[-267-]
Postscript
FIRE OF LONDON - ITS RAVAGES - ITS EFFECT UPON
WE have frequently alluded to the Fire of London,
and the effect it had upon the present condition of the Metropolis; a long
account of this great national calamity would have been out of place in the
middle of this volume, but, perhaps, it may be welcome to some few at the end of
the book. There is, in fact, a striking difference between the older parts of
London, and those of foreign cities, which is mainly owing to the fire. In other
countries we are enabled to trace the different periods of domestic,
ecclesiastical, or civil architecture, by the buildings which survive in
different parts of the Metropolis. In London, the Hotel de Ville, or Mansion
House, is little more than one hundred years old. The City Halls of the olden
times must have been glorious buildings, if we may judge by Crosby Hall; and the
dwelling-houses quaint structures, if the Holborn end of Staple's Inn is a fair
specimen; but the fire has been fatal to our curiosity in this respect; so that
Bristol, York, and Chester still preserve more models of a bygone age than
London itself. The palace of Bridewell, the residence of Henry VIII.; the
remains of John of Gaunt's House, Old St. Paul's, which, however Inigo [-268-]
Jones is supposed in his ignorance of Gothic architecture to have
spoiled; the Old Custom House, on the site of that rebuilt by Charles II., were
the victims of this dreadful catastrophe.
The fire broke out on the 2nd of September, 1666, in the
middle of the night; a high wind aided its fury. The following is the account
given in the London Gazette.
"On the 2nd instant, at one of the clock of the morning,
there happened to break out a sad and deplorable fire in Pudding Lane, near New
Fish Street, which falling out at that hour of the night, and in a quarter of
the town so close built, with wooden pitched houses, spread itself so far before
day, and with such distraction to the inhabitants and neighbours, that care was
not taken for the timely preventing of the farther diffusion of it by pulling
down houses, as ought to have been; so that this lamentable fire, in a short
time, became too big to be mastered by any engines in working near it. It fell
out most unhappily too, that a violent easterly wind fomented it, and kept it
burning all that day and night following, spreading itself to Gracechurch Street
and downwards, from Cannon Street to the waterside, as far as the Three Cranes
in the Vintry. The people in all parts about it distracted by the vastness of
it, and their particular care to carry away their goods, many attempts were made
to prevent the spread of it by pulling down houses and making great intervals,
but all in vain, the fire seizing upon the timbers and rubbish, and so
continuing itself even [-269-] through these
spaces, and raging in a bright flame all Monday and Tuesday, notwithstanding His
Majesty's own and his Royal Highnesses indefatigable and personal pains to apply
all possible remedies to prevent it, calling upon and helping the people with
their guards; and great number of nobility and gentry, unweariedly assisting
therein, for which they were requited with a thousand blessings from the poor
distressed people.
"By the favour of God the wind slackened a little on
Tuesday night, and the flames meeting with brick buildings at the Temple, by
little and little it was observed to lose its force on that side, so that on
Wednesday morning we began to hope well, and his Royal Highness never despairing
or slackening his personal care, wrought so well that day, assisted in some
parts by the Lords of the Council, before and behind it, that a stop was put to
it at the Temple Church, near Holbourn Bridge, Pie Corner, Aldersgate,
Cripplegate, near the lower end of Bishopsgate Street, and Leadenhall Street, at
the Standard in Cornhill, at the church in Fenchurch Street, near Clothworkers'
Hall, in Mincing Lane, at the middle of Mark Lane, and at the Tower Dock. On
Thursday, by the blessing of God, it was wholly beat down and extinguished; but
so as that evening it unhappily burst out again fresh at the Temple, by the
falling of some sparks (as is supposed) upon a pile of wooden buildings; but his
Royal Highness, who watched there that whole night in person, by the great
labour and diligence [-270-] used, and especially
by applying powder to blow up the houses about it; before day most happily
mastered it. Divers strangers - Dutch and French-were, during the fire,
apprehended upon suspicion that they contributed mischievously to it, who are
all imprisoned, and informations prepared to make a severe inquisition thereupon
by my Lord Chief Justice Keeling, assisted by some of the Lords of the Privy
Council, and some principal members of the city, notwithstanding which
suspicions, the manner of the burning all along in a train, and so blown
forwards in all its way by strong winds, makes us conclude the whole was an
effect of an unhappy chance, or to speak better, the heavy hand of God upon us
for our sins, showing us the tenor of his judgment in thus raising the fire, and
immediately after, his miraculous and never enough to be acknowledged mercy in
putting a stop to it when we were in the last despair, and that all attempts for
the quenching it, however industriously proposed, seemed insufficient. His
Majesty then sat hourly in council, and ever since bath continued making rounds
about the City in all parts of it, where the danger and mischief was greatest,
till this morning that he bath sent his Grace the Duke of Albemarle, whom he
bath called for to assist him in this great occasion, to put his happy and
successful hand to the finishing this memorable deliverance.
