The History of London Part 14

The fire broke out at a baker's in Pudding Lane, Thames Street. It was early on Sunday morning on the second day of September, 1666. It was then, and is now, a place where the houses stood very thick and close together: all round were warehouses filled with oil, wine, tar, and every kind of inflammable stuff. The baker's shop contained a large quant.i.ty of f.a.ggots and brushwood, so that the flames caught and spread very rapidly. The people, for the most part, had time to remove their most valuable things, but their furniture, their clothes, the stock of their shops, the tools of their trade, they had to leave behind them.

Some hurriedly placed their things in the churches for safety, as if the fire would respect the sanct.i.ty of these buildings. A stranger Sunday was never spent than this, when those who had escaped were asking where to go, and those upon whom the flames were advancing were tearing out of their houses whatever they could carry away, and the rest of the town were looking on and asking whether the flames would be stayed before they reached their houses.

Among those who thought that a church would be a safe place were the booksellers of Paternoster Row. They carried all their books into St.

Paul's Cathedral and retired--their stock in trade was safe. But the flames closed round upon the Cathedral: they seized on Paternoster Row, so that the booksellers like the rest were fain to fly: and presently towering to the sky flamed up the lofty roof of nave and chancel and tower. Then with an awful crash the flaming timbers fell down into the church below. Even the Cathedral was burned with the rest, and with it all the books.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GENTLEMAN. A GENTLEWOMAN.

ORDINARY CIVIL COSTUME; _temp._ CHARLES I.

(_From Speed's map of 'The Kingdom of England,' 1646._)]

All Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and part of Wednesday, the fire raged, till it seemed as if there would be no end until the City was utterly destroyed. Happily a remnant was saved, as you have seen. The fire was stopped at last by blowing up houses everywhere to arrest its progress.

Close by the Temple Church (which barely escaped) they stopped it in this way. At Aldersgate, Cripplegate, and Bishopsgate, they used the same means, and at Pye Corner, Smithfield. Nearly opposite Bartholomew's Hospital, you may still see the image of a boy set up to commemorate the stopping of the fire at that point. Had it gone further we should have lost St. Bartholomew the Great and the houses of Cloth Fair.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LUD-GATE ON FIRE.]

When the fire stopped the people sat down to consider the losses they had sustained and the best way out of them.

St. Paul's Cathedral, that ancient and venerable edifice, with its thick walls and roof so lofty, that it seemed as if no fire but the fire from heaven could reach it, was a pile of ruins, the walls of the nave and transept standing, the choir fallen into the crypt below. The Parish churches to the number of 88 were burned: the Royal Exchange--Gresham's Exchange--was down and all the statues turned into lime, with the exception of Gresham's alone: nearly all the great houses left in the City, the great n.o.bles' houses, such as Baynard's Castle, Coldharbour, Bridewell Palace, Derby House, were in ashes: all the Companies' Halls were gone: warehouses, shops, private residences, palaces and hovels--everything was levelled with the ground and burned to ashes.

Five-sixths of the City were destroyed: an area of 436 acres was covered with the ruins: 13,200 houses were burned: it is said that 200,000 persons were rendered homeless--an estimate which would give an average of 15 residents to each house. Probably this is an exaggeration. The houseless people, however, formed a kind of camp in Moorfields just outside the wall, where they lived in tents, and cottages hastily run up. The place now called Finsbury Square stands on the site of this curious camp.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PAUL PINDAR'S HOUSE.]

We ask ourselves in wonder how life was resumed after so great a calamity. The t.i.tle deeds to houses and estates were burned--who would claim and prove the right to property? The account books were all lost--who could claim or prove a debt? The warehouses and shops with their contents were gone--who could carry on business? The craftsmen had lost their employment--how were they to live?

Of debts and rents and mortgages and all such things, little could be said. It was not a time to speak of the past. They must think of the future: they must all begin the world anew.

53. THE TERROR OF FIRE.

PART II.

They must begin the world anew. For most of the merchants nothing was left to them but their credit--their good name: try to imagine the havoc caused by burning all the docks, warehouses, wharves, quays, and shops in London at the present day with nothing at all insured!

[Ill.u.s.tration: LONDON, AS REBUILT AFTER THE FIRE.]

