But to two people the plague and the fire brought a more inward crisis. To Doctor Meredith the plague had brought a profound sense of failure. His only role, he freely admitted, had been to comfort the dying. His medicine was useless and he knew it. The quest for medical knowledge would go on but until the time when doctors actually knew something, “I might as well try to save their souls,” he concluded. As he had watched St Paul’s burn from Ludgate he had decided. “I shall take holