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166-407: 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
332-689: 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
498-642: A Parliament, are known as the Personal Rule or the "eleven years' tyranny". Ruling without Parliament was not exceptional, and was supported by precedent. But only Parliament could legally raise taxes, and without it Charles's capacity to acquire funds for his treasury was limited to his customary rights and prerogatives. A large fiscal deficit had arisen during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. Notwithstanding Buckingham's short-lived campaigns against both Spain and France, Charles had little financial capacity to wage wars overseas. Throughout his reign, he
664-563: 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,
830-790: A Scottish force and after lengthy negotiations between the English and Scottish parliaments he was handed over to the Long Parliament in London. Charles refused to accept his captors' demands for a constitutional monarchy , and temporarily escaped captivity in November 1647. Re-imprisoned on the Isle of Wight , he forged an alliance with Scotland, but by the end of 1648, the New Model Army had consolidated its control over England. Charles
996-541: 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
1162-567: A bride and to a rapturous and relieved public welcome, he and Buckingham pushed the reluctant James to declare war on Spain. With the encouragement of his Protestant advisers, James summoned the English Parliament in 1624 to request subsidies for a war. Charles and Buckingham supported the impeachment of the Lord Treasurer , Lionel Cranfield, 1st Earl of Middlesex , who opposed war on grounds of cost and quickly fell in much
1328-736: A clandestine attempt to aid Catholicism's resurgence. Rather than direct involvement in the European land war, the English Parliament preferred a relatively inexpensive naval attack on Spanish colonies in the New World , hoping for the capture of the Spanish treasure fleets . Parliament voted to grant a subsidy of £140,000, an insufficient sum for Charles's war plans. Moreover, the House of Commons limited its authorisation for royal collection of tonnage and poundage (two varieties of customs duties) to
1494-526: A compromise whereby the king would agree to forfeit ship money in exchange for £650,000 (although the cost of the coming war was estimated at £1 million). Nevertheless, this alone was insufficient to produce consensus in the Commons. The Parliamentarians' calls for further reforms were ignored by Charles, who still retained the support of the House of Lords. Despite the protests of the Earl of Northumberland,
1660-665: A controversial anti-Calvinist ecclesiastic, Richard Montagu , who was in disrepute among the Puritans . In his pamphlet A New Gag for an Old Goose (1624), a reply to the Catholic pamphlet A New Gag for the New Gospel , Montagu argued against Calvinist predestination , the doctrine that God preordained salvation and damnation . Anti-Calvinists—known as Arminians —believed that people could accept or reject salvation by exercising free will . Arminian divines had been one of
1826-717: A critic of the king, Strafford defected to royal service in 1628, in part due to the Duke of Buckingham's persuasion, and had since emerged, alongside Laud, as the most influential of Charles's ministers. Bolstered by the failure of the English Short Parliament, the Scottish Parliament declared itself capable of governing without the king's consent, and in August 1640 the Covenanter army moved into
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#17327726963391992-584: A defence against innovation and disorder. Parliament quickly seized London, and Charles fled the capital for Hampton Court Palace on 10 January, moving two days later to Windsor Castle . After sending his wife and eldest daughter to safety abroad in February, he travelled northwards, hoping to seize the military arsenal at Hull . To his dismay, he was rebuffed by the town's Parliamentary governor , Sir John Hotham , who refused him entry in April, and Charles
2158-420: 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
2324-415: 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 the riverfront and set alight
2490-466: 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
2656-514: 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
2822-521: 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
2988-462: 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 the Trained Bands, troops of Life Guards, and members of the court. The light turned out to be
3154-467: 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
3320-516: A man who had great influence over the prince, travelled incognito to Spain in February 1623 to try to reach agreement on the long-pending Spanish match. The trip was an embarrassing failure. The infanta thought Charles little more than an infidel, and the Spanish at first demanded that he convert to Catholicism as a condition of the match. They insisted on toleration of Catholics in England and
3486-512: 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 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
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#17327726963393652-563: A new departure for Irish politics whereby all sides joined to present evidence against him. In a similar manner to the English Parliament, the Old English members of the Irish Parliament argued that while opposed to Strafford they remained loyal to Charles. They argued that the king had been led astray by malign counsellors, and that, moreover, a viceroy such as Strafford could emerge as a despotic figure instead of ensuring that
3818-436: A platform for popular protest, and the judges found against Hampden only by the narrow margin of 7–5. Charles also derived money by granting monopolies, despite a statute forbidding such action , which, though inefficient, raised an estimated £100,000 a year in the late 1630s. One such monopoly was for soap, pejoratively referred to as " popish soap " because some of its backers were Catholics. Charles also raised funds from
3984-488: 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
4150-658: A secret marriage treaty with his brother-in-law Louis XIII of France . Moreover, the treaty loaned to the French seven English naval ships that were used to suppress the Protestant Huguenots at La Rochelle in September 1625. Charles was crowned on 2 February 1626 at Westminster Abbey , but without his wife at his side, because she refused to participate in a Protestant religious ceremony. Distrust of Charles's religious policies increased with his support of
4316-552: 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
4482-460: 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
4648-429: 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
4814-518: A venture. Both the English and Irish parliaments were summoned in the early months of 1640. In March 1640, the Irish Parliament duly voted in a subsidy of £180,000 with the promise to raise an army 9,000 strong by the end of May. But in the English general election in March, court candidates fared badly, and Charles's dealings with the English Parliament in April quickly reached stalemate. The earls of Northumberland and Strafford attempted to broker
4980-476: 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
5146-516: A year, although previous sovereigns since Henry VI had been granted the right for life. In this manner, Parliament could delay approval of the rates until after a full-scale review of customs revenue. The bill made no progress in the House of Lords past its first reading . Although no act of Parliament for the levy of tonnage and poundage was obtained, Charles continued to collect the duties. A poorly conceived and executed naval expedition against Spain under Buckingham's leadership went badly, and
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5312-584: 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
5478-604: The Chapel Royal of Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh on 23 December 1600, he was baptised by David Lindsay , Bishop of Ross , and created Duke of Albany , the traditional title of the second son of the king of Scotland , with the subsidiary titles of Marquess of Ormond , Earl of Ross and Lord Ardmannoch. James VI was the first cousin twice removed of Queen Elizabeth I of England , and when she died childless in March 1603, he became King of England as James I. Charles
5644-637: The Electoral Palatinate were invaded by a Habsburg force from the Spanish Netherlands . James, however, had been seeking marriage between Prince Charles and Ferdinand's niece, Infanta Maria Anna of Spain , and began to see the Spanish match as a possible diplomatic means of achieving peace in Europe. Unfortunately for James, negotiation with Spain proved unpopular with both the public and James's court. The English Parliament
5810-739: The First Bishops' War in 1639. He did not seek subsidies from the English Parliament to wage war, instead raising an army without parliamentary aid and marching to Berwick-upon-Tweed , on the Scottish border. The army did not engage the Covenanters , as the king feared the defeat of his forces, whom he believed to be significantly outnumbered by the Scots. In the Treaty of Berwick , Charles regained custody of his Scottish fortresses and secured
5976-540: The Grand Remonstrance , a long list of grievances against actions by Charles's ministers committed since the beginning of his reign (that were asserted to be part of a grand Catholic conspiracy of which the king was an unwitting member), but it was in many ways a step too far by Pym and passed by only 11 votes, 159 to 148. Furthermore, the Remonstrance had very little support in the House of Lords, which
6142-672: The Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand of Austria , a Catholic , was elected king of Bohemia . The next year, the Bohemians rebelled , defenestrating the Catholic governors . In August 1619, the Bohemian diet chose Frederick, who led the Protestant Union , as their monarch, while Ferdinand was elected Holy Roman Emperor in the imperial election . Frederick's acceptance of the Bohemian crown in defiance of
6308-590: The Kirk . Although it had been written, under Charles's direction, by Scottish bishops, many Scots resisted it, seeing it as a vehicle to introduce Anglicanism to Scotland. On 23 July, riots erupted in Edinburgh upon the first Sunday of the prayer book's usage, and unrest spread throughout the Kirk. The public began to mobilise around a reaffirmation of the National Covenant , whose signatories pledged to uphold
6474-812: 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
6640-575: The Short Parliament (as it came to be known) was dissolved in May 1640, less than a month after it assembled. By this stage the Earl of Strafford, Lord Deputy of Ireland since 1632, had emerged as Charles's right-hand man and, together with Archbishop Laud, pursued a policy that he termed " Thorough ", which aimed to make central royal authority more efficient and effective at the expense of local or anti-government interests. Although originally
6806-808: The Thirty Years' War . His attempts to force the Church of Scotland to adopt high Anglican practices led to the Bishops' Wars , strengthened the position of the English and Scottish parliaments, and helped precipitate his own downfall. From 1642, Charles fought the armies of the English and Scottish parliaments in the English Civil War . After his defeat in 1645 at the hands of the Parliamentarian New Model Army , he fled north from his base at Oxford. Charles surrendered to
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6972-610: 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 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
7138-675: The mint in the Tower of London , promising its later return at 8% interest to its owners. In August, after the East India Company refused to grant a loan, Lord Cottington seized the company's stock of pepper and spices and sold it for £60,000 (far below its market value), promising to refund the money with interest later. Throughout Charles's reign, the English Reformation was in the forefront of political debate. Arminian theology emphasised clerical authority and
