The Fires of London of 1655

‘Fire and water are proverbially said to be good servants, but bad masters’ [Robert Elborough, London’s Calamity by Fire (1666)]

Fire, along with earth, water and air, was traditionally considered one of the four elements. In Greek mythology Prometheus stole fire from the Olympian gods and was punished for doing so by Zeus – Prometheus was bound to rock, unable to prevent an eagle from eating his liver each day. Fire, moreover, was considered one of the constituent elements of the soul by the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus. In Zoroastrianism, a pre-Christian religion centred in what is now Iran, a number of fire temples were built as sites of ritual purification. As for the Bible, fire features frequently. In Genesis God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah with brimstone and fire, while fire was used to burn certain intended sacrificial offerings to the same deity. Indeed, God is called a consuming fire in the Epistle to the Hebrews. There is also a pillar of fire in Exodus to lead the way for the children of Israel at night. Metals such as lead and gold were purified by fire. And the punishment of everlasting fire awaited sinners in the New Testament, not to mention a lake of fire and brimstone for the beast, the false prophet and the devil.

Besides its importance in mythology, philosophy and theology, fire – especially when not brought under control by humans – could be and indeed still is, tragically, both destructive and deadly. Probably the most famous example during the early modern period was what one scholar has called ‘the most devastating urban fire in Europe’ since Antiquity. This was the Great Fire of London of September 1666 which destroyed an estimated 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, 6 or 7 consecrated chapels, 52 livery company halls and 4 stone bridges, not to mention several courts and prisons. In short, about a quarter of the metropolis was consumed by flames. The cost of this damage was reckoned by certain contemporaries to amount to £10,730,500 or a little over £1.6 billion today, although we have to allow for the possibility of overinflated values.

Plan for rebuilding London after the Great Fire of 1666

Among historians there has been debate as to whether fires were commonplace or rare occurrences in early modern towns and cities. Certainly, there is abundant evidence that they happened – regardless of whether they were caused by lightning, acts of war, arson or accident. So the issue has been reframed as a question of degree: how frequent were large-scale fires during the sixteenth, seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries? Aside from London (1666) other examples of conflagrations include Venice (1505); Edinburgh (1544); Moscow (1547, 1571); Constantinople [Istanbul] (1569, 1589, 1606, 1653, 1660, 1665, 1679, 1683); Paris (1618); Cork (1622); Vienna (1627); Stockholm (1625, 1642, 1686, 1697); Magdeburg (1631); the Forbidden City in Beijing (1644); Issoudun (1651); Glasgow (1652); Aachen (1656); Edo [Tokyo] (1657); Turku (1681); Hamburg (1684); Prague (1689); Skopje (1689); Port Royal, Jamaica (1703); Rennes (1720); and Copenhagen (1728).

News from France. Or a relation of a marvellous and fearful accident of a disaster, which happened at Paris (1618)

David Garrioch, ‘Large fires and climatic variability in urban Europe, 1500–1800’, Climates and Cultures in History, 1 (2024), p. 6

Turning specifically to England, for the period from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century, the compilers of A gazetteer of English urban fire disasters identified 518 ‘major fires’ that occurred in 249 English provincial towns. In each instance a minimum of ten houses were burned or there was extensive damage. There were more urban fires still, although there is insufficient evidence to adequately document them.

‘Number of dwellings destroyed, where known, in English provincial towns between 1600 and 1759’ A gazetteer of English urban fire disasters

Notable fires in English provincial towns during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries include those at Norwich (1507); Oswestry, Shropshire (1567); East Dereham, Norfolk (1581); Nantwich, Cheshire (1583); Darlington, county Durham (1584); Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire (1594, 1595, 1614, 1641); Tiverton, Devon (1598, 1612); Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk (1608); Dorchester, Dorset (1613, 1625); Wymondham, Norfolk (1615); Banbury, Oxfordshire (1628); Southwark, Surrey (1639, 1676, 1681, 1689); Oxford (1644, 1671); Marlborough, Wiltshire (1653); Southwold, Suffolk (1659); Newport, Shropshire (1665); Northampton (1675); Newmarket, Cambridgeshire (1683); St Ives, Huntingdonshire (1689); and Warwick (1694).

