The Plague of 1603, which is said to have swept away 30,578 persons, is one of the four great plagues of London of the seventeenth century. Historians, in their desire to account for these visitations, talk glibly about the sanitary arrangements of the City, the scant supply of good water, the crowded houses, and so forth as helping to spread the Plague. No doubt these things did help and encourage the visitation. Let us point out, however, that the City a hundred years after the plague of 1666—say, in 1766—was far more crowded than at that time, that its sanitary arrangements were no better, and that the people, though the New River water was laid on, continued to drink the water of the City wells (not, certainly, so many as before the fire), which received the filtrations and the pollutions of a hundred and fifty burial-grounds. They also continued their cess-pools, their narrow lanes, and their kennels filled with refuse of all kinds. Yet in the eighteenth century there was no plague. Let us also point out that parts of all great cities in Europe were, and are still, extremely crowded and filthy, yet no plague. In other words, it is dangerous to be unwashed, but not in itself a sufficient cause of plague. There must have been causes, of which one knows nothing, why the Plague should take hold of the City on four separate occasions in one century, and after devastating it on a grand scale, should go away for good. All the precautions observed in 1666 are recorded to have been taken in 1603. Women who had to do with the sick and the dead, if they went abroad, carried in their hands a red staff, so that people gave them a wide berth. Warnings were issued against attending funerals; dogs were killed; infected houses were marked with a red cross; streets were cleansed; bonfires were lit at street corners; the grave-diggers and the conductors of the dead carts did their work with the protection of tobacco; a thick cover of earth was laid upon the dead. The people, thrown out of work by thousands, were relieved and maintained by the Corporation and the City Companies.

There exists a strange and whimsical account of this plague entitled The Wonderful Yeare 1603. The writer has no intention of setting down a plain unvarnished tale, as will be seen from the following extracts (Phoenix Britannicus):—

“A stiffe and freezing horror sucks up the rivers of my blood; my haire stands on ende with the panting of my braines: mine eye balls are ready to start out, being beaten with the billowes of my teares: out of my weeping pen does the ink mournfully and more bitterly than gall drop on the pale-faced paper, even when I do but thinke how the bowels of my sicke country have been torne. Apollo, therefore, and you bewitching silver-tongued Muses, get you gone: I invocate none of your names. Sorrow and truth, sit you on each side of me, whilst I am delivered of this deadly burden: prompt me that I may utter ruthfull and passionate condolement: arme my trembling hand, that I may boldly rip up and anatomize the ulcerous body of this Anthropophagized Plague: lend me art (without any counterfeit shadowing) to paint and delineate to the life the whole story of this mortall and pestiferous battaile. And you the ghosts of those more (by many) than 40,000, that with the virulent poison of infection have been driven out of your earthly dwellings: you desolate hand-wringing widowes, that beate your bosomes over your departing husbandes: you wofully distracted mothers that with dishevelled hair fall into swounds, while you lie kissing the insensible cold lips of your breathless infants: you outcast and downtrodden orphans, that shall many a yeare hence remember more freshly to mourne, when your mourning garments shall look old and be forgotten: and you the Genii of all those emptyed families, whose habitations are now among the Antipodes: joine all your hands together, and with your bodies cast a ring about me: let me behold your ghastly vizages, that my paper may receive their true pictures and eccho forth your grones through the hollow trunke of my pen, and rain down your gummy tears into mine incke, that even marble bosomes may be shaken with terrour, and hearts of adamant melt into compassion.”

He goes on to describe the many who ran away:—

“It was no boot to bid them take their heels, for away they trudge thick and threefold: some riding, some on foote, some without bootes, some in their slippers, by water, by land, swom they westward: many to Gravesend none went unless they were driven: for whosoever landed there never came back again. Hacknies, water-men, and wagons were not so terribly employed many a year: so that within a short time there was not a good horse in Smithfield, nor a coach to be set eye on: for after the world had once run upon the wheeles of the pest cart, neither coach nor caroach durst appeare in his likenesse. Let us pursue these run-awayes no longer, but leave them in the unmercifull hands of the country-hardheaded Hobbinolls (who are ordained to be their tormentors), and return back to the siege of the citie.

Every house lookte like St. Bartholomew’s Hospitall, and every street like Bucklersbury, for poor Methridatum and Dragonwater (being both of them in all the world, scarce worth threepence) were boxt into every corner, and yet were both drunke every hour at other men’s cost. Lazarus lay groaning at every man’s door: marry no Dives was within to send him a crum (for all your Gold-finches were fled to the woods) nor a dogge left to licke his sores, for they (like Curres) were knockt downe like oxen, and fell thicker than acornes. I am amazed to remember what dead marches were made of three thousand trooping together: husbands, wives, and children being led as ordinarily to one grave as if they had gone to one bed. And those that could shift for a time, and shrink their heads out of the collar (as many did) yet went they most bitterly miching and muffled up and downe with rue and worme-wood stoft into their eares and nostrils, looking like so many bores’ heads stuck with branches of rosemary, to be served in for brawne at Christmas. This was a rare world for the Church, who had wont to complaine for want of living, and now had more living thrust upon her than she knew how to bestow: to have been clarke now to a parish clarke was better than to serve some foolish justice of peace, or than the yeare before to have been a benefice.

Never let any man aske me what became of our Phisitions in this massacre; they hid their synodicall heads as well as the prowdest: and I cannot blame them: for their phlebotomes, losinges, and electuaries, with their diacatholicons, diacodions, amulets and antidotes had not so much strength to hold life and soule together; as a pot of Pindar’s Ale and a nutmeg: their drugs turned to dirt, their simples were simple things: Galen could do no more than Sir Giles Goosecap: Hipocrates, Avicen, Paracelsus, Rafis, Fernalius, with all their succeeding rabble of doctors and water-casters were at their wits end, or, I think, rather at the world’s end, for not one of them durst peepe abroad, or if any did take upon him to play the ventrous knight, the plague put him to his nonplus: in such strange and such changeable shapes did this camelion-like sicknes appeare, that they could not (with all the cunning in their budgets) make pursenets to take him napping.”

The Plague first made its appearance in the East End; it raged at Gravesend. On the alarm of its spreading all those who could took flight; those who were left behind were the working-men, craftsmen, journeymen, and servants, who lost their work and their wages. Among the fugitives were the physicians, whose place was taken by quacks; and in the City there perished many thousands, sometimes whole families dying in a single house; sometimes poor wretches lying down to die in the street or under a stall; in a word, all the horrors of such a visitation with which Defoe has made the world familiar.

Twenty-one years later, on the accession of Charles, the Plague returned, and, continuing for a year, carried off 35,417 persons in London alone. I mention it in this place because the same writer, Benjamin Spencer, who gave us The Wonderful Yeare lived to write in 1625 Vox Civitatis, the Lament of London. The City complains that her children have infected the air with their sins; we need not enumerate the sins; in this respect every city is conservative. These and not the stinks of the City, not the reeking shambles, the noisome kennel, the malarious laystall are the cause of the Plague. Nor is her trouble only caused by sickness and death of multitudes:—

“This is not all my trouble, for my sorrows are increased like my sins: sickness hath consumed my substance: and with David, I justly say, I am weak and poor. My poverty lieth in being void of Trade, Money and victual. All which I am well nigh destitute of at this time. This I confess to be justly inflicted on me for my Pride, with which I have sought to outface Heaven. My tinckling feet, and my tip-toe Pace, my horned Tyaras, and crisp-curled locks, Shin-pride, and shoe-pride. Fulness of Bread hath made me lift my heel against my Maker, I said in my prosperity I should never be moved: but Thou, O Lord, hast turned Thy face, and I am troubled. My children have been so full-fed, that they have fallen out among themselves, the meanest thinking himself as good as the Magistrate, and the mighty refusing to look upon the cause of the mean. My Merchants have been the companions of Princes, but now are gone; their place is scarce to be found. How hath my back groaned with heavy burdens: and now Issacher stands still for want of work. One Waine may carry all I sell in a day. I have had such trading, that I could scarce find time to serve God, but now every day is a holiday, because I have prophaned His holy day (even His blessed Sabbath) which hath been dedicated to Him, as a remembrance of His glorious resurrection. But I have laid dead in sins and trespasses. I have given liberty to my servants to execute their wills in Sabbath breaking and deceiving: now God hath proclaimed liberty for them to the pestilence, to wandering, and to idleness. My apprentices have been the children of knights, and justices of the country (which they accepted at my hands joyfully), but now my children are cast out by those Swines like dung, rated like Beggars, served like swine in Hogsties, buried in the Highway like Malefactors.”

With a great deal more, from which we perceive that the same things happened in 1625 as in 1603. Aldermen, Common Councilmen, Magistrates, Physicians, Lawyers, Clergymen, all ran away, and among the dying sat the children not yet infected, crying for bread. It would seem—a fact that I have not elsewhere observed—that they turned the rooms over the City gates into hospitals or receiving houses for the children, doubtless the orphaned children.

Besides the two visitations of Plague already mentioned, there were in the seventeenth century two more, viz. in 1636 and 1665, the first of these occurring after an interval of no more than five years since the preceding one. The deaths from Plague for these four visitations were as follows; the numbers must be taken as approximate only:—

In 1603 there died of Plague 30,561 persons.
„1625„„35,417„
„1636„„10,400„
„1665„„68,596„

That is to say, in sixty-three years there died 144,974 persons of Plague alone. There were, however, many more victims, because between 1603 and 1636 the Plague was hardly ever absent. The deaths from Plague every year ranged from 1000 to 4000, though in one or two years there were none.

For the greatest and last visitation, that of 1665, we have, besides the graphic account of Defoe, also the more sober notices of Pepys and Evelyn. There were warnings of the approach of the Plague. In the autumn of 1663 it was reported to be raging in Amsterdam; ships from Holland were placed in quarantine; in December 1664 one person died of Plague in London; in February 1665 another death was reported; in April there were two; in May the number began to increase, running up to nine, fourteen, and forty-three. The summer of 1665 was extremely hot; an unclouded sky continued for weeks; there was no rain to wash the streets; there was no wind to refresh the air; if the people made bonfires to create a draught, it was observed that the flame and smoke mounted straight up. In June all those who could escape to the country left the town in whatsoever vehicles they could get—coaches, carriages, waggons, and carts. There was a general stampede, until the villagers stopped it, driving back the people with pitch-forks, and the Lord Mayor stopped it by refusing certificates of health. Then, the mortality rising daily by leaps and bounds, the people sat down in their houses to die, or wandered disconsolately about the desolate streets, marking the crosses on the doors with sinking hearts.

It must be observed that the Lord Mayor, the Sheriffs, and the Aldermen remained at their posts, that the Archbishop of Canterbury remained at Lambeth, and that the Duke of Albemarle and Lord Craven remained in their town houses; the Court, however, went away, and the judges removed their courts to Oxford. The physicians excused their flight by the plea that they accompanied their patients, and the City clergy—those who ran away—that they had followed their flocks.