But the citizens of London were not the kind of people to sit down weeping. The first thing was to rebuild their houses. This done there would be time to consider the future. The Lord Mayor and the Aldermen took counsel together how to rebuild the City. They called in Sir Christopher Wren, lately become an architect after being astronomer at Cambridge, and Evelyn: they invited plans for laying out the City in a more uniform manner with wider streets and houses more protected from fire. Both Wren and Evelyn sent in plans. But while these were under consideration the citizens were rebuilding their houses.

They did not wait for the ashes to get cool. As soon as the flames were extinct and the smoke had cleared: as soon as it was possible to make way among the ruined walls, every man sought out the site of his own house and began to build it up again. So that London, rebuilt, was almost--not quite, for some improvements were effected--laid out with the same streets and lanes as before the fire. It was two years, however, before the ruins were all cleared away and four years before the City was completely rebuilt. Ten thousand houses were erected during that period, and these were all of brick: the old timbered house with clay between the posts was gone: so was the thatched roof: the houses were all of brick: the roofs were tiled: the chief danger was gone. At this time, too, they introduced the plan of a pavement on either side of smooth flat stones with posts to keep carts and waggons from interfering with the comforts of the foot pa.s.sengers. It took much longer than four years to erect the Companies' Halls. About thirty of the churches were never rebuilt at all, the parishes being merged in others. The first to be repaired, not rebuilt, was that of St. Dunstan's two years after the fire: in four years more, another church was finished. In every year after this one or two: and the last of the City churches was not rebuilt till thirty one years after the fire.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COACH OF THE LATTER HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

(_From Loggan's 'Oxonia Ill.u.s.trata.'_)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WAGGON OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

(_From Loggan's 'Oxonia Ill.u.s.trata.'_)]

It was at this time of universal poverty that the advantages of union was ill.u.s.trated to those who had eyes to see. First of all, the Corporation had to find food--therefore work. Thousands were employed in clearing away the rubbish and carting it off so as to make the streets, at least, free for traffic. The craftsmen who had no work to do, were employed when this was done on the building operations. The quays were cleared, and the warehouses put up again, for the business of the Port continued. Ships came, discharged their cargoes, and waited for their freight outward bound. Then the houses arose and the shops began to open again. And the Companies stood by their members: they gave them credit: advanced loans: started them afresh in the world. Had it not been for the Companies, the fate of London after the fire would have been as the fate of Antwerp after the Religious Wars. But there must have been many who were ruined completely by this fearful calamity. Hundreds of merchants, and retailers, having lost their all must have been unable to face the stress and anxiety of making this fresh start. The men advanced in life; the men of anxious and timid mind; the incompetent and feeble: were crushed. They became bankrupt: they went under: in the great crowd no one heeded them: their sons and daughters took a lower place: perhaps they are still among the ranks into which it is easy to sink; out of which it is difficult to rise. The craftsmen were injured least: their Companies replaced their tools for them: work was presently resumed again: their houses were rebuilt and, as for their furniture, there was not much of it before the fire and there was not much of it after the fire.

The poet Dryden thus writes of the people during and after the fire:

Those who have homes, when home they do repair, To a last lodging call their wandering friends: Their short uneasy sleeps are broke with care To look how near their own destruction tends.

Those who have none sit round where once it was And with full eyes each wonted room require: Haunting the yet warm ashes of the place, As murdered men walk where they did expire.

The most in fields like herded beasts lie down, To dews obnoxious on the gra.s.sy floor: And while the babes in sleep their sorrow drown, Sad parents watch the remnant of their store.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ORDINARY DRESS OF GENTLEMEN IN 1675.

(_From Loggan's 'Oxonia Ill.u.s.trata.'_)]

54. ROGUES AND VAGABONDS.

The aspect of the City varies from age to age: the streets and the houses, the costumes, the language, the manners, all change. In one respect however, there is no change: we have always with us the same rogues and the same roguery. We do not treat them quite after the manner followed by our forefathers: and, as their methods were incapable of putting a stop to the tricks of those who live by trickery, so are ours; therefore we must not pride ourselves on any superiority in this direction. A large and very interesting collection of books might be formed on the subject of rogues and vagabonds. The collection would begin with Elizabeth and could be carried on to the present day, new additions being made from year to year. But very few additions are ever made to the customs and the methods of the profession. For instance, there is the confidence trick, in which the rustic is beguiled by the honest stranger into trusting him. This trick was practised three hundred years ago. Or there is the ring-dropping trick, it is as old as the hills. Or there is the sham sailor--now very rarely met with. When we have another war he will come to the front again. We have still the cheating gambler, but he has always been with us. In King Charles the Second's time he was called a Ruffler, a Huff, or a Shabbaroon. The woman who now begs along the streets singing a hymn and leading borrowed children, did the same thing two hundred years ago and was called a clapperdozen. The man who pretends to be deaf and dumb went about then, and was known as the dummerer. The burglar was then the housebreaker.