The woeful and lamentable waste and spoil done by a sudden fire in S. Edmonds-bury in Suffolk (1608)

John Hilliard, Fire from Heaven (1613), concerning the burning of Dorchester on 6 August 1613

As for London, between 1500 and 1649 there were recorded fires at London Bridge (1503, 1633) and St Paul’s Cathedral (1561) as well as in various other parts of the City (1504, 1538, 1559, 1563). There was also a deadly accident in January 1650 resulting in at least 67 fatalities. This was a ‘lamentable & fearful’ fire at a ship-chandler’s house on Tower Street where twenty barrels of gunpowder caught flame. The ensuing explosion destroyed fifteen houses outright with a further 26 properties rendered uninhabitable. More than a hundred additional houses were badly damaged in this ‘direful tragedy’.

Death’s Master-piece: Or, A true relation of that great and sudden fire in Tower Street, London (January, 1650)

Similarly, on 20 July 1654 a merchant ship with a cargo of cloth bound for Bilbao accidently caught fire on the River Thames. The ship was driven into a sandbank near London Bridge where its store of gunpowder exploded. There was much loss of life:

for by its mighty violence all the decks were blown up and rent asunder, and the main mast and [mizzen] cast up at a great distance, so that the ship was so disjointed, that sundry pieces thereof flew about upon the shore, making great devastation.

The next day another ship laden with oil and docked at a wharf on the Thames blew up when the snuff of a candle set light to its gunpowder. Nine were killed aboard ship while an infant being held in the arms of a maid on the bank was severely wounded by splinters and never seen again.

On many occasions contemporaries detected the hand of God in these fearful events, for they were usually interpreted as terrible divine judgments upon sinful communities. Indeed, comparisons were frequently made with the punishment that God had inflicted upon two of the five cities of the plain, Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:1–29). Among the sins that moralists bewailed were pride, envy, hypocrisy, idleness, drunkenness, gluttony, covetousness, false dealing, slandering, swearing, whoring, treachery and lack of charity for the poor. Accordingly, these moralists implored sinners to repent through public acts of prayer, fasting and humiliation. Yet if devastating fires tended to be seen as an instrument of God’s wrath against an erring people, more often than not they were started by human hands – whether inadvertently or deliberately.

Besides God raining down fire from heaven, contemporaries had other explanations for the causes and spread of urban fires. At the top of the list were workplace accidents in household industries that used flammable materials. Negligence was commonly highlighted. And incidents which could have been contained, had there been prompt action, sometimes got out of control very quickly - especially if people were sleeping at night. Dry summers made it easier for wooden buildings to catch fire, while strong winds had the capacity to drive flames through narrow streets or blow embers into neighbouring areas. What made matters worse, particularly in London, was the profusion of flammable materials such as oil, butter, brandy, sugar, hops, hemp, flax, cordage, pitch, tar, brimstone and coal. Then there was saltpetre, which accelerated the process.

Modern scholarship has identified additional factors, notably the flouting of effective medieval fire regulations which had recommended the use of stone in building construction (particularly for party walls between adjoining residences); roofing with thatch rather than fireproof materials; tightly packed timber housing; the prevalence of hearths in domestic and work environments; the reliance upon open flames for lighting within the home at night; unsatisfactory ventilation; inadequate fire-fighting methods which encompassed the use of leather buckets as well as pulling down houses to create firebreaks; and the impact of climate change as a result of the Little Ice Age. It has also been noted that there was no formalised system of insurance for much of this period.

‘English provincial town fires between 1600 and 1699’ in A gazetteer of English urban fire disasters

Little wonder that in 1643 the Lord Mayor of London authorised the publication of some Seasonable Advice. Authored by an engineer, it outlined numerous ways in which people had suffered burns either through carelessness, wickedness or treason. In addition, there were recommended measures for ‘preventing the mischief of fire’ as well as instructions on how to prepare for and put out fires should they break out.

