From the fresco painting in the Royal Exchange, London, by permission of the Artist, Stanhope A. Forbes, A. R.A., and the Donors. The Sun Insurance Office.

their goods, and leave all to the fire, and having seen it get as far as the Steelyard,
and the wind mighty high and driving it into the City, and everything after so
long a drought, proving combustible, even the very stones of churches, and among
other things the poor steeple by which pretty Mrs. lives, and whereof my old
schoolfellow Elborough is parson, taken fire in the very top and there burned till it
fell down: I to White Hall (with a gentleman with me who desired to go off from
the Tower to see the Fire, in my boat), and to White Hall, and there up to the
King's closett in the Chappell, where people come about me, and I did give them
an account dismayed them all, and the word was carried in to the King. So I was
called for, and did tell the King and Duke of York what I saw, and that unless His
Majesty did command houses to be pulled down, nothing could stop the fire."
"Walked along Watling Street, as well as I could, every creature coming away
loaden with goods to save, and here and there sicke people carried away in beds.
Extraordinary good goods carried in carts and on backs. At last met ye Lord
Mayor in Canning Street, like a man spent, with a handkercher about his neck.
To the King's message he cried like a fainting woman, 'Lord! what can I do? I
am spent; people will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses: but the fire
overtakes us faster than we can do it.' That he needed no more soldiers: and that,
for himself, he must go and refresh himself, having been up all night. So he left
me, and I him, and walked home, seeing people all almost distracted, and no manner
of means used to quench the fire. The houses, too, so very thick thereabouts, and
full of matter for burning, as pitch and tarr, in Thames Street: and warehouses of
oyle, and wines, and brandy and other things. . . . And to see the churches all
filling with goods by people who themselves should have been quietly there at this
time. . . . Soon as dined, I and Moone away, and walked through the City, the
streets full of nothing but people and horses and carts loaden with goods, ready to
run over one another, and removing goods from one burned house to another.
They now removing out of Canning Street (which received goods in the morning)
into Lombard Street and further: and among others I now saw my little goldsmith
Stokes, receiving some friend's goods, whose house itself was burned the day after.
We parted at Paul's: he home, and I to Paul's Wharf, where I had appointed a
boat to attend me, and took in Mr. Carcasse and his brother, whom I met in the
streets, and carried them below and above bridge to and again to see the fire, which
was now got further, both below and above, and no likelihood of stopping it. Met
with the King and Duke of York in their barge, and with them to Queenhithe, and
there called Sir Richard Browne to them. Their order was only to pull down
houses apace, and so below bridge at the water side: but little was or could be
done, the fire coming upon them so fast. Good hopes there was of stopping it at
the Three Cranes above, and at Buttolph's Wharf below bridge, if care be used:
but the wind carries it into the City, so as we know not by the water-side what

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of all ranks and degrees, deploring their loss, and though ready to perish for hunger and destitution, yet not asking one penny for relief. It was not money they wanted, it was food and shelter. Can one conceive a picture more sorrowful than that of 200,000 people thus wholly ruined? Evelyn went home, and at once set to work on a plan for the reconstruction of the City.

Pepys has preserved fuller details :

"So I down to the water-side, and there got a boat and through bridge, and there saw a lamentable fire. Poor Michell's house, as far as the Old Swan, already

burned that way, and the fire running further, that in a very little time it got as far as the Steelyard while I was there. Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that lay off: poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the water-side to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconys till some of them burned their wings and fell down. Having staid, and in an hour's time seen the fire rage every way, and nobody, to my sight, endeavouring to quench it, but only to remove

CHAPTER V

CONTEMPORARY EVIDENCE

I PROCEED to quote four accounts of the Fire from eye-witnesses. Between them one arrives at a very fair understanding of the magnitude of the disaster, the horrors of the Fire, especially at night, and the wretchedness of the poor people, crouched over the wreck and remnant of their property.

"Here"-Evelyn is the first of the four-"we saw the Thames covered with floating goods, all the barges and boates laden with what some had time and courage to save, as on the other, the carts carrying out to the fields, which for many miles were strewed with movables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away. Oh the miserable and calamitous spectacle! Such as happly the world had not seene the like since the foundation of it, nor be outdone till the universal conflagration of it. All the skie was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light seene above 40 miles round for many nights. God grant mine eyes may never behold the like, who now saw above 10,000 houses all in one flame: 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 aire 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 neere two miles in length and one in bredth. The clowds also of smoke were dismall and reached upon computation neere 56 mile in length. Thus I left it this afternoone burning, a resemblance of Sodom, or the last day. It forcibly called to my mind that passage non enim hic habemus stabilem civitatem: the ruines resembling the picture of Troy. London was, but is no more."

The next day he went to see the Fire again. All Fleet Street and the parts around it were in flames, the lead running down the streets in a stream, the stones of St. Paul's "flying like granados." The people, to the number of 200,000, had taken refuge in St. George's Fields and Moorfields as far as Islington and Highgate; there Evelyn visited them; they were lying beside their heaps of salvage,

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