Abstract
Protestant demonology was always full of the inflammatory terrors of papistry. The legendary execution pyres of Smithfield and the everlasting fires of Hell presided over by the Antichrist Pope always gave to Protestant discussions of Catholicism a whiff of ash and sulphur. In 1666 London was still a city of wood and wattle, prone to every spark from every fire. One such spark, from a baker’s premises in Pudding Lane, started a conflagration that began at the very heart of the ancient city and burned everything in its path until it reached to within a few yards of Temple Bar. The fire began on 2 September and lasted five days, destroying two-thirds of the old City. St Paul’s Cathedral, eighty-seven churches, the ancient Guildhall, over forty livery halls, the Royal Exchange, Customs House and 13,200 houses, shops and workrooms were reduced to ash and rubble as Londoners fled to surrounding fields or over London Bridge to stay with relatives and friends or camp in the open. For urban dwellers before the general use of less combustible building materials a city fire was second only to plague in the terrors it suggested.
Chapter PDF
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Notes
Neil Hanson, The Dreadful Judgement: The True Story of the Great Fire of London (London: Doubleday, 2001), pp. 168–9.
For entries to the entire period of the Fire see E. S. Beer, ed., The Diary of John Evelyn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955). See also Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, vol. VII, 1666 (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1972), pp. 267–81.
John Bedford, London’s Burning (London: Abelard-Schuman, 1966), p. 152.
Gamini Salgado, The Elizabethan Underworld (London: Alan Sutton, 1995), pp. 144–5.
Alan Davidson, ‘A Further Note on Bedlam’ in The London Recusant 4–7 (1974–77), p. 65.
John Kenyon, The Popish Plot (London: Phoenix [1972] 2000), p. 177.
B.S. Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men (London: Faber and Faber, 1972) p. 222.
David C. Hanrahan, Colonel Blood (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Press, 2003) p. 66.
Iris Morley, A Thousand Lives: An Account of the English Revolutionary Movement of 1660–1685 (London: Andre Deutsch, 1954) p. 57.
U. G. O’Leary, ‘A Small Riot in 1688’, London Recusant 4–7 (1974–77), p. 67.
Robert Beddard, ‘Anti-Popery and the London Mob, 1688’, History Today VIII (1988), p. 36.
Stephen Knight, The Killing of Justice Godfrey (London: Grafton [1984], 1986).
Alan Marshall, The Strange Death of Edmund Godfrey: Plots and Politics in Restoration London (Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton Press, 1999).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2010 Clive Bloom
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bloom, C. (2010). Murderous Fantasies. In: Violent London. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230289475_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230289475_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-230-27559-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-28947-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)