7304-530: The plantation of Ulster , coupled with resentment at moves to ensure the Irish Parliament was subordinate to the Parliament of England, sowed the seeds of rebellion. When armed conflict arose between the Gaelic Irish and New English in late October 1641, the Old English sided with the Gaelic Irish while simultaneously professing their loyalty to the king. In November 1641, the House of Commons passed
7470-435: 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 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
7636-436: 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
7802-582: The "Distraint of Knighthood", in abeyance for over a century, which required any man who earned £40 or more from land each year to present himself at the king's coronation to be knighted. Relying on this old statute, Charles fined those who had failed to attend his coronation in 1626. The chief tax Charles imposed was a feudal levy known as ship money , which proved even more unpopular, and lucrative, than tonnage and poundage before it. Previously, collection of ship money had been authorised only during wars, and only on coastal regions. But Charles argued that there
7968-458: The "wicked counsels" of Charles's "arbitrary and tyrannical government". While those who signed the petition undertook to defend the king's "person, honour and estate", they also swore to preserve "the true reformed religion", Parliament, and the "rights and liberties of the subjects". Fearing for his family's safety in the face of unrest, Charles reluctantly assented to Strafford's attainder on 9 May after consulting his judges and bishops. Strafford
8134-504: 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
8300-482: 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,
8466-518: The Commons launched a direct protestation attacking Buckingham, stating, "We protest before your Majesty and the whole world that until this great person be removed from intermeddling with the great affairs of state, we are out of hope of any good success; and do fear that any money we shall or can give will, through his misemployment, be turned rather to the hurt and prejudice of this your kingdom than otherwise, as by lamentable experience we have found those large supplies formerly and lately given." Despite
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#17327726963398632-667: The Commons passed the bill as an ordinance, which they claimed did not require royal assent. The Militia Ordinance appears to have prompted more members of the Lords to support the king. In an attempt to strengthen his position, Charles generated great antipathy in London, which was already fast falling into lawlessness, when he placed the Tower of London under the command of Colonel Thomas Lunsford , an infamous, albeit efficient, career officer. When rumours reached Charles that Parliament intended to impeach his wife for supposedly conspiring with
8798-399: The Commons' walls, demanding war with Spain and a Protestant princess of Wales . Like his father, Charles considered discussion of his marriage in the Commons impertinent and an infringement of his father's royal prerogative . In January 1622, James dissolved Parliament, angry at what he perceived as the members' impudence and intransigence. Charles and Buckingham, James's favourite and
8964-566: The English county of Northumberland . Following the illness of Lord Northumberland, who was the king's commander-in-chief, Charles and Strafford went north to command the English forces, despite Strafford being ill himself with a combination of gout and dysentery. The Scottish soldiery, many of whom were veterans of the Thirty Years' War, had far greater morale and training than their English counterparts. They met virtually no resistance until reaching Newcastle upon Tyne , where they defeated
9130-558: The English forces at the Battle of Newburn and occupied the city, as well as the neighbouring county of Durham . As demands for a parliament grew, Charles took the unusual step of summoning a great council of peers . By the time it met, on 24 September at York , Charles had resolved to follow the almost universal advice to call a parliament. After informing the peers that a parliament would convene in November, he asked them to consider how he could acquire funds to maintain his army against
9296-422: 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
9462-425: The French with English ships as a condition of marrying Henrietta Maria, in 1627 he launched an attack on the French coast to defend the Huguenots at La Rochelle. The action, led by Buckingham, was ultimately unsuccessful. Buckingham's failure to protect the Huguenots—and his retreat from Saint-Martin-de-Ré —spurred Louis XIII's siege of La Rochelle and furthered the English Parliament's and people's detestation of
9628-429: The Garter . Eventually, Charles apparently conquered his physical infirmity, which might have been caused by rickets . He became an adept horseman and marksman, and took up fencing. Even so, his public profile remained low in contrast to that of his physically stronger and taller elder brother, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales , whom Charles adored and attempted to emulate. But in early November 1612, Henry died at
9794-487: The House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here." Charles abjectly declared "all my birds have flown", and was forced to retire empty-handed. The botched arrest attempt was politically disastrous for Charles. No English sovereign had ever entered the House of Commons, and his unprecedented invasion of the chamber to arrest its members was considered a grave breach of parliamentary privilege . In one stroke Charles destroyed his supporters' efforts to portray him as
