A. D. 1666]

THE FIRE OF LONDON.

227

Pepys was roused from his sleep, at about three o'clock in the morning, and informed that a great fire had broken out; which he conceived by its appearance from his window, to be in the neighbourhood of Mark Lane. Shortly afterwards he was told that above three hundred houses had been burned down in the night, and that the fire was then burning down all Fish Street towards London Bridge. Pepys went to the Tower, and from one of its highest turrets saw the houses at that end of the bridge all on fire, and raging extensively on both sides. He descended, went to the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Robinson, who informed him that it began in the night at Faryner's, the King's Baker, in Pudding Lane, and had already burnt down St. Magnus's Church, and the greater part of Fish Street. He then took a boat, went through the bridge, saw the fire extending to the Old Swan, and before he left, the warehouses in the Steel Yard were on fire. Every one was endeavouring to remove his goods, some throwing them into the river in their despair, others putting them into lighters; poor people staying in their houses till driven out by the flames, then flying into boats, or dropping from their windows into the water.

SEEING the dreadful progress of the fire, Mr. Pepys went by water to Whitehall, saw the King and the Duke of York, told them of what he had seen, and that unless His Majesty commanded houses to be pulled down nothing could stop the progress of the fire. The King therefore commanded Pepys to go to the

Lord Mayor, from him, and desire him to spare no houses, but to pull them down in every direction to isolate the fire, and the Duke of York offered the assistance of the soldiers, if required.

MR. PEPYS started immediately on his mission, taking Captain Cocke's coach as far as St. Paul's, where he alighted, walked along Watling Street, as well as he could, being crowded with people laden with goods brought away from their burning houses; and here and there sick people carried away in their beds, the plague not having quite ceased. He at length met the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bludworth, in Cannon Street, almost spent with anxiety and fatigue. When he heard the King's message, he cried, says Pepys, like a fainting woman, made loud lamentations, complained that the people would not obey him, that he had been pulling down houses, that the fire followed faster than they could do it, that he needed no more soldiers, and that he must go and refresh himself, having been up all night; and so left the King's messenger to do as he pleased.

EVELYN, who was at Deptford when the fire broke out, went to Bankside on the Sunday, after public prayers at home, where he saw the dreadful extent of the conflagration. The whole City was in flames, burning from Cheapside to the Thames, all along Cornhill, Tower Street, Fenchurch Street, Gracechurch Street, almost to the Tower. Westward to Baynard's Castle, and Northward to St. Paul's Cathedral, the burning of which was increased, if not caused, by the

A. D. 1666]

ASPECT OF THE CITY IN FLAMES.

229

scaffolding erected around it by the Commissioners for its proposed reparations. The people, says Evelyn, were so astonished, that from the beginning of the fire, whether by despondency or fate, he knew not, hardly stirred to quench it; so that there was nothing heard or seen, but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures. Such a consternation seized many of them they scarcely attempted to save their own goods, and those who did were often unsuccessful.

THE sky, says Evelyn, was of a fiery aspect like the top of a mighty burning oven, and the light was seen above forty miles round for many nights; and the air appeared ignited by the preceding hot and sultry summer, which had prepared the materials to conceive the fire, which devoured houses, churches, public halls, the exchange, hospitals, monuments, ornaments, furniture, goods and everything that came in its way. The noise and cracking, and thunder of the impetuous flames, the shrieking of women and children, the hurry of people, the falling of lofty towers, houses and churches, he describes to have been like a hideous storm, and the atmosphere so hot as to be almost unbreathable. "GOD grant mine eyes may never again behold the like," writes the afflicted pious Evelyn, "who now saw above ten thousand houses all in one flame !"

THE Scene of devastation became at last so hot that no one was able to approach it, so that people were compelled to be awe-struck spectators of a burning city nearly two miles in length, and one in breadth. The clouds of smoke were thick and dismal, and upon com

putation nearly fifty miles in length. Pepys describes its appearance as "a most horrid, malicious, bloody flame, not like the flame of an ordinary fire."

THE King and the Duke of York did their duty in a manner becoming their station, and were rewarded by the gratitude of the sufferers and the commendation of historians. Evelyn and his brother Commissioners, under the King's command, began Pepys's recommendation of destroying some of the houses to stop the progress of the flames, particularly at the northern end of Fetter Lane, to save the upper part of Holborn, and distributed themselves with able bands of stout seamen, brought thither by Evelyn, to stay its devastations. The people also began to recover from their stupor, who till then stood as men intoxicated, with their hands crossed before them, and were at last convinced that nothing could arrest its progress, but the blowing up of so many houses as would make a wider gap than any which had hitherto been formed.

Had

this advice been followed at the first, Evelyn thinks might have saved nearly the whole City; but, he has put it on record, that this wise counsel was rejected because "some tenacious and avaricious men, aldermen, etc., would not permit, because their houses must have been of the first." It was then, at the eleventh hour, began, and Evelyn's great care being for St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where he had many sick and wounded seamen from the late naval battle with the Dutch, and the Savoy Hospital in the Strand, where * Diary, Sept. 5, 1666.

A. D. 1666 THE KING AND THE DUKE OF YORK.

231

he had many others, under his care, he paid great attention to these depositaries of the wretched sufferers in that unfortunate war. "It now," writes this true patriot," pleased GOD, by abating the wind, and by the industry of the people, when almost all was lost, infusing a new spirit into them, that the fury of it began sensibly to abate about noon, so that it came no farther than the entrance of the Temple westward, nor than the entrance to Smithfield northward but continued all this day and night so impetuous towards Cripplegate and the Tower as made us all despair. It also broke out again at the Temple, but the courage of the multitude persisting and many houses being blown up, made such extensive gaps, that with the former three days consumption the back fire did not so vehemently rage as formerly. There was yet no standing near the burning and glowing ruins for nearly a furlong's space."

On the 7th Mr. Evelyn went on foot from Whitehall to London Bridge through the late Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill, by St. Paul's, the devastation of which he feelingly deplores, Cheapside, the Exchange, Bishopsgate, Aldersgate and out to Moorfields; thence, through Cornhill and its vicinity with extraordinary difficulty, clambering over heaps of smoking ruins, and frequently mistaking the localities; the surface was so hot that it burned his shoes.

WHILST the indefatigable Commissioner was thus employed in surveying the ruins of what was, but a *Pie Corner in Giltspur Street.