London to the Fire

A wind blew freshly throughout three of the four days that London burnt, always driving the flames farther into the City. By midnight on Monday, the second day, vast destruction had been done in an area that spread for nearly a mile along the river front, and in its northward extension the fire involved the whole of Corn hill, the Poultry, and was at the entrance of Cheapside. About the waterside much of the City lay dead and blackened, and the fire at night assumed the form of that huge "bow of flame" which so greatly impressed the diarist Pepys. Fire appliances consisted of iron hooks on poles for pulling down the burning wooden houses, axes and ladders, the only means of projecting water being brass hand-squirts worked by three men.

The king displaced the irresolute lord mayor (Sir Thomas Blud worth) from supreme authority, which he gave to James, duke of York; soldiers and dockyardsmen were sent in. Nearly half the walled City was burning by Tuesday morning. That third day the Guildhall was alight, the Custom House and Royal Exchange were destroyed, and late that night fire broke out on the roof of St. Paul's and ultimately left the great Gothic cathedral in ruins. In its onward rush the fire burnt through Cheapside and reached London's northern wall at Cripplegate, and westward passed the wall at Newgate and Ludgate, and burnt the larger part of the liberty, extending to Holborn bridge and throughout the length of Fleet street to within a few houses of Temple Bar. The wind falling during the night, the fire made but small advance on the fourth day, when save in a few isolated places it burnt itself out.

The City surveyors' return shows concisely the extent of the calamity :—Area of the City burnt, 273ac. within the walls, 63ac. without the walls; 87 parish churches, besides chapels, burnt; 13,20o houses burnt in over 400 streets and courts. Only one fif th of the walled city was left standing.

Reconstruction.

With undaunted courage the citizens faced the vast task of rebuilding their city. Sir Christopher Wren and John Evelyn devised model plans, but amid the resulting distress and in the absence of any national contribution these could not be carried out, and the mediaeval street plan was retained. The Rebuilding Act of 1667 directed that brick and stone only should be used. Four types of houses alone were to be permitted, for which specifications were given. A brick-built city slowly arose that was orderly in design, and in marked contrast to the pictur esque jumble of gabled dwellings that it superseded. A few main

streets were widened and straightened. Forty-four City Com panies' halls had been burnt, and these, with the Custom House and Royal Exchange, were first rebuilt. Repairs to the Guild hall lasted till 1675. Four years after the fire construction began of ten of Wren's churches; the 51 churches rebuilt were not com pleted when the century ended. St. Paul's was finished in 1712.

No other single event exerted such influence upon the city's future and the welfare of its inhabitants as the great fire. The Reformation destroyed the predominating ecclesiastical charac ter that London had maintained throughout the middle ages; the fire made the City within the lord mayor's jurisdiction the main commercial centre that it has since been. Under the first Stuart kings the nobility, moving out from the City, created a fashionable west-end at Covent Garden and Lincoln's Inn Fields; loyalists returned with King Charles II. built themselves houses farther west. At the close of the reign Aldersgate street alone in the City remained a place of fashionable residence.

After the fire London for the first time was given a central sanitary authority. Municipal service hardly existed. Lighting such as the streets enjoyed, by candles exposed in horn lanterns before the house fronts, it was the duty of individual householders to provide; they formed the watch (police) ; there was no public control of drainage; repair of the street surface to the centre line and cleansing of the streets were obligations cast upon residents, each man before his own house. A Sewers Act of 1671 gave to London in perpetuity a public body called the commissioners of sewers, nominated by the corporation, with power to raise a rate, and to this body was confided the laying out, repair, drainage and cleansing of the City streets.

For the last time a king of England sought to curtail the City of London's ancient liberties and franchises, by proceedings under the writ Quo warranto, which resulted in 1683 in various Alder men and officers being ejected, and for a few years their places, together with the mayoralty, were filled by royal nominees. The legality of the proceedings was never acknowledged ; it became known only later that two of the King's Bench judges who fa voured the City's cause were arbitrarily removed before judg ment. Charles died on Feb. 6, 1685, and in the crisis of King James II.'s short reign that followed full restitution was made of the City's liberties.