Joseph Mendham (1769–1856) was an English clergyman and controversialist.
85-516: He was the eldest son of Robert Mendham, a merchant in Walbrook , London, who died at Highgate, Middlesex , 7 April 1810, aged 77, leaving a widow, who died there on 11 October 1812, at the age of 78. He matriculated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford , on 27 January 1789, and graduated B.A. 1792, M.A. 1795. In 1793 he was ordained a deacon in the Church of England , and in 1794 priest. Early in 1795, Mendham accepted
170-661: A Councillor ) to the Court of Common Council of the City of London Corporation . Only electors who are Freemen of the City of London are eligible to stand. The ward is represented in the City of London Corporation by John Garbutt Alderman and the Common Councilmen James Thomson (Deputy) and Peter Bennett. Ackroyd, Peter . London: The Biography ( Chatto & Windus , 2000) p. 33 Great Fire of London This
255-551: A Roman settlement for four centuries and had become progressively more crowded inside its defensive city wall. It had also pushed outwards beyond the wall into extramural settlements such as Shoreditch , Holborn , Cripplegate , Clerkenwell and Southwark , and the Inns of Court . To the West it reached along Strand to the Royal Palace and Abbey at Westminster . By the late 17th century,
340-529: A bakery in Pudding Lane shortly after midnight on Sunday 2 September, and spread rapidly. The use of the major firefighting technique of the time, the creation of firebreaks by means of removing structures in the fire's path, was critically delayed due to the indecisiveness of the Lord Mayor , Sir Thomas Bloodworth . By the time large-scale demolitions were ordered on Sunday night, the wind had already fanned
425-422: A few deaths, enumerating known deaths from hunger and exposure among survivors of the fire, "huddled in shacks or living among the ruins that had once been their homes" in the cold winter that followed. The dramatist James Shirley and his wife are believed to have died in this way. Hanson maintains that "it stretches credulity to believe that the only papists or foreigners being beaten to death or lynched were
510-505: A grid system, which became prevalent in the American urban landscape. If it had been rebuilt under some of these plans, London may have rivalled Paris in Baroque magnificence. According to archaeologist John Schofield, Wren's plan "would have probably encouraged the crystallisation of the social classes into separate areas", similar to Haussmann's renovation of Paris in the mid-1800s. Wren's plan
595-405: A hose to spray on a fire or fill buckets. Further, the site where the fire started was close to the river: all the lanes from the river up to the bakery and adjoining buildings should have been filled with double chains of firefighters passing buckets of water up to the fire and then back down to the river to be refilled. This did not happen, as inhabitants panicked and fled. The flames crept towards
680-512: A larger English fleet led by Thomas Allin . A special Fire Court was set up from February 1667 to December 1668, and again from 1670 to February 1676. The aim of the court, which was authorized by the Fire of London Disputes Act 1666 and the Rebuilding of London Act 1670 , was to deal with disputes between tenants and landlords and decide who should rebuild, based on ability to pay. Cases were heard and
765-464: A long way, tended to arrive too late, and had limited reach, with spouts but no delivery hoses. On this occasion, an unknown number of fire engines were either wheeled or dragged through the streets. Firefighters tried to manoeuvre the engines to the river to fill their tanks, and several of the engines fell into the Thames. The heat from the flames by then was too great for the remaining engines to get within
850-483: A proclamation that "all Cities and Towns whatsoever shall without any contradiction receive the said distressed persons and permit them the free exercise of their manual trades". Royal proclamations were issued to forbid people to "disquiet themselves with rumours of tumults", and to institute a national charitable collection to support fire victims. The official account of the fire in the London Gazette concluded that
935-450: A safe refuge, with its thick stone walls and natural firebreak in the form of a wide empty surrounding plaza. It had been crammed full of rescued goods and its crypt filled with the tightly packed stocks of the printers and booksellers in adjoining Paternoster Row . However, the building was covered in wooden scaffolding, undergoing piecemeal restoration by Christopher Wren . The scaffolding caught fire on Tuesday night. Within half an hour,
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#17328695484661020-594: A ship in the North Sea, and had not arrived in London until two days after the fire started. A committee was established to investigate the cause of the Great Fire, chaired by Sir Robert Brooke . It received many submissions alleging a conspiracy of foreigners and Catholics to destroy London. The committee's report was presented to Parliament on 22 January 1667. Versions of the report that appeared in print concluded that Hubert
1105-458: A single day. The perception of a need to get beyond the walls took root only late on the Monday, and then there were near-panic scenes at the gates as distraught refugees tried to get out with their bundles, carts, horses, and wagons. The crucial factor which frustrated firefighting efforts was the narrowness of the streets. Even under normal circumstances, the mix of carts, wagons, and pedestrians in
1190-432: A useful distance. A fire broke out at Thomas Farriner 's bakery in Pudding Lane a little after midnight on Sunday 2 September. The family was trapped upstairs but managed to climb from an upstairs window to the house next door, except for a maidservant who was too frightened to try, thus becoming the first victim. The neighbours tried to help douse the fire; after an hour, the parish constables arrived and judged that
1275-474: A verdict usually given within a day; without the Fire Court, lengthy legal proceedings would have seriously delayed the rebuilding which was necessary if London was to recover. Radical rebuilding schemes poured in for the gutted City and were encouraged by Charles. Apart from Wren and Evelyn, it is known that Robert Hooke , Valentine Knight , and Richard Newcourt proposed rebuilding plans. All were based on
1360-552: Is a Ward of the City of London and a minor street in its vicinity. The ward is named after a river of the same name . The ward of Walbrook contains two of the City's most notable landmarks: the Bank of England and the Mansion House . The street runs between Cannon Street and Bank junction , though vehicular traffic can only access it via Bucklersbury, a nearby side-road off Queen Victoria Street . A street called Walbrook runs along
1445-456: Is an accepted version of this page The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through central London from Sunday 2 September to Thursday 6 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall , while also extending past the wall to the west. The death toll is generally thought to have been relatively small, although some historians have challenged this belief. The fire started in
1530-603: The Protestant Journal , and Christian Observer . Articles by him in the Church of England Quarterly Review were printed separately. Mendham collected a library of controversial theology. This came to his nephew, the Rev. John Mendham, on whose death his widow, Sophia, placed the books at the disposal of Charles Hastings Collette , solicitor in Lincoln's Inn Fields , by whom a selection
1615-588: The Mansion House , the official residence of the Lord Mayor , are both situated in Walbrook ward, as is the historic London Stone (the latter situated on Cannon Street). Within the ward is also the Walbrook Club , a private dining club founded in 2000; this was designed by Mark Birley of Annabel's , and is set in a Queen Anne-style townhouse . Walbrook is one of 25 wards in the City of London, each electing an Alderman and Commoners (the City equivalent of
1700-789: The Royal Exchange , the Custom House , St Paul's Cathedral, the Bridewell Palace and other City prisons, the General Letter Office , and the three western city gates— Ludgate , Newgate , and Aldersgate . The monetary value of the loss was estimated at around 9–10 million pounds (equivalent to £2.13 billion in 2023). François Colsoni says that the lost books alone were valued at £150,000. Evelyn believed that he saw as many as "200,000 people of all ranks and stations dispersed, and lying along their heaps of what they could save" in
1785-453: The lead roof was melting, and the books and papers in the crypt were burning. The cathedral was quickly a ruin. The wind dropped on Tuesday evening, and the firebreaks created by the garrison finally began to take effect on Wednesday, 5 September. Pepys climbed the steeple of Barking Church , from which he viewed the destroyed City, "the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw". There were many separate fires still burning, but
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#17328695484661870-551: The City proper—the area bounded by the city wall and the River Thames —was only a part of London, covering some 700 acres (2.8 km ; 1.1 sq mi), and home to about 80,000 people, or one quarter of London's inhabitants. The City was surrounded by a ring of inner suburbs where most Londoners lived. The City was then, as now, the commercial heart of the capital, and was the largest market and busiest port in England, dominated by
1955-469: The City, and so he did not see the early stages of the disaster. He went by coach to Southwark on Monday, joining many other upper-class people, to see the view which Pepys had seen the day before of the burning City across the river. The conflagration was much larger now: "the whole City in dreadful flames near the water-side; all the houses from the Bridge, all Thames-street, and upwards towards Cheapside, down to
2040-485: The City, they refused the offers that Charles made of soldiers and other resources. Even in such an emergency, the idea of having the unpopular royal troops ordered into the City was political dynamite. By the time that Charles took over command from the ineffectual Lord Mayor, the fire was already out of control. The city was essentially medieval in its street plan, an overcrowded warren of narrow, winding, cobbled alleys. It had experienced several major fires before 1666,