Burglary was formerly a far worse crime than it is now, because the people for the most part kept all their money in their houses, and a robbery might ruin them. The pickpocket plied his trade, only he was then a cutpurse. The footpad lay in wait on the lonely country road or among the bushes of the open fields at the back of Lincoln's Inn. The punishments, which seem so mild under the Plantagenets, increased in severity as the population outgrew the powers of the government. Instead of plain standing in pillory, ears were nailed to the post and even sliced off: whippings became more commonly administered, and were much more severe: heretics were burned by Elizabeth as well as by Mary, though not so often. After the civil wars we enter upon a period when punishment became savage in its cruelty, of which you will presently learn more. Meantime remark that when the City was less densely populated, and when none lived outside the wards and walls, the people were well under the control of the aldermen and their officers: they were also well known to each other: they exercised that self-government--the best of any--which consists in refusing to harbour a rogue among them. If in every London street the tenants would refuse to suffer any evildoer to lodge in their midst, the police of London might be almost abolished. But the City grew: the wards became densely populated: then houses and extensive suburbs sprang up at Whitechapel, Wapping, outside Cripplegate, at Smithfield north of Fleet Street, Lambeth, Bermondsey and Rotherhithe: the aldermen no longer knew their people: the men of a ward did not know each other: rogues were harboured about Smithfield and outside Aldgate: the simple machinery for enforcing order ceased to be of any use: and as yet the new police was not invented. Therefore the punishments became savage. Since the government could not prevent crime and compel order, they would deter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DRESS OF LADIES OF QUALITY.

(_From Sandford's 'Coronation Procession of James II.'_)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ORDINARY ATTIRE OF WOMEN OF THE LOWER CLa.s.sES.

(_From Sandford's 'Coronation Procession of James II.'_)]

Apart from active crime, vagrancy was a great scourge. Wars and civil wars left crowds of idle soldiers who had no taste for steady work: they became vagrants: there was also--and there is still--a certain proportion of men and women who will not work: they become vagrants by a kind of instinct: they are born vagabonds. Laws and proclamations were continually pa.s.sed for the repression of vagrants. They were pa.s.sed on to their native place: they were provided with pa.s.ses on their way. But these laws were always being evaded, and vagrants increased in number.

Under Henry VIII. a very stringent statute was pa.s.sed by which old and impotent persons were provided with license to beg, and anybody begging without a license was whipped. But like all such acts it was imperfectly carried out. For one who received a whipping a dozen escaped. Stocks, pillory, bread and water, all were applied, but without visible effect, because so many escaped. London especially swarmed with beggars and pretended cripples. They lived about Turnmill Street, Houndsditch and the Barbican, outside the walls. From time to time a raid was carried on against them, and they dispersed, but only to collect again. In the year 1575, for instance, it is reported that there were few or no rogues in the London prisons. But in the year 1581, the Queen observing a large number of st.u.r.dy rogues during a drive made complaint, with the result that the next day 74 were arrested: the day after 60, and so on, the catch on one day being a hundred, all of whom were 'soundly paid,' i.e.

flogged and sent to their own homes. The statute ordering the whipping of vagabonds was enforced even in this present century, women being flogged as well as men. No statutes, however, can put down the curse of vagrancy and idleness. It can only be suppressed by the will and resolution of the people themselves. If for a single fortnight we should all refuse to give a single penny to beggars: if in every street we should all resolve upon having none but honest folk among us: then and only then, would the rogue find this island of Great Britain impossible to be longer inhabited by him and his tribe.

55. UNDER GEORGE THE SECOND.

PART I.

THE WEALTH OF LONDON.

If a new world was opened to the adventurous in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, this new world two hundred years later was only half explored and was constantly yielding up new treasures. The lion's share of these treasures came to Great Britain and was landed at the Port of London.

The wealth and luxury of the merchants in the eighteenth century surpa.s.sed anything ever recorded or ever imagined. So great was their prosperity that historians and essayists predicted the speedy downfall of the City: the very greatness of their success frightened those who looked on and remembered the past.