[1665 A.D.]

No

a Sabbath-day, observed with a greater solemnity than it used to be in the city. Now shops are shut in, people rare and very few that walk about, insomuch that the grass begins to spring up in some places, and a deep silence in every place, especially within the walls. prancing horses, no rattling coaches, no calling in 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 among 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 oldest 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."

At the beginning of September the empty streets put on another aspect, equally fearful. The bonfire, which was the exhibition of gladness, was now the token of desolation. Every six houses on each side of the way were to be assessed towards the expense of maintaining one great fire in the middle of the street for the purification of the air-fires which were not to be extinguished by night or by day. A heavy rain put out these death-fires, and perhaps did far more good than this expedient.

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As winter approached, the disease began rapidly to decrease. Confidence a little revived. A few shops were again opened. The York waggon again ventured to go to London with passengers. At the beginning of 1666 "the town fills again." "Pray God," says Pepys, "continue the plague's decrease; for that keeps the court away from the place of business, and so all goes to rack as to public matters." He rides in Lord Brouncker's coach to Covent Garden: "What staring to see a nobleman's coach come to town. And porters everywhere bow to us: and such begging of beggars." The sordid and self-indulgent now began to come back: January 22nd. The first meeting of Gresham College since the plague. Dr. Goddard did fill us with talk, in defence of his and his fellow-physicians' going out of town in the plague-time; saying that their particular patients were most gone out of town, and they left at liberty, and a great deal more." This is Pepys' entry of the 4th of February: "Lord's day: and my wife and I the first time together at church since the plague, and now only because of Mr. Mills his coming home to preach his first sermon; expecting a great excuse for his leaving the parish before anybody went, and now staying till all are come home: but he made but a very poor and short excuse, and a bad sermon." Defoen tells, with the strictest accuracy, the mode in which the spiritual condition of the plaguestruck city was attended to: "Though it is true that a great many of the clergy did shut up their churches, and fled, as other people did, for the safety of their lives, yet all did not do so; some ventured to officiate, and to keep up the assemblies of the people by constant prayers, and sometimes sermons, or brief exhortations to repentance and reformation, and this as long as they

['The decrease was as follows: 6,460, 5,720, 5,068, 1,806, 1,388, 1,787, 1,359, 905, 544. There was not a week in the year in which some cases of plague were not returned. Clarendon a with his usual inaccuracy, makes the number of dead, according to the weekly bills, to amount to 160,000, which, he says, ought, in the opinion of well-informed persons, to be doubled. The number of burials, according to the bills, was only 97,306. See the table prefixed to Hodges' r Loimologia. If we add one-third for omissions, the amount will be about 130,000; but from these must be deducted the deaths from other causes than the plague. In the tables themselves the deaths from the plague in this year are 68,596; in 1666 the are 1,996; in 1667, they fall to thirty-five, to fourteen in 1668, and after that seldom reach to half-a-dozen. In August of the following year it raged with violence in Colchester, Norwich, Winchester, Cambridge, and Salisbury.- LINGARD.]

[1665 A.D.] would hear them. And dissenters did the like also, and even in the very churches where the parish ministers were either dead or fled; nor was there any room for making any difference at such a time as this was. Baxter also relates that, when "most of the conformable ministers fled, and left their flocks in the time of their extremity," the non-conforming ministers, who, since 1662, had done their work very privately, "resolved to stay with the people; and to go into the forsaken pulpits, though prohibited; and to preach to the poor people before they died; and also to visit the sick, and get what relief they could for the poor, especially those that were shut up. The reward which the non-conforming ministers received for their good work was The Five Mile Act.

The statute which popularly bore this name is entitled "An Act for restraining Non-conformists from inhabiting in Corporations." In consequence of the plague raging in London, the parliament met at Oxford on the 9th of October. Their first act was for a supply of 1,250,000l. Their second was what Hallame calls this "new and more inevitable blow aimed at the fallen church of Calvin." All persons in holy orders who had not subscribed the Act of Uniformity were required to take the following oath: "I, A. B., do swear, that it is not lawful, under any pretence whatsoever, to take arms against the king; and that I do abhor the traitorous position of taking arms by his authority against his person, or against those that are commissionated by him, in pursuance of such commissions; and that I will not at any time endeavour any alteration of government either in church or state." In default of taking this oath they were forbidden to dwell, or come, unless upon the road, within five miles of any corporate town, or any other place where they had been ministers, or had preached, under a penalty of forty pounds and six months' imprisonment. They were also declared incapable of teaching in schools, or of receiving boarders. This act had for its object wholly to deprive the conscientious Puritans of any means of subsistence connected with their former vocation of Christian ministers or instructors of youth. Hallame truly says, "The Church of England had doubtless her provocations; but she made the retaliation much more than commensurate to the injury. No severity comparable to this cold-blooded persecution had been inflicted by the late powers, even in the ferment and fury of a civil war." An attempt was made to impose the non-resisting oath upon the whole nation; but it was defeated by a small majority.