There was no trade or craft of any kind carried on; shops, warehouses, offices, quays were closed or deserted; ships that arrived laden remained unnoticed in the Pool; the craftsmen and the common people had no work and drew no wages; servants and apprentices were thrust into the street; except for food there was nothing bought or sold; the quays, the port, the streets were silent; there was no grumbling of the broad wheels of waggons; there were no street cries; there were no bells; there were no children shouting and running about the streets. The churches, deserted by their incumbents, were taken over by Nonconformist ministers. It was contrary to law, but at such a time who cared for law? These preachers, braver than their persecutors, exhorted fearlessly crowded congregations, catching at every word of consolation or hope; quacks of the basest kind issued their advertisements, professing to cure the Plague. All kinds of ridiculous remedies were tried; plague water, amulets, hot spices, cupping glasses, besides old mediÆval nostrums, all these were advocated and proved futile. The parishes which suffered most were St. Giles in the Fields; St. Andrew’s, Holborn; St. Clement Danes; St. Martin’s in the Fields, and Westminster. When the disease abated in those parts it broke out with equal force in Cripplegate, St. Sepulchre’s; St. James’s, Clerkenwell; St. Bride’s, and St. Botolph’s, Aldersgate. The City was divided into districts, each with surgeons, nurses, watchers, and grave-diggers; infected houses were closed; their doors were marked with a red cross a foot long; the grave-diggers removed the bodies of those who died in the streets; in the night the cart went round to collect the dead; the bodies were thrown into fosses communes, or common graves, either in the parish churchyard or some place set apart outside the town. There were hospitals erected called Pest Houses, one in Tothill Fields and one in Old Street; but those were only for people who could afford to pay. In a tract entitled “God’s terrible voice to the City,” by the Rev. Thomas Vincent, there is a picture, not overdrawn, of the City in August when the Plague was at its worst:—

“In August how dreadful is the increase! Now the cloud is very black, and the storm comes down upon us very sharp. Now death rides triumphantly on his pale horse through our streets, and breaks into every house where any inhabitants are to be found. Now people fall as thick as the leaves in autumn when they are shaken by a mighty wind. Now there is a dismal solitude in London streets: every day looks with the face of a Sabbath day, observed with a greater solemnity than it used to be in the City. Now shops are shut, people rare and very few that walk about, insomuch that the grass begins to spring up in some places; there is a deep silence in every street, especially within the walls. No prancing horses, no rattling coaches, no calling on customers nor offering wares, no London cries sounding in the ears. If any voice be heard it is the groans of dying persons breathing forth their last, and the funeral knells of them that are ready to be carried to their graves. Now shutting up of visited houses (there being so many) is at an end, and most of the well are mingled amongst the sick, which otherwise would have got no help. Now, in some places, where the people did generally stay, not one house in a hundred but what is affected: and in many houses half the family is swept away: in some, from the eldest to the youngest: few escape but with the death of one or two. Never did so many husbands and wives die together: never did so many parents carry their children with them to the grave, and go together into the same house under earth who had lived together in the same house upon it. Now the nights are too short to bury the dead: the whole day, though at so great a length, is hardly sufficient to light the dead that fall thereon into their graves.”

During this terrible time, when all work was suspended, the people were only kept from starving by munificent gifts. The King gave £1000 a week; the City £600 a week; the Archbishop of Canterbury many hundreds every week; there was the whole industrial population of the City to be provided for. Some got employment from the Corporation as watchmen, grave-diggers, searchers, and the like; most had no work and no wages; their insufficient nourishment no doubt assisted the disease, which raged with the greatest force among the poorer sort. Bartholomew Fair was forbidden. In September Pepys writes, “To Lambeth: but Lord! what a sad time it is, to see no boats upon the river, and grass grows all up and down Whitehall Court, and nobody but wretches in the street.” The people began to get back and to go about their usual business in December; the Court returned in February, and it was soon observed that the streets were as full of people as ever. Yet nearly 70,000 had fallen, or perhaps one in three. If with the present population of 5,000,000 one in three were to die of Plague there would be a loss of 1,700,000. It seems as if about a third part of the population of London were cut off by this scourge. Happily it was the last of the great plagues. The history of London is no longer interrupted by the death of one-third of its people.

The following notes are a brief diary of the Plague as it was observed by Pepys—

It will be observed that the Plague lingered until the Great Fire of September 2 drove it clean away.

The best—that is, the most graphic—account of the Plague is that of Daniel Defoe. It is, perhaps, too long. The mind grows sick in the reading. He presents us, after his favourite method, with a series of pictures and portraits of individuals. When it is remembered that his book appeared in the year 1720, the year, that is, of the great Plague of Marseilles, and fifty-five years after the event, it is generally believed that his history is a work of pure fiction. I think it can be shown, however, that it was not a work of fiction at all, but simply a work of recollection. To the old man of sixty came back the memories and the tales that he had heard as a boy not yet in his teens.

Defoe was born in the year 1661. His father lived in Cripplegate, where, as we know, he had a shop. The child, therefore, was four years of age in the Plague year. A child of four observes a great deal and may remember a great deal. Children vary very much in respect to observation and memory. For instance, a child would remember, perhaps, anything out of the common in the buying and selling of goods in his father’s shop, where he looked on at the customers. Defoe says: “When anyone bought a joint of meat, he would not take it out of the butcher’s hand, but took it off the hooks himself; on the other hand, the butcher would not touch the money, but put it into a pot full of vinegar which he kept for that purpose. The buyer carried always small money to make up any odd sum, so that he might take no change.” This must surely have been seen by the child and remembered. It happened in his own father’s shop before his eyes. Another thing. The Great Fire not only drove the lingering Plague out of the City, but actually drove away the memory of it. Who could talk or think about the Plague with this other awful affliction to consider? Now Cripplegate—where the child Defoe lived—was not touched by the Fire; it was very heavily afflicted by the Plague, but the Fire spared it. Therefore to the people of Cripplegate the Plague continued as the chief incident in their lives; they continued to talk of their adventures, their escapes, their sufferings, and their bereavements long after the people within the walls had left off thinking of theirs. And the boy grew up amid such talk. Therefore he was never allowed to forget his childish impressions. The awful silence in the streets, save for the shrieks and groans of the plague-stricken; the rumbling of the burial carts at night; the houses deserted, infected, no longer marked but left with open doors ready for the robber who roamed about with impunity till Death seized him and he fell; the poor wretch, gone mad with terror and suffering and bereavement, moaning and crying in the street; the closed shops; the poor creatures sitting down in any porch or on any stall to die—all these things were told to the boy over and over again, until they were burned into his brain, to be reproduced in the most wonderful account of a plague that has ever been written. Therefore, and for this reason, Defoe’s History is a real history; the incidents are not invented but remembered. While we allow something for the embroidery of the novelist we must acknowledge that we have a contribution to the history of that terrible year larger, fuller, more human, than we can find in Pepys or in Evelyn, or in any other contemporary authority.

On the first appearance of the Plague of 1665 the Mayor and Aldermen issued orders of precaution similar to those which had been framed in the visitation of the year 1625. These orders are contained in a collection of “valuable and scarce Pieces” relating to the Plague of the latter year, published for J. Roberts at the Oxford Arms in Warwick Lane, 1721. This collection gives in full the orders of the Mayor and Council as follows:—

“Examiners to be appointed in every Parish. First, it is thought Requisite, and so ordered, that in every Parish there be one, two, or more Persons of good Sort and Credit, chosen and appointed by the Alderman, his Deputy, and Common Council of every Ward, by the Name of Examiners, to continue in that Office the space of two Months at least: And if any fit Person so appointed, shall refuse to undertake the same, the said Parties so refusing to be committed to Prison until they shall conform themselves accordingly.

The Examiner’s Office

“That these Examiners be sworn by the Aldermen, to enquire and learn from time to time what Houses in every Parish be Visited, and what Persons be Sick, and of what Diseases, as near as they can inform themselves; and upon doubt in that Case, to command Restraint of Access, until it appear what the Disease shall prove; And if they find any Person sick of the Infection, to give order to the Constable that the House be shut up; and if the Constable shall be found Remiss or Negligent to give present Notice thereof to the Alderman of the Ward.

Watchmen

“That to every infected House there be appointed two Watchmen, one for every Day, and the other for the Night; and that these Watchmen have a special care that no Person go in or out of such infected Houses, whereof they have the Charge, upon pain of severe Punishment. And the said Watchman to do such further offices as the sick House shall need and require: and if the Watchman be sent upon any Business, to lock up the House, and take the Key with him; And the Watchman by Day to attend until ten of the Clock at Night; and the Watchman by Night until six in the Morning.

Searchers

“That there be a special care to appoint Women-Searchers in every Parish, such as are of honest Reputation, and of the best Sort as can be got in this kind: and these to be sworn to make due Search, and true Report to the utmost of their Knowledge, whether the Persons whose Bodies they are appointed to Search, do die of the Infection, or of what other Diseases, as near as they can. And that the Physicians who shall be appointed for Cure and Prevention of the Infection, do call before them the said Searchers, who are or shall be appointed for the several Parishes under their respective Cares, to the end they may consider whether they are fitly qualified for that Employment; and charge them from time to time as they shall see Cause, if they appear defective in their Duties.

“That no Searcher during this time of Visitation, be permitted to use any publick Work or Employment, or keep any Shop or Stall, or be employed as a Laundress, or in any other common Employment whatsoever.

Chirurgeons

“For better assistance of the Searchers, for as much as there hath been heretofore great Abuse in misreporting the Disease, to the further spreading of the Infection; it is therefore ordered, that there be chosen and appointed able and discreet Chirurgeons, besides those that do already belong to the Pest House: Amongst whom the City and Liberties to be quartered as the places lie most apt and convenient; and every of these to have one Quarter for his Limit; and the said Chirurgeons in every of their Limits to join with the Searchers for the View of the Body, to the end there may be a true Report made of the Disease.

“And further, that the said Chirurgeons shall visit and search such like Persons as shall either send for them, or be named and directed unto them, by the Examiners of every Parish, and inform themselves of the Disease of the said Parties.

“And forasmuch as the said Chirurgeons are to be sequestered from all other Cures, and kept only to this Disease of the Infection; it is ordered, That every of the said Chirurgeons shall have Twelve-pence a Body searched by them, to be paid out of the Goods of the Party searched, if he be able, or otherwise by the Parish.

Nurse-keepers

“If any Nurse-keeper shall remove herself out of any infected House before twenty eight Days after the Decease of any Person dying of the Infection, the House to which the said Nurse-keeper doth so remove herself, shall be shut up until the said twenty eight Days be expired.

Notice to be given of the Sickness

“The Master of every House, as soon as any one in his House complaineth, either of Botch, or Purple, or Swelling in any part of his Body, or falleth otherwise dangerously Sick, without apparent Cause of some other Disease, shall give knowledge thereof to the Examiner of Health within two Hours after the said Sign shall appear.

Sequestration of the Sick

“As soon as any Man shall be found by this Examiner, Chirurgeon or Searcher to be sick of the Plague, he shall the same Night be sequestered in the same House. And in case he be so sequestered, then though he afterwards die not, the House wherein he sickened shall be shut up for a Month, after the use of the due Preservatives taken by the rest.

Airing the Stuff

“For Sequestration of the Goods and Stuff of the Infected, their Bedding, and Apparel, and Hangings of Chambers, must be well aired with Fire, and such Perfumes as are requisite within the infected House, before they be taken again to use: This to be done by the Appointment of the Examiner.

Shutting up of the House

“If any Person shall have visited any Man, known to be infected of the Plague, or entered willingly into any known infected House, being not allowed; the House wherein he inhabiteth, shall be shut up for certain Days by the Examiner’s Direction.

“None to be removed out of infected Houses, but, etc., Item, That none be removed out of the House where he falleth sick of the Infection, into any other House in the City (except it be to the Pest-House or a Tent, or unto some such House, which the Owner of the said visited House holdeth in his own Hands, and occupieth by his own Servants), and so as Security be given to the Parish whither such Remove is made, that the Attendance and Charge about the said visited Persons shall be observed and charged in all the Particularities before expressed, without any Cost of that Parish, to which any remove shall happen to be made, and his Remove to be done by Night; and it shall be lawful to any Person that hath two Houses, to remove either his sound or his infected People to his spare House at his choice, so as if he send away first his Sound, he may not after send thither the Sick nor again unto the Sick the Sound. And that the same which he sendeth, be for one Week at the least shut up and secluded from Company for fear of some Infection, at the first not appearing.

Burial of the Dead

“That Burial of the Dead by this Visitation, be at most convenient Hours, always either before Sun-rising, or after Sun-setting, with the Privity of the Churchwardens or Constable, and not otherwise: and that no Neighbours nor Friends be suffered to accompany the Corps to Church, or to enter the House visited, upon pain of having his House shut up, or be imprisoned. And that no Corps dying of Infection shall be buried, or remain in any Church in time of Common-Prayer, Sermon, or Lecture. And that no Children be suffered at time of burial of any Corps in any Church, Church-yard, or Burying-place to come near the Corps, Coffin, or Grave. And that all the Graves shall be at least six Foot deep. And further, all publick Assemblies at other burials are to be forborn during the Continuance of this Visitation.

No Infected Stuff to be Uttered

“That no Clothes, Stuff, Bedding or Garments be suffered to be carried or conveyed out of any infected Houses, and that the Criers and Carriers abroad of Bedding or old Apparel to be sold or pawned, be utterly prohibited and restrained, and no Brokers of Bedding or old Apparel be permitted to make any outward Shew, or hang forth on their stalls, shopboards or Windows towards any Street, Lane, Common-way or Passage, any old Bedding or Apparel to be sold, upon pain of Imprisonment. And if any Broker or other Person shall buy any Bedding, Apparel, or other Stuff out of any infected House, within two Months after the Infection hath been there, his House shall be shut up as Infected, and so shall continue shut up twenty Days at the least.

No Person to be conveyed out of any Infected House

“If any Person visited do fortune by negligent looking unto, or by any other Means, to come, or be conveyed from a Place infected, to any other Place, the Parish from whence such Party hath come or been conveyed, upon notice thereof given, shall at their Charge cause the said Party so visited and escaped, to be carried and brought back again by Night, and the Parties in this case offending, to be punished at the Direction of the Alderman of the Ward: and the House of the Receiver of such visited Person to be shut up for twenty Days.

Every Visited House to be Marked

“That every House visited, be marked with a red Cross of a Foot long, in the middle of the Door, evident to be seen, and with these usual printed Words, that is to say, ‘Lord have Mercy upon us,’ to be set close over the same Cross, there to continue, until lawful opening of the same House.

Every Visited House to be Watched

“That the Constables see every House shut up, and to be attended with Watchmen, which may keep them in, and minister Necessaries unto them at their own Charges (if they be able) or at the common Charge if they be unable: The shutting up to be for the space of four Weeks after all be whole. That precise Order be taken that the Searchers, Chirurgeons, Keepers and Buriers are not to pass the Streets without holding a red Rod or Wand of three Foot in length in their Hands, open and evident to be seen, and are not to go into any other House than into their own, or into that whereunto they are directed or sent for; but to forbear and abstain from Company, especially when they have been lately used in any such Business or Attendance.

Inmates

“That where several Inmates are in one and the same House, and any Person in that House happen to be infected; no other Person or Family of such House shall be suffered to remove him or themselves without a Certificate from the Examiners of Health of that Parish; or in default thereof, the House whither he or they so remove, shall be shut up as in case of Visitation.

Hackney-Coaches

“That care be taken of Hackney-Coachmen, that they may not (as some of them have been observed to do) after carrying of infected Persons to the Pest-House, and other Places, be admitted to common use, till their Coaches be well aired, and have stood unemployed by the space of five or six Days after such Service.

Orders for Cleansing and Keeping of the Streets Sweet

the streets to be kept clean

“First, it is thought necessary, and so ordered, that every Householder do cause the Street to be daily pared before his Door, and so to keep it clean swept all the Week long.

that rakers take it from out the houses

“That the sweeping and Filth of Houses be daily carried away by the Rakers, and that the Raker shall give notice of his coming, by the blowing of a Horn, as heretofore hath been done.

laystalls to be made far off from the city

“That the Laystalls be removed as far as may be out of the City, and common Passages, and that no Nightman or other be suffered to empty a Vault into any Garden near about the City.

care to be had of unwholesome fish or flesh and of musty corn

“That special care be taken, that no stinking Fish, or unwholesome Flesh, or musty Corn, or other corrupt Fruits, of what sort soever be suffered to be sold about the City, or any part of the same.

“That the Brewers and Tipling houses be looked unto, for musty and unwholesome Casks. That no Hogs, Dogs, or Cats, or tame Pigeons, or Conies, be suffered to be kept within any part of the City, or any Swine to be, or stray in the Streets or Lanes, but that such Swine be impounded by the Beadle or any other Officer, and the Owner punished according to Act of Common-Council, and that the Dogs be killed by the Dog-killers appointed for that purpose.”

It was further ordered, and for once the City did provide a sufficient number of constables to enforce these orders, that the multitude of rogues and wandering beggars that swarm in every place around the City shall be dispersed, and that no beggars be allowed in the City at all. That the theatres be closed and that none of the sports be held which attract assemblies of people, such as bear-baitings, ballad-singings, buckle-play, and the like; that public feasts and dinners be discontinued, particularly those of the City companies; that tippling be discouraged, and that every tavern, ale-house, coffee-house, and cellar be closed at 9 o’clock.

And further that the Aldermen and Common Council should assemble once a week to hear reports upon the manner of carrying out these rules.

The following is a contemporary account by the Rev. John Allin; it was published in the thirty-seventh volume of ArchÆologia:—

“Loveing ffriend,—Yours of the 16th instant I have received and give you hearty thankes for that particular accompt you gave me of your affayres. If I can possibly gett time I thinke to write to you againe on Thursday: but I thought it not amiss for the inclosed’s sake, to write a few lines now, and to give you my thoughts of the death of Tolhurst’s sister. According to your description of her, there hath not one of those thousands yet dyed here with all the signall characters of this present Plague more evident than she had, which this inclosed will in parte confirme to you. Concerning the external effects of this internall infection, there are these three, with one or more or all of which this distemper is usually attended, botches, blaines, and carbuncles, to which I may add a fourth, spotts commonly called the tokens, and are very symtomatical never ariseing till the full state of the disease, even when deathe stands at the doore: for very few or none live that are so markt. For the botches or pestilential bubos, they usually aries but in 3 places, whereof the principal emunctorys of the body are:—behind or under the ears when the braine is afflicted; under each arme when the heart or vitalls are afflicted; in the groynes principally when the liver is afflicted. The blaines and carbuncles may and doe aries generally in any parte of the body, necke, face, throate, backe, thighs, armes, leggs, etc., and all of them very hard: and obstinate to be dealt with withall, and must have several proceedings with them: and if any of them, after once appearing, either fall or retire backe againe, it is a very bad and dangerous symptome. The botches sometimes rise to a very great buiggnes, especially under the armes and in the groines; if so under the ears they quickly choake or kill with paine, there being no roome for them to bee extended: if they rise something in an oblongish forme, and red at the first, it is so much the better then if round, though as they grow to more maturity they will tend to a more round forme, as they come to ripen, especially on the topp; if they rise white it argues coldnes and want of heate and spot to drive them out, and must bee more carefully helpt forwards with internal drivers and externall drawers. The blaines rise first like blisters, but not puffy, as if sweld with wind or water, but hard, not yielding to the touch: but if they come forward to any maturity (which they are very difficult to bee brought to, and many dye if they have blaines) there will bee a very hard and knotty bunch of corrupt matter in them. The carbuncles, though it may be rise roundly like a pinn’s head, yet presently rise up to a pointed boile, very hard: sometimes fiery red, sometimes black, and sometimes blewish in places: red the best, ye others worst. All of these risings (if they be accurately observed at the first; but especially the carbuncles and blaines) have a particular symptome annexed to them, viz. they are generally circled about with red or blew circles, sometimes with both: sometimes they are broader then a bare circle, one within another: the red colour argue the small blood affected or choler abounding: the blewish argue the arteriall blood from the hearte affected; the blacke choler adust or melancholy: white, the potre actions of cold and crude humours most. For the spotts or tokens, which most generally are forrerunns of certain death, they do more generally this year then formerly appeare in divers parts of the body, formerly usually and allmost onely to be found upon the region of the hearte and liver, or the brest, and against it on the backe; but now on the necke, face, hands, armes, amost anywhere as well as there: sometimes as broad as farthings, these are called tokens: sometimes this yeare as broad as an halfecrowne: sometimes smaller: but always of more colours than one. If they bee observed at first rising sometimes with a red circle without and blew within: sometimes with a blew circle without and red within: sometimes one more bright red, the other blewish or darker, sometimes blacker: the blew from the arteriall, the red from the venall blood affacted, the blacke from melancholy as is aforesaid. Of the swellings, or mixt as the infection is mixed more or lesse, these usually come forth about the state of the disease, when nature hath done its utmost to expell but cannot conquer: which endeavours to expel the utmost send forth these external symptomes of it: and generally when these come out the party seemes not sick as before, but dye presently within a day or 2 at the utmost after. Many times this distemper strikes the vitalls so immediately, that nature hath not time to putt forth either spotts or blotches, and then it is the highest infection, most aptly called the Pestilence, and not the Plague: but done by a more immediate stroake of the destroying Angell. But, if such bodyes bee kept a little length of time after death, sometimes spoots will then arise which did not before, especially whilst any warmth remayne in the body: but how many are therefore deceived, because either they view the body onely immediately when dead, or bury them whilest warme: others, wickeddly to conceal the hands of God, will drive them in agaune, and keepe them in with colde and wett cloths.”

This chapter dealing with the medical literature of the Plague covers both the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, in which there was little change medicinally.

The sixteenth century was full of plague and pestilence. In Elizabeth’s reign there was plague in 1563, in 1569, in 1574, in 1581, in 1592, and in 1603. Preventive ordinances were drawn up and issued. It is, however, evident that the people could not be possibly made to understand the necessity of caution and quarantine. The invisible enemy, to an ignorant folk, does not exist. The people of London bribed the officers, surveyors, constables, and scavengers to take down the “Bills” affixed to infected houses; they refused to carry the white rods enjoined by law upon the convalescent; they went about among their fellows while they were still dangerous; and they would not keep the streets clean. The period of seclusion was fixed at four weeks; women were appointed to carry necessaries to infected houses; every morning at six, and every evening at eight the streets were to be sluiced with buckets of water; there were to be no funeral assemblies; beggars and masterless men were to be turned out of the City. These precautions were excellent; the sanitary laws were in the right direction; but all was rendered ineffectual for want of an executive; the Plague might have been stamped out had these rules been enforced; but they were not, and so the disease continued until the Great Fire of 1666 purified the soil. New investigations rendered necessary by the outbreak of Plague in India and elsewhere will perhaps lead to an abandonment of the old theory that the Plague was caused simply by the unclean condition of the ground, saturated with the abominations of a thousand years and more. Until science, however, has spoken more definitely, I suppose that we shall continue to associate a visitation of this terrible scourge with unsanitary conditions. It is at least a useful and a wholesome belief.

I have before me certain infallible remedies prescribed in the attack of 1625. Among them are blisters, clysters, cauteries, poultices, cuppings, strong purges and emetics. Drugs and strange compounds were also administered. Among the former, London treacle, Venice treacle, angelica root, dragon water, and carduus play a large part. The roots of certain wild flowers were also powdered and added to the infusion, showing that the medicine of the time depended largely on the science of the herbwoman. Who but she knew the properties of the roots and leaves of tormentil, sorrel, goat’s rue, gentian, bay berries, scabious, bur seeds, celandine? Who but a village herbalist could have discovered the healing powers of fresh cowdung strained with vinegar? I transcribe one of many prescriptions to induce a strong sweat and thereby to expel the Plague.

“Take the inward Bark of the Ash Tree one Pound, of Walnuts with the Green outward Shells, to the number of Fifty, cut these small: of Scabious, of Vervin, of each a Handful, of Saffron two Drams, pour upon these the strongest Vinegar you can get, four Pints, let them a little boil together upon a very soft fire, and then stand in a very close Pot, well stopt all Night upon the Embers, after distil them with a soft Fire, and receive the Water close kept. Give unto the Patient laid in Bed and well covered with Cloaths, two Ounces of this Water to drink, and let him be provoked to Sweat; and every eight hours (during the space of four and twenty Hours) give him the same quantity to Drink.

Care must be taken in the use of these Sweating Cordials, that the Party infected, sweat two or three Hours, or rather much longer, if he have strength, and sleep not till the Sweat be over, and that he have been well wiped with warm Linnen and when he hath been dried let him wash his Mouth with Water and Vinegar Warm, and let his face and Hands be washed with the same. When these things are done, give him a good Draught of Broth made with Chicken or Mutton, with Rosemary, Thyme, Sorrel, succory and Marygolds; or else Water-Grewel, with Rosemary and Winter-Savory or Thyme, Panado seasoned with Verjuice, or juice of Wood-Sorrel: for their Drink, let it be small Beer warmed, with a Toast, or Water boiled with Carraway-Seed, Carduus-Seed, and a Crust of Bread, or such Posset-Drink as is mentioned before in the second Medicine; after some Nutriment, let them sleep or rest, often washing their Mouth with Water and Vinegar.”

Or instead of the complicated nostrum, here are two. By the first, it is said, “Secretary Naunton removed the Plague from his Heart.” The second, it is asserted, was prepared by Sir Francis Bacon and approved by Queen Elizabeth.

“An Ale Posset-drink with Pimpernel seethed in it, till it taste strong of it, drunk often, removed the infection, tho’ it hath reached the very heart....

Take a Pint of Malmsey burnt, with a spoonful of bruised Grains, i.e., Cardamom Seeds, of the best Treacle a spoonful, and give the Patient to drink of it two or three Spoonfuls pretty often, with a draught of Malmsey Wine after it, and so let him sweat; if it agrees with him, and it stays with him, he is out of Danger; if he vomits it up, repeat it again.”

Let us leave the Plague for a moment and consider the general subject of medicine in the seventeenth century.

When he was ill, the Londoner had as many nostrums and infallible medicines as his successor of the present day. We have our effervescent drinks, our pills, our ointments—so had our ancestor. First of all, the pharmacopoeia included an immense quantity of herbs, specifics for this and the other; their names still preserve some of their supposed qualities—such as fever few, eye-bright, etc. Thus, walnut water was supposed to be good for sore eyes. The apothecary understood how to cover a pill with sugar so as to make it tasteless; and his pills were great boluses which we should now find it hard indeed to swallow. The physicians prescribed potions fearfully and wonderfully made, some containing thirty, forty, or even seventy ingredients. Such was “Mithidate” or “Mithridates,” as a common medicine was called.

For fevers they prescribed a “cold water affusion,” with drinking of asses’ milk. When the Queen was ill in 1663 they shaved her head and applied pigeons to her feet. When a man fell down in a fit, they treated him vigorously. No half measures were allowed. They boxed and cuffed his ears, pulled his nose, threw a bucket of cold water into his face, and pinched and kneaded the nape of his neck. Powdered mummy for a long time was held to be a specific against I know not what diseases. It is said that the reason why it went out of use was that Jews took to embalming bodies and then sold them for genuine ancient mummies.

If a dentist was wanted he was sought in the street; he was an itinerant tooth drawer, and he went his regular round, carrying with him his “dentist’s key” and decorated with strings of teeth, while he bawled his calling and offered his services.

Ben Jonson ridicules the pretences and pretensions of the quacks of his time when he puts the following extravagance into the mouth of Bobadil:—

“Sir, believe me, upon my relation for what I tell you, the world shall not reprove. I have been in the Indies, where this herb grows, where neither myself, nor a dozen gentlemen more of my knowledge, have received the taste of any other nutriment in the world, for the space of one and twenty weeks but the fume of this simple only; therefore, it cannot be, but ’tis most divine. Further, take it in the nature, in the true kind: so, it makes an antidote, that, had you taken the most deadly poisonous plant in all Italy, it should expel it, and clarify you, with as much ease as I speak. And for your green wound—your Balsamum and your St. John’s wort, are all mere gulleries and trash to it, especially your Trinidado: your Nicotian is good too. I could say what I know of the virtue of it, for the expulsion of rheums, raw humours, crudities, obstructions, with a thousand of this kind, but I profess myself no quacksalver. Only this much: by Hercules, I do hold it, and will affirm it before any prince in Europe, to be the most sovereign and precious weed that ever the earth tendered to the use of man.”

Francis Bacon—the last of his generation to be considered a quack—prescribed a regimen which would make longevity a certainty.

Every morning the patient was to inhale the fume of lignaloes, rosemary, and bay-leaves dried; “but once a week to add a little tobacco, without otherwise taking it, in a pipe.” For supper he was to drink of wine in which “gold had been quenched,” and to eat bread dipped in spiced wine. In the morning he was to anoint the body with oil of almonds and salt and saffron. Once a month he was to bathe the feet in water of marjoram, fennel, and sage.... That diet was pronounced best “which makes lean and then renews.” The great people were content with nothing less than extravagant remedies. Salt or chloride of gold was taken by noble ladies; dissolved pearls were supposed to have mystic virtues, and even coral was a fashionable medicine.

Common folk had to submit to more desperate remedies. They were advised by Dr. Andrew Boorde to wipe their faces daily with a scarlet cloth, and wash them only once a week. Pills made of the skull of a man that had been hanged, a draught of spring water from the skull of a murdered man, the powder of antimony, the oil of scorpions, the blood of dragons, and the entrails of wild animals were all recommended for special diseases. Salves, conserves, cataplasms, ptisanes, and electuaries were made of all kinds of herbs, and freely used and believed in, though most of them must have been ridiculous. The “nonsense-confused compounds” which Burton ridiculed half a century later were in great demand, however, and the amount of general physic-taking was marvellous. Complexion-washes for ladies and fops, love-philtres for the melancholy, and anodynes for the aged, were commonly dispensed in every apothecary’s establishment.

Tumours were supposed to be curable by stroking them with the hand of a dead man. Chips of a hangman’s tree were a great remedy for the ague, worn as amulets. To cure a child of rickets, it was passed head downwards through a young tree split open for the purpose, and then tied up. As the tree healed, the child recovered. The king’s evil, a scrofulous affection, was supposed to be cured by the royal touch, as we have already seen in considering the service for the occasion. There is a description of the process in Macbeth:—

Ben Jonson contains some excellent prescriptions. Thus, for old age:—

On the divergence of opinions among physicians:—

Or if the patient called in the wise woman:—

One learns from Ben Jonson that at St. Katherine’s by the Tower there were lunatic asylums:—

The cunning man or woman was a kind of physician and in large practice. He undertook to cure all diseases under the sun by the “Ephemerides,” the marks on almanacks of lucky or unlucky days. Besides his medical learning he knew how to advise in the matter of winning at horse races; in card playing, how to win; he could search for things lost, he sold charms, he told girls about their future lovers, and he erected astrological figures. Often he was a physician by profession, like that unfortunate Dr. Lambe, done to death by the crowd in the City for being an astrologer or cunning man.

The level of medical science in the seventeenth century may be judged by the prescriptions which follow:—

“(1) For Dimness of sight.

For dimness of the Eyes, eat 12 leaves of Rue in a morning with bread and butter and it will very much availe.”

For the stopping of bleeding

“Take red nettles, stamp them and straine them alone, then take the juice and rubb all over the forehead and temples, so lett it dry upon the face 7 or 8 hours, after you may wash it of, but if you bleede againe, renew it.”

For the plague we have

“The Medicine that the Lord Mayor of London had sent him from Q. Elisa: the ingredients are sage, rue, elder leaves, red bramble leaves, white wine and ginger. ‘So drink of it till evening and morning 9 dayes together: the first spoonfull will by God’s grace preserve safe for 24 dayes and after the ninth spoonfull for one whole yeare.’”

Another “safe medicine” is as follows:—

“Take a locke of your Owne hair, cutt it as small as may bee, and so take it in beere or wine.”

The next is not so appetising. For a dull hearing

“Take a grey snaile, prick him, and putt the water which comes from him into the eare and stop it with blackwool, it will cure.”

“(2) To cure the biting or stinging of a Snake, as it hath often been tryed.

‘Take the leaves of a Burr-dock stamp and straine them and so drinke a good quantity, halfe a pint at the least, the simple juice itselfe is best.’

(3) A most pretious Water of Wallnutts.

Cures many ailments. Among the rest: ‘One drop in the eyes healeth all infirmityes, it healeth palsyes, it causeth sleep in the night. If it be used moderately with wine, it preserveth life so long as nature will permitt.’

(4) For Sciatica.

The principal ingredient is the marrow of a horse (killed by chance, not dying of any disease) mixed with some rose water. ‘Chafe it in with a warme hand for a quarter of an houre, then putt on a Scarlett cloth, broad enough to cover the parte affected and go into a warme bed.’

(5) Headache.

The juice of Ground-ivy snuft up into the nose out of a spoone taketh away the greatest paine thereof. This medicine is worth gold.

(6) For consumption is recommended an infusion in which the following ingredients take part:—

“Malaga-sacke, liverwort, Dandelion-root scrapt and the pith tooke out, and a piece of Elecampane sliced.

(7) Madness in a Dog or anything:—

Pega, tega, sega, docemena, Mega. These words written and the paper rowl’d up and given to a Dog or anything that is mad, will cure him.”

Floyer, for his part, placed the greatest reliance on the sovereign virtues of cold water, administered externally. He spared no pains to inculcate on sufferers from rheumatism, nervous disorders, and other maladies, the virtue of cold bathing, and maintained that the prevalence of consumption in this country dated only from the time when baptism by immersion had been discontinued.

I have mentioned the “cunning man” who was also an astrologer. But there was the astrologer in higher practice. Everybody believed in astrology, from the King downwards. The astrologer followed a profession both lucrative and honourable. Sometimes, as in the case of Dr. Nenier of Linford, he was an enthusiast who prayed continually and was in confidential communication with the archangels, being by them enabled to heal many diseases, especially ague, and the falling sickness by means of consecrated rings.

When the Civil War began there were astrologers on both sides who prophesied, each for the good of his own cause. Thus, on the Parliamentary side the astrologer prophesied disasters to the Cavaliers and victory to the Roundheads. These predictions became weapons of great weight because people believed them. Butler puts the case in his own way:—

The most important of the tribe was William Lilly, already mentioned, who wrote on the Roundhead side, publishing his predictions in an almanack called Merlinus Anglicus. Towards the close of the Protectorate he had the good sense to see what was coming and to predict the Restoration. When this came he made his almanack loyal to the backbone. Astrology fell somewhat into disrepute after Charles’s return, or perhaps younger men got all the patronage, for Lilly abandoned astrology and took up with medicine.

The Royal Society had not yet been founded, and the only learned association was the Society of Antiquaries, formed by Archbishop Parker in 1572, meeting weekly at the College of Heralds and dissolved by James I. “from some jealousy,” remarks Hallam, about the year 1604. Consequently there were no influences at work to stem the popular superstitions, and individuals who profited by them were not likely to turn reformers. The trade in charms was, however, more than half sanctioned by the learned. In his Natural History, Bacon lays it down as credible that precious stones “may work by consent upon the spirits of men to comfort and exhilarate them. The best for that effect are the diamond, the emerald, the hyacinth Oriental, and the gold stone, which is the yellow topaz. As for their particular properties, there is no credit to be given to them. But it is manifest that light, above all things, excelleth in comforting the spirits of men: and it is very probable that light varied doth the same effect, with more novelty, and this is one of the causes why precious stones comfort.”

Bracelets of coral are recommended to cool the body, because coral loseth colour through “distemper of heat,” and other varieties for similar purposes. The learned lawyer and philosopher was thus not many degrees higher than the plain and simple folk who imagined that every precious stone had some mystic virtue communicable to the wearer. The sapphire was believed to impart courage, the coral to preserve from enchantment, the topaz to cure madness, and the hyacinth to protect from lightning. As for the carbuncle, with its brilliant unborrowed light, it is referred to many times by Shakespeare, but perhaps in the happiest form in “Henry VIII.,” where the Princess Elizabeth is spoken of as

Texts of Scripture, mystic letters, cabalistic rings, and other devices were commonly worn even by the most intelligent.

There was very little difference between the London of Elizabeth and the London of Charles II. I briefly quote a contemporary. The following humorous description was written by Sir William Davenant two or three years before the Fire:—

“Sure your ancestors contrived your narrow streets in the days of wheel-barrows, before those greater engines, carts, were invented. Is your climate so hot, that as you walk, you need umbrellas of tiles to intercept the sun? Or, are your shambles so empty, that you are afraid to take in fresh air, lest it should sharpen your stomachs? Oh, the goodly landslip of Old Fish Street, which, had it not had the ill luck to be crooked, was narrow enough to have been your founder’s perspective! And where the garrets, (perhaps not for want of architecture, but through abundance of amity) are so made, that opposite neighbours may shake hands without stirring from home. Is unanimity of inhabitants in wise cities better exprest than by their coherence and uniformity of building: where streets begin, continue and end, in a like stature and shape? But yours (as if they were raised in a general insurrection, where every man hath a several design) differ in all things that can make distinction. Here stands one that aims to be a Palace, and, next it, another that professes to be a hovel; here a giant, there a dwarf: here slender, there broad: and all most admirably different in faces as well as in their height and bulk. I was about to defie any Londoner, who dares pretend there is so much ingenious correspondence in this City, as that he can shew me one house like another: yet your houses seem to be reverend and formal, being compared to the fantastical looks of the modern: which have more ovals, niches, and angles, than are in your custards, and are inclosed with pasteboard walls, like those of malicious Turks, who, because themselves are not immortal, and cannot dwell for ever where they build, therefore wish not to be at charge to provide such lastingness as may entertain their children out of the rain: so slight and prettily gaudy, that if they could more, they would pass for pageants. It is your custom, where men vary often the mode of their habits, to term the nation fantastical: but where streets continually change fashion, you should make haste to chain up the city, for it is certainly mad.

“You would think me a malicious traveller if I should still gaze on your misshapen streets, and take no more notice of the beauty of your river: therefore, I will pass the importunate noise of your watermen (who snatch at fares as if they were to catch prisoners, plying the gentry so uncivilly, as if they had never rowed any other passengers but bearwards) and now step into one of your peascod boats, whose tilts are not so sumptuous as the roofes of gundaloes, nor when you are within are you at the ease of a chaise-À-bras. The commodity and trade of your river belong to yourselves: but give a stranger leave to share in the pleasure of it, which will hardly be in the prospect of freedom of air, unless prospect, consisting of variety, be made up with here a palace, there a wood-yard: here a garden, there a brew-house: here dwells a lord, there a dyer, and between both, duomo commune. If freedom of air be inferred in the liberty of the subject, where every private man hath authority, for his own profit, to smoak up a magistrate, then the air of your Thames is open enough, because it is equally free. I will forbear to visit your courtly neighbours at Wapping, not that it will make me giddy to shoot your Bridge, but that I am loth to disturb the civil silence of Billingsgate, which is so great, as if the mariners were always landing to storm the harbour: therefore, for brevity’s sake, I will put to shoar again, though I should be constrained, even without my galoshoes, to land at Puddle Dock.

“I am now returned to visit your houses, where the roofs are so low, that I presume your ancestors were very mannerly and stood bare to their wives: for I cannot discern how they could wear their high-crowned hats: yet, I will enter, and therein oblige you much, when you know my aversion to a certain weed that governs amongst your coarser acquaintance as much as lavender amongst your coarser linen; to which, in my apprehension, your sea-coal smoke seems a very Portugal perfume. I should here hasten to a period, for fear of suffocation, if I thought you so ungracious as to use it in public assemblies: and yet, I see it grows so much in fashion, that methinks your children begin to play with broken pipes instead of corals, to make way for their teeth. You will find my visit short; I cannot stay to eat with you, because your bread is too heavy, and you disdain the light substance of herbs. Your drink is too thick, and yet you are seldom over-curious in washing your glasses. Nor will I lodge with you, because your beds seem no bigger than coffins: and your curtains so short, as they will hardly serve to inclose your carriers in summer, and may be held, if taffata, to have lined your grand-sires’ skirts.

“I have now left your houses, and am passing that of your streets, but not in a coach, for they are uneasily hung, and so narrow, that I took them for sedans upon wheels: nor is it safe for a stranger to use them till the quarrel be decided whether six of your nobles, sitting together, shall stop and give way to as many barrels of beer. Your city is the only metropolis in Europe where there is wonderful dignity belonging to carts. I would now make a safe retreat, but that methinks I am stopt by one of our heroic games, called foot-ball: which I conceive (under your favour) not very conveniently civil in the streets, especially in such irregular and narrow roads as Crooked Lane. Yet it argues your courage much like your military pastime of throwing at cocks: but your metal would be much magnified (since you have long allowed those two valiant exercises in the streets) to draw your archers from Finsbury, and during high market let them shoot at butts in Cheapside. I have now no more to say but what refers to a few private notes, which I shall give you in a whisper when we meet in Moorfields, from whence (because the place was meant for public pleasure, and to shew the munificence of your City) I shall desire you to banish the laundresses and bleachers, whose acres of old linen make a shew like the fields of Carthagena when the five months’ shifts of the whole fleet are washt and spread.”

To this satirical note let us add a glance at the suburbs with the help of Hollar’s map of 1665. In this map Lambeth is evidently a small village lying south of the church and Palace, with at least one street running along the road on the east leading across to St. George’s Fields. On the north there are no houses; the Palace Gardens stretch out behind the Embankment, covered with trees; then comes the Lambeth Marsh, a broad field bare of trees; there is a broad mile where the river bends, and here, buried among the trees, houses begin, and continue along Bankside; on the east of Lambeth Marsh is St. George’s Fields, with houses on the north side, and St. George’s Church. According to Hollar, South London at this time must have been a charming and rural place divided into gardens and set with trees. Unfortunately his picture becomes unintelligible when we find St. Mary Overies on the other side of the river.

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

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:—

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

Without doubt there was nothing of plot or design in all this, though the people would fain think otherwise. Some lay it upon the French and Dutch, and are ready to knock them all on the head, wheresoever they meet them; others upon the fanatics, because it broke out so near the 3rd of September, their so celebrated day of triumph; others upon the Papists, because some of them are now said to be in arms; but ’tis no otherwise than as part of those militias which are, or ought to be, in a posture everywhere.

All the stories of making and casting of fire-balls are found to be mere fictions when they are traced home; for that which was said to be thrown upon Dorset House was a firebrand, seen by the Duke of York upon the Thames to be blown thither, and upon notice thereof given by his highness was for that time quenched. But there could be no plot without some time to form it in: and making so many parties to it, we must needs have had some kind of intelligence of it: besides, no rising follows it, nor any army appears anywhere to second such a design. Above all, there hath been no attempt upon the King or Duke’s person, which might easily have been executed had this been any effect of treason.

Men begin now everywhere to recover their spirits again and think of repairing the old and rebuilding a new City. I am told this day by Mr. Chichely the City have sent to the King to desire a new model. Vaults are daily opened wherein are found immense quantities of pepper, spices, and wines, oils and sugars, etc., safe and untouched, though the houses were fired: but all the cloth laid in St. Faith’s Church under St. Paul’s is burnt. Gresham College is set apart for an Exchange and Post Office. Leadenhall is to supply the uses of Guildhall; and without doubt, when the Parliament meets, as much will be done towards the restoring of the City, and in it of the kingdom, to its ancient lustre and esteem, as can be expected from the piety and policy of so dutiful an assembly.”