9960-446: The House of Commons began proceedings for the impeachment of the duke. In May 1626, Charles nominated Buckingham as Chancellor of Cambridge University in a show of support, and had two members who had spoken against Buckingham— Dudley Digges and Sir John Eliot —arrested at the door of the House. The Commons was outraged by the imprisonment of two of their members, and after about a week in custody, both were released. On 12 June 1626,
10126-448: The Incident , Charles's credibility was significantly undermined. Ireland's population was split into three main sociopolitical groups: the Gaelic Irish , who were Catholic; the Old English , who were descended from medieval Normans and also predominantly Catholic; and the New English , who were Protestant settlers from England and Scotland aligned with the English Parliament and the Covenanters. Strafford's administration had improved
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#173277269633910292-455: The Irish army to subdue England was not corroborated, and on 10 April Pym's case collapsed. Pym and his allies immediately launched a bill of attainder, which simply declared Strafford guilty and pronounced the sentence of death. Charles assured Strafford that "upon the word of a king you shall not suffer in life, honour or fortune", and the attainder could not succeed if Charles withheld assent. Furthermore, many members and most peers opposed
10458-458: The Irish economy and boosted tax revenue, but had done so by heavy-handedly imposing order. He had trained up a large Catholic army in support of the king and weakened the Irish Parliament's authority, while continuing to confiscate land from Catholics for Protestant settlement at the same time as promoting a Laudian Anglicanism that was anathema to presbyterians. As a result, all three groups had become disaffected. Strafford's impeachment provided
10624-447: The Irish rebels, he decided to take drastic action. Charles suspected, probably correctly, that some members of the English Parliament had colluded with the invading Scots. On 3 January 1642, Charles directed Parliament to give up five specific members of the Commons—Pym, John Hampden , Denzil Holles , William Strode and Sir Arthur Haselrig —and one peer, Lord Mandeville , on the grounds of high treason. When Parliament refused, it
10790-426: 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
10956-438: The Lord Keeper and 12 peers to summon Parliament if the king failed to do so. The Act was coupled with a subsidy bill, and to secure the latter, Charles grudgingly granted royal assent in February 1641. Strafford had become the principal target of the Parliamentarians, particularly John Pym , and he went on trial for high treason on 22 March 1641. But the key allegation by Sir Henry Vane that Strafford had threatened to use
11122-494: The Protestant cause abroad effectively. In 1633, Charles appointed William Laud Archbishop of Canterbury . They initiated a series of reforms to promote religious uniformity by restricting non-conformist preachers, insisting the liturgy be celebrated as prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer , organising the internal architecture of English churches to emphasise the sacrament of the altar, and reissuing King James's Declaration of Sports , which permitted secular activities on
11288-451: The Remonstrance attacked. The tension was heightened by news of the Irish rebellion, coupled with inaccurate rumours of Charles's complicity. Throughout November, a series of alarmist pamphlets published stories of atrocities in Ireland, including massacres of New English settlers by the native Irish who could not be controlled by the Old English lords. Rumours of "papist" conspiracies circulated in England, and English anti-Catholic opinion
11454-406: The Scots in the meantime. They recommended making peace. A cessation of arms was negotiated in the humiliating Treaty of Ripon , signed in October 1640. This stated that the Scots would continue to occupy Northumberland and Durham and be paid £850 per day indefinitely until a final settlement was negotiated and the English Parliament recalled, which would be required to raise sufficient funds to pay
11620-408: The Scottish forces. Consequently, Charles summoned what later became known as the Long Parliament . Once again, his supporters fared badly at the polls. Of the 493 members of the Commons returned in November, over 350 were opposed to the king. The Long Parliament proved just as difficult for Charles as had the Short Parliament. It assembled on 3 November 1640 and quickly began proceedings to impeach
11786-432: The Scottish nobility, at the price of considerable acrimony, by the Act of Revocation (1625), whereby all gifts of royal or church land made to the nobility since 1540 were revoked, with continued ownership being subject to an annual rent. In addition, the boundaries of the royal forests in England were restored to their ancient limits as part of a scheme to maximise income by exploiting the land and fining land users within
11952-679: The Tonnage and Poundage Act. The House of Commons also launched bills attacking bishops and episcopacy, but these failed in the Lords. Charles had made important concessions in England, and temporarily improved his position in Scotland by signing a final settlement of the Bishops' Wars , then securing the Scots' favour on a visit from August to November 1641 during which he conceded to the official establishment of presbyterianism in Scotland. But after an attempted royalist coup in Scotland, known as
12118-415: 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
12284-481: The age of 18 of what is suspected to have been typhoid (or possibly porphyria ). Charles, who turned 12 two weeks later, became heir apparent . As the eldest surviving son of the sovereign, he automatically gained several titles, including Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay . In November 1616, he was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester . In 1613, Charles's sister Elizabeth married Frederick V, Elector Palatine , and moved to Heidelberg . In 1617,
12450-422: 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,
12616-473: The attainder, not wishing, in the words of one, to "commit murder with the sword of justice". But increased tensions and an attempted coup by royalist army officers in support of Strafford and in which Charles was involved began to sway the issue. The Commons passed the bill on 20 April by a large margin (204 in favour, 59 opposed, and 230 abstained), and the Lords acquiesced (by 26 votes to 19, with 79 absent) in May. On 3 May, Parliament's Protestation attacked
12782-413: 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,
12948-442: The building was covered in wooden scaffolding, undergoing piecemeal restoration by Christopher Wren . The scaffolding caught fire on Tuesday night. Within half an hour, 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
13114-404: The capital; for one thing, with the shortage of labour following the fire, it was impossible to secure workmen for the purpose. Conflagration A conflagration is a large fire . Conflagrations often damage human life, animal life, health, and/or property. A conflagration can begin accidentally or be intentionally created ( arson ). A very large fire can produce a firestorm , in which
13280-596: The case of John Rolle , a Member of Parliament whose goods had been confiscated for failing to pay tonnage and poundage. Many MPs viewed the imposition of the tax as a breach of the Petition of Right. When Charles ordered a parliamentary adjournment on 2 March, members held the Speaker, Sir John Finch , down in his chair so that the session could be prolonged long enough for resolutions against Catholicism, Arminianism, and tonnage and poundage to be read out and acclaimed by
13446-408: The central column of rising heated air induces strong inward winds, which supply oxygen to the fire. Conflagrations can cause casualties including deaths or injuries from burns , trauma due to collapse of structures and attempts to escape, and smoke inhalation . Firefighting is the practice of extinguishing a conflagration, protecting life and property and minimizing damage and injury. One of
13612-513: The chamber. The provocation was too much for Charles, who dissolved Parliament and had nine parliamentary leaders, including Sir John Eliot, imprisoned over the matter, thereby turning the men into martyrs and giving popular cause to their protest. Personal rule necessitated peace. Without the means in the foreseeable future to raise funds from Parliament for a European war, or Buckingham's help, Charles made peace with France and Spain. The next 11 years, during which Charles ruled England without
13778-532: 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
13944-409: 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 was by far
14110-606: The dissolution of the Covenanters' interim government, albeit at the decisive concession that both the Scottish Parliament and General Assembly of the Scottish Church were called. The military failure in the First Bishops' War caused a financial and diplomatic crisis for Charles that deepened when his efforts to raise funds from Spain while simultaneously continuing his support for his Palatine relatives led to
14276-696: The duke. Charles provoked further unrest by trying to raise money for the war through a "forced loan": a tax levied without parliamentary consent. In November 1627, the test case in the King's Bench , the " Five Knights' Case ", found that the king had a prerogative right to imprison without trial those who refused to pay the forced loan. Summoned again in March 1628, Parliament adopted a Petition of Right on 26 May, calling upon Charles to acknowledge that he could not levy taxes without Parliament's consent, impose martial law on civilians, imprison them without due process, or quarter troops in their homes. Charles assented to
14442-543: 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 the Three Cranes, were now consumed". In
14608-494: The emperor marked the beginning of the turmoil that would develop into the Thirty Years' War . The conflict, originally confined to Bohemia, spiralled into a wider European war, which the English Parliament and public quickly grew to see as a polarised continental struggle between Catholics and Protestants. In 1620, King Frederick was defeated at the Battle of White Mountain near Prague and his hereditary lands in
14774-465: 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, the miserable and calamitous spectacle!" Suspicion soon arose in
14940-405: The few sources of support for Charles's proposed Spanish marriage. With King James's support, Montagu produced another pamphlet, Appello Caesarem , published in 1625 shortly after James's death and Charles's accession. To protect Montagu from the stricture of Puritan members of Parliament, Charles made him a royal chaplain, heightening many Puritans' suspicions that Charles favoured Arminianism as
15106-477: 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
15272-427: The fire grows into a firestorm . Inside a building, the intensity of gas exchange depends on the size and location of openings in walls and floors, the ceiling height, and the amount and characteristics of the combustible materials . Charles I of England Charles I (19 November 1600 – 30 January 1649) was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles
15438-558: 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
15604-424: 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
15770-457: 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 the fire
15936-514: 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
16102-499: The first time, and the bond between them grew stronger. Together, they embodied an image of virtue and family life, and their court became a model of formality and morality. In January 1629, Charles opened the second session of the English Parliament, which had been prorogued in June 1628, with a moderate speech on the tonnage and poundage issue. Members of the House of Commons began to voice opposition to Charles's policies in light of
