought a piece of ground, called No Man’s Land, north-east of Smithfield, enclosed it with a brick wall, and gave it to the City for a burial-ground. It was called Pardon Churchyard, and lay beyond what is now the north wall of the Charterhouse. After the plague ceased, Pardon Churchyard became the burial-place of suicides and executed criminals. Their bodies were carried thither in a cart belonging to the Hospital or House of St. John; it was covered with black cloth which had a white cross in front, and was provided with a bell which rang with its jolting. The plague still continuing, Sir Walter Manny bought another piece of ground, adjacent to the Pardon Churchyard, thirteen acres in extent. This he enclosed, and gave to the City as an additional burial-place. He further erected a chapel upon it. This chapel stood somewhere in the middle of Charterhouse Square. On the burial-ground, and with ten acres more of ground, Sir Walter Manny afterwards built the House of the Carthusians. Fifty thousand people who died of the plague were buried in this ground. The fact was recorded on a stone pillar which stood in the place (see also vol. ii. pt. iii. ch. iv.):—

“Anno Domini 1349, regnante magnâ pestilentiâ consecratum fuit hoc coemiterium in quo et infra septa presentis monasterii sepulta fuerunt mortuorum corpora plus quam quinquaginta millia præter alia multa abhinc usque ad presens: quorum animabus propitietur Deus. Amen.”

These were not the only cemeteries consecrated for the reception of the victims. On the north-east of the Tower there lay a piece of ground, perhaps cultivated, perhaps waste, which was bought by a priest named Corey, and given by him to the City, calling it the Churchyard of the Holy Trinity. One, Robert Elsing, gave five pounds towards enclosing it and building a chapel upon it; other citizens also assisted, and when the plague was over, King Edward III., mindful of a recent escape in a tempest through the miraculous interposition of the Virgin Mary herself, built here a monastery, and called the House King Edward’s Free Chapel of the Blessed Virgin of Grace—in memoriam Gratiarum. The site is long since built over. But I suppose there must have been the memory of that plague associated with the House. Indeed, though the plague went away, it came again in 1361, again in 1367, in 1369, and in 1407.

These illustrations may indicate something of the impression made upon the people by this terrible visitation, for such dangers, such bereavements, incline the better class of mind to reflection and to meditation. It is not impossible that the spread of Wyclyf’s opinions among the citizens of London may have been partly due to the shock of these successive plagues—the quickening shock which caused those who were able to think to ask if outward forms were really all that made religion.

The immediate effect of the Black Death on the Continent took many forms. Many thousands were terrified into repentance of sins; many thousands died of sheer terror; rich men and noble dames gave their gold to monasteries; when the gates were closed to keep out infection they actually threw their offerings over the walls. Many strange things were done under the influence of this terror; the strangest of all was the Brotherhood of the Flagellants, which sprang directly from the terror caused by the Black Death. It originated in Hungary, and it spread over the whole of Europe except England, where it appeared, as will be seen immediately, once only. The Flagellants marched in procession through the cities with singers at their head; they were clad in sombre garments; they wore a kind of mask, or hood, over their eyes; their heads were bent; they had red crosses on back and breast and hood; and in their hands every man carried a triple scourge tied in knots with points of iron. They sang a hymn as they marched, and at a given signal they stripped to the waist and scourged each other. It was a wonderful mania, and lasted for nearly a quarter of a century. These Flagellants fanned into a flame the most fanatical prejudices; they caused a persecution of the Jews equalled only by that when the hordes of the First Crusade poured across Europe on their way to massacre on the plains of Asia Minor. It seems wonderful that any Jews escaped, for they were murdered, they were burned, and they were banished. In Mayence alone 12,000 were put to death. Wherever the Flagellants came, a persecution of the Jews followed. And—which has always been observed in the persecution of this race—the more fanatical were their enemies, the more resolute the Jews became. At Eslingen the whole Jewish community burned themselves in their synagogue: an act equalled only by the tragedy of Masada and the tragedy of York. In England at this time we had no Jews. The Flagellants, therefore, when they arrived here, which was not till the year 1368, could do no great harm. They were Dutch, and a company of a hundred and twenty. They came over, uninvited, with the laudable intention of making London repent. This they tried to effect by marching as I have described above, every man lustily scourging the man next to him—they must have marched in single file. It would seem, however, as if London was not in the least moved by the appearance of the blood streaming from the backs and shoulders of the Brotherhood. The insular hatred of foreigners probably made the citizens resent this uncalled-for interference with their wickedness. So the Flagellants went home again. But the hymn they sang has been preserved. It may be found in Hecker’s book, and it is all, like a Salvation Army hymn, based upon the fear of Hell fire:—

“Ye that repent your sins draw nigh, From the burning hell we fly, From Satan’s wicked company, Where he leads With pitch he feeds. If we be wise we then shall flee. Maria! Queen! we trust in thee To move thy Son to sympathy.