What follows is based on pamphlets, newsbooks, newsletters, ambassadorial reports, notebooks and local government records. While they have their shortcomings, I have used these printed and manuscript sources to provide a narrative of the little-known fires that broke out in London, Westminster and Southwark between February and December 1655. Against the backdrop of unseasonably warm weather and drought the previous summer, fires were reported during these months in several locations – notably at or near Fleet Street, Threadneedle Street, Birchin Lane, Billingsgate, Smithfield, St Giles in the Fields and Bermondsey. The population of London at this time, it should be added, has been estimated at about 375,000 people (among European cities it was then only exceeded by Paris and Constantinople).

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At about 11 o’clock on the night of Monday, 12 February 1655 a ‘very lamentable’ fire broke out in a grocer’s residence near ‘The Horn’ tavern in Fleet Street. The blaze raged for several hours, consuming not only the house where it began but also several other buildings in the vicinity. Despite all efforts to douse the flames with engines and buckets, the fire continued to burn until almost noon the following day. When it was all over between twenty and thirty houses had been incinerated and a ‘great store’ of goods destroyed. The estimated loss exceeded £100,000 (about £13.7 million today). It was said that the cause of the conflagration was a stove in the grocer’s home used for drying sugar.

A Perfect Account, no. 214 (7–14 February 1655), p. 1712

Then on Tuesday, 20 March 1655 at about 10 o’clock at night, a ‘most lamentable’ fire broke out in Threadneedle Street, not far from the Old Exchange. Some thought it began in a plumber’s dwelling, others in a packer’s residence. Fuelled by wines and oils the blaze swiftly spread out of control, burning down about fifteen houses by Merchant Taylors’ Hall and part of a prominent building adjoining the French church. Due to the ‘laborious’ efforts of firefighters the church itself was spared, suffering only broken glass windows in the chancel. Yet notwithstanding ‘the great use of engines and other means to quench it’ the fire continued raging for much of the next day. Remarkably, the conflagration ‘did seem to bear a peculiar and malicious appetite’ and ‘did spit at men’. While some lost a considerable fortune in merchandise (pepper, nutmeg, silk, cloth), jewels and costly household stuff others, venturing too close to the flames, received serious burns. Several firefighters were reported to have lost their limbs and a handful of people, the packer’s drunken servant included, were reckoned to have lost their lives. Among the fatalities some were killed by falling chimneys and others by burns suffered from falling into a blazing cellar (one of these men died in hospital). When the flames had abated it was estimated that the inferno had caused between £200,000 and £300,000 of damage (between £27 million and £41 million today), ‘which ought to be a matter of serious consideration and repentance’. According to the resident Venetian secretary:

the accident is considered as a punishment of Heaven for this country for its treatment of its innocent king, its disregard of true devotion and the multiplicity and confusion of sects.

The Weekly Intelligencer, no. 37 (20–27 March 1655), p. 246

On the night of Wednesday, 21 March 1655 another fire broke out at a home in Birchin Lane. More were to follow. At about 2 o’clock in the afternoon on Easter Sunday, 15 April 1655 a fire broke out in the upper room of a house at the lower end of Buttolph Lane near Billingsgate. The roofs of two adjacent houses were quickly pulled down and with the aid of engines and buckets the blaze was soon put out. That day a second fire broke out near Smithfield and a third at St. Giles in the Fields, but they were soon quenched. Even so, it was thought that these three fires were ‘warnings and caveats, to show that as God is angry with many sins amongst us, so particularly with the sin of profaning the Lord’s day’. Less than a week later at about 2 o’clock on the morning of Saturday, 21 April 1655 a ‘sad fire’ broke out at a brewery on the junction of Cross Key Alley and Barnsby Street in Bermondsey, Southwark. Most of the brewer’s malt (valued at £1,000), his kilns, horses and three dogs, an alehouse and more than twenty-five neighbouring properties were engulfed by flames. Fortunately soldiers quartering nearby and at great risk to their safety were able to halt the fire’s progress. None were killed and only one or two suffered minor injuries. It was said that the conflagration had begun in a kiln as the brewer’s inebriated servant slept. The following evening three more fires broke out in London, though these seem to have caused little harm. The next night the unfortunate brewer of Bermondsey suffered another fire in one of his kilns, but a passing soldier soon put this out.

