London in the Time of the Stuarts

by Walter Besant

The next day he went to see the Fire again. All Fleet Street and the parts around it were in flames, the lead running down the streets in a stream, the stones of St. Paul’s “flying like granados.” The people, to the number of 200,000, had taken refuge in St. George’s Fields and Moorfields as far as Islington and Highgate; there Evelyn visited them; they were lying beside their heaps of salvage, of all ranks and degrees, deploring their loss, and though ready to perish for hunger and destitution, yet not asking one penny for relief. It was not money they wanted, it was food and shelter. Can one conceive a picture more sorrowful than that of 200,000 people thus wholly ruined? Evelyn went home, and at once set to work on a plan for the reconstruction of the City.

JOHN EVELYN (1620–1706)

Pepys has preserved fuller details:—

“So I down to the water-side, and there got a boat and through bridge, and there saw a lamentable fire. Poor Michell’s house, as far as the Old Swan, already burned that way, and the fire running further, that in a very little time it got as far as the Steelyard while I was there. Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that lay off: poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the water-side to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconys till some of them burned their wings and fell down. Having staid, and in an hour’s time seen the fire rage every way, and nobody, to my sight, endeavouring to quench it, but only to remove their goods, and leave all to the fire, and having seen it get as far as the Steelyard, and the wind mighty high and driving it into the City, and everything after so long a drought, proving combustible, even the very stones of churches, and among other things the poor steeple by which pretty Mrs. —— lives, and whereof my old schoolfellow Elborough is parson, taken fire in the very top and there burned till it fell down: I to White Hall (with a gentleman with me who desired to go off from the Tower to see the Fire, in my boat), and to White Hall, and there up to the King’s closett in the Chappell, where people come about me, and I did give them an account dismayed them all, and the word was carried in to the King. So I was called for, and did tell the King and Duke of York what I saw, and that unless His Majesty did command houses to be pulled down, nothing could stop the fire.”... “Walked along Watling Street, as well as I could, every creature coming away loaden with goods to save, and here and there sicke people carried away in beds. Extraordinary good goods carried in carts and on backs. At last met ye Lord Mayor in Canning Street, like a man spent, with a handkercher about his neck. To the King’s message he cried like a fainting woman, ‘Lord! what can I do? I am spent; people will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses: but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it.’ That he needed no more soldiers: and that, for himself, he must go and refresh himself, having been up all night. So he left me, and I him, and walked home, seeing people all almost distracted, and no manner of means used to quench the fire. The houses, too, so very thick thereabouts, and full of matter for burning, as pitch and tarr, in Thames Street: and warehouses of oyle, and wines, and brandy and other things.... And to see the churches all filling with goods by people who themselves should have been quietly there at this time.... Soon as dined, I and Moone away, and walked through the City, the streets full of nothing but people and horses and carts loaden with goods, ready to run over one another, and removing goods from one burned house to another. They now removing out of Canning Street (which received goods in the morning) into Lombard Street and further: and among others I now saw my little goldsmith Stokes, receiving some friend’s goods, whose house itself was burned the day after. We parted at Paul’s: he home, and I to Paul’s Wharf, where I had appointed a boat to attend me, and took in Mr. Carcasse and his brother, whom I met in the streets, and carried them below and above bridge to and again to see the fire, which was now got further, both below and above, and no likelihood of stopping it. Met with the King and Duke of York in their barge, and with them to Queenhithe, and there called Sir Richard Browne to them. Their order was only to pull down houses apace, and so below bridge at the water side: but little was or could be done, the fire coming upon them so fast. Good hopes there was of stopping it at the Three Cranes above, and at Buttolph’s Wharf below bridge, if care be used: but the wind carries it into the City, so as we know not by the water-side what it do there. River full of lighters, and boats taking in goods, and good goods swimming in the water, and only I observed that hardly one lighter or boat in three that had the goods of a house in, but there was a pair of Virginals in it.... So near the fire as we could for smoke: and all over the Thames, with one’s face in the wind, you were almost burned with a shower of fire-drops. This is very true: so as houses were burned by these drops and flakes of fire, three or four, nay, five or six houses, one from another. When we could endure no more upon the water, we to a little ale-house on the Bank-side over against the Three Cranes, and there staied till it was dark almost, and saw the fire grow: and as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid malicious bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire. Barbara and her husband away before us. We staid till, it being darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire, and flaming at once: and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their ruine.... I up to the top of Barking steeple, and there saw the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw: everywhere great fires, oyle-cellars, and brimstone, and other things burning.... Walked into the town and find Fenchurch Streete, Gracious Streete, and Lumbard Streete all in dust. The Exchange a sad sight, nothing standing there, of all the statues or pillars, but Sir Thomas Gresham’s picture in the corner. Walked into Moorfields (our feet ready to burn walking through the towne among the hot coles), and find that full of people, and poor wretches carrying their goods there, and everybody keeping his goods together by themselves (and a great blessing it is to them that it is fair weather for them to keep abroad night and day).... To Bishop’s gate, where no fire had yet been near, and there is now one broken out: which did give great grounds to people, and to me too, to think that there is some kind of plot in this (on which many by this time have been taken, and it hath been dangerous for any stranger to walk in the streets), but I went with the men, and we did put it out in a little time: so that it was well again. It was pretty to see how hard the women did work in the cannells sweeping of water: but then they would scold for drink, and be as drunk as devils. I saw good butts of sugar broke open in the street, and people go and take handsfull out, and put into beer, and drink it. And now all being pretty well, I took boat, and over to Southwarke, and took boat to the other side the bridge, and so to Westminster, thinking to shift myself, being all in dirt from top to bottom: but could not find there any place to buy a shirt or pair of gloves, Westminster Hall being full of people’s goods, those in Westminster having removed all their goods, and the Exchequer money put into vessels to carry to Nonsuch: but to the Swan and there was trimmed: and then to White Hall, but saw nobody, and so home. A sad sight to see how the River looks: no houses nor church near it, to the Temple where it stopped.”

THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON

From the fresco painting in the Royal Exchange, London, by permission of the Artist, Stanhope A. Forbes, A.R.A., and the Donors, The Sun Insurance Office.

Here is a letter addressed to Lord Conway a few days after the Great Fire:—

“Alas, my lord, all London almost within the walls, and some part of it which was without the walls, lies now in ashes. A most lamentable devouring fire began upon Sunday morning last, at one of the clock, at a baker’s house in Pudding Lane beyond the bridge, immediately burned down all the new houses upon the bridge, and left the old ones standing, and so came on into Thames Street, and went backwards towards the Tower, meeting with nothing by the way but old paper buildings and the most combustible matter of tar, pitch, hemp, rosin, and flax, which was all laid up thereabouts: so that in six hours it became a large stream of fire, at least a mile long, and could not possibly be approached or quenched. And that which contributed to the devastation was the extreme dryness of the season, which laid all the springs so low, that no considerable quantity of water could be had, either in pipes or conduits: and above all, a most violent and tempestuous east wind, which had sometimes one point towards the north, then again a point towards the south, as if it have been sent on purpose to help the fire to execute upon the City the commission which it had from Heaven.