Curiosities of Street Literature. Various

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FULL PARTICULARS

       OF THE

       HORRIBLE & DREADFUL GREAT FIRE IN LONDON.

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      [Few public calamities recorded in our annals can bear a comparison, in point of distress, with the tremendous conflagration which reduced the greater part of the British metropolis to ashes, in the 1666. Of this dire catastrophe, all our histories give a general, and some of them a detailed, account; but no relation hitherto published is so minutely descriptive as that written at the time, and as it were on the smoking embers of the city, by the ingenious John Evelyn; from whose memoirs we have therefore extracted the whole narration.]

      September 2. This fatal night about ten began that deplorable fire near Fish Street, in London.

      Sept. 3. The fire continuing, after dinner I took coach, with my wife and son, and went to the bank side in Southwark, where we beheld that dismal spectacle, the whole city in dreadful flames near the waterside; all the houses from the bridge, all Thames street, and upwards towards Cheapside down to the Three Cranes, were now consumed.

      The fire having continued all this night (if I may call that night which was light as day for ten miles round about, after a dreadful manner), when conspiring with a fierce eastern wind in a very dry season; I went on foot to the same place, and saw the whole south part of the city burning from Cheapside to the Thames, and all along Cornhill (for it kindled back against the wind as well as forward) Tower street, Fenchurch street, Gracious street, and so along to Bainard’s Castle, and was now taking hold of St. Paul’s Church, to which the scaffolds contributed exceedingly. The conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonished, that from the beginning, I know not by what despondency or fate, they hardly stirred to quench it, so that there was nothing heard or seen but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures, without attempting to save even their goods, such a strange consternation there was upon them, so as it burned both in breadth and length, the Churches, Public Halls, Exchange, Hospitals, Monuments, and ornaments, leaping after a prodigious manner from house to house and street to street, at great distances one from the other, for the heat with a long set of fair and warm weather had even ignited the air and prepared the materials to receive the fire, which devoured after a most incredible manner, houses, furniture, and every thing. Here we saw the Thames covered with goods floating, all the barges and boats laden with what some had time and courage to save, as, on the other, the carts, &c., carrying out to the fields, which for many miles were strewed with moveables 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 haply the world had not seen the like since the foundation of it, nor to be outdone till the universal conflagration. All the sky was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, the light seen above forty miles round about for many nights. God grant my eyes may never behold the like, now seeing above ten thousand 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 air all about so hot and inflamed that at 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 near two miles in length and one in breadth. The clouds of smoke were dismal and reached upon computation near fifty miles in length. Thus I left it this afternoon burning, a resemblance of Sodom, or the last day—London was, but is no more!

      H. Jones, Printer, Smith Street, London.