A History of London, Vol. I
Loftie, W. J.
1883
CHAPTER XI. THE WAR, THE PLAGUE, AND THE FIRE.
CHAPTER XI. THE WAR, THE PLAGUE, AND THE FIRE.
THERE was no part of the kingdom more inclined than London to acknowledge peaceably the accession of . Amid the popular lamentation for the heralds proclaimed her successor in Cheap and at the other accustomed places, and four days afterwards the new king sent to thank the lord mayor for "his great forwardness in that just and honourable action." The favour of the city, as James probably knew, was worth having, and he hastened to offer it " hereby a taste of our thankful mind for the same." The lord mayor and aldermen met the king on his arrival at Stamford Hill, having sent one of the sheriffs as far as Waltham. The other sheriff was ill, and indeed London was never so unhealthy as then. It was computed that more than thirty thousand deaths occurred that year from plague alone. The building of houses in the suburbs was forbidden, as it had already been by , players were silenced, and Bartholomew Fair suppressed. But James very prudently stopped when he had reached the Charterhouse, and deferred his first visit to London till the plague was stayed-about a year later. | |
The loan of 6o,ooo£. on the one side, the indiscriminate bestowal of knighthood on the other, and the disputes about precedency which ensued; the confirmation by charter of the Conservancy; the settlement of | |
333 | the question of metage, and the cleansing--for the last time-of the old fosse round the walls, are the chief civic events of the first years of the seventeenth century. In , James was made free of the clothworkers' company, to the great envy of the merchant taylors, who at a grand entertainment showed him reproachfully the roll of kings, princes, archbishops, and dukes that had belonged to their fraternity. They had to be satisfied with Prince Henry, who was immediately enrolled, and presented with a purse of gold, which so pleased the boy that he called upon all his attendants to follow his example and join the ranks of the company. |
It is strange to observe continued proclamations against the increase of buildings. The city being overcrowded it might have been thought that an extension of suburbs would have been a safeguard against the frequent visitations of the plague; but these proclamations were constantly issued at intervals even by Oliver , and offenders punished in the Star Chamber, without any effect, except to drive settlers to the remoter villages, such as Islington, , or St. Marylebone, and to render the overgrown town more unwieldy still. Two slight rectifications of the city boundaries (in reality consequent on the changes caused by the suppression of the monasteries) may be noted here, as probably the last additions of jurisdiction which London received. As far back as a dispute which arose as to the lord mayor's right to exercise his authority in the new district now springing up about Ely Place in Holborn was settled by an acknowledgment that the precinct was within the city.[1] Similar disputes had constantly taken place as to the sites of the suppressed religious houses, and in his second charter surveys and defines | |
334 | the city jurisdiction. The places named are the "late dissolved priory of the Church of Trinity, near , commonly called Creed Church Street, or the Duke's Place;" [2] St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield; the "late dissolved house or priory of Preaching Friars within and at Ludgate, London, commonly called ; and also the late dissolved house or priory of Friars of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, called ; and also the inn or liberty of Cold Herberge, otherwise Cold Harburgh, and Cold Herburgh Lane." Yet the inhabitants of these precincts were specially exempted from the payment of certain taxes, and from the duty of holding certain civic offices, so long did the old "odour of sanctity" hang about the "rookeries from which the birds had been chased." |
An anecdote, which is probably authentic, gives us some idea of the estimation in which the shrewd citizens held their Scottish king.[3] James was displeased because he could not obtain the loan of a sum of money which he wanted. " Being somewhat transported, he said that he would remove his own court, with all the records of the Tower, and the courts of , to another place, with further expressions of his indignation. The lord mayor calmly heard all, and at last answered, 'Your Majesty hath power to do what you please, and your city of London will obey accordingly; but she humbly desires that when your Majesty shall remove your courts, you would please to leave the behind you."' | |
The temper of the citizens was indeed changed. The | |
335 | influence of Protestantism acting on two successive generations, and the spread of a certain smattering of learning, coupled with that self-conceit which always characterises the newly educated, must have inclined the Londoners of this period to the dogmatic views in religious matters which such moderate counsellors as Whitgift, or Hooker, or Fuller endeavoured in vain to direct. We have a full picture of this aspect of the times in the almost contemporary works of Izaak Walton, who was a wholesale linen merchant at the corner of Chancery Lane, and who, through his mother, a Cranmer, and his wife, a Ken, was connected with several bishops, and acquainted more or less intimately with the history of every eminent churchman of his own time, and the generation before his. Of none is his portrait more complete than of Hooker. The great controversy with Travers raged chiefly in the Temple opposite Walton's own abode.[4] Hooker had been appointed Master in , before Walton was born, and had died at Bourne in , before Walton came to live in Chancery Lane; but when he wrote of the generation before his own, he had the scene before his eyes, and when he mentioned the religious controversies of their day, it was not without reference to those of his own. |
Walter Travers, though he was connected by marriage with Hooker's family,[5] had been his rival for the mastership, and when he was disappointed had shown his Christian temper by using the subordinate post of lecturer to preach against the opinions of his superior. The lawyers took sides, and, indeed, the whole town, where, as Walton | |
