BOOKS.
GREAT FIRE OF LONDON.•
Iv is strange that no historian of London until now should have written a comprehensive account of the Great Fire and its sequel. Mr. Walter Bell, who has devoted years to the task, has produced a most interesting and valuable book on the subject. The Fire marked an epoch in the history of the City. Mediaeval London, picturesque and foul, was wiped out. Modem London, less romantic in appearance but more healthy and convenient for trade, came into being. There is no mystery about the Fire. The wonder is that mediaeval London, a mass of wooden houses intersected by very narrow lanes, had survived so long, considering that there was no proper organization for fighting fires and that the water supply was scanty. The summer of 1666 was hot and dry. Early on Sunday, September 2nd, one Farynor, the King's baker, who lived in Pudding Lane, to the east of London Bridge, and only ten doors from Thames Street, woke to find his bakehouse on fire. The embers drawn from the hot oven the night before had presumably set light to a pile of faggots carelessly left near the oven. The baker's house burnt for an hour ; his next-door neighbour had time to remove all his goods. Any modern fire brigade would have quenched the fire in a few minutes. The Lord Mayor, who arrived on the scene at three o'clock in the morning, expressed his contempt for so trivial an affair in language more vigorous than polite. But the fire, not being put out, spread to the adjacent houses and soon reached London Bridge and the wharves and warehouses along Thames Street. At the bridge-foot the water-wheels raising the supply of water for part of the City were put out of action, while the great stores of combustibles on the wharves provided fuel for the flames. A strong wind blew the fire westward, and by breakfast time there was a great blaze along the waterside. The Lord Mayor had been advised to pull down houses so as to prevent the fire from spreading, but he demurred to the cost of compensation. When Pepys, with orders from the King, reached the City about liana, spasmodic and ill-directed efforts were made to check the fire by demoliehing houses. The City authorities were helpless ; the citizens were concerned either to save their own property or to discover the foreign incendiaries who, it was rumoured, had caused the disaster. Mr. Bell's narrative reminds us closely of the accounts of the great fire at Salonika in 1918, which reproduced in almost every detail the destruction of London in 1666. On the Sunday the flames enveloped almost the whole riverside from east of London Bridge to Queenhythe, and as far back as Cannon Street. Next day the fire spread westward, beyond Baynard's Castle, almost to the Fleet River, and northward to the Poultry and Threadneedle Street, destroying Gresham's Royal Exchange and all the rich shops round it. On the Tuesday the fire, still driven by the wind, marched northward to the City wall, overwhelming the Guildhall and St. Paul's and many another ancient building, while to the west it overleapt the Fleet and devoured Fleet Street, Alsatia or Whitefriars, and the Inner Temple. But on Tuesday night the wind fell, and on the Wednesday detachments of sailors, brought up from Deptford by Pepys, and the trainbands got the fire under control, by blowing up houses that were threatened and thus creating a neutral zone which the flames could not pass.
Charles the Second and his brother, the Duke of York, had taken an active part in fighting the fire. But for the King's initiative and energy, it looks as if no part of the City would have escaped. King Charles had many faults, but he set a good • The Gnat Bass or Leaks te 1565. By Walter George Bal. Leaden: John law.- 1E5% net.) example to his people in these exciting days, directing the operations in person and passing buckets with his own hands. The Duke of York had the credit of saving the Rolls Chapel, with part of the national archives, from imminent peril. Nevertheless, when the fire had ceased to spread on the Wednesday, five-alias of the groat City was either burnt or burning, and a hundred thousand people were homeless. Only the eastern district, including Moorgate, Learrealmll and the outskirts of the town, had escaped, thanks to the persistence with which the wind blow the flames westward. Thirteen thousand houses, eighty-seven churches, fifty-two halls of City companies were destroyed, with most of their contents. Mr. Bell mike us not to lament unduly over the fate of old St. Paul's, which was in a bad state of repair through long neglect ; only six days before the fire broke out the Dean had ordered Wren to prepare estimates for the restoration of the ancient church. Doubtless Wren would not have had the opportunity of creating his masterpiece if the fire had not broken out ; yet we cannot but regret the loss of so imposing' and venerable a church as old St. Paul's. In tho orypt, used as St. Faith's Church, the booksellers stored their stocks for safety, but the fire destroyed all, including, according to tradition, most of the sheets of the Third Shakespearean Folio of 1661. Mr. Bell is unable to throw new light on this literary disaster. The story goes that the booksellers opened the sealed-up vaults too soon and that the heated masses of paper burst into fiamel as soon as the fresh air reached them. Tho booksellers thus' lost £150,000. The general losses duo to the fire can hardly be estimated. Strypo in 1720 suggested a total of nearly £11,000,000, and his figures, according to Mr. Bell, were under the mark. There was no fire insurance in those days. The merchant whose warehouse was burnt was ruined. A collection made in the churches throughout England for the relief of the sufferers realized only some £13,000. But the Londoners did not lose heart and straightway set themselves to rebuild the capital.