Commenting on these events, one writer remarked, ‘who shall not fear when God speaks thus by fire?’ Taking notice of this ‘third great fire’ the resident Venetian secretary likewise observed that these ‘fearful disasters’ were being ascribed to the ‘judgment of Heaven on the ungodly’. Indeed, the enemies of the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) did not hesitate to exploit these calamities by saying that these things happened by Cromwell’s will since he wanted to ‘keep London in affliction’, the better to subdue it. Others, however, asserted that these fires were the work of Royalist extremists who wanted to see ‘everything upset and destroyed’. Even so, the secretary noted, anyone who spoke their opinion freely was arrested and punished, ‘so the majority conceal their ill will, and only the minority disclose it and put it in action’.

Perfect Proceedings of State Affaires, no. 291 (19–26 April 1655), p. 4616

Meanwhile, terrified of becoming another Sodom, the governors of London were quick to give ‘serious consideration’ to ‘the most just Judgments of Almighty God, upon this sinful City in the many great Fires, & signs of wrath, which have lately appeared here’. At a meeting of the Common Council held at the Guildhall on 24 April 1655 it was agreed that a day of fasting and prayer be appointed to repent of those ‘many great crying sins, which have so much provoked the holy eyes of God who is a consuming fire’. Among the sins they enumerated were lust, lasciviousness, idleness, pride, luxurious living, neglect of the poor, profanation of the Sabbath, and contempt for God’s word, teachings and warnings. This declaration was subsequently read in several London churches.

Perfect Proceedings of State Affaires, no. 293 (3–10 May 1655), p. 4659

The next day, Wednesday 25 April 1655, at ‘a very unseasonable hour’, a young man walking the streets of London with ‘a bundle of straw and matches dipped in brimstone’ was apprehended. Suspected to have had a hand in ten recent yet unexplained fires in the City, the alleged arsonist was taken to prison and confined until he could prove his innocence or provide sufficient bail. The prevailing mood, however, remained one of dread and it was said that in those perilous times there was nothing on people’s minds but ‘fire, fire’ ever since the ‘Devil’s link-boy’ had been detained.

Helping stoke these anxieties was a pamphlet entitled A third great and terrible Fire, Fire, Fire: Where? Where? Where? This supposedly God-given warning can be dated 25 March 1655, that is the first day of the new civil and political year. Its author was William Finch, a disciple of TheaurauJohn Tany (1608–1659), self-proclaimed High Priest and Recorder to the thirteen Tribes of the Jews. Here Finch declared that ‘the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel’ was sending forth a third great and terrible fire. For Finch believed that the sins of lust, pride, covetousness, ambition, deceit, perjury and covenant breaking had provoked the ‘pure FIRE Love’ of God ‘to boil and break forth, even down upon us’. Reminding his readers of ‘my Fire kindled in Fleet Street, and secondly renewed in Threadneedle Street, in the bowels of that proud City’, Finch proclaimed:

But now I am coming to take full and final possession by Fire and Sword on all flesh.

For by fire and sword doth the Lord plead with all flesh [Isaiah 66:16].

To the proud, ‘who puff up your fleshly bladders with wind of lust and vanity’, Finch issued a monition; ‘the Lord’s Fire is already kindled in your consciences, and is burning in the cankered bottoms of your Bags, and doth eat your flesh as Fire’. Only those of a contrite spirit, who were circumcised in heart, who feared the Lord and trembled at his word, whose souls were fitted to receive the refining fire of the resurrected Christ, only they would be spared ‘this great and dreadful day of vengeance, recompense, and judgement, which is begun already, and will reach over all the Creation’:

So that HERE, HERE, HERE is the Third Great and Terrible FIRE, FIRE, FIRE.