336 | says, even the shopwomen were keen controversialists. Hooker, in a sermon preached several years before at St. Paul's Cross, had made use of expressions with regard to predestination which differed strongly from those held by a majority of the citizens, and Travers had the support of many people of all ranks. The contest was carried on at every opportunity, Travers frequently in the afternoon combating the opinions expressed by Hooker in the forenoon.[6] There was no regular rupture between the two, and neither party forgot the rules of courtesy, yet there is something unseemly, to our modern ideas at least, in the whole dispute. It had, however, one result which none can regret, the composition by Hooker of his book on 'Ecclesiastical Polity,' a work which probably more than any other influenced the settlement of the Church of England under . In it was registered at Stationers' Hall as consisting of eight books, and the first four were published in . A year later Hooker's connection with the Temple ceased, on his appointment to the rectory of Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury. |
Since Hooker's time everything at the Temple has changed, except perhaps the Middle Temple Hall, which was built in , and has not been substantially altered, having been spared by the Great Fire of , as well as by meddling treasurers since, except that the exterior stonework was renewed in the middle of the last century.[7] In a play of 's ('Twelfth | |
337 | Night') was acted here, and the great dramatist, by an anachronism, makes it a rendezvous of Falstaff and tile Prince.[8] Of the other buildings there is nothing left to recall Hooker. I have already spoken of the chapel, in which not a trace of old work has been permitted to remain. It would have been interesting to see the pulpit from which Hooker and Travers alternately expounded the doctrines of the Church and of dissent. Pepys records a visit to "the Temple Church, looking with pleasure on the monuments and epitaphs "[9] which the fire had spared, but which were removed almost in our own day.[10] Among them were tablets to the memory of a son of Coke and of a daughter-in-law of Littleton, who was honoured by an epitaph containing the well-known couplet- |
| |
All religious questions were fiercely debated in the city at this time, and the tendency of a majority of the citizens was undoubtedly towards the Genevan doctrine. This was in part caused it is probable by the apathy of the clergymen who enjoyed city livings. They held preaching to be no part of their duty. True, before the Reformation preaching had been rare in a church, and after it preachers' mouths were closed by the strict enforcement of the power of licensing. But had the incumbents of the city livings exerted themselves in this particular during the reign of James and the early years | |
338 | of , the very strong part taken by the citizens in the subversion of the Church might have been modified if not prevented. As it was, preachers were appointed in many parishes. Preaching or lecturing seldom took place on Sunday.[11] The parishioners paid the lecturers' salaries, and the rectors were in many cases obliged therefore to leave to them the choice of suitable persons. In the result, as might have been and probably was foreseen, the lecturers became practically the parish parsons; and though archbishop Laud made a vehement attempt to abolish them, they held their ground, and under the Commonwealth completely supplanted the rectors. The famous 'Book of Sports' found no favour with them, and the first open difference between the court and the city broke out when the lord mayor stopped the king's carriages as they were being driven through the streets during the hours of divine service. James was bitterly enraged, and inquired how many kings there were in England besides himself. But the mayor, George Bolles, submitted with a protest, and similarly, in , Sir Martin Lumley obeyed an arbitrary command of the king, who came himself to the Guildhall to reprimand the citizens for an insult to Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador. A wretched fellow was actually arrested and whipped through the city merely for making disrespectful remarks. |
When James had been five years upon the throne, there was born in the very midst of the city, nay in the very midst of Cheap, a child who, though his life has little to do with the history of London, must yet be | |
339 | mentioned as one of whom citizens have the greatest reason to be proud. In Bread Street, in , every house must have had its sign, as the idea of numbering the doors had not yet occurred to anybody. Among the signs was one very like a coat of arms. It represented a spread eagle, and was, indeed, the bearing of an old but decayed family named Milton. Its head at this time was a scrivener-" an ingenious man," says Aubrey, who "delighted in music and composed many songs now in print, especially that of Oriana." He loved his son's pursuits, and encouraged him to make verses while still quite a boy, as the poet himself says[12] - |
| |
The boy loved the play, and in his poems are many allusions which show him to have been fond even of comedy; but the most distinct point to such tragical pieces as '' or '' Above all, however, he loved London, and | |
| |
The tournaments close by in Cheap were not yet wholly forgotten. He was able to call them up, and many another scene which the Great Fire obliterated for us Had it been healthy, London must indeed have been a city which a man could love- | |
| |
340 | And one of his finest sonnets is written in apprehension of an assault upon the city- |
| |
Milton was living at this time in . He afterwards removed to "Mr. Russell's, in St. Bride's Churchyard," and during the Commonwealth he had a house on the south side of St. James' Park, into which he had a private door, so as conveniently to attend on at Whitehall. At the restoration he took refuge in St. Bartholomew's Close, which, perhaps, of all Miltonian localities, so to speak, is the least altered. was composed in the rural Holborn, or the completely civic Jewin Street, and he died in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, at a house which used to be pointed out long after, very near the melancholy enclosure of Bunhill Fields. A monument to his memory exists in the parish church, where his grave was found and examined in .[13] | |
The reign of . opened with every omen against it. The plague raged so violently that the customary procession through the city was omitted, as was the public reception of queen Henrietta Maria on her arrival from France. Parliament for the same cause was adjourned to Oxford. To add to the miseries of the citizens, it soon became known that the king had even more overbearing ideas than his father, and a resolute opposition was organised among the commons when attempted to exact a loan of 100,000£. It was absolutely refused, and the imprisonment of a number of those citizens who were known to have taken part in | |