2125-518: The Fire in its early stages... there was little [he] could have done" given the state of firefighting expertise and the sociopolitical implications of antifire action at that time. Samuel Pepys ascended the Tower of London on Sunday morning to view the fire from the battlements. He recorded in his diary that the eastern gale had turned it into a conflagration. It had burned down an estimated 300 houses and reached
2210-480: The Fleet and outflanked them, driven by the unabated easterly gale, forcing them to run for it. By mid-morning the fire had breached the wide affluent luxury shopping street of Cheapside . James's firefighters created a large firebreak to the north of the conflagration, although it was breached at multiple points. Through the day, the flames began to move eastward from the neighbourhood of Pudding Lane, straight against
2295-611: The Great Fire was over. It took some time until the last traces were put out: coal was still burning in cellars two months later. In Moorfields , a large public park immediately north of the City, there was a great encampment of homeless refugees. Evelyn was horrified at the numbers of distressed people filling it, some under tents, others in makeshift shacks: "Many [were] without a rag or any necessary utensils, bed or board ... reduced to extremest misery and poverty." Most refugees camped in any nearby available unburned area to see if they could salvage anything from their homes. The mood
2380-534: The King commanded me to go to my Lord Mayor from him and command him to spare no houses, but to pull down before the fire every way." Charles' brother James, Duke of York , offered the use of the Royal Life Guards to help fight the fire. The fire spread quickly in the high wind and, by mid-morning on Sunday, people abandoned attempts at extinguishing it and fled. The moving human mass and their bundles and carts made
2465-408: The King put his brother James, Duke of York, in charge of operations. James set up command posts on the perimeter of the fire. Three courtiers were put in charge of each post, with authority from Charles himself to order demolitions. James and his life guards rode up and down the streets all Monday, "rescuing foreigners from the mob" and attempting to keep order. "The Duke of York hath won the hearts of
2550-495: The Three Cranes, were now consumed". In the evening, Evelyn reported that the river was covered with barges and boats making their escape piled with goods. He observed a great exodus of carts and pedestrians through the bottleneck City gates, making for the open fields to the north and east, "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,
2635-620: The Trained Bands, troops of Life Guards, and members of the court. The light turned out to be a flareup east of Inner Temple, large sections of which burned despite an effort to halt the fire by blowing up Paper House. Only a few deaths from the fire are officially recorded, and deaths are traditionally believed to have been few. Porter gives the figure as eight and Tinniswood as "in single figures", although he adds that some deaths must have gone unrecorded and that, besides direct deaths from burning and smoke inhalation , refugees also perished in
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2720-416: The adjoining houses had better be demolished to prevent further spread. The householders protested, and Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Bloodworth was summoned to give his permission. When Bloodworth arrived, the flames were consuming the adjoining houses and creeping towards the warehouses and flammable stores on the riverfront. The more experienced firemen were clamouring for demolition, but Bloodworth refused on
2805-425: The air current, such as the constricted space between jettied buildings , and this left a vacuum at ground level. The resulting strong inward winds fueled the flames. The fire pushed towards the city's centre "in a broad, bow-shaped arc". By Sunday evening it "was already the most damaging fire to strike London in living memory", having travelled 500 metres (1,600 ft) west along the river. Throughout Monday,
2890-429: The area of London came to share in these opportunities, the carts jostling at the narrow gates with the panicked inhabitants trying to get out. The chaos at the gates was such that the magistrates briefly ordered the gates shut, in the hope of turning the inhabitants' attention from safeguarding their own possessions to fighting the fire: "that, no hopes of saving any things left, they might have more desperately endeavoured
2975-462: The bakery fire into a firestorm which defeated such measures. The fire pushed north on Monday into the heart of the City. Order in the streets broke down as rumours arose of suspicious foreigners setting fires. The fears of the homeless focused on the French and Dutch, England's enemies in the ongoing Second Anglo-Dutch War ; these substantial immigrant groups became victims of street violence. On Tuesday,
3060-513: The curacy of Sutton Coldfield , Warwickshire . His sole preferment seems to have been the incumbency of Hill Chapel in Arden, Warwickshire , to which he was licensed on 22 August 1836. In this district of Warwickshire the rest of his life was spent, and he died at Sutton Coldfield on 1 November 1856, aged 87. Mendham studied the points of controversy between Catholicism and its Protestant opponents. He wrote: He contributed to Notes and Queries ,