The fourth eye-witness whom I shall quote is a certain Edward Atkyns in a letter preserved in the London and Middlesex Note-book (p. 171):—

“Good Brother—I received your letter and shall give you ye best account I can of our late sad fire, though it is scarcely possible for any man fully to describe it. It began at a Baker’s house in Pudding Lane, near Thames Street, on Sunday morning about 2 or 3 of ye clock: and burnt doone several houses, but could not be quencht in regard it was a narrow place where engines could not play, and ye Lord Maior did not think fit to pull doone eny houses to prevent ye further spreading of ye fire: about 10 of ye clock, whilst we were at church, there was a cry in the streets yt ye Dutch and French were in armes, and had fired the Citty, and therefore ye Ministers dismist their several congregations, but wee yt were soe remote thought little of it. In the afternoon I went into the temple garden, where I saw it had made an unhappy progresse, and had consumed towards the Thames side many houses and 2 or 3 churches, as Laurence Pointney Church, which I saw strongly fired, and other churches, and at last growing violent, and meeting with many wharfes, and the wind being high, it grew very formidable, and we began to thinke of its nearer approach. By Monday morning it had burnt doone all Thames Street, New Fish Street, and some part of Cannon Street, and thereupon ye Citizens began to neglect ye fire, and in fine, and to be short, by Wednesday evening it had burnt all the City: yesterday I went from St. Dunstan’s Church to Bpgates Street, and there is not one house standing betwixt those places, there one only within the wall, but a part of these 3 streets remaining, viz. part of Leadenhall Street, Basinghall and Bpgates Street, all the rest burnt to the ground, and not so much as a considerable piece of timber as I could see saved from the fire: it is impossible almost to conceive the total destruction, all the churches burnt, nay, some of ye churches, as Bow Church and ... have not so much as the walls standing: all the Halls, as Guild-hall, Merchant Taylors, Mercers Chapel, Old Exchange, burnt downe to the ground, soe yt you can hardly tell where such a Parish or place was: I can say but this, that there is nothing but stones and rubbish, and all exposed to the open aire, soe yt you may see from one end of ye Citty almost to the other. St. Paul’s Church, ye very stones, are crumbled and broken into shivers, and slatts, and you can compare London (were yt not for ye rubbish) to nothing more than an open field. The Citizens were forced to remove their goods into the open fields, and £2:10 a Cart was no deare value to carry away ye goods, the inner Temple almost all burnt, and pulled down except ye Temple Church, ye Hall much defaced, and ye Exchequer Office, Sergeants Inn in Fleet Street, and all to St. Dunstan’s Church, and soe on ye other side to Holborne Bridge: ye King and Duke of Yorke were exceedingly active, or otherwise I doubt the suburbs would have undergone ye same calamity. Some have conceived it was a plott, but most, and ye King himself, believed yt it was only ye Hand of God. Ye King comforts ye Citizens with ye rebuilding of ye Citty, but God knows when yt will be: ye Exchange is now kept at Gresham College, where I heard yesterday there was a full exchange of Merchants. My father’s house at St. Ellens stands well; the fire began to seize upon Chancery Lane, having burnt up Fetter Lane, and came as far as Brides Lane and Whites Alley, but, blessed be God, suppressed, and all things safe at your house and chambers: but Mr. Hainson of Cateaton Street Mr. Lowe has enquired for, and cannot hear of him, his house suffered the same calamity. Dr. Tillotson has lost many goods and £100 worth of books: he has taken a house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where his father-in-law purposes to remain. 40,000 quarters of Corne destroyed in Bridewell—being the City—store. Sir William Backhouse has lost £1600 per an. in houses and in the benefit of ye New River. Sir R. Lucy and ye Lady Allen and Lady Fairfax about 3 or 400 per an. Sir Richard Browne’s house burnt to the ground, where he has sustained great losses, and my brother Broone likewise, for my sister being then ill, all the care was to remove her. They and all now at ye Red Lyon, Holborne, my sister at her sister Howards house at Rockhampton. My father came up on Monday, and staid removing his goods till Wednesday morning, and I sat up all ye night, but through Mercy, Chancery Lane is yet standing, except St. John’s Head next Lincolns ... was pulled doone by way of prevention, and another house towards Holborne. The Parliament will certainly meet at ye day: ye Duke of Albemarle is now in London. There was a flying report of an engagement at sea, but not confirmed. Several persons, foreigners, are in prison upon suspicion, but little will be made of it, as I am informed the Attorney-General very ill. My father and his family are well at Albany, where my wife went on Thursday last. I had gone my circuit and my last two counties this week, but ye fire prevented my intentions. If we cannot find out your cousin Harrison I’le go to Totnam on Tuesday next and inquire after him, and how it stands in reference to your goods in his custody; but I believe he having notice sufficient, and being a prudent man, has secured both his owne and youre goods. Houses are now at an excessive value, and my Lord Treasurer’s new buildings are now in great request. I think it best yt you remove noe goods either in your house or chambers, for I doe believe ye danger is well over, only we have frequent alarms of fire, sometimes in one place and then in another: it only now burns in cellars and warehouses, where either coals, spirits, or other combustible matters were lodged. I thinke it convenient yt you be here agst the sitting of Parliament, for there will be need of you: great watch is kept, for though the judgements of God have been soe remarkable, yet you would wonder at ye profaneness of people, and how little some are concerned in this sad calamity. My hearty service to my sister and nephew, Sir Robert: my father writt a letter this week to you, but no post went, and I cannot come at ye letter. My mother has had a great loss in her house by Ludgate—for what service I can perform pray command me. My paper bids me end. Our navy is come into St. Helen’s Bay.—I am your ever loving brother, most ready to serve you,

Edw. Atkyns.”

The following account is from Dean Milman’s Annals of St. Paul’s.

“A certain Doctor Taswell remembered well the awful event, for it happened between his election and admission as a king’s scholar at Westminster. It was likely to be graven deeply on the memory of a boy. ‘On Sunday between ten and eleven, just as I was standing upon the steps leading up to the pulpit in Westminster Abbey, I discovered some people below me, running to and fro in a seeming inquietude and consternation; immediately almost a report reached my ears that London was in a conflagration. Without any ceremony I took leave of the preacher, and having ascended the Parliament steps near the Thames, I soon perceived four boats crowded with objects of distress. These had escaped from the fire scarce under any covering but that of a blanket.’

The next day (Monday) Dolben, then Dean of Westminster, set gallantly forth at the head of the Westminster boys (the Dean, by Taswell’s account, had frequently in the civil wars mounted guard as sentinel) to do what they could to render assistance in staying the fire. They went a long way, for they aided in saving the Church of St. Dunstan in the East by fetching water from the back sides of the building, and so extinguishing the fire. Taswell acted as a sort of aide-de-camp page to the Dean. During this expedition Taswell may have heard or seen what he relates about St. Paul’s. ‘The people who lived contiguous to St. Paul’s Church raised their expectations greatly concerning the absolute security of that place upon account of the immense thickness of its walls and its situation, built on a large piece of ground on every side remote from houses.’ Upon that account they filled it with all sorts of goods; and besides, in the Church of St. Faith, under that of St. Paul, they deposited libraries of books, because it was entirely arched over; and with great caution and prudence even the least avenue, through which the smallest spark could penetrate, was stopped up. ‘But,’ Taswell proceeds, ‘this precaution availed them little. As I stood upon the bridge (a small one over a creek at the foot of what is now Westminster Bridge), among many others, I could not but observe the progress of the fire towards that venerable fabric. About eight o’clock it broke out on the top of St. Paul’s Church, almost scorched up by the violent heat of the air and lightning too, and before nine blazed so conspicuously as to enable me to read very clearly a 16mo. edition of Terence which I carried in my pocket.’ This was on Tuesday 4th; on Thursday, like a bold boy, Taswell, soon after sunrising, endeavoured to reach St. Paul’s. ‘The ground was so hot as almost to scorch my shoes, and the air so intensely warm, that unless I had stopped some time upon Fleet Bridge to rest myself, I must have fainted under the extreme languor of my spirits. After giving myself a little time to breathe, I made the best of my way to St. Paul’s.

And now let any person judge of the extreme emotion I was in when I perceived the metal belonging to the bells melting, the ruinous condition of the walls, with heaps of stones, of a large circumference, tumbling down with a great noise just upon my feet, ready to crush me to death. I prepared myself for retiring back again, having first loaded my pockets with several pieces of bell-metal.

I forgot to mention that near the east end of St. Paul’s’ (he must have got quite round the church) ‘a human body presented itself to me, parched up as it were with the flames, white as to skin, meagre as to flesh, yellow as to colour. This was an old decrepit woman who fled here for safety, imagining the flames would not have reached her there; her clothes were burned, and every limb reduced to a coal. In my way home I saw several engines which were bringing up to its assistance, all on fire, and those engaged with them escaping with all eagerness from the flames, which spread instantaneous almost like a wildfire, and at last, accoutred with my sword and helmet, which I picked up among many others in the ruins, I traversed this torrid zone back again.’

Taswell relates that the papers from the books in St. Faith’s were carried with the wind as far as Eton. The Oxonians observed the rays of the sun tinged with an unusual kind of redness, a black darkness seemed to cover the whole atmosphere. To impress this more deeply on Taswell’s memory, his father’s house was burned and plundered by officious persons offering to aid.”

Let us turn to London rebuilt after the Fire. The City now began to grow outside the walls with determination; it was found impossible to stop its expansion any longer. London spread out long arms and planted colonies, so to speak; the craftsmen, driven out of their old quarters in the City by the increase of trade, and consequently of warehouses, quays, shops, and offices, settled down in the new colonies. The City joined hands with Westminster; it ran houses along Holborn to the Tyburn Road; it reared a suburb at Bloomsbury; it turned Clerkenwell into a crowded town; it made settlements at Ratcliffe, Mile End, and Stepney; it created a river-side population beyond Wapping (see Appendix VI.)

The map of Porter, circa 1660 (London Topographical Society, 1898), shows us the suburbs of that date.

Beginning with the east, we find a continuous line of houses “on the wall between St. Katherine’s and Limehouse.” Wapping contains two streets parallel with the river; at intervals there are stairs. What was afterwards Ratcliffe Highway is a broad road with cottages on either side, half a mile long; on the north of this road are fields intersected by country lanes. Stepney Church stands in the middle of fields. In the Whitechapel Road there are no houses beyond the church. On the north-east of the Tower is a broad open area, on the north of which stand, apparently, some of the remains of Eastminster. In the Minories, however, we look in vain for the ruins of the nunnery, though these were undoubtedly still standing at the time. Petticoat Lane, running into Wentworth Street, is the only street leading out of Whitechapel. On the north of Wentworth Street are the Spittle Fields; the Cloister and Cross of St. Mary Spital are visible. Lines of houses run north along Bishopsgate Street as far as Shoreditch Church.