341 | the refusal only embittered the quarrel and confirmed the opposition. When a parliament was called in , the king had the mortification to see no fewer than twenty-seven of his prisoners returned as members for various places.[14] Ship-money was also stoutly refused, and had the city mob not given legitimate cause of offence on one memorable occasion, the whole history of the reign of in London would be comprised in a list of lawless exactions and lawful resistance. But the murder of Doctor Lamb cannot in any way be defended. The wretched man was looked upon as one of the principal instruments of oppression, and in June, , he unfortunately ventured into the city, where being recognised he was set upon by the rabble, dragged about the streets, beaten and kicked until death released him from their hands. The king came himself to the rescue, but in vain. The mob loudly declared that they had judged him and found him guilty, and had to return insulted and baffled. An order from the council to the lord mayor and sheriffs to bring the rioters to justice produced no effect. They were then summoned to Whitehall and threatened with the confiscation of their charter, but persisted in reporting that the murderers of Lamb could not be found. Four years afterwards, however, in , some of them were apprehended; but the king had meanwhile imposed a fine on the citizens, and from this time on there was no truce between London and . Each year saw some aggravation of the king's oppressive conduct. Shipmoney, tonnage, and poundage were imposed with the utmost rigour. Vassall, a wealthy merchant, who resisted, |
342 | and defended his refusal before the barons of the exchequer, was condemned and imprisoned. But one merchant who happened to be a member of the House of Commons was more successful. John Rolle, a Cornishman, was in business in the city. He refused to pay the illegal tax, and his goods were seized by officers of the customs. The house took up the question, and, after several adjournments, voted (while the speaker was forcibly held in the chair), that Rolle "ought to have privilege both in person and goods." |
issued writs for ship-money in , and the citizens protested in the most solemn manner, but ineffectually. Rightly or wrongly, they believed that Strafford meditated "a plundering of the city, and putting it to fine and ransom," and it was currently reported that he had threatened to hang some of the aldermen. The discovery of this so-called army plot sealed his fate. Twenty thousand citizens petitioned the House of Lords against him. A mob attacked the residence of the Spanish ambassador in , and the lord mayor could with difficulty protect it. The professional preachers fanned the flames with violent diatribes against the fallen minister, and six thousand citizens presented themselves at and clamoured for justice. When the Bill of Attainder had been passed, the hesitation of was overcome by similar means, and the earl's execution on Tower Hill was made the occasion of open rejoicings, and was observed almost as a public holiday. The bells of the churches rang out, and when evening came on bonfires blazed in many of the streets. | |
The king, to whom his greatest enemies never imputed a want of personal courage, who in the worst of times refused the services of a body-guard, and had once, | |
343 | as we have seen, faced a howling mob of the lowest class of the city, now took a more extraordinary, and in some respects a still more courageous step. His attempted seizure of the five members in the House of Commons is well known. Defeated in this design, and well aware that the prey he sought had taken refuge among the citizens, he boldly drove to the Guildhall, [15] having previously ordered a meeting of the common council to be convened. He made them a speech, demanding the apprehension of the accused members, and taking the opportunity of assuring his audience of his attachment to the Protestant religion, which he promised to defend against "Papists and separatists." To this speech he obtained no answer. The sheriffs, indeed, received his commands with respect, but that was all. He dined with one of them, "who was of the two thought the least inclined to his service."[16] In the afternoon he returned to Whitehall in his coach, surrounded by an indignant crowd of the citizens, who vociferated "Privilege of Parliament," as he passed. Five days went by without any return to the writs he had issued to the sheriffs, and with gradually growing rumours that the trained bands of the city were about to escort the five members t to in triumph, and to constitute themselves "guardians of the parliament, the kingdom, and the king." But had no mind to such protection. On the 10th he left Whitehall for Hampton Court, and the following day the sheriffs conducted the five members to by water, guarded by forty long boats armed with small pieces of ordnance, and gaily decorated with flags. The sheriffs were called in |
344 | and publicly thanked by t, and an indemnity passed for their conduct. Two companies of the trained bands were then told off for constant duty at ; and custody of the Tower and its stores was given to the civic authorities.[17] |
Meanwhile, the king on his side making preparations for war, the commons ordered the "Militia of London" to train and exercise themselves daily in various open places not more than three miles from the city. The lord mayor, Sir Richard Gurney, was suspected of a leaning towards the court party. When the parliament asked the city for money, he received a letter from the king bidding him to warn the citizens of his displeasure in case they should comply with the demand. On this the parliament issued a counter-proclamation, and the lord mayor was actually arrested, arraigned before what remained of a house of peers, deprived of his office, declared incapable of ever holding it again, and committed to the custody of his own sheriffs in the Tower. The king, having declared war on the 22nd August, and having commenced his march on London, a prodigious crowd, which included even women and children, assembled to make a new fortification. . after the undecisive battle of Edge Hill, continued his advance and occupied Brentford on the 12th November, after a sharp fight in which the forces of the parliament were defeated. The approach of peril nerved the citizens to greater exertions. The trained bands showed such a formidable front that the king retired first to Reading and then to Oxford. Shops were shut and apprentices enrolled, proclamation being made that when their services were no longer required the masters should | |
