From contemporary prints.

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.

CHAPTER V
CONTEMPORARY EVIDENCE

I proceed to quote four accounts of the Fire from eye-witnesses. Between them one arrives at a very fair understanding of the magnitude of the disaster, the horrors of the Fire, especially at night, and the wretchedness of the poor people, crouched over the wreck and remnant of their property.

“Here”—Evelyn is the first of the four—“we saw the Thames covered with floating goods, all the barges and boates laden with what some had time and courage to save, as on the other, the carts carrying out to the fields, which for many miles were strewed with movables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away. Oh the miserable and calamitous spectacle! Such as happly the world had not seene the like since the foundation of it, nor be outdone till the universal conflagration of it. All the skie was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light seene above 40 miles round for many nights. God grant mine eyes may never behold the like, who now saw above 10,000 houses all in one flame: the noise and cracking and thunder of the impetuous flames, the shrieking of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of Towers, Houses and Churches, was like a hideous storm, and the aire all about so hot and inflamed, that at the last one was not able to approach it, so that they were forced to stand still and let the flames burn on, which they did for neere two miles in length and one in bredth. The clowds also of smoke were dismall and reached upon computation neere 56 mile in length. Thus I left it this afternoone burning, a resemblance of Sodom, or the last day. It forcibly called to my mind that passage non enim hic habemus stabilem civitatem: the ruines resembling the picture of Troy. London was, but is no more.”