London, Londoners and the Great Fire of 1666

Disaster and Recovery

Jacob F. Field

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351582759
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The Great Fire of 1666 was one of the greatest catastrophes to befall London in its long history. While its impact on London and its built environment has been studied and documented, its impact on Londoners has been overlooked. This book makes full and systematic use of the wealth of manuscript sources that illustrate social, economic and cultural change in seventeenth-century London to examine the impact of the Fire in terms of how individuals and communities reacted and responded to it, and to put the response to the Fire in the context of existing trends in early modern England. The book also explores the broader effects of the Fire in the rest of the country, as well as how the Great Fire continued to be an important polemical tool into the eighteenth century.

Part one

1
A brief account of the Great Fire

In 1666 around 400,000 people lived in London, making up 7.5 per cent of England’s total population of 5.3 million. The historic core of the metropolis was the City of London, the area enclosed by the old Roman walls and the parishes that immediately surrounded them. For the most part it retained the same street structure it had had since medieval times. Houses and businesses were closely packed together, leaning over narrow streets and lanes. Beyond the City lay London’s suburbs. By 1666 London had been growing rapidly for over a century. At least 330,000 people (net) had been added to its population from 1550 to 1650. Most of these new arrivals tended to live in low-quality, densely packed, filthy houses in yards and alleys.¹ Such residences and people were spread throughout London, although most migrants first settled in the suburbs. In the City wealthier groups tended to live in the centre with poorer residents on the riverside and near to the Walls.²

By the mid-seventeenth century, less than half of London lived in the City within and without the Walls. The latter areas, known as the ‘liberties’, were outside the boundary of the Walls but within the jurisdiction of the City. The suburbs were the most rapidly growing areas of the early modern metropolis.³ New arrivals usually lived in the suburbs because rents tended to be lower and there were more opportunities for economic growth as guild controls were less strictly imposed.⁴ The northern and southern suburbs expanded rapidly from 1560 to 1600, but thereafter increased at approximately the same rate as the City. During the seventeenth century, the main areas of growth were to the west and the east of the City.⁵ Despite the fact that the City was decreasing in its share of London’s population, it remained a centre of wealth, influence and prestige. It was home to many of England’s wealthiest merchants, a waterside thronged with quays and wharfs, and famed commercial districts like Cheapside and the Royal Exchange. The City also included Guildhall, the ceremonial and administrative centre of civic government, dozens of livery company halls, over 100 parish churches and the gothic hulk of Old St Paul’s Cathedral.

Even though the Great Fire primarily impacted the City, it is vital to have an understanding of the suburbs. Each of them developed in different ways and had distinct functions and specialisations.⁶ Mirroring the City was Westminster. The two were connected by the Strand and Fleet Street. Since the mid-eleventh century Westminster had been a seat of government and administration for the Crown, as well as the location of England’s Parliament and key parts of its judiciary. Westminster and the City had been geographically separate until the sixteenth century, when the fields between them were filled in. The traditional boundary between the City and Westminster was Temple Bar, which was located close to the Inns of Court, the centre of the legal profession since the late fourteenth century. By the seventeenth century the ‘West End’ had emerged, with nobles, gentry and professions flocking to live there. It became a centre of fashion and taste, as well as a centre of commerce and leisure. Here there were larger, more prestigious dwellings, with high concentrations of elite groups which could rival the City.⁷ The West End was not only made up of grand houses for the wealthy; outside of the large developments around squares, there were still low-quality houses for poorer residents, who mainly worked in the service industry, clustered in alleys and courts.⁸

Figure 1.1 Panoramic view of London by Nicolaes Visscher (c. 1666)

(Reproduced with the kind permission of the London Metropolitan Archives [City of London])

The East End was the geographical and social opposite of the western suburbs. A key boundary between the eastern suburbs and the City was the Tower of London. In the east there was a higher concentration of lower-status residences.⁹ Development in the East End in the seventeenth century tended to be lower density than in the West End, clustering along the Thames and the major thoroughfares such as Ratcliffe Highway.¹⁰ The most important part of the area was the Port of London, which would grow to rival Amsterdam as the most important centre of shipping and commerce in Europe. The area north of the City tended to be home to craftsmen and manufacturers. It was also the location of two open areas of ground, Moorfields and Finsbury Fields, which would play a crucial role during the Fire. Finally there were the southern suburbs. Directly opposite the City, connected by London Bridge, was Southwark, an area famed for leisure and hospitality, as well as the location of some industry. Stretching away to the east along the river were Bermondsey, Rotherhithe and Greenwich, which were all associated with shipping and related industries. There was no strict delineation between the suburbs and the City. They were linked through the movements of goods and people and social networks such as the livery companies.¹¹

London and England in 1666

Six years before the Fire the Stuarts had been restored to the throne. Charles II entered London in triumph on 29 May. His regime had not been able to completely bring stability to England. A major structural problem of the Restoration was that many of the political and religious divisions that had caused the Civil Wars still existed. The balance of power between crown and Parliament continued to be a matter of dispute. Charles II’s religious policies were highly divisive. The Clarendon Code had targeted nonconformists, ejecting dissenting ministers from their parishes and attempting to ensure that all members of local government conformed to the Church of England. There was suspicion at the apparent sympathy that the monarchy had for Catholics. These issues combined, with practical limitations on royal power, made Charles II’s regime more precarious than it appeared.¹²

London’s relationship with the Crown was uneasy. The City had played a key role in supporting the Parliamentarian cause during the Civil Wars. Many Londoners had joined Parliament’s armed forces and also helped to finance the anti-Royalist forces. Although London had cautiously welcomed Charles II in 1660, disputes between him and many Londoners arose, particularly due to religious differences.¹³ London’s population was possibly 15 to 20 per cent nonconformist, with the heaviest concentrations in wards outside the Walls, such as Aldersgate Without, Bishopsgate Without and Cripplegate Without. The Clarendon Code had therefore subjected a significant portion of Londoners to sporadic government persecution.¹⁴ TheCrown attempted to secure the loyalty and compliance of London (and other urban areas) by purging their administration of nonconformists under the 1661 Corporation Act. Symbolic of this new regime in London was the Sir Thomas Bludworth, who had been begun his one-year term as Lord Mayor in October 1665. Bludworth, a prosperous merchant to Iberia and the Levant, was a member of the Vintners’ Company. He had been arrested by the Rump Parliament, but after the Restoration was knighted for his services to the Royalist cause. He had then been named one of the two sheriffs of London before being made alderman of Aldersgate Ward in 1662, his predecessor having been removed by the Crown.¹⁵

In 1666 England was engaged in the Second Anglo-Dutch War, which had formally begun on 22 February 1665. Charles II hoped the conflict would galvanise support for his regime.¹⁶ The war was certainly not unpopular in London in its initial phases. Most prominent figures in the City were mercantilists who believed that the war was necessary to achieve commercial dominance over the Dutch. The City had financed the building of the HMS Loyal London to express their renewed allegiance to the crown and support for the war. It was launched in June 1666. That month England had won the first major engagement of the war, defeating the Dutch fleet at Lowestoft. Financing the conflict proved challenging for England. Parliament had allocated £2.5 million for the war, although the Crown had not received all of this money because of shortfalls in taxation. In October 1665 another £1.25 million was allocated for the war. Buying provisions was proving increasingly problematic as merchants charged the Royal Navy higher prices because most of their purchases were on credit.¹⁷ The last major action of the war before the Great Fire was Holmes’ Bonfire. On 9 August 1666 Rear-Admiral Robert Holmes raided the Vlie, a channel between the Dutch islands of Terschelling and Vlieland. It was full of merchant ships, which Holmes fired, destroying over 140 vessels and £1 million worth of goods. The next day his troops landed in the village of West-Terschelling, which was looted and burned. This caused outrage in the Dutch Republic, where the Great Fire would be hailed as divine retribution for Holmes’ actions.¹⁸

Pestilence had struck England in 1665. Bubonic plague was endemic to most large cities in seventeenth-century Europe, including London. Since the Bills of Mortality had begun to be regularly compiled in 1603 there had been only four years free from plague deaths. Occasionally serious epidemics flared up, killing thousands. The most recent outbreak in London had peaked in 1647, killing 3,597. However, in 1664 there were just four recorded plague deaths in London.¹⁹ That year rumours of a serious form of plague in the Dutch Republic emerged in England, and all ships from there were subject to quarantine. These regulations did not prevent the plague spreading to London. The first plague deaths were recorded in December 1664 in St Giles-in-the-Fields, a parish in the western suburbs that contained some of London’s poorest residences. By spring 1665 it was spreading to other parishes in the west as well as emerging in the East End. On 9 May the first plague death within the Walls was recorded, in St Mary Woolchurch Haw. The epidemic peaked that ...