"About the Tower, the seasonable orders given for
plucking down houses to secure the magazines of powder, were more especially
successful, that part being [-271-] up the wind,
notwithstanding which it came almost to the very gates of it, so as by this
early provision, the several stores of war lodged in the Tower, were entirely
saved. And we have further, this infinite cause particularly to give God thanks
that the fire did not happen in any of those places where His Majesty's naval
stores are kept, so as though it pleased God to visit us with his own hand, he
bath not by disfurnishing us with the means of carrying on war, subjected us to
our enemies.
"It must be observed that this fire happened in a part
of the town where though the commodities were not very rich, yet they were so
bulky that they could not be removed, so that the inhabitants of that part where
it first began have sustained very great loss; but by the best inquiry we can
make, the other parts of the town, where the commodities were of greater value,
took the alarm so early that they saved most of their goods of value, which
possibly may have diminished their loss, though some think that if the whole
industry of the inhabitants had been applied to the stopping of the fire, and
not to the saving of their particular goods, the success might have been much
better, not only to the public, but to many of them in their own particulars.
Through this sad accident it is easy to be imagined how many persons were
necessitated to remove themselves and goods into the open fields, where they
were forced to continue some time, which could not but work compassion in the
beholders; [-272-] but his Majesty's care was most
signal on this occasion, who, besides his personal pains, was frequent in
consulting all ways for relieving those distressed persons, which produced so
good an effect, as well by his Majesty's proclamation, and the orders issued to
the neighbour justices of the peace to encourage the sending in provisions to
the markets, which are publickly known, as by other directions, that when his
Majesty, fearing lest other orders might not yet have been sufficient, had
commanded the Victualler of his Navy to send bread into Moorfields for the
relief of the poor, which for the more speedy supply he sent in bisket, out of
the sea stores, it was found that the markets had been already so well supplied,
that people being unaccustomed to that kind of bread declined it, and so it was
returned in great part to his Majesty's stores again without any use made of
it."
We are told, in another account, that the fire broke out in a
baker's shop in Pudding Lane, in the lower part of the city, near Thames Street,
amongst rotten wooden houses. They who are curious in such matters may not be
aware that Cripplegate Church was uninjured, and that in the churchyard are
still some remains of the old city wall; the church is a strange medley of
architecture, and the pews and pulpit in the stiff taste of the last two
centuries-great square boxes, whilst above them are Gothic windows.
"The damage done by the fire is thus computed. Burned
and consumed 12,000 houses within the walls [-273-] of
the city, and above 1,000 more without the walls, but all of them within the
freedom and liberty of London, that is in all 13,000; or, as others say, 13,200
houses; there were also destroyed the Cathedral Church of St. Paul's, which was
then being rebuilt, and, as to the stone work, almost finished. Also
eighty-seven parish churches, and six consecrated chapels, most of the principal
and public edifices, as the great Guildhall, wherein were nine several courts
belonging to the city: the Royal Exchange, the King's Custom House, Justice
Hall, where the sessions were kept eight or nine times in the year for the trial
of murderers, felons, and other malefactors, the four prisons, four of the
principal gates of the city, and fifty halls of companies, most of which were
most magnificent structures and palaces. The whole damage sustained by this fire
is almost incredible.