16268-456: The flames, the western counterpart of the Tower of London . This historic royal palace was completely consumed, burning all night. Tuesday, 4 September 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
16434-461: The form of a bill of attainder . The incident set an important precedent as the process of impeachment would later be used against Charles and his supporters the Duke of Buckingham , Archbishop William Laud , and the Earl of Strafford . James insisted that the House of Commons be concerned exclusively with domestic affairs, while the members protested that they had the privilege of free speech within
16600-418: The futility of the marriage negotiation. Two years later, shortly after his accession, he married Henrietta Maria of France . After his succession in 1625, Charles quarrelled with the English Parliament , which sought to curb his royal prerogative . He believed in the divine right of kings , and was determined to govern according to his own conscience. Many of his subjects opposed his policies, in particular
16766-405: 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 the quenching of the fire." Monday marked the beginning of organised action, even as order broke down in the streets, especially at
16932-541: 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, 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
17098-413: The goals of fire prevention is to avoid conflagrations. When a conflagration is extinguished, there is often a fire investigation to determine the cause of the fire. During a conflagration a significant movement of air and combustion products occurs. Hot gaseous products of combustion move upward, causing the influx of more dense cold air to the combustion zone. Sometimes, the influx is so intense that
17264-432: 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 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
17430-513: 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
17596-412: 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
17762-546: The individual's ability to reject or accept salvation, which opponents viewed as heretical and a potential vehicle for the reintroduction of Catholicism. Puritan reformers considered Charles too sympathetic to Arminianism, and opposed his desire to move the Church of England in a more traditional and sacramental direction. In addition, his Protestant subjects followed the European war closely and grew increasingly dismayed by Charles's diplomacy with Spain and his failure to support
17928-639: The king was directly involved in governance. Strafford's fall from power weakened Charles's influence in Ireland. The dissolution of the Irish army was unsuccessfully demanded three times by the English Commons during Strafford's imprisonment, until lack of money eventually forced Charles to disband the army at the end of Strafford's trial. Disputes over the transfer of land ownership from native Catholic to settler Protestant, particularly in relation to
18094-576: The king's leading counsellors for high treason. Strafford was taken into custody on 10 November; Laud was impeached on 18 December; Finch, now Lord Keeper of the Great Seal , was impeached the next day, and consequently fled to The Hague with Charles's permission on 21 December. To prevent the king from dissolving it at will, Parliament passed the Triennial Act , which required Parliament to be summoned at least every three years, and permitted
18260-462: 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
18426-408: 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
18592-515: 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
18758-545: The levying of taxes without Parliamentary consent, and perceived his actions as those of a tyrannical absolute monarch . His religious policies, coupled with his marriage to a Roman Catholic , generated antipathy and mistrust from Reformed religious groups such as the English Puritans and Scottish Covenanters , who thought his views too Catholic. He supported high church Anglican ecclesiastics and failed to aid continental Protestant forces successfully during
18924-444: 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 was panic on Wednesday night in the encampments at Parliament Hill , Moorfields, and Islington:
19090-404: 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
19256-472: 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 a hose to spray on
19422-417: 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 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
19588-505: 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,
19754-418: The opening of his first Parliament until after the marriage was consummated, to forestall any opposition. Many members of the Commons opposed his marriage to a Catholic, fearing that he would lift restrictions on Catholic recusants and undermine the official establishment of the reformed Church of England . Charles told Parliament that he would not relax religious restrictions, but promised to do exactly that in
19920-485: 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 the City, and so he did not see
20086-456: The petition on 7 June, but by the end of the month he had prorogued Parliament and reasserted his right to collect customs duties without authorisation from Parliament. On 23 August 1628, Buckingham was assassinated. Charles was deeply distressed. According to Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon , he "threw himself upon his bed, lamenting with much passion and with abundance of tears". He remained grieving in his room for two days. In contrast,
20252-486: 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
20418-462: 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
20584-477: The propertied classes for inflicting degrading punishments on gentlemen. For example, in 1637 William Prynne , Henry Burton and John Bastwick were pilloried , whipped and mutilated by cropping and imprisoned indefinitely for publishing anti-episcopal pamphlets. When Charles attempted to impose his religious policies in Scotland he faced numerous difficulties. Although born in Scotland, Charles had become estranged from it; his first visit since early childhood