Glad news I bring thee, sinful mortal, In heaven Saint Peter keeps the portal, Apply to him with suppliant mien, He bringeth thee before thy Queen. Benignant Michael, blessed Saint, Guardian of souls, receive our plaint, Through the Almighty Maker’s death Preserve us from the Hell beneath.”

The growing frequency of these terrible visitations of plague in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries shows the insalubrity of the City. That every day quantities of offal were thrown into the river, and that a stream of blood from the shambles rolled daily down open gutters, mattered very little: London was too small as yet, even with a hundred thousand people, to do much harm to her noble river. The swans still delighted to float and swim about London Bridge; salmon came up to be caught in mid-stream; and even the town ditch, which also received a good deal of the refuse, continued to be full of good fish. There were scavengers—not only the rain, the frost, the sun, the wind, and the kites, but men appointed to do for the householder then what they do now: to remove the refuse. These men were appointed for every ward. Their oath, given by Stow, seems from its language to belong to the sixteenth century, but it may be older:

“Ye shal swear that ye shal wel and diligently observe that the Pavements in every ward be wel and rightfully repaired: and not haunted by the Noyance of the Neighbours: and that the ways, Streets, and Lanes be kept clene from Donge and other filth, for the Honesty of the City. And that all the chimnies, Reredoses, and Furnaces be made of stone, for defence of Fire; and if ye know of any such ye shal show it to the Alderman; that he may make due Redress therefor. And this ye shal not leve. So help you God and by this Book.”

It is not what is thrown into a great tidal river from a town that corrupts the town, nor is it what is thrown upon a lay-stall there to lie for a few days until it is taken away; it is what sinks into the earth and slowly spreads around, corrupting all the springs and wells, and causing exhalations in times of heat and moisture. The greatest difficulty of cities has always been the disposal of waste matter, solid and liquid. For nearly two thousand years the lower part of the City, the most densely populated part, was dotted with latrines and cesspools; the whole soil of the City was soaked and permeated and corrupted with the pestiferous stuff; the ground gave off a poisoned breath; when the plague came, this poison encouraged it, helped it along, spread it, and strengthened it. We have had no plague for more than two hundred years. Perhaps the reason has been that the Fire of London in 1666 not only baked and calcined the ground with its heat for many feet deep, burning up the dead bodies which rested three or four feet below the surface, with the coffins, bones, and deadly poisonous soil of the churchyards, but also choking up the City wells—which were never again opened—and burning the whole of the soil, decayed with the impurities of two thousand years.

The fire baked the earth, and cleansed it, and destroyed its exhalations for many feet below the surface; when the folk came back again they found, though they knew it not, the ground cleaner than it had been for two thousand years; as clean as when the solitary elk stood upon the edge of the cliff and looked out upon the broad lagoon of the river at high tide. The people began at once to restore, as much as they could, the old state of things: the cesspools came back and remained for a hundred and fifty years, but not the wells; in the two hundred years that have passed, it has been impossible to restore completely the mischievous conditions due to two thousand years of filth.

There was another horrible method of poisoning the ground, and therefore the air, namely the practice of burying in tiny churchyards, crowded with the dreadful dead, not yet restored to the dust and ashes from whence they came. The fire, as I have said, restored the churchyards to their pristine purity of soil. The people, in this respect as well, for they learned nothing, did their best to restore the old conditions. As the population increased, they nearly succeeded; the revelations of Dr. Walker in 1843 made the world shudder at the enormities daily committed. This, too, we have altered; the crowded, stinking churchyard is now a tiny spot of green with a tree in it and a bench and a border of flowers. Only we may note that while we have cleaned out and filled up cesspools, and stopped the burial of the dead in our midst, and ceased to drink well water, we have arranged for the introduction into the soil of a new and perhaps equally fatal poison: the earth is now black and reeking with gas. It is, perhaps, a scientifically interesting point to learn how long it will be before the atmosphere, charged with gas, which all our millions breathe, will encourage or develop another pestilence. And it will be a much more costly business to burn down all London once more in the twentieth than it was in the seventeenth century in order to purge and purify the soil again.

The next great danger always hanging over the City was that of famine. The uncertain character of our climate, the occurrence of long rains, untimely frost, summer with no warmth or sunshine, blight and murrain, the ravages of war, and especially of civil war, the devastation caused by plague and pestilence, the difficulty of importing grain from abroad: all these causes conspired to make famine an ever-present danger. Terrible famines are reported to have happened in the third and fourth centuries; there were pestilences which accompanied times of great scarcity. In the year 1086 there was a famine, in 1150 there was a great dearth in London, another in 1195, another in 1257. The worst famine ever experienced by London was that of the year 1315-16 (see p. 51). It came after a succession of wet seasons and bad harvests, and nothing in the history of famines can be worse than the horrors of those two years: people lay out in the open streets and on the highways dying of starvation, they and their children; men fought for food everywhere; there were stories of mothers devouring their own offspring; the prisoners in the gaols murdered and devoured each other. Another terrible famine occurred in the year 1338; London, however, felt it little, because the Mayor imported grain from Prussia: outside London the people were making bread out of ivy berries and fern roots.