"The damage done is thus estimated :-
In houses burnt £3,900,000
In churches and public edifices as
follows :-
The
eighty-seven parish churches at £.8,000 each - £696,000
Six chappels
at £.2,000 each £12,000
The Royal
Exchange at - £50,000
The King's
Custom House at £10,000
The fifty-two
halls of companies, at £.15,000 each £780,000
Three of the
city gates at £.3,000 each £9,000
[-274-] The Jail of Newgate
£15,000
Four stone
bridges £6,000
The Sessions
House £7,000
The Guildhall
and courts and offices belonging to it £40,000
Blackwell
Hall £3,000
Bridewell
£5,000
Poultry
Compter £5,000
Wood Street
Compter £2,000
"To
which add
Towards
building of St. Paul's Cathedral £2,000,000
The wares,
household stuffs, monies, and other moveable goods, &c. £2,000,000
The hire of
porters, carts, waggons, barges, boats for removing wares and household stuff .
. £200,000
In printed
books £150,000
In wine,
tobacco, sugar, and of which the city was then very full £1,500,000
For public
works enjoined by Act of Parliament £41,500
[Total]
£11,432,500"
The following causes were supposed to have contributed to the
great destruction of property:-
"The fire began between one and two o'clock, after
midnight when all were in a dead sleep.
[-275-] "It broke out on
Saturday night when many of the most eminent merchants and others were retired
into the country, and none but servants left to look to their city houses.
"It was in the long vacation, being that particular time
of the year when many wealthy citizens and tradesmen, were wont to be in the
country at fairs, and getting in of debts, and making up accompts with their
chapmen.
"The closeness of the building and narrowness of the
streets 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.
"The matter of which the houses were-timber, and those
very old.
"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 had so dried the timber, that it was never more apt to take fire.
"The nature of the wares and commodities stowed and
vended in those parts were most combustible of any sold in the whole city-as
oil, pitch, tar, cordage, hemp, flax, rosin, wax, butter, cheese, wine, brandy,
sugar. An easterly wind, which is the driest of all others, had blown for
several days together before, and at that time very strongly.
"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 [-276-] which supplied all that part of
the city with Thames water, 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 confidence
of easily quenching it, and of its stopping at several places afterwards, turned
at length into 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.
"To all which reasons, must not be past over the general
suspicion that most then had of incendiaries laying combustible stuff in many
places, having observed divers distant houses to be on fire together, and many
were then taken up on suspicion*. [*SEYMOUR'S Survey of London and
Westminster.]"
Within four or five years the city was nearly rebuilt, in a
more uniform and substantial manner than before; but if the designs of Sir
Christopher Wren had been carried out, London would indeed have been a fine
city. He intended to have laid out one large street from Aldgate to Temple Bar,
in the middle of which was to have been a large square, capable of containing
the new church of St. Paul, with a proper distance for the view all round it. He
further intended to have rebuilt all the parish churches in such a manner as to
be seen at the end of every vista of houses, and dispersed at such a [-277-]
distance from one another, as neither to be too thick nor too thin. All
the houses to be uniform, and supported on a piazza like that of Covent Garden;
and by the water-side, from the bridge (London Bridge) to the Temple, he had
planned a long and broad wharf or quay, wherein he designed to have ranged all
the halls that belong to the several companies of the city, with proper
warehouses for merchants between, to vary the edifices, and to make it at once
one of the most beautiful and most useful ranges of buildings in the world. But,
says his encomiast, the hurry of rebuilding, and the disputes about property,
prevented this glorious scheme from taking place. It would seem that the great
fire was not without its use,-that houses were built on the old foundations, but
in a much better and more substantial manner than before, though not so well as
if Sir Christopher's plan had been followed. We are apt to think that the
crowding of several families into one house is an innovation of later times; it
would rather seem to have been the revival of an obsolete practice. The fire
rooted out and destroyed Rookeries, and the stringent laws laid down for the
rebuilding of the city prevented such abuses for some years; but we find Queen
Elizabeth issuing a proclamation at the time of her progress in 1572, from which
the following is an extract:-
"Yet where there are a great multitude of people brought
to inhabit in very small rooms, whereof the greater part seem very poor, - yea,
such as live of begging or worse means, - and they heaped up together [-278-]
and in a sort smothered with many families of children and servants in
one house or small tenement, it must needs follow (if any plague or popular
sickness should by God's permission enter among the multitude), that the same
would not only spread itself and invade the whole city and confines, as great
mortality should ensue to the same where Her Majesty's personal presence is many
times required, besides the great confluence of people from all parts of the
realm, by reason of the ordinary Terms for Justice there holden, but would also
be dispersed through all other parts of the realm to the manifest danger of the
whole body thereof. For the remedy whereof, Her Majesty, by good and deliberate
advice of her Council, doth straightly command all manner of persons of what
quality soever they be, to desist and forbear from any new building of any house
or tenement within three miles of the gates of the said City of London, to serve
for habitation or lodging for any person, where no former house hath been known
to have been in the memory of such as are now living; and also to forbear from
letting, or setting or suffering any more families than one only to be placed
or to inhabit from henceforth in any house that heretofore has been
inhabited." And the authorities are moreover enjoined to prevent " the
heaping up of multitudes of families in the same house, or the converting of any
one house into multitudes of tenements for dwelling or victualling places."