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The extent of the miseries inflicted by the plague in London was probably diminished by The Settlement Act of 1662. This was entitled An Act for the better relief of the Poor. The preamble of the statute declares the continual increase of the poor, not only within the cities of London and Westminster, but also through the whole kingdom; but there is little reason to doubt that the main object of the bill was to thrust out from the parishes of the metropolis, all chargeable persons occupying tenements under the yearly value of ten pounds. By this act the power of removal was first established a measure which, however modified, has done as much evil to the labouring population in destroying their habits of self-dependence, as a legal provision for their support, prudently administered, has been a national blessing. The Settlement Act was carried by the metropolitan members, with little resistance from the country members. In 1675, in a debate on a bill for restraint of building near London, one member said that "by the late act the poor are hunted like foxes out of parishes, and whither must they go but where there

['Keightley' says it might almost be called a "bill of starvation."]

[1666 A.D.]

are houses?" Another declared that "the act for the settlement of the poor does, indeed, thrust all people out of the country to London." The intent of the framers of the act had probably been defeated by the reprisals of the rural magistrates and overseers. The system of hunting the poor went on amidst the perpetual litigation of nearly two centuries; and it is not yet come to an end.

The plague-year has passed; the "Year of Wonders" is come. Dryden called his Annus Mirabilis "an historical poem." In his preface he says, "I have taken upon me to describe the motives, the beginning, progress, and successes, of a most just and necessary war; in it, the care, management, and prudence of our king; the conduct and valour of a royal admiral, and of two incomparable generals; the invincible courage of our captains and seamen; and three glorious victories, the result of all. After this, I have, in the fire, the most deplorable, but withal the greatest, argument that can be imagined: the destruction being so swift, so sudden, so vast and miserable, as nothing can parallel in story." The year 1666 is, indeed, an eventful year; and the relation of its miseries, so closely following upon the calamity of the plague, carries with it the consolation that the spirit of the English people, founded upon their industrious habits and their passion for liberty, has always been able to surmount the greatest political evils, and to acquire, even under the severest dispensations of providence, the courage and perseverance which convert chastisements into blessings.

THE GREAT LONDON FIRE OF 1666

The story of the great fire of London has been related with minuteness by many trustworthy observers. We can place ourselves in the midst of this extraordinary scene, and make ourselves as familiar with its details as if the age of newspapers had arrived, and a host of reporters had been engaged in collecting every striking incident. But it is not in the then published naratives that we find those graphic touches which constitute the chief interest of this event at the present time. Half a century ago the materials for a faithful record of the great fire were to be sought in the report of a committee of the house of commons, in the state trials, and in various tracts issued at the period. There are also several striking passages of Baxter's Life, which relate to the fire. But such notices are meagre compared with the personal records in the two remarkable diaries which have been rescued from obscurity during our own day.

We are with Mr. Pepys m in his nightgown at three o'clock in the morning of Sunday, the 2nd of September, looking out of his window in Seething Lane, at the east end of the city, and, thinking the fire far enough off, going to sleep again. We accompany him later in the morning to a high place in the Tower, and see the houses near London Bridge on fire. The weather is hot and dry, and a furious east wind is blowing. The active Mr. Pepys takes a boat from the Tower stairs; and slowly sculling up stream, looks upon the burning houses in the streets near the Thames; distracted people getting their goods on board lighters; and the inhabitants of the houses at the water's edge not leaving till the fire actually reached them. He has time to look at the pigeons — of which the Londoners generally were then as fond as the Spitalfields weavers of our time hovering about the windows and balconies till they burned their wings and fell down.

There is nobody attempting to quench the fire in that high wind. Everything is combustible after the long drought. Human strength seems in vain,

[1666 A.D.]

and the people give themselves up to despair. The busy secretary of the navy reaches Whitehall, and tells his story to the king; and he entreats his majesty to order houses to be pulled down, for nothing less would stop the fire. The king desires Pepys to go to the lord mayor, and give him this command. In Cannon street he encounters the lord mayor, who cries, like a fainting woman, "Lord! what can I do? I am spent. People will not obey me." He had been pulling down houses. He did not want any soldiers. He had been up all night, and must go home and refresh himself. There is no service in the churches, for the people are crowding them with their goods. He walks through the streets; and again he takes boat at Paul's wharf. He now meets the king and the duke of York in their barge. They ordered that houses should be pulled down apace; but the fire came on so fast that little could be done. We get glimpses in this confusion of the domestic habits of the citizens. "The river full of lighters and boats taking in goods; and good goods swimming about in the water; and 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." The severer Puritans had not driven out the old English love of music; the citizens' wives and daughters still had the imperfect spinet upon which Elizabeth and her maids of honour played.