3145-572: The days of the English Civil War. Five to six hundred tons of powder was stored in the Tower of London . The high Roman wall enclosing the city impeded escape from the inferno, restricting exit to eight narrow gates. During the first couple of days, few people had any notion of fleeing the burning city altogether. They would remove what they could carry of their belongings to a safer area; some moved their belongings and themselves "four and five times" in
3230-399: The disaster were overwhelming. Flight from London and settlement elsewhere were strongly encouraged by Charles II, who feared a London rebellion amongst the dispossessed refugees. Various schemes for rebuilding the city were proposed, some of them very radical. After the fire, London was reconstructed on essentially the same medieval street plan, which still exists today. By the 1660s, London
3315-586: The entire country, burned down early on Monday morning. The London Gazette just managed to put out its Monday issue before the printer's premises went up in flames. Suspicions rose to panic and collective paranoia on Monday, and both the Trained Bands and the Coldstream Guards focused less on fire fighting and more on rounding up foreigners and anyone else appearing suspicious, arresting them, rescuing them from mobs, or both. The inhabitants, especially
3400-475: The fields towards Islington and Highgate . The fire destroyed approximately 15 percent of the city's housing. The Court of Aldermen sought to quickly begin clearing debris and re-establish food supplies. By the Saturday after the fire "the markets were operating well enough to supply the people" at Moorfields. Charles II encouraged the homeless to move away from London and settle elsewhere, immediately issuing
3485-581: The fire is the acceptance of the confession of a simple-minded French watchmaker named Robert Hubert , who claimed that he was a member of a gang that had started the Great Fire in Westminster. He later changed his story to say that he had started the fire at the bakery in Pudding Lane. Hubert was convicted, despite some misgivings about his fitness to plead , and hanged at Tyburn on 29 October 1666. After his death, it became apparent that he had been on board
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3570-552: The fire spread over nearly the whole city, destroying St Paul's Cathedral and leaping the River Fleet to threaten Charles II 's court at Whitehall . Coordinated firefighting efforts were simultaneously getting underway. The battle to put out the fire is considered to have been won by two key factors: the strong east wind dropped, and the Tower of London garrison used gunpowder to create effective firebreaks, halting further spread eastward. The social and economic problems created by
3655-426: The fire spread to the west and north. The spread to the south was mostly halted by the river, but it had torched the houses on London Bridge and was threatening to cross the bridge and endanger the borough of Southwark on the south bank of the river. London Bridge, the only physical connection between the City and the south side of the river Thames, had been noted as a deathtrap in the fire of 1633. However, Southwark
3740-447: The fire was an accident: "it stressed the role of God in starting the flames and of the king in helping to stem them". Despite this, residents were inclined to put the blame for the fire on foreigners, particularly Catholics, the French, and the Dutch. Trained bands were put on guard and foreigners arrested in locations throughout England. An example of the urge to identify scapegoats for
3825-460: The fire-fighting efforts and near to collapse, "like a fainting woman", crying out plaintively in response to the King's message that he was pulling down houses: "But the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it." Holding on to his "dignity and civic authority", he refused James's offer of more soldiers and then went home to bed. King Charles II sailed down from Whitehall in the Royal barge to inspect
3910-515: The grounds that most premises were rented and the owners could not be found. Bloodworth is generally thought to have been appointed to the office of Lord Mayor as a yes man , rather than by possessing requisite capabilities for the job. He panicked when faced with a sudden emergency and, when pressed, made the oft-quoted remark, "A woman might piss it out", and left. Jacob Field notes that although Bloodworth "is frequently held culpable by contemporaries (as well as some later historians) for not stopping
3995-414: The impromptu camps. Field argues that the number "may have been higher than the traditional figure of six, but it is likely it did not run into the hundreds": he notes that the London Gazette "did not record a single fatality" and that had there been a significant death toll it would have been reflected in polemical accounts and petitions for charity. Hanson takes issue with the idea that there were only
4080-612: The intention of selling them to raise funds. An auction sale took place at Sotheby's in London on 5 June 2013, when 106 out of the total of 142 lots were sold at a total price of £1,180,875. The Revd. Joseph Mendham bequeathed manuscripts concerned with the Council of Trent to the Bodleian Library . On 15 December 1795 he married Maria, second daughter of the Rev. John Riland, rector of Sutton Coldfield (died 1822), by his wife Ann, daughter of Thomas Hudson of Huddersfield . His wife, who