20750-425: The protests, Charles refused to dismiss his friend, dismissing Parliament instead. Meanwhile, domestic quarrels between Charles and Henrietta Maria were souring the early years of their marriage. Disputes over her jointure , appointments to her household, and the practice of her religion culminated in the king expelling the vast majority of her French attendants in August 1626. Despite Charles's agreement to provide
20916-453: The public humiliation of the Battle of the Downs , where the Dutch destroyed a Spanish bullion fleet off the coast of Kent in sight of the impotent English navy. Charles continued peace negotiations with the Scots in a bid to gain time before launching a new military campaign. Because of his financial weakness, he was forced to call Parliament into session in an attempt to raise funds for such
21082-664: The public rejoiced at Buckingham's death, accentuating the gulf between the court and the nation and between the Crown and the Commons. Buckingham's death effectively ended the war with Spain and eliminated his leadership as an issue, but it did not end the conflicts between Charles and Parliament. It did, however, coincide with an improvement in Charles's relationship with his wife, and by November 1628 their old quarrels were at an end. Perhaps Charles's emotional ties were transferred from Buckingham to Henrietta Maria. She became pregnant for
21248-798: The reasserted boundaries for encroachment. The programme's focus was disafforestation and sale of forest lands for conversion to pasture and arable farming, or in the case of the Forest of Dean , development for the iron industry. Disafforestation frequently caused riots and disturbances, including those known as the Western Rising . Against the background of this unrest, Charles faced bankruptcy in mid-1640. The City of London, preoccupied with its own grievances, refused to make any loans to him, as did foreign powers. In this extremity, in July Charles seized silver bullion worth £130,000 held in trust at
21414-474: The reformed religion of Scotland and reject any innovations not authorised by Kirk and Parliament. When the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland met in November 1638, it condemned the new prayer book, abolished episcopal church government , and adopted presbyterian government by elders and deacons. Charles perceived the unrest in Scotland as a rebellion against his authority, precipitating
21580-654: The repeal of the English penal laws , which Charles knew Parliament would not agree to, and that the infanta remain in Spain for a year after any wedding to ensure that England complied with all the treaty's terms. A personal quarrel erupted between Buckingham and the Count of Olivares , the Spanish chief minister, and so Charles conducted the ultimately futile negotiations personally. When he returned to London in October, without
21746-441: 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
21912-517: The sabbath. The Feoffees for Impropriations , an organisation that bought benefices and advowsons so that Puritans could be appointed to them, was dissolved. Laud prosecuted those who opposed his reforms in the Court of High Commission and the Star Chamber , the two most powerful courts in the land. The courts became feared for their censorship of opposing religious views and unpopular among
22078-498: The same manner Bacon had. James told Buckingham he was a fool, and presciently warned Charles that he would live to regret the revival of impeachment as a parliamentary tool. An underfunded makeshift army under Ernst von Mansfeld set off to recover the Palatinate, but it was so poorly provisioned that it never advanced beyond the Dutch coast. By 1624, the increasingly ill James was finding it difficult to control Parliament. By
22244-424: 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
22410-496: The south-east and East Anglia, as well as the English navy. After a few skirmishes, the opposing forces met in earnest at Edgehill , on 23 October 1642. Charles's nephew Prince Rupert of the Rhine disagreed with the battle strategy of the royalist commander Lord Lindsey , and Charles sided with Rupert. Lindsey resigned, leaving Charles to assume overall command assisted by Lord Forth . Rupert's cavalry successfully charged through
22576-454: The streets all Monday, "rescuing foreigners from the mob" and attempting to keep order. "The Duke of York hath won the hearts of 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
22742-405: 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
22908-677: 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
23074-618: 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 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
23240-592: The time of his death in March 1625, Charles and Buckingham had already assumed de facto control of the kingdom. With the failure of the Spanish match, Charles and Buckingham turned their attention to France. On 1 May 1625 Charles was married by proxy to the 15-year-old French princess Henrietta Maria in front of the doors of Notre Dame de Paris . He had seen her in Paris while en route to Spain. They met in person on 13 June 1625 in Canterbury . Charles delayed
23406-486: 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
23572-405: 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
23738-409: 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
23904-448: 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 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,
24070-421: 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
24236-598: Was tried, convicted , and executed for high treason in January 1649. The monarchy was abolished and the Commonwealth of England was established as a republic . The monarchy was restored in 1660, with Charles's son Charles II as king. The second son of King James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark , Charles was born in Dunfermline Palace , Fife, on 19 November 1600. At a Protestant ceremony in