345 | reinstate them in their former places. The new mayor, Pennington, was devoted to the cause of the parliament, and during the winter the inner wall was strengthened, and a fresh line of defence completed. |
This new fortification consisted of earthworks with forts at various points. It took in both the city and , and the suburbs as far as Shoreditch on the north and St. George's Fields on the south. East and west it extended from Hyde Park to Mile End and the Lea. Redoubts were made at Hackney, where not long ago some remnants of the banks might still be seen; at the upper pond of the New River;[18] at the Islington pound; at Southampton House in Holborn where probably Castle Street may commemorate it; at St. Giles'; at the east end of " Road," close to what is now Rathbone Place; and at the head of Wardour Street. On the western side a large earthwork was long known as " Oliver's Mount," and is commemorated by the name of Mount Street, Grosvenor Square. At Hyde Park Corner, at Tothill Fields, and various places on the south side of the were similar structures. | |
To the expenses of the war the city, which had grumbled at the comparatively small exactions of the king, cheerfully contributed, the sum of 10,000£. a week being demanded by the parliament and paid by the citizens. The discovery of a plot formed by Sir Nicholas Crisp, a former civic dignitary, for seizing the city, gave rise to fresh exertions, as did a futile proclamation by the king fulminated from Oxford, in which London was placed under a kind of interdict. The answer of the citizens t[19] was the expenditure of 50,000£. more in | |
346 | improvement of the fortifications and other defences, and an almost riotous concourse of the people at to petition the parliament against any reconciliation with the king. The common council desired the city companies to collect and lend 500,000£ to the parliament, and sent six regiments to raise the siege of Gloucester. More money and more men were forthcoming when required, and there can be no kind of doubt that the determined attitude of London decided the great civil war. learned, when it was too late, what a glance at history might have told him long before, that the side of London was eventually the winning side in every struggle: and that in oppressing the citizens he had ruined his own cause. The relief of Gloucester, mainly achieved by the trained bands, was the " turning point of the war." [20] |
The citizen soldiers were not, it is true, always victorious. At Newbury, Essex was utterly routed, but the Londoners mustered strongly again under Manchester at Naseby, and on the , five days after that decisive victory, both houses of parliament attended a thanksgiving service in the old church of the ,t and afterwards dined with the citizens at the Grocers' Hall, in the Poultry. After dinner all joined in singing the inspiriting words of the great psalm t of trust and triumph which Luther had used on similar occasions, "God is our refuge and strength: a very present help in trouble." | |
So ended the war, as far as the king was concerned. London had now to reckon with the army. The submission of was offered to the lord mayor, aldermen, and commons. He expressed his willingness to comply with the demands of the parliament in everything, | |
347 | "for settling truth and peace." But it was too late. Whether he was sincere or not, both parliament and city had lost the power of accepting his surrender. They had called a monster into existence, and were at its mercy. A tumult, raised in all probability by disbanded royalist soldiers, gave Fairfax occasion to occupy London. The insurgents were encountered near the Leadenhall, and put to the rout. The soldiers were now masters of the city. The battle of Cornhill, as it may be called, though little known in history, had momentous consequences. Soon after the arrival of the army a demand of 50,000£. was made upon the citizens. They could not, or would not comply, and the soldiers threatened, and in part carried out their threat, to dismantle the fortifications. Never, perhaps, since the Norman Conquest, had London been brought so low. Colonel Pride, who in the following year was to render himself famous by administering his "purge" to the house of commons, was sheriff of Surrey, and took the opportunity of clearing of playhouses. The citizens were terrified at the approach of this uncompromising officer, but Fairfax kept order, and people began to look for a renewal of tranquillity on the return of the victorious from his successful campaign in the north. This took place in the beginning of December, . He immediately sent a couple of regiments into the city to secure any money they could find, and some 20,000£. was obtained by the simple process of taking it from the halls of the companies. Long afterwards, the habit, which seems so strange nowadays, of keeping cash in hand was practised universally, and Pepys we may remember, buried some money in his garden on the approach of the fire. The soldiers were billeted upon private families, the horses were sent to the inns. |
348 | Probably the citizens never spent a more miserable Christmas. The old festivities of the season were strictly forbidden. The "sour-visag-ed saints " demanded of the common council pay and provisions for the army till the ensuing 25th March, and only allowed fourteen days for deliberation, assessment, and collection. The reaction which had set in showed itself in the election of a royalist lord mayor, Abraham Reynardson, and no doubt the occupation of the city was chiefly caused by the existence of this and other signs of a change in the feelings of the people. By one of those curious mistakes which even the greatest rulers of men sometimes make, the council of officers greatly intensified the smouldering loyalty of the citizens by the king's execution in January, as it not only awoke any personal feeling they may have retained towards a monarch who certainly cannot be said to have treated them well: but it endued an innocent boy, of whom so far no harm was known, with all the traditional regard which London had paid to the crown. Reynardson absolutely refused to proclaim the abolition of royalty, and was committed to the Tower and heavily fined. A new mayor was elected and sworn before the remnant of the house of commons with great solemnity. His name was Atkins, and he lived to suffer for that day's proceedings. On the accession of . he took Reynardson's place in the Tower, and died in confinement. |