North-east of Moorfields are Finsbury Fields. Cripplegate Without and Clerkenwell are thickly populated, including the Barbican, Chiswell, Red Cross, White Cross, and Grub Street. Goswell Street, as far north as the Charterhouse, Little Britain, Long Lane, and St. John Street, West Smithfield, were enclosed. There were houses as far west as St. Giles’s. Between Holborn and the Strand, or Fleet Street, lay Fetter Lane and Chancery Lane; between them large gardens; Lincoln’s Inn Fields was an open area of irregular shape, the gardens of Lincoln’s Inn occupying the same position as to-day. New Inn and Clement’s Inn have a garden behind them; Drury Lane is an open road; Covent Garden is the “Piazzo.” Along the river-side are Bridewell, Whitefriars, nearly all a garden; the Temple, Essex House, Arundel House, Somerset House, The Savoy, Worcester House, Durham House, Buckingham House, Northampton House, Whitehall, each in its own broad garden. There are no houses in Pall Mall; none in the Haymarket, except a “Gaming House” in the north-east corner. Piccadilly is “Pecadilly Mall” without a single house. Westminster consists of King Street and the lanes round the Abbey.

On the south side there is a fringe of houses on the river wall, forming a street extending for nearly a mile east of London Bridge; there are houses in “Barmisie” Lane; a single street, ending with St. George’s Church; another fringe of houses west of the Bridge, nearly as far as the bend of the river to the south. A theatre is still standing—or is it a house for bear-baiting?—apparently on the site of the Globe. There is a strange and unexpected street, with houses on either side, in the very middle of Lambeth Marsh. And with these exceptions, and a few cottages dotted about, there are no houses south of the river at all. The whole of the low-lying ground is covered with gardens, orchards, and meadows.

Turning now to the new London as it was after the Fire, we have Ogilby’s excellent map of 1677 (see Map) showing the whole of London from Somerset House to St. Katherine by the Tower, and from the river to Clerkenwell, Chiswell Street, and Norton Folgate. It does not, indeed, include Westminster or Southwark. This map is an exact survey of the town as it was during the latter part of the seventeenth century, making allowance for some increase of houses in the northern suburbs. It is on the large scale of 100 feet to the inch; it presents every building, every street, and every lane, court, and alley. It consists of twenty sheets. I propose to pass this map under review, taking the streets in line from west to east.

The area of the City within the walls, according to Ogilby, was 380 acres; including the Liberties, it was 680 acres; the length from Temple Bar to Whitechapel Bar is 9256 feet, or one mile, six furlongs, and a pole; the breadth from the Bars of Bishopsgate to the Bridge 4653 feet, or seven furlongs and two poles. If we include the suburbs, the distance between Blackwall inclusive and St. James’s Street is nearly six miles; between St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, and the end of Blackman Street, Southwark, is two and a half miles.

In Clerkenwell, we observe, taking St. James’s Church as a centre, that on the north side, apparently on the site of the Cloister, there lies a garden surrounded by buildings named “The Duke of Newcastle.” On the south-east side is the churchyard; on the west and south-west are Clerkenwell Close and Clerkenwell Green. A hundred yards north-west of the church stands the “New Corporation Court Yard” with its “Bridewell Yard” and the “New Prison Walk” leading to it. Behind the Court Yard is a “Churchyard for Clerkenwell.” Beyond and west of the Court are bowling fields, ponds—one of them a ducking pond—pasture lands, and private gardens; the houses are few. In the south part, however, round Hockley in the Hole, at the east end of which is a pond, the houses stand thickly with small gardens and open courts. Clerkenwell Green leads into St. John Street where the Inns begin. Here are the White Horse Yard and the Red Bull Yard; here are Aylesbury House and Gardens, 500 feet long by 200 feet broad. The east side of the street is lined with houses, apparently of the humbler kind, for they have no gardens and are divided by narrow alleys or lanes. On the north lie “Gardiners’ Gardens,” that is, market gardens. Between St. John’s Street and Goswell Street are fields and woods, belonging to the Charter House. Old Street runs out of Goswell Street, and like the east side of that street and the east side of St. John’s Street, it is lined with small houses and narrow alleys. Between Goswell Street and Bunhill Fields lies a quarter thickly inhabited and covered with houses. Golden Lane and White Cross Street run across this district in a north-west direction. Between the two streets, on the north of Playhouse Yard, is a churchyard, and on the Bunhill side are gardens behind the houses; the largest of them is not more than 80 feet square. There is no church in this thickly populated area, more than a quarter of a mile long by nearly as much broad. It is evidently a place inhabited by the craftsmen, most of whom have ceased to live any longer in the City. The houses and gardens of Bunhill overlooking the “New Artillery Garden” remind us that many of the citizens had already begun to live out of town. Continuing east, beyond the Artillery Garden, we find Upper Moorfields, with trees planted on all four sides and paths intersecting; a large area called “Butchers’ Close or Tenter Field,” and a thickly built part bounded on the north by Hog Lane, and on the east by Norton Folgate. Here, again, the abundance of narrow alleys and the houses without gardens proclaim a humble population. Shoreditch is lined with houses; on its east side lies a large open space called Porter Close, with Spital Fields beyond. Two or three streets are fully built, but the vacant spaces are many and wide. No church is on this part of the map, except St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch. We observe on the west of Norton Folgate two or three of the little streams which formerly ran across the moor here; they lie open for a little space and then disappear again.

The second line of maps carries us from east to west in the latitude of Gray’s Inn. The only buildings of the Inn are South Square, Gray’s Inn Square, and the Hall and Chapel. The rest of the Inn is planted thickly with trees, or lies open, a beautiful garden. Not far to the east of Gray’s Inn are the great gardens of Furnival’s Inn. Between Gray’s Inn Road and the Fleet River lies a quarter thickly populated on the west and the east, but with many open spaces, especially on either side of Hatton Garden and Saffron Hill. What were these open spaces? They were not gardens, or the fact would have been indicated; they were not enclosed. Were they simply open spaces, the playground of children, the retreat of pickpockets? In this place, apparently, no gentlefolk dwelt, and there is no church.

We now cross over the Fleet and find ourselves in the classic regions of Turnmill Street, Cow Cross, and Chick Lane. Here, however, we are in a suburb which has been occupied and partly built over since the twelfth century. North of Chick Lane is the new churchyard of St. Sepulchre’s, re-discovered recently when excavations took place which revealed stacks of human bones regularly laid and piled. I believe that these bones were moved from the old churchyard, which seems the only way to account for their great number, and the regular method of laying them. They have now been moved to some consecrated ground, and the place is built over. St. John’s Lane leads to St. John’s Gate, and Berkeley House and Gardens are on the west side; the great houses of the Elizabethan period are replaced by mean tenements. On the south side of St. John’s Street is “Hix’s” Hall. Further south, again, passing through the Bars, we are in Smithfield. The church of Little St. Bartholomew was not yet within the Hospital; that of St. Bartholomew the Great shows the ambulatory and the Lady Chapel, but not the transepts. Charter House shows the Courts as at present; on the east side of Charterhouse Yard are the houses and gardens of the Marquis of Dorchester and Lord Gray. St. Bartholomew’s Close is a large open space; Cloth Fair and the narrow streets around it are much the same to-day as then; the whole area is covered with narrow alleys and courts with narrow openings. Between Aldersgate Street and Little Moor Fields lies a suburb thickly built over except on the northern portion south of Chiswell Street, where the houses are more scattered and there are gardens and, apparently, small fields. The same remarkable abundance of open courts approached by narrow passages that has been already mentioned may be observed here. East of Aldersgate, and just under the wall at the Cripplegate angle, are the gardens of Thanet House. North of Barbican are those of Bridgewater House. St. Giles’s Church has taken over a part of the town ditch for an extension of its churchyard; the wall is encroached upon on both sides by buildings, but a strip on the south side is still left free from buildings. As regards the portion of the City included in this street, it will be noticed farther on. The upper field has trees planted along its sides and diagonally from point to point shading two intersecting fields; the lower field has also trees along its sides and two paths across at right angles, also planted with trees. On these fields the people turned out by the Fire encamped until they could rebuild their houses; it is, however, impossible to describe the great number of streets east and west of the Fields, without feeling sure that the houses afforded lodgings, better or worse, for the great majority of the homeless. On the south of Moorfields stood the New Bethlehem Hospital, a long narrow building on the outside of the wall, a piece of which has been cut down to afford an entrance from the City. The old churchyard of Bethlehem, about 200 feet by 300 feet, lay on the north-east side of Lower Moorfields; the site of St. Mary Bethlehem is preserved in the name of a street or court: “Bethlehem”—between the yard and Bishopsgate Street Without. St. Botolph’s without Bishopsgate has taken a large piece of the town ditch for an extension of churchyard; the lane running along its north side leads into Petty France, now called North Broad Street. All the ground about this part is now swallowed up by the Liverpool and Broad Street Stations. Bishopsgate Street Without, with the ground east and west, is completely built up and covered with houses. The site of Old Artillery Garden is still marked by Artillery Lane, which led into it. East of Bishopsgate Street we find Petticoat Lane, Wentworth (then called Wentford) Street, Brick Lane, Carter Street, Fashion Street, Dean and Tower Streets, and other streets and lanes, lined with houses but not yet filled in with courts; the houses, in nearly all cases, have gardens behind them. One wishes for a drawing of one of these early Whitechapel streets, but in vain. Tenter fields fill up the spaces not yet built over.

We next come to the third line of maps. On the north of this line runs the noble highway of Holborn; on its north side we pass Warwick House, Gray’s Inn; and Brook House, evidently a stately building in the form of a court, with a gateway to the street and gardens behind; this is separated from Furnival’s Inn by a narrow lane. The Inn, whose gardens we have already noticed, presents in plan an oblong outer court, a hall and chapel, and an unfinished inner court; Ely House has a court, gardens and buildings, and a hall. In the street itself stands the Middle Row, only taken down a few years ago; at its east end, and just west of Staple Inn, are the Holborn Bars. We next observe Chancery Lane; its west side is largely taken up with Lincoln’s Inn. The Inn itself consists of the first two courts, the chapel, and the hall; the rest is all garden, open on the east to Chancery Lane, and on the west to the Fields. Lincoln’s Inn Fields are not enclosed and are crossed by paths; the south side is occupied by “Portugal Row.” South of the Inn, on the ground now covered by part of New Square and by part of the High Courts of Justice, is an open space called Lower Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the existence of which appears to have been neglected by writers on topography. On the east side of Chancery Lane there are continuous houses, and behind them the gardens of Staple Inn, the Rolls with the Master’s house, the chapel, and the gardens.

Following the south side of Holborn we find Staple Inn, much as it is at the present day, but with fine and spacious gardens; Barnard’s Inn, as it was before it was turned into a school; Fetter Lane, where most of the houses still had gardens; Thavies Inn, with its two courts and its small garden; and St. Andrew’s Church and Churchyard. The labyrinth of undistinguished streets called Harding Street, New Street, etc., is almost the same in 1677 as at present, save that it was not as yet the Printers’ Quarter.