They are charged to prevent "the increase of [-279-] many
indwellers, or, as they are commonly called, inmates or undersitters, contrary
to the good ancient laws."
Before the Fire, we are told, that when old houses were
repaired that were of good amplitude, they would make two or three tenements of
them, to increase the rent, and these were turned some into ale-houses and let
out to the poorer sort. Great houses also were turned sometimes into alleys,
consisting of divers houses. Care was taken for the preventing of drinking
houses, more commonly cellars. Many sheds were also set up to serve for
small houses, which did but harbour poor people; there were also made holes
under the shops for the poorer sort of artisans.
Such dwellings were not the fruit of municipal arrangements
for the housing of the poor, they are the abuses of them. When men devise
deliberate plans for such ends, they are in general liberal, it may be said;
that as the carrying out of such plans does not affect the lawmakers, but rather
those whom laws control, that there is not the usual selfish inducement of
profit to guide them. It would be more true to say, that men shrink from putting
on paper that at which they are brought by custom to connive. The authorities,
before the Fire took place, wished to confine London within a given space, so
that, like continental cities, its suburbs should be rural districts, not that
it should stretch forth its arms in the form of Brixton, Camberwell, Greenwich,
Hackney, Hampstead, Hammersmith, Wandsworth, and others; [-280-]
yet the natural effect of such provision was to crowd as many persons as
could be packed within a given area. The Fire came and cleared a vast space -
cleared, in fact, almost the whole surface of what was then the City of London.
The Parishes of St. George's, Bloomsbury, St. James's, St. Martin's, were like
what our suburban districts now are, places where the nobility lived, their
residences having a background of garden, or rather park.
Oxford Street being Oxford Road, fields intervening between
Gray's Inn and Hampstead, houses scattered here and there, Rookeries could
scarcely have been as yet established beyond the precincts of the City, so that
when the fire came, it made a wholesale clearance in these time honoured
colonies. How many perished Strype and others do not tell, and we only gather
from certain enactments curtailing their excess and checking their extent, that
such purlieus were.
The citizens had no sooner looked their losses in the face
than they began to repair them. Heavy were the burdens entailed upon the funds
of that ancient corporation during many years-deep the groans of the worthy
Seymour as he pondered on or recapitulated the expense; but men must live, so
that very soon a new city stood in the place of the old one, not certainly a
very picturesque or convenient monument of good taste, not a very creditable
monument to the liberality of the nation ; but a fairer representative than its
predecessor of the liberality of the Londoners - and, considering [-281-]
the infamous excesses of the court, and the disgusting character of
Charles II., as decent a substitute as could be hoped for in old London. In this
good work Rookeries had no place, the poor were provided for, as hewers of wood
and drawers of water ever must be; still there were no special injunctions that
eight or ten families should live in a single house, nor did alleys seem to
enjoy a blissful immunity from the comforts accessible to dwellers in larger
thoroughfares.