was now about to proceed to Ireland, and Fairfax obtained 150,000£. from the city towards his expenses. Prior to his departure, another solemn service was held in Christ Church, and another dinner was eaten in the Grocers' Hall, when the citizens gave Fairfax a basin and ewer of beaten gold, and plate also to , with a sum of money. The mayor, with | |
349 | twelve of the aldermen, proclaimed the abolition of royalty, and things were so far settled, that no objection was openly made. As ever, the citizens above all things desired leisure for their mercantile pursuits, and the growing power of , while it promised peace at home and protection for commerce abroad, was not unwelcome even to those who in their hearts longed for the presence of a court, and sighed amid the gloom of the presbyterian rule for the merry days of old. When came back victorious from the decisive battle of Worcester, the citizens went out to Acton to meet him. He was feasted at Guildhall, and received everywhere as a deliverer. After he had snuffed out the last flicker of the old parliament, and had been sworn in as lord protector, the city treated him with regal honours, and the mayor received knighthood at his hands. There can be no doubt of the strong royalist feeling of the city. The person of the king was comparatively a matter of indifference. would have done for them exceedingly well, and they would certainly have elected him had he allowed it. On his death they turned instinctively to ., and General Monk's first overtures were made to the mayor and aldermen. |
As this was the last time but one that the Londoners exercised their ancient electoral privilege, it excites a greater interest than the king's actual entry, which has been so fully described.[21] The negotiations commenced upon the rupture between Monk and the parliament, when that astute general, instead of writing to the citizens, sent a private messenger to the lord mayor, who may have communicated some of the design in hand. Be this as it may, the mayor invited Monk to a dinner, after | |
350 | which he and the members of the corporation repaired to the Guildhall, where he made a speech, in which he apologised for some recent military proceedings which had frightened the city into the idea that its independence would be compromised. He further, as an earnest of his good intentions, communicated the contents of a letter which he had written to the parliament advising the issue of writs for a new house of commons; and though he did not openly acquaint the meeting with his whole counsel in the matter of a restoration, he contrived to show them that in what he did he had the interests of the city rather than of the parliament at heart. and that, come what may, he felt sure they would eventually be satisfied with his course of action. By such vague phrases he restored or awakened their confidence, and a mutual engagement was entered into by which he and they were bound to stand or fall together. He charged them to keep order, and, having replace the members of parliament who had so long been excluded, he contrived that an ordinance should be passed restoring the ancient liberty, and was in gratitude immediately elected general of the civic forces, and invited for his greater security to take up his quarters in the city. He probably thought himself sufficiently safe at , where he had made his headquarters in Northumberland House; so he sent a grateful but vague reply, and summoned the trained bands to a grand review in Hyde Park. Early in 166O matters took a fresh turn. sent Lord Mordaunt and Sir John Grenville from Breda with a letter to the lord mayor, aldermen, and common council, as well as to Monk, the parliament, and the fleet. The mayor, Thomas Alleyne,[22] |
351 | assembled his fellow citizens, and introduced Mordaunt and Grenville. The letter was read amid the wildest acclamations of joy. The messengers were immediately presented with a handsome gratuity, and before the meeting broke up, fourteen members of the common council were deputed to accompany them back to Holland, with a present of 10,000£, and an assurance of their loyal devotion. A few days later[23] the new king was proclaimed at the usual places in the city, when the citizens took occasion to testify their loyalty, and no doubt their feeling of relief from the thraldom of the presbyterians, by excesses of drunkenness such as London had not seen for many a long day. The fourteen citizens who formed the deputation were knighted at Breda, and on the 29th May accompanied to St. George's Fields, where the lord mayor received him, and where, before entering the city, the king was entertained in a splendid tent erected beforehand. The magnificence of his welcome has been often described, and may be summed up in a brief sentence from the amusing diary of Samuel Pepys :-" It is impossible to relate the glory of this day, expressed in the clothes of them that rid, and their horses and horse-clothes." |
The events of the restoration belong to the history of England. The history of the city is concerned about a very different kind of subject. The two greatest misfortunes that ever befel it were already approaching The intoxication of triumph was sobered by the outbreak of an epidemic of small-pox, to which the new king's brother, among thousands of others, fell a victim; but a worse disaster was impending. | |
I have avoided, hitherto, anything but a passing reference to the visitations of the plague. They culminated | |
352 | in the appalling disaster of . Several times had the deaths from epidemic disorders reached so high a figure that the year was afterwards described as that of the "Great Plague." Such a calamity occurred in , when 50,000 people are said to have died. This may be an exaggeration, yet we have no means of testing its truth, not knowing how great was the populatio.n of the city at the time. Hallam estimated it in the twelfth century as about 40,000. Fitzstephen speaks of 80,000 fighting men as mustering for war in his day.[24] In the sixteenth century we are just as much in ignorance as to the number of souls within the city boundaries. In the seventeenth, however, we have better information, yet there are astonishing discrepancies between the different estimates. Thus Howel thinks there were not fewer than a million and a half of people in London in the time of the Commonwealth, [25] while twenty years earlier the authorities of the Guildhall only estimated about 700,000 within the liberties. In , Sir William Petty, a very careful and acute observer, reckoned the population at 672,000, inhabiting 84,000 houses. Yet another writer of the same period only made the number 530,000. On the whole, as Petty only reckoned the average number of inhabitants of each house at eight, it seems not unlikely that 672,000 is a moderate estimate. |