4165-460: The lack of efforts to save the wealthy, fashionable districts which were now menaced by the flames, such as the Royal Exchange —combined bourse and shopping centre —and the opulent consumer goods shops in Cheapside . The Royal Exchange caught fire in the late afternoon, and was a "smoking shell" within a few hours. John Evelyn , courtier and diarist, wrote: The conflagration was so universal, and
4250-409: The lanes impassable for firemen and carriages. Pepys took a coach back into the city from Whitehall, but reached only St Paul's Cathedral before he had to get out and walk. Pedestrians with handcarts and goods were still on the move away from the fire, heavily weighed down. They deposited their valuables in parish churches away from the direct threat of fire. Pepys found Bloodworth trying to coordinate
4335-531: The lower part of the brook's course. A valley is clearly visible; this can be seen most clearly at the junction of Walbrook and Cannon Street . On the street is the church of St Stephen Walbrook , which originally stood on the west bank of the stream, but was rebuilt around 1439 on the east side. In 1666 the church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London ; Christopher Wren built a new church there in 1672, which still stands, to replace it. The Bank of England and
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#17328695484664420-434: The miserable and calamitous spectacle!" Suspicion soon arose in the threatened city that the fire was no accident. The swirling winds carried sparks and burning flakes long distances to lodge on thatched roofs and in wooden gutters , causing seemingly unrelated house fires to break out far from their source and giving rise to rumours that fresh fires were being set on purpose. Foreigners were immediately suspected because of
4505-406: The most recent in 1633. Building with wood and roofing with thatch had been prohibited for centuries, but these cheap materials continued to be used. The only major area built with brick or stone was the wealthy centre of the city, where the mansions of the merchants and brokers stood on spacious lots, surrounded by an inner ring of overcrowded poorer parishes, in which all available building space
4590-451: The necessary orders. The use of water to extinguish the fire was frustrated. In principle, water was available from a system of elm pipes which supplied 30,000 houses via a high water tower at Cornhill , filled from the river at high tide, and also via a reservoir of Hertfordshire spring water in Islington . It was often possible to open a pipe near a burning building and connect it to
4675-553: The ones rescued by the Duke of York", that official figures say very little about the fate of the undocumented poor, and that the heat at the heart of the firestorms was far greater than an ordinary house fire, and was enough to consume bodies fully or leave only a few skeletal fragments, producing a death toll not of eight, but of "several hundred and quite possibly several thousand." The material destruction has been computed at 13,200–13,500 houses, 86 or 87 parish churches, 44 Company Halls,
4760-529: The ongoing Second Anglo-Dutch War . Fear and suspicion hardened into certainty on Monday, as reports circulated of imminent invasion and of foreign undercover agents seen casting "fireballs" into houses, or caught with hand grenades or matches. There was a wave of street violence. The fears of terrorism received an extra boost from the disruption of communications and news. The General Letter Office in Threadneedle Street , through which post passed for
4845-449: 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 at all attempting to save even their goods, such a strange consternation there was upon them. Evelyn lived in Deptford , four miles (6 km) outside
4930-431: The people with his continual and indefatigable pains day and night in helping to quench the Fire," wrote a witness in a letter on 8 September. On Monday evening, hopes were dashed that the massive stone walls of Baynard's Castle , Blackfriars would stay the course of the flames, the western counterpart of the Tower of London . This historic royal palace was completely consumed, burning all night. Tuesday, 4 September
5015-579: The plight of Londoners, yet he made no secret that he regarded "the fire of London as a stroke of good fortune for him" as it reduced the risk of French ships crossing the English Channel being taken or sunk by the English fleet. Louis tried to take advantage but an attempt by a Franco-Dutch fleet to combine with a larger Dutch fleet ended in failure on 17 September at the Battle of Dungeness when they encountered
5100-458: The potential to be a threat to Charles II, as had been demonstrated by several republican uprisings in London in the early 1660s. The City magistrates were of the generation that had fought in the Civil War, and could remember how Charles I 's grab for absolute power had led to that national trauma. They were determined to thwart any similar tendencies in his son, and when the Great Fire threatened
5185-402: The prevailing east wind and towards the Tower of London with its gunpowder stores. The garrison at the Tower took matters into their own hands after waiting all day for requested help from James's official firemen, who were busy in the west. They created firebreaks by blowing up houses on a large scale in the vicinity, halting the advance of the fire. Everybody had thought St. Paul's Cathedral