At the end of Holborn is Holborn Bridge, crossing the Fleet, which is here called the New Canal; barges and boats lie upon it. At the back of the street now called Farringdon Street, facing the stream, are two burial yards, one belonging to St. Andrew’s, Holborn; the other, lower down, to St. Bride’s, Fleet Street; on the west side a great number of narrow streets branch off to the east, ending at Snow Hill and the Old Bailey. Newgate Prison lies north and south of the Gate, quite separated from the court. The Gate and wall crossed the road 200 yards east of Giltspur Street. Passing over Holborn Bridge we can walk up Snow Hill, which leads us to St. Sepulchre’s Church and Newgate, or we can keep straight on through Cock Lane to Giltspur Street, Pie Corner, and St. Bartholomew’s and Smithfield. The Hospital consists apparently of one court only. Three large churchyards lie round it: that of St. Bartholomew the Less; that called “Bartholomew Churchyard,” and the “Hospital Churchyard,” on the site of the town ditch. In front of Newgate Prison stood a block of buildings like the Middle Row of Holborn, Butcher’s Row in the Strand, or Holywell Street; on the west side the narrow street was called the Little Old Bailey. Among the courts leading out of the Little Old Bailey we observe Green Arbour Court, afterwards the residence of Oliver Cromwell.

The next sheet is altogether within the City.

We then come to Aldgate and Whitechapel. The eastern limits of the map run through Goodman’s Fields, in 1677 really open fields. We observe that from Aldgate to the Tower, the site of the town ditch is still left open. A broad space not built over lies across the site of the Minories.

The last line of streets begins with Somerset House. Taking the north side we find Lyon’s Inn between Holywell Street and Wych Street; Clement’s Inn and New Inn, side by side, each with its two courts and its garden; Butcher Row, built in the middle of the Strand, and a labyrinth of courts, lanes, and yards lying between Clement’s Inn and Bell Yard, the whole now occupied by the High Courts of Justice; Clifford’s Inn lies north of St. Dunstan’s Church in Fleet Street.

On the south side we get Somerset House and Gardens, soon to be all built over; the two Temples with their gardens—a vast number of wherries are waiting at the Temple Stairs—and the Whitefriars Precinct, between Whitefriars Lane and Water Lane, where there is a dock for barges. St. Bride’s is called St. Bridget’s; the Palace of Bridewell, with its two courts and two gateways, is represented as still standing. The Duke’s Theatre on the south-east side of Salisbury Court perhaps accounts for the number of wherries gathered at the stairs.

Passing over the City we come to the Tower, and beyond the Tower to the eastern boundary of our map. As to the crowded lanes and courts on the other side of the Tower, there is nothing to say about them; they belong to the Precinct of St. Katherine, now almost entirely converted into a dock.

We have thus gone all round the City from Somerset House west to St. Katherine’s east, and from the City wall on the south to Clerkenwell on the north. These were no longer rural retreats or villages; they were, for the most part, completely built over and laid out in streets; there were among them half a dozen noblemen’s houses. As there were none left in the City, it is certain that the former connection between the City and the nobility had been well-nigh destroyed; but not quite. Prince Rupert is said to have lived in the Barbican, and there are still the houses we have found in Ogilby and those along the riverside between the Temple and Westminster. In all these suburbs there are as yet no new churches, and for all these crowded suburbs, only ten old churches. There are few schools. In the seventeenth century was begun the fatal neglect of the populace, formerly living in the City under surveillance and discipline, taught, trained, and kept in their place. This was the creating cause of the terrible London mob of the next century. What could be expected, when a vast population was allowed to grow up without guidance, without instruction, without religion, and without even a police? We observe also that outside the City there was a great number of market gardens, with gardens at the back of every house until the space is wanted, when courts and alleys are run into them. The Londoner always loved a garden, and had one as long as he could (see Appendix VII.).

Let us next, very briefly, consider the City of 1677 as represented by this map. It is eleven years after the Fire. It is sometimes stated, loosely, that it took a great many years to rebuild London. The statement is only true as regards the churches and the companies’ halls. The City itself was rebuilt with every possible despatch. As for the plans prepared by Wren and Evelyn, they came under the consideration of the Council after the people had begun with feverish haste to clear away the rubbish and to rebuild. The actual alterations made by order of the Mayor were carefully enumerated by Maitland, and will be found in their place (Appendices V. and VI.).

We must remember that the people, deprived of their shops and their warehouses, huddled together in temporary huts erected on Moorfields, with the winter before them, or lodged in the mean tenements of the suburbs, living on bounty and charity, were eager to get back to their own places. Every man claimed his own ground; every heap of rubbish was the site of a house; every house had its owner or its tenant; without a workshop or his counter there was no means of making a livelihood. Therefore, even before the ashes were cooled, the people were picking their way through the encumbered lanes, crying “Mine! Mine!” and shovelling away the rubbish in order to put up the walls anew. The improvements ordered by the Mayor were not, one fears, carried out exactly; we know by sad experience the difficulty of getting such an order or a regulation obeyed. If we look into Ogilby’s map we see plainly that as regards the streets and courts, London after the Fire was very much the same as London before the Fire; there were the same narrow streets, the same crowded alleys, the same courts and yards. Take, for instance, the small area lying between Bread Street Hill on the west and Garlick Hill on the east, between Trinity Lane on the north and Thames Street on the south: is it possible to crowd more courts and alleys into this area? Can we believe that after the Fire London was relieved of its narrow courts with this map before us? Look at the closely-shut-in places marked on the maps, “1 g., m. 46, m. 47, m. 48, m. 40.” These are respectively, Jack Alley, Newman’s Rents, Sugar Loaf Court, Three Cranes Court, and Cowden’s Rents. Some of these courts survive to this day. They were formed, as the demand for land grew, by running narrow lanes between the backs of houses and swallowing up the gardens. There were 479 such courts in Ogilby’s London of 1677, 472 alleys, and 172 yards, besides 128 inns, each of which, with its open courts for the standing of vehicles, and its galleries, stood retired from the street on a spot which had once been the fair garden of a citizen’s house.

The projecting upper stories had disappeared; wooden houses and thatched roofs were no longer permitted; moreover, the hot breath of the Fire had burned up the infected soil, the noisome laystalls, and the plague-smitten churchyards; the wreck and rubbish of the Fire had choked the wells fed from the contaminated soil: these were not, for the most part, reopened. As for the churches, we know the date of the rebuilding of every one. In 1677 there were only about twenty rebuilt out of all the eighty-seven which were burned down; a white square space on the map indicates the site of a church not yet rebuilt.

The picturesqueness of London had been lost; gables, projecting stories, casement windows gave place to a straight faÇade, and flat square windows with sashes. In this map of 1677 we step from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century. And the most ardent admirer of Wren will hardly aver that his cathedral and his churches were externally more beautiful, while they were much less venerable, than those which they replaced.

The demand for land and its value was shown in the curious way in which many of the churches were built. Some had houses beside and over the porch; some against the north or south side: as, for instance, the church of St. Ethelburga, which still has houses built before the west front; the churches of St. Peter Cornhill, St. Mary le Bow, and St. Michael, the church of St. Alphege, all hidden by houses. The old craft quarters had by this time almost disappeared. But there were still places which continued to keep what modern tradesmen call a “line.” Linen-drapers and toymen were found in Fleet Street; here also jewellers held raffles; mutton was sold in Newgate Market; beef in Leadenhall; veal at St. James’s; the cheesemongers set up their shops in Thames Street; second-hand booksellers round Moorfields; second-hand clothes-men in Monmouth Street: fruit was sold in Covent Garden; mercers were always faithful to Cheapside; bankers and money-lenders were found in Lombard Street; milliners had stalls in the upper rooms of the Royal and the New Exchange.

The frays and feuds between the crafts, which constantly arose during the earlier centuries, had almost become things of the past: but in 1664 the weavers and the butchers reminded the elders of the good old days by one more burst of brawling and fighting. It seems strange that so peaceful a creature as the weaver came oft victorious. The weavers marched triumphantly about the streets offering a hundred pounds for the production of a butcher, and the blue smocks stayed at home in the shambles of Newgate, inglorious and defeated. And a butcher, too! a man of blood and slaughter! The streets, with the exception of Cheapside and Ludgate Hill, were not used by ladies as a place of walking and meeting. The merchants met on ’Change; the lawyers had their Inns of Court; for social and convivial purposes there were the taverns. Nor were the streets used greatly for purposes of locomotion; if a man wished to go from the Tower stairs to Blackfriars or from the Temple to Westminster, he took a boat; the Thames was, and continued until the nineteenth century, the great highway of the City; thousands of boats and barges plied up and down the river; the old ferry—the ferry of St. Mary Overies—still crossed the river above the bridge; that called the Horseferry still crossed the river at Westminster. It was a great deal easier and shorter to take oars than to walk, to ride, or to take a “glass coach”: one of the newly invented machines which replaced the old coach, with its perforated sides for windows. No one thought it a scandal that the watermen on the river should exchange language which in these days would drive every decent man or woman from the boats for ever. It was natural that rough and coarse men, like the watermen, should use rough and coarse language. The ladies of Charles the Second’s time heard coarseness unparalleled from these fellows with much the same air with which ladies of our own time pass a group of working-men energetically strengthening every assertion with the universal adjective. They hear, but they do not hear.

As we already know, shooting London Bridge was a dangerous feat except at high and low water. Some of the boats were tilt boats, covered, that is, with a tilt or awning of canvas to keep off the rain; they were a kind of omnibus, and ran between Greenwich and London, with other lines. Most of them, however, were wherries of the kind which still survive, though they are now little used. It is melancholy to look at the river of to-day above Bridge and to compare its silence and loneliness with the animation and bustle of two hundred years ago, when it was covered with boats taking passengers up and down the river, barges with parties, stately barges of the Mayor and the Companies, Royal barges, cargo-freighted barges, boats with anglers moored in mid stream, tilt boats, sailing boats, and every conceivable kind of small craft. When the Queen came down from Hampton Court ten thousand boats accompanied her.

We read a great deal about the insanitary condition of the City, the narrow lanes, the projecting storeys nearly meeting at the top, the laystalls and the stinking heaps of offal and refuse, which were not abolished by the Fire but only burnt up. No doubt these things were bad; probably they contributed to the spread of the Plague. However, the City was as healthy as any town in the world, as cities then went; it stood upon a broad tidal river which swept up a fresh wind with every tide—twice a day; the City was less than half a mile in breadth, and on all sides it was surrounded by open spaces and broad moorland. Fresh pure air on every side, without a town to speak of for twenty miles around. Moreover it stood upon a hill, or many hills; the ground sloped to the river and to the two streams; the climate had always been rainy, and the rain washed the streets and carried away the decaying matter.

There were public latrines in the streets and cesspools at the back of every house; carts went about for the collection and removal of things which require removal; they emptied their contents sometimes in the river, unless they were stopped; sometimes in “laystalls,” of which there continued to be many outside the walls. One need do no more than indicate the sanitary condition of a great town without any sewers.

Pepys, in one of his observations upon the effects of the Fire, says that the Royal Exchange “is now made pretty” by having windows and doors before all the shops to keep off the cold. So that before 1666 the shops in the Royal Exchange were mere stalls open to the cold and wind. This, I take it, was the condition of nearly all the shops at that time; they had no doors, and if any glass in front, then only in the upper parts.