Mr. Bell's account of the rebuilding is entirely new and highly instructive. It is not true, as the Monument inscription says, that London was rebuilt in three years, any more than it is true that the fire which began in Pudding Lane ended in Pie Corner—beside St. Sepulchre's Church—and therefore, as a Nonconformist preacher contended at the time, was caused by the sin of gluttony. The fire raged in Oripplegate long after Pie Corner was burnt out, and it. was stopped at Cock Lane, famous in Dr. Johnson's day for its ghost. Four years after the lire London still lacked its churches and mart of its public buildings, and many private houses had yet to be built. The King by Proclamation of September 13th, 1666, determined the character of the new London. Every house, great or small, was to be of brick or stone. Ambitious schemes for planning the capital anew were brought forward—by Wren, who would have disregarded the old highways, and would have made a broad public quay along the Thames from the Tower to the Temple ; by Evelyn, who designed a formal Continental city ; and by the philosopher Hooke, who proposed a city of straight streets with side streets at right angles, such as the Americans love. One ingenious person, who proposed to make a canal through the City from the Thames to the Fleet, and who estimated that the King might derive a large revenue from it, was sent to gaol to repent his errors. The new plans were set aside, though Wren's proposal for a public quay was adopted. The Corporation took powers to widen the approaches to the river and other important thorough. fares. The streets were classified as " by-lance," " streets and lanes of note," and " high and principal streets," and in these the houses were to be, respectively, of two, three and four storeys, while merchants' mansion houses, not built to the street front, were not to exceed four storeys. The innumerable disputes caused by the destruction of property and the lose of deeds were remitted to a special Court of Fire Judges, who had full power to cancel or amend old covenants, or to order now leases, and who, by their firm and business-like procedure, soon brought refractory landlords or tenants to terms. The Corporation, sorely in need of money to rebuild its Guildhall, churches and prisons, was empowered to levy a shilling a ton on coal brought into the City ; the extra duty was raised to three shillings in 1670, and reduced in 1687 to eighteeapenoe. The coal dues, which it was reserved for Lord Randolph Churchill to abolish a generation ago, enabled the Corporation to restore London'. Fibrin buildings. is well as to undertako
many great works in later times. Parliament in Charles the Second's time had no patience with selfish trade unionism. The London gilds who objected to the presence of any " foreign " workmen in the City were promptly shorn of their old monopoly for seven years at least, and builders' workmen from the country were enabled to take part in the rebuilding of London. Had the gilds been permitted, like modern builders' unions, to maintain an artificial scarcity of labour. London would not have risen from her ruins till many years had passed. As it was, the whole community, including the London freemen, benefited by the rapid restoration of the capital and the revival of its prosperity. Mr. Bell points out that in the work of reconstruction the Common Council learned for the first time to take pride in the well-being of the City as a whole, instead of leaving local affairs to the parish vestries, and that London after the fire was imbued with a new civic spirit. The Commissioners of Sewers, set up by statute in 1671, were the first central sanitary authority that London had had, and they greatly improved the health of the citizens. The new houses, though fewer in number, were far more habit- able than the old houses, and the flow of population to the districts outside the walls was beneficial. Mr. Bell agrees with most historians in regarding the Fire as a blessing in disguise, though it created much temporary suffering and caused great injury to many individuals. On the other hand, London lost many fine mediaeval buildings, which might still be standing if the City had evolved naturally, and not under the pressure of a catastrophe. We commend Mr. Bell's excellent book, with its wealth of new material and its many illustrations and maps, to all who are interested in the history of London.
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