24402-520: 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 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
24568-404: Was a weak and sickly infant, and while his parents and older siblings left for England in April and early June that year, due to his fragile health, he remained in Scotland with his father's friend Lord Fyvie appointed as his guardian. By 1604, when Charles was three-and-a-half, he was able to walk the length of the great hall at Dunfermline Palace without assistance, and it was decided that he
24734-472: Was actively hostile towards Spain and Catholicism, and thus, when called by James in 1621, the members hoped for an enforcement of recusancy laws, a naval campaign against Spain, and a Protestant marriage for the Prince of Wales. James's Lord Chancellor , Francis Bacon , was impeached before the House of Lords for corruption. The impeachment was the first since 1459 without the king's official sanction in
24900-455: Was also slow, and he had a stammer for the rest of his life. In January 1605, Charles was created Duke of York , as is customary in the case of the English sovereign's second son, and made a Knight of the Bath . Thomas Murray , a presbyterian Scot, was appointed as a tutor. Charles learnt the usual subjects of classics, languages, mathematics and religion. In 1611, he was made a Knight of
25066-490: Was beheaded three days later. Also in early May, Charles assented to an unprecedented Act that forbade the dissolution of the English Parliament without its consent. In the following months, ship money, fines in distraint of knighthood and excise without parliamentary consent were declared unlawful, and the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission were abolished. All remaining forms of taxation were legalised and regulated by
25232-521: Was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland , but after his father inherited the English throne in 1603, he moved to England, where he spent much of the rest of his life. He became heir apparent to the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1612 upon the death of his elder brother, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales . An unsuccessful and unpopular attempt to marry him to Infanta Maria Anna of Spain culminated in an eight-month visit to Spain in 1623 that demonstrated
25398-519: Was for his Scottish coronation in 1633. To the dismay of the Scots, who had removed many traditional rituals from their liturgical practice, Charles insisted that the coronation be conducted using the Anglican rite. In 1637, he ordered the use of a new prayer book in Scotland that was almost identical to the English Book of Common Prayer , without consulting either the Scottish Parliament or
25564-638: Was forced to withdraw. In mid-1642, both sides began to arm. Charles raised an army using the medieval method of commission of array , and Parliament called for volunteers for its militia. The negotiations proved futile, and Charles raised the royal standard in Nottingham on 22 August 1642. By then, his forces controlled roughly the Midlands, Wales, the West Country and northern England. He set up his court at Oxford . Parliament controlled London,
25730-427: 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 was now so volatile that Charles feared a full-scale London rebellion against
25896-496: 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
26062-599: Was no legal bar to collecting the tax for defence during peacetime and throughout the whole of the kingdom. Ship money, paid directly to the Treasury of the Navy, provided between £150,000 to £200,000 annually between 1634 and 1638, after which yields declined. Opposition to ship money steadily grew, but England's 12 common law judges ruled the tax within the king's prerogative, though some of them had reservations. The prosecution of John Hampden for non-payment in 1637–38 provided
26228-403: Was obliged to rely primarily on volunteer forces for defence and on diplomatic efforts to support his sister Elizabeth and his foreign policy objective for the restoration of the Palatinate. England was still the least taxed country in Europe, with no official excise and no regular direct taxation. To raise revenue without reconvening Parliament, Charles resurrected an all-but-forgotten law called
26394-543: 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 was seen as
26560-449: 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
26726-600: Was possibly Henrietta Maria who persuaded Charles to arrest the five members by force, which he resolved to do personally. But news of the warrant reached Parliament ahead of him, and the wanted men slipped away by boat shortly before Charles entered the House of Commons with an armed guard on 4 January. Having displaced Speaker William Lenthall from his chair, the king asked him where the MPs had fled. Lenthall, on his knees, famously replied, "May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as
26892-497: 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
27058-438: Was strengthened, damaging Charles's reputation and authority. The English Parliament distrusted Charles's motivations when he called for funds to put down the Irish rebellion; many members of the Commons suspected that forces he raised might later be used against Parliament itself. Pym's Militia Bill was intended to wrest control of the army from the king, but it did not have the support of the Lords, let alone Charles. Instead,
27224-407: Was strong enough to journey to England to be reunited with his family. In mid-July 1604, he left Dunfermline for England, where he was to spend most of the rest of his life. In England, Charles was placed under the charge of Elizabeth, Lady Carey , the wife of courtier Sir Robert Carey , who put him in boots made of Spanish leather and brass to help strengthen his weak ankles. His speech development
27390-419: 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
27556-402: 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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