That hot September evening is spent by our observer upon the water. Showers of fire-drops are driving in his face. He sees the fiery flakes shooting up from one burning house, and then dropping upon another five or six houses off, and setting that on flame. The roofs were in many streets only thatched: the walls were mostly timber. Warehouses in Thames street were stored with pitch, and tar, and oil, and brandy. The night came on; and then Pepys, from a little alehouse on the Bankside, saw the fire grow, and shoot out between churches and houses, "in a most horrid, malicious, bloody flame, not like the fire flame of an ordinary fire." And then, as it grew darker, he saw the fire up the hill in an arch of above a mile long. Then rose the moon shedding a soft light over the doomed city; and amidst the terrible glare and the gentle radiance the whole world of London was awake, gazing upon the conflagration, or labouring to save something from its fury.

We turn to the diary of Evelyn - a more elegant writer than Pepys, but scarcely so curious an observer of those minute points that give life to a picture. He has seen the fire from the Bankside on Sunday afternoon; and on Monday he returns to see the whole south part of the city burning. It was now taking hold of the great cathedral, which was surrounded by scaffolds for its repair. "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 air 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 near two miles in length and one in breadth. The clouds, also, of smoke were dismal, and reached, upon computation, near fifty miles in length. Thus I left it this afternoon burning, a resemblance of Sodom, or the last day. The ruins resembled the picture of Troy. London was, but is no more.'

On Tuesday, the 4th, Evelyn saw that the fire had reached as far as the Inner Temple. "All Fleet street, the Old Bailey, Ludgate Hill, Warwick lane, Newgate, Paul's chain, Watling street, now flaming, and most of it reduced to ashes; the stones of Paul's flew like grenados, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream, and the very pavements glowing with fiery redness, so as no horse, nor man, was able to tread on them, and the demolition had stopped all the passages, so that no help could be applied; the eastern

[1666 A.D.]

wind still more impetuously driving the flames forward." On that day the houses near the Tower were blown up; and the same judicious plan was pursued in other places. On the 5th the court at Whitehall was in unwonted bustle. The king and his brother had set an excellent example of personal activity; and gentlemen now took charge of particular streets, and directed the means of extinguishing the flames. The people now began to bestir themselves. The civic authorities no longer rejected the advice, which some seamen had given at first, to blow up the houses before the flames reached them, instead of attempting to pull them down. The wind abated. Large gaps were made in the streets. The desolation did not reach beyond the Temple westward, nor beyond Smithfield on the north. On Wednesday, the 5th, the mighty devourer was arrested in his course. Three days and three nights of agony had been passed; but not more than eight lives had been lost. Mr. Pepys at last lies down and sleeps soundly. He has one natural remark: "It is a strange thing to see how long this time did look since Sunday, having been always full of variety of actions, and little sleep, that it looked like a week or more, and I had forgot almost the day of the week."

Whilst indifferent spectators were gazing on the fire from Bankside, and the high grounds on the south of the Thames, the fields on the north were filled with houseless men, women, and children. "I went," says Evelyn, "towards Islington and Highgate, where one might have seen two hundred thousand people, of all ranks and degrees, dispersed and lying along by their heaps of what they could save from the fire, deploring their loss; and, though ready to perish for hunger and destitution, yet not asking one penny for relief." There were liberal contributions from the king, and the nobility, and the clergy. Collections were made and distributed in alms to the most needy. But the real difficulty must have been to ensure a supply of food, when all the usual channels of interchange were choked up. Proclamations were made for the country people to bring in provisions. Facilities were offered to the people to leave the ruins, by a command that they should be received in all cities and towns to pursue their occupations: and that such reception should entail no eventual burthen on parishes. No doubt it was necessary to strive against the selfishness that vast calamities too often produce in the sufferers and the lookers-on. The country people for miles around had gazed upon the flames. There was an immense destruction of books; and their half-burnt leaves were carried by the wind even as far as Windsor. The dense cloud of smoke shut out the bright autumn sun from the harvest-fields, and upon distant roads men travelled in the shade. The extent of the calamity was apparant. Yet it may be doubted if many of the great ones received the visitation in a right spirit. Pepys says, "none of the nobility came out of the country at all, to help the king, or comfort him, or prevent commotions at this fire." Some of the insolent courtiers exulted in the destruction, saying according to Baxtero: "Now the rebellious city is ruined, the king is absolute, and was never king indeed till now." One profligate "young commander" of the fleet "made mighty sport of it;" and rejoiced that the corruption of the citizens' wives might be effected at a very reduced cost.

The monument erected in commemoration of the fire has an elaborate Latin inscription, in which it is set forth that the destruction comprised eightynine churches, the city gates, Guildhall, many public structures, hospitals, schools, libraries; a vast number of stately edifices; thirteen thousand two hundred dwelling-houses, four hundred streets. An account, which estimates the houses burnt at twelve thousand, values them at an average rent of 251. a