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#17328695484665270-400: The quenching of the fire." Monday marked the beginning of organised action, even as order broke down in the streets, especially at the gates, and the fire raged unchecked. Bloodworth was responsible as Lord Mayor for coordinating the firefighting, but he had apparently left the City; his name is not mentioned in any contemporaneous accounts of the Monday's events. In this state of emergency,
5355-468: The riverfront and set alight the water wheels under London Bridge , eliminating the supply of piped water. London possessed advanced fire-fighting technology in the form of fire engines , which had been used in earlier large-scale fires. However, unlike the useful firehooks, these large pumps had rarely proved flexible or functional enough to make much difference. Only some of them had wheels; others were mounted on wheelless sleds. They had to be brought
5440-441: The riverfront. The houses on London Bridge were burning. He took a boat to inspect the destruction around Pudding Lane at close range and describes a "lamentable" fire, "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
5525-426: The scene. He found that houses were still not being pulled down, in spite of Bloodworth's assurances to Pepys, and daringly overrode the authority of Bloodworth to order wholesale demolitions west of the fire zone. By Sunday afternoon, the fire had become a raging firestorm that created its own weather. A tremendous uprush of hot air above the flames was driven by the chimney effect wherever constrictions narrowed
5610-406: The streets and authorised both imprisonment of recalcitrant builders and demolition of dangerous buildings. It too had little impact. The riverfront was important in the development of the Great Fire. The Thames offered water for firefighting and the chance of escape by boat, but the poorer districts along the riverfront had stores and cellars of combustibles which increased the fire risk. All along
5695-681: The streets at night watched for fire as one of their duties. Self-reliant community procedures were in place for dealing with fires, and they were usually effective. "Public-spirited citizens" would be alerted to a dangerous house fire by muffled peals on the church bells, and would congregate hastily to fight the fire. The firefighting methods relied on demolition and water. By law, every parish church had to hold equipment for these efforts: long ladders, leather buckets, axes, and "firehooks" for pulling down buildings. Sometimes buildings were levelled quickly and effectively by means of controlled gunpowder explosions. This drastic method of creating firebreaks
5780-589: The trading and manufacturing classes. The City was traffic-clogged, polluted, and unhealthy, especially after it was hit by a devastating outbreak of bubonic plague in the Plague Year of 1665. The relationship between the City and the Crown was often tense. The City of London had been a stronghold of republicanism during the English Civil War (1642–1651), and the wealthy and economically dynamic capital still had
5865-407: The undersized alleys was subject to frequent gridlock and accidents. Refugees escaping outwards, away from the centre of destruction, were blocked by soldiers trying to keep the streets clear for firefighters, causing further panic. Fires were common in the crowded wood-built city with its open fireplaces, candles, ovens, and stores of combustibles. A thousand watchmen or "bellmen" who patrolled
5950-477: The upper class, were growing desperate to remove their belongings from the City. This provided a source of income for the able-bodied poor, who hired out as porters (sometimes simply making off with the goods), being especially profitable for the owners of carts and boats. Hiring a cart had cost a couple of shillings the week before the fire; on Monday, it rose to as much as £40, a fortune equivalent to roughly £133,000 in 2021. Seemingly every cart and boat owner in
6035-409: The water-side to another." Pepys continued westward on the river to the court at Whitehall , "where people come about me, and did give them an account dismayed them all, and the word was carried into the King. So I was called for, and did tell the King and Duke of Yorke what I saw, and that unless His Majesty did command houses to be pulled down nothing could stop the fire. They seemed much troubled, and
6120-423: The wharves, the rickety wooden tenements and tar paper shacks of the poor were shoehorned amongst "old paper buildings and the most combustible matter of tarr, pitch, hemp, rosen, and flax which was all layd up thereabouts". London was also full of black powder , especially along the riverfront where ship chandlers filled wooden barrels with their stocks. Much of it was left in the homes of private citizens from
6205-610: Was born in 1772, died in 1841. Their only son, the Rev. Robert Riland Mendham, matriculated at Wadham College, Oxford , 12 November 1816, aged 18, took the degrees of B.A. 1820, M.A. 1824, and died at Sutton Coldfield 15 June 1857. Their daughter, Ann Maria Mendham, died 1872. Both were unmarried. [REDACTED] This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Courtney, William Prideaux (1894). " Mendham, Joseph ". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography . Vol. 37. London: Smith, Elder & Co. Walbrook Walbrook
