London in the Time of the Stuarts

by Walter Besant

From Thames Street it went up Fish Street Hill into Canning Street, Gracechurch Street, Lombard Street, Cornhill, Bartholomew Lane, Lothbury, Austin Friars, and Broad Street northwards, and likewise into Fenchurch Street and Lime Street, burning down all the churches, the Royal Exchange, and all the little lanes and alleys as it went. From thence westward it swept away Friday Street, Watling Street, Cheapside, Newgate market, and the Prison, Paternoster Row, St. Sepulchre’s, and so up to Smithfield Bars, and down to Holborn bridge. Also all St. Paul’s Churchyard, the roof of Paul’s Church, Ludgate Hill, part of Fleet Street, Blackfriars, Whitefriars, and all the Inner Temple, till it came to the Hall, a corner of which had taken fire, and was there most happily quenched, as likewise in Fleet St. over against St. Dunstan’s Church: else, for aught appears, it might have swept away Whitehall and all the City of Westminster too, which is now left standing, together with all the suburbs: viz. the Strand, Covent Garden, Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn fields, Holborn as far as the Bridge, and all Hatton Garden, Clerkenwell, and St. John Street.

Of the City itself, from the Tower unto Temple Bar, remains only all Smithfield and St. Bartholomew’s, being stopped there before it came to Sir Elias Harvey’s, wherefrom, together with Sir John Shaw’s and Gresham College and so forward, are preserved: all Bishopsgate Street, Leadenhall Street, Duke’s Place, and so to Aldgate.

But ’tis fit your lordship should know that all that is left, both of City and suburbs, is acknowledged, under God, to be wholly due to the King and Duke of York, who, when the citizens had abandoned all further care of the place, were intent chiefly upon the preservation of their goods, undertook the work themselves, and with incredible magnanimity rode up and down, giving orders for blowing up of houses with gunpowder, to make void spaces for the fire to die in, and standing still to see those orders executed, exposing their persons not only to the multitude, but to the very flames themselves, and the ruins of buildings ready to fall upon them, and sometimes labouring with their own hands to give example to others: for which the people do now pay them, as they ought to do, all possible reverence and admiration. The King proceeds daily to relieve all the poor people with infinite quantities of bread and cheese, and in this is truly God’s vicegerent, that he does not only save from fire but give life too.

Temple Bare The West-Side

From the Crace Collection in the British Museum.

I believe there was never any such desolation by fire since the destruction of Jerusalem, nor will be till the last and general conflagration. Had your lordship been at Kensington you would have thought—for five days together, for so long the fire lasted—it had been Doomsday, and that the heavens themselves had been on fire; and the fearful cries and howlings of undone people did much increase the resemblance. My walks and gardens were almost covered with the ashes of papers, linen, etc., and pieces of ceiling and plaister-work blown thither by the tempest.

The loss is inestimable, and the consequence to all public and private affairs not presently imaginable, but in appearance very dreadful: yet I doubt not but the king and his people will be able to weather it out, though our enemies grow insolent upon it.

The greatest part of the wealth is saved, the loss having chiefly fallen upon heavy goods, wine, tobacco, sugars, etc.; but all the money in specie, plate, jewels, etc., were sent into the Tower, where it now lies; and the Tower itself had been fired, but that it preserved itself by beating down the houses about it, playing continually with their cannon upon all that was fired, and so stopped the progress.

So great was the general despair, that when the fire was in the Temple, houses in the Strand, adjoining to Somerset House, were blown up on purpose to save that house, and all men, both in City and suburbs, carried away their goods all day and night by carts, which were not to be had but at most inhumane prices. Your lordship’s servant in Queen Street made a shift to put some of your best chairs and fine goods into your rich coach, and sent for my horses to draw them to Kensington, where they now are.