The number of deaths from the plague, or from various epidemics, some of which were the plague, and some of a different character, is as difficult to ascertain now as the population. When the "bills of mortality" were first issued in it became easier, and before the end of the century a very accurate idea could be formed. | |
353 | The plague which began in the year of queen 's death, went on increasing year by year in its fatal powers till , when no fewer than 4000 were believed to have succumbed to it. It lost its virulence by , but there were probably a few deaths from it at intervals until , when there was another terrific outbreak, and the deaths from all causes amounted to 54,265, of which 35,417 were attributed to the plague. In the same year, the number of christenings was only 6983. The deaths, therefore, in that, the worst plague year before , were to the births as 8 to I. Several different kinds of disease were summarily referred to under the one word "plague." The Black Death is the significant name given to the epidemic of . It had reached London in the previous November.[26] The first symptoms seemed in themselves sufficiently horrible to justify the name. A man apparently in perfect health would suddenly commence to vomit blood. A few minutes later he would fall down dead. Sometimes, however, his agonies would be prolonged for twelve hours, sometimes for two days. Every thing he touched, every place where he rested, spread the contagion. If he survived the first stunning blow of the Black Death, his body was covered with inflammatory swellings, and it was believed that even a glance of the sick man's distorted eyes was sufficient to give the infection. |
The Sweating Sickness came next. [27] It reached London in July , and speedily decimated the citizens. Yet, compared with the Black Death, it was mildness itself, and in many cases yielded to curative treatment. The city was crowded with poor artisans, | |
354 | and the insurrection known as Evil May Day, of which I gave some account in the last chapter, has been connected by many writers with the immigration of innumerable foreign workmen. But the sweating sickness attacked high and low indifferently. Ammonius, the Latin secretary of cardinal Wolsey, whose name occurs so frequently in contemporary memoirs, boasted to Sir Thomas More that his precautions were such that he and his family were perfectly safe. He died the same evening. Michaelmas and Christmas were both left unobserved, and the epidemic raged without interruption for six months, before it abated. The plague began to spread as soon as the sweating sickness subsided, and when we read of the state of London houses at the time, our only wonder is that such an overwhelming misfortune as the Great Plague of was so long in coming. Erasmus says of the dwellings of the lower classes in his time, that they were filthy beyond description. The floors were of loam, and were strewed with rushes, which were constantly put on fresh without the removal of the old, and intermixed with bones, broken victuals, and other dirt. They had probably improved very little, if at all, by the middle of the seventeenth century, and we may be sure that the Augaean filth of the city required nothing less than the Great Fire to purify it. |
The water supply, it is now generally acknowledged, is the first cause of epidemic disease. In London at the beginning of the reign of ., it was threefold. Some water came to public conduits, like those in Cheap, by underground pipes from . Some was drawn by water-wheels and other similar means from the , polluted as it was at .[28] A third source | |
355 | of supply was still more dangerous: in all the suburbs, and probably also in most houses in the city itself, people depended on wells. What wells among habitations, and especially filthy habitations, become, we know now, but in the seventeenth century and much later,[29] the idea of their danger had not been started. |
Such being the conditions of existence in London, the plague now and then smouldering for a year or two, now and then breaking out as in , , and , a long drought, which means resort to half dry and stagnant reservoirs, was sufficient to call it forth in all its strength. The heat of the summer weather in was such that the very birds of the air were imagined to languish in their flight. The 7th of June, said Pepys, was the hottest day that ever he felt in his life. The deaths from the plague, which had begun at the end of the previous year, in the suburb of St. Giles' in the Fields, at a house in Long Acre, where two Frenchmen had died of it, rose during June from 112 to 268. The entries in the diary are for four months almost continuous as to the progress of the plague. Although it was calculated that not less than 200,000 people had followed the example of the king and court, and fled from the doomed city, yet the deaths increased daily. The lord mayor, Lawrence, held his ground, as did the brave earl of Craven and General Monk, now become duke of Albemarle. Craven provided a burial-ground, the Pest Field, with a kind of cottage-hospital, in Soho; [30] but the only remedy that could be devised by the united wisdom of the corporation, fortified by the presence of the duke and the earl, was to order fires in all the streets, as if the | |
356 | weather was not already hot enough. Medical art seems to have utterly broken down. Those of the sick who were treated by a physician, only died a more painful death by cupping, scarifying, and blistering. The city rectors, too, who had come back with the king, fled from the danger, as might be expected from their antecedents, and the nonconformist lecturers who remained had overwhelming congregations wherever they preached repentance to the terror-stricken people. Distinctions of creed were forgotten before the common danger. The wildest conjectures were hazarded as to its origin. The president of the College of Physicians pronounced it to have come in a bale of flax from Holland,[31] while the lecturers attributed it solely to the just anger of God at the excesses which had prevailed in the kingdom since the restoration. |