6290-520: Was by far the largest city in Britain and the third largest in the Western world, estimated at 300,000 to 400,000 inhabitants. John Evelyn , contrasting London to the Baroque magnificence of Paris in 1659, called it a "wooden, northern, and inartificial congestion of Houses". By "inartificial", Evelyn meant unplanned and makeshift, the result of organic growth and unregulated urban sprawl . London had been
6375-492: Was increasingly used towards the end of the Great Fire, and modern historians believe that this in combination with the wind dying down was what finally won the struggle. Demolishing the houses downwind of a dangerous fire was often an effective way of containing the destruction by means of firehooks or explosives. This time, however, demolition was fatally delayed for hours by the Lord Mayor's lack of leadership and failure to give
6460-646: Was made and presented to the Incorporated Law Society in Chancery Lane, London. These are described in a printed catalogue dated 1871, and in a supplement which was issued in 1874. It contained many sermons and pamphlets by him. This Mendham Collection has since 1985 been on loan to Canterbury Cathedral Library and the University of Kent. In July 2012 the Law Society removed some of the most valuable books with
6545-426: Was now so volatile that Charles feared a full-scale London rebellion against the monarchy. Food production and distribution had been disrupted to the point of non-existence; Charles announced that supplies of bread would be brought into the City every day, and markets set up round the perimeter. Fears of foreign terrorists and of a French and Dutch invasion were as high as ever among the traumatised fire victims. There
6630-519: Was one of a number of Catholic plotters responsible for starting the fire. Abroad in the Netherlands, the Great Fire of London was seen as a divine retribution for Holmes's Bonfire , the burning by the English of a Dutch town during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. In Italy, a pamphlet circulated comparing London "to Lucifer in its proud arrogance and its spectacular fall". In Spain, the fire
6715-401: Was panic on Wednesday night in the encampments at Parliament Hill , Moorfields, and Islington: a light in the sky over Fleet Street started a story that 50,000 French and Dutch immigrants had risen, and were marching towards Moorfields to murder and pillage. Surging into the streets, the frightened mob fell on any foreigners whom they happened to encounter, and were pushed back into the fields by
6800-450: Was particularly challenging to implement because of the need to redefine property titles. The Crown and the City authorities attempted to negotiate compensation for the large-scale remodelling that these plans entailed, but that unrealistic idea had to be abandoned. Exhortations to bring workmen and measure the plots on which the houses had stood were mostly ignored by people worried about day-to-day survival, as well as by those who had left
6885-496: Was preserved by an open space between buildings on the bridge which acted as a firebreak. The fire's spread to the north reached "the financial heart of the City". The houses of the bankers in Lombard Street began to burn on Monday afternoon, prompting a rush to rescue their stacks of gold coins before they melted. Several observers emphasise the despair and helplessness which seemed to seize Londoners on this second day, and
6970-678: Was seen as a "parable of Protestant wickedness". On 5 October, Marc Antonio Giustinian, Venetian Ambassador in France, reported to the Doge of Venice and the Senate, that Louis XIV announced that he would not "have any rejoicings about it, being such a deplorable accident involving injury to so many unhappy people". Louis had made an offer to his aunt, the British Queen Henrietta Maria , to send food and whatever goods might be of aid in alleviating
7055-509: Was the day of greatest destruction. The Duke of York's command post at Temple Bar , where Strand meets Fleet Street , was supposed to stop the fire's westward advance towards the Palace of Whitehall. He hoped that the River Fleet would form a natural firebreak, making a stand with his firemen from the Fleet Bridge and down to the Thames. However, early on Tuesday morning, the flames jumped over
7140-422: Was used to accommodate the rapidly growing population. The human habitations were crowded, and their design increased the fire risk. The typical multistorey timbered London tenement houses had " jetties " (projecting upper floors). They had a narrow footprint at ground level, but maximised their use of land by "encroaching" on the street with the gradually increasing size of their upper storeys. The fire hazard
7225-403: Was well perceived when the top jetties all but met across the narrow alleys—"as it does facilitate a conflagration, so does it also hinder the remedy", wrote one observer. In 1661, Charles II issued a proclamation forbidding overhanging windows and jetties, but this was largely ignored by the local government. Charles's next, sharper message in 1665 warned of the risk of fire from the narrowness of
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