Among the directions given for rebuilding the city, are
provisions for removing abuses; the streets to be rebuilt were to be free from
certain annoyances which their predecessors could not shake off-they were to be
raised in the neighbourhood of the Thames to a certain level, because, previous
to the fire, these streets were periodically inundated,-sewers were to be
formed, and drainage carried out after the best model and on the most scientific
plans then known - that in future the city might be spared the wasting plague,
so frequent in former times.
That part of the city which was situated near the Thames not
only suffered much from inundation previous to the Great Fire, but the ascent
was also difficult. It was therefore ordered, after the fire, that all the
ground between Thames Street and the river should be raised and made higher by
three feet, at the least, above the surface of the ground. Such old streets and
passages within the City of London and its liberty as were narrow and
incommodious for carriages and passengers, and [-282-] prejudical
to the trade and health of the inhabitants, were to be enlarged. New streets,
wharves, and markets were quickly formed. Brick was henceforth to be used
instead of wood.
We can have little idea of what London was before the fire*
[*Whilst these sheets were going through the press, the Writer was gratified by
the appearance of a large print of London, before the Fire, by BOGUE AND SON, of
Fleet Street.]. Doubtless a strange medley, - palaces and hovels, - glorious
specimens of the Tudor style, flanked by timber huts, - Inigo Jones'
masterpieces concealed by the penthouses of crumbling shops, - the Conduit in
Cheapside, a splendid relic of the past, despoiled indeed in Edward the Sixth's
time, and shorn of its glory, yet contrasting oddly with the mean buildings
which surrounded it, - Gresham's Exchange, in the quaint style perhaps of that
still remaining at Antwerp, - Old St. Paul's, multilated by the bad taste of the
age, with the stone pulpit where Hooker preached, - Smithfield, still retaining
the memory of bloody Mary and the Martyrs' fires, - the goodly hospitals,
piety's tributes in the olden time, - the city halls, speaking of the guilds and
brotherhoods, with the privileges which municipalities wrought out with their
own good swords, - churches where convents lavished their wealth, - the noble's
palace and the trader's mansion, - streets which tell better than the most
laboured annals the history of different ages, - gates which had fortified the
city's rebellion, - thoroughfares which had rung to the cry of "
Clubs" and "Prentices," - hospitals [-283-]
for diseases now forgotten,- courts of justice and cellars of merchandise, -
bridges and conduits, inns and prisons, - squares which of old had witnessed
brave feats of arms, where tournaments once kept up the spirit of a martial
age,- the scenes where fountains ran with wine on festal days, and pageants
arrayed their tasteful flattery for the new crowned Sovereign,- all alike have
perished. The wasting fire bath invaded halls the architect might have sketched
as models of his craft; stores of records which enriched a nation's history have
perished. And yet we may not lament ;-the plague, whose periodical ravages were
wont to be numbered by its tens of thousands victims, has fled the land,-the
hovels which beckoned the advancing flames, and aided them in their course, have
ceased to be; and, if the old city bath raised in their stead structures which
taste condemns, they wait perhaps for the wand of some better age to bid them
vanish; and, if streets still narrow check the traffic, and stop hurrying
concourse, the citizens have still repaired not a few of their forefathers'
errors.
For many a year were city feasts despoiled by the expenses
the fire entailed, and imposts still exist which owe their origin to this great
calamity. Yet we, as sons, reap the benefit of our fathers' tears; the flames
swept away pests which years of litigation might still have spared, which
selfishness would have clung to and avarice groaned over. Smithfield, not as
now, the last fortress of relaxing covetousness, would have been the type of
kindred shambles; St. Giles, already yielding [-284-] to
the pressure of awakened common sense, would have been kept in countenance by
wood-built Rookeries, and cholera seizing on unnumbered outposts would have
outdone the Plague!
We cannot write now of the monument as Pope did -
"Where London's column pointing
to the skies,
Like a tall bully lifts its head and
lies."
Returning charity has erased the scandal, but it is yet a
record of our fathers's loss and our gratitude; they suffered that we might be
spared. Old London is no more, but in its stead a vigorous offspring. The past
has long blotted out the traces of the fire; the present enjoys the blessings it
bequeathed.