The symptoms were very distressing. Fever and vomiting were among the first, and every little ailment was thought premonitory, so that it was said at the time that as many died of fright as of the disease itself. Pepys mentions the terror which affected a household when a child suffered from headache. The fatal signs were glandular swellings which ran their course in a few hours, the plague spots turning to gangrene almost as soon as they appeared. The patients frequently expired the same day that they were seized, while others survived a week and even longer, only to die slowly of exhaustion from bleeding and ill-treatment in general. | |
The most terrible stories of premature burial were circulated. All business was suspended. Grass grew in | |
357 | the streets. No one went about. The rumbling wheels of the cart, and the cry, " Bring out your dead !" alone broke the stillness of the night. Great pits were dug in Bunhill Fields, and in Tothill Fields at , and the bodies were shot into them and covered up without coffins, without even grave-clothes, and without any funeral ceremony. In the first weeks of September the number of fatal cases rose to a day, the bills of mortality recording 24,000 deaths between the 1st and 21st of that month. Then at last it began to decline, but rose again at the beginning of October. A change of weather at length occurred, and the average declined so rapidly, that by the beginning of November the number of deaths was reduced to , and before Christmas came, it had fallen to the usual number of former years. In all, the official statements enumerated 97,306 deaths during the year, and, if we add those unrecorded, a very moderate estimate of the whole mortality would place it at the appalling figure of 100,000 at least. |
I have thus briefly summarised the details of this terrible event, referring for fuller particulars to the innumerable publications on the subject which appeared then, and afterwards. That the plague was ever stayed we must attribute to a cause for which as I have already hinted, sufficient allowance has not hitherto been made. Though the Great Fire of was the proximate reason, the total cessation of the epidemic must be traced to the alteration in the water-supply, which the fire made not only possible but necessary. As far back as , Sir Hugh Myddelton, a public-spirited Welshman, who was a member of the goldsmiths' company, had completed his scheme for bringing water to London. He tapped a supply at Chadswell Springs in Hertfordshire, and constructing a canal nearly forty miles long, | |
358 | formed a reservoir in Islington, from which to this day London obtains its water. The New River, as it is still called, was one of the greatest benefits the city ever received from a private individual. Sir Hugh was ruined, and parted with his interest in the great work to a company, reserving to himself and his heirs an annuity of 100£, which has not been claimed since . The first dividend was paid to the shareholders in , but the water was evidently used only here and there before . When the old wells were filled by the ruins after the fire, the New River water became universal. In the city as rebuilt it was everywhere laid on; and London must acknowledge Sir Hugh Myddelton to have been its greatest modern benefactor. He changed it, from having been as unhealthy as Dublin, Naples, or even Calcutta, to be one of the safest places of abode in the world. The mildest case of typhoid fever in the city now would probably occasion a greater sensation than a thousand cases of plague would have caused under the Stuarts. |
Scarcely had the terrified citizens settled down once more in their old homes when a second calamity came upon them. The summer of was, if possible, hotter than that of the previous year. An easterly wind which occasionally rose almost to a gale, prevailed without intermission for weeks together. At last, when wooden houses must have become as dry as tinder, a baker's oven in Pudding Lane, near Fish Street Hill and Eastcheap, and thus to windward of the central part of the city, took fire one sultry night. The neighbours looked at it as they had looked at many fires before, but when twenty-four hours had elapsed and the flames continued to spread into the adjoining streets and lanes, here very narrow, crowded and old, they began to take alarm. | |
359 | The baker's shop had ignited at one o'clock on the morning of the 2nd September.[32] By the next night all Gracechurch Street was burned, and the flames spread along the river's side to the Vintry. On Tuesday, the 3rd, the whole of Fleet Street as far as the Temple was on fire, but the more substantial brick buildings in that quarter checked its further progress. The king himself, and his brother the duke of, exerted their influence in blowing up and pulling down houses to stop the course of the conflagration, and succeeded so well, that it is easy to see that similar activity earlier applied might have saved the city. But Bludworth, who had succeeded Lawrence as lord mayor, though he did not spare himself, had no power of organisation. At first he under-estimated the greatness of the danger, and replied by a coarse joke to those who urged the application of stronger methods of repression. Next he despaired and wrung his hands in hopeless fatuity. By the help of soldiers, however, and others, and by the personal exertions of the duke and his courtiers, gunpowder was freely used at Temple Bar, at Pye Corner near the entrance of Smithfield, and at various other salient points to the north and east of the central fire. On Thursday evening it was brought under control, and though it burst out again in one or two places it was speedily subdued, and by Friday at mid-day the great danger was over, and people had time to judge of the dimensions of the disaster. |
The prospect was terrible enough to paralyse a stouter heart than that of the unhappy mayor. The result of the five days' fire was, summarily, as follows :-396 acres of houses were destroyed, comprising fifteen wards | |
360 | wholly ruined, eight others half burnt; 400 streets, 13,200 dwellings, 89 churches, besides chapels, and 4 of the city gates. The cathedral of St. Paul, the Exchange, Custom House, portion of the Guildhall, and most of the halls of city companies, with a host of other stately edifices of all sorts, were consumed. The extent of the ruin is absolutely unparalleled. The earthquake of Lisbon, in that London was so much greater, was as nothing in comparison. The loss of life, as ascertained, was moderate, but the loss of property could hardly be estimated. It has sometimes been reckoned at between three and four millions sterling, but this is irrespective of the destruction of inestimable things, such as monuments, libraries, records, and objects of personal value. London, in short, as a city, was obliterated from the map. |
The burning of St. Paul's alone would have been considered an irreparable misfortune at any other time. True the steeple, once the highest in Europe, had already, as long before as , been shortened, if not actually destroyed, by lightning: but now the long Norman nave, the light and elegant choir, the chapels, the subsidiary church of St. Faith, the cloisters, the venerable chapter-house, the bishop's palace, the deanery and the canons' houses, all were reduced to a mass of smoking ruins.[33] The crypt had been filled, as a place | |
361 | of safety, with sheets of unbound, and in some cases unpublished, books, and four days after the flames had been first overcome, on the opening of the doors, the rush of air fanned the smouldering paper into a fresh fire, which could not be extinguished, and which consummated the ruin of the very foundations of the great edifice above. |
The beautiful church of the , to which I have so often had occasion to refer, shared the same fate, as did the chapel of St. Thomas in Cheap,-the Mercers' chapel, as it was then called,-and, of course, all the minor parochial churches as far east as St. Michael's and St. Peter's in Cornhill, and as far west as St. Bride's in Fleet Street. St. Sepulchre's was only partially burnt. St. Bartholomew's, or what was left of it from the rough usage of the previous century, was saved, as were the inner buildings of the , now the Blue Coat School, and All Hallows, Barking, though the flames approached close to it. The churches on the north side of Leadenhall Street were also preserved. These exceptions include, of course, all that lay further north, St. Helen's, St. Ethelburga's, with Crosby Hall and Gresham College, in , but everything else was utterly consumed, and for most of the old city we have only the descriptions left us by the indefatigable Stow to tell how great is our loss in sumptuous churches, chapels, tombs and tablets, the memorials of long ages of faith and devotion, of artistic skill and venerable association. | |
Footnotes: [1] See further on this subject in vol. ii. chapter xx. [2] See Maitland, i. 291. [3] Howell's 'Londinopolis,' p. 19. He tells the story with evident pleasure, but qualifies it in the index as "A factious saying of the Lord Mayor's to King James." He does not give the lord mayor's name. [4] There is a contemporary view of the Temple Gate. See the accompanying reproduction. [5] John Travers, Walter's brother, married Alice, sister of Richard Hooker. (' Herald and Genealogist,' iii. 27). [6] "Hooker, it was said, preached Canterbury in the forenoon, and Travers Geneva in the afternoon. The Benchers were divided."-Cunningham, ' Handbook,' ii. 802. [7] The little fountain had associations of its own, and was made the background of one of Dickens' most pathetic scenes. But the vulgar horror of age and quaintness which has ruined so much else in the Temple has transformed it within the past few years, and it retains now no morebeauty or picturesqueness than if it belonged to a nursery garden or a suburban villa. [8] ' Henry IV .' part i. act iii. scene 3. [9] Oct. 22, 1666. [10] They are now, at least those which have survived, under the bellows of the organ. The church before it was completely altered is described in 'The Churches of London,' by Godwlin and Britton, vol. i. [11] At St. Margaret's, Lothbury, in 1583, Mr. Alexander Shepherd proposed to preach on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but the parishioners preferred Sunday forenoon and Thursday night. Parish Books, quoted by Mr. Freshfield, 'Archæologia, xiv. 67. [12] In a Latin poem 'Ad Patrem,' translated by Cowper, and quoted with other notices, in Knight's ' London,' ii. 98. [13] See Knight, &c. [14] Allen, i. 336. The general history of this miserable period is so well known that I confine myself in the text to the most prominent points and of those to what concerns the city only. [15] 3rd January,1642. [16] Clarendon, 'History,' vol. i. See Green, iii. 214. , They had been lodged very openly in a house in Coleman Street, and daily visited by members of parliament and the chief citizens. [17] It is asserted that Charles carried off the contents of the Mint-the property of the goldsmiths-on this occasion, amounting to 200,000£. See Price, ' Handbook of London Bankers,' p. 61. [18] See below, p. 357. [19] " The city of London was the very soul of the cause."-Maitland, i. 380, where even the speeches at the civic banquets may be found in full. [20] Green, iii. 226. t Christ Church, Newgate Street. I Psa. xlvi. [21] The negotiations are given in great detail by Maitland, chiefly from Rushworth. [22] Alleyne was a member of the Grocers' Company, to which General Monk was also admitted in February, 1660. Charles II. became a member of the same company in July. [23] 8th May,1660, [24] Pegge suggests that an extra cypher has crept into the manuscript: but in writing of the period So,ooo would probably be lXXXM [25] 'Londinopolis' was published in 1657. [26] Hecker, 'Epidemics of the Middle Ages,' p. 20, edition of 1844. [27] Hecker, p. 209. [28] Every one has heard of the sick man who died when he was removed from the sound of the water-wheel near his house on the bridge. [29] Hecker, for example, accounts for plagues by earthquakes, atmospheric disturbances, personal contagion, and many other things. [30] See vol. ii., chapters xvii. and xxi. [31] 'Distinct Notions of the Plague,' by "The Explainer," 1722, p. 14. This and several other works of the kind were published about the same time, namely, during a scare occasioned by an outbreak of plague at Marseilles. Defoe's fictitious 'Diary' was among them. [32] The official account, from the London Gazette of the 10th September, is reprinted by Allen, i. 401. [33] In a curious poem, 'The Conflagration of London,' attributed by Lowndes to Simon Ford, D.D. of Oxford (lent to me by Messrs. Ellis and White of Bond Street), the burning of St. Paul's is described in forcible if grotesque couplets:- "That reverend Fabrick which the World admir'd Amongst a crowd of lesser note, is fir'd. Its cloud surmounting steeple flam'd so high That threatned Heavens ne're fear'd a flame so nigh. Yea, some beholders thought 'twas more then fear'd While falling sparks like falling Stars appear'd." |