In a postscript addressed to the ‘Apostate and perjured nation’ of England, Finch affirmed that 1655 would be the last year of ‘thy days’. For as there were exactly 1656 years from creation of Adam to the destruction of ‘that old Apostate world by the Flood of waters’, so it was unavoidable that 1655 years from the Incarnation of Christ the Lord would appear in but one year by ‘fire and sword’ to ‘plead with all flesh’.

Then there were the prophecies of the famous astrologer William Lilly (1602–1681), who predicted yet more ‘strange fires’ in several locations in and about London – namely Cheapside, Fleet Street, Aldersgate Street, Whitecross Street, Golding Lane and other places. Yet to be forewarned was to be forearmed, as a journalist remarked.

On Thursday, 10 May 1655 the Lord Mayor of London, the Court of Aldermen and many of the inhabitants of the City diligently kept a public fast in ‘humble acknowledgment and self-abhorrence’ for those many sins that had provoked God. Yet as the devout artisan Nehemiah Wallington (1598–1658) commented, it was as if ‘God was angry at our prayers’, for still fires continued to break out in the City – including one in Aldersgate Street. Nevertheless, and much to Wallington’s satisfaction, he could not learn of any fires in the City or suburbs since ‘the day of Humiliation of Fasting and prayer of his despised servants which some did mock & flout at’. Looking back on these terrible events Wallington believed that the ‘Lord hath of late been pleading with this city by fire and rebuking of it with flames of fire’. Seeking an explanation for the conflagrations and the lessons that might be learned from them, Wallington turned to scripture:

For behold the Lord will come with fire and his chariots like a whirlwind that he may recompense his anger with wrath and his indignation with the flames of Fire. For the Lord will judge with fire and with his sword all flesh and the slain of the Lord shall be many [Isaiah 66:15–16; Amos 7:4]

As the months passed and the fire showed no signs of returning, Wallington’s interpretation of London’s woes appeared unduly apocalyptic. Then in December 1655 six or seven new fires swept through London, prompting one preacher to see them ‘as the beginning of God’s judgment on the world’. The heresiarch John Reeve (1608–1658) concurred:

What is the ground think you of so many dreadful fires this year in this City, and other parts, above the memory of man? I know with the Astrologian Sophisters you may impute it to Planets plot, or peoples want of care; but of the contrary I believe you Serpent sign-mongers will find these fires came not merely by natural causes, but by a divine power as a forerunner of the eternal burning of this world, and all the natural glory therein to dust, powder, or dry sand.

Both the unnamed preacher and Reeve appear to have drawn upon an astrological prediction by William Lilly, who had wondered if the ‘fearful messengers of fire’ that God had so frequently sent into several parts of London in 1655 presaged a further and terrible judgment should the inhabitants of the City not repent of their sins. Lilly’s prognostication relied upon a chronogram; i.e. the use of highlighted Roman numerals within a word or phrase which, when rearranged, indicate a particular date. In this instance the words were MVnDI ConfLagratIo, Latin for ‘conflagration of the world’. The capitalised letters had a value of 1657, prompting a Swedish diplomat to scoff: ‘as if the destruction of the world was to be bound up with the Latin language!’

William Lilly, Merlini Anglici Ephemeris. Astrological Predictions for the Year 1656 (postscript dated 25 October 1655)

Previously Lilly had predicted a great fire by way of a woodcut illustrating the burning of an unidentified city. Forming part of a series of enigmatic images, these had been appended to a miscellaneous collection of prophecies and commentaries that he had published in summer 1651, two and a half years after the execution of Charles I. Some fifteen years later, in October 1666 Lilly was examined before a committee and asked if his ‘hieroglyphic’ figure had any connection with the Great Fire that had destroyed much of London the previous month. Having insisted that he did not foresee the year of the conflagration and that he was ignorant as to the human instruments God had used to bring about the blaze Lilly was dismissed, by his own account with great civility.

William Lilly, Monarchy or no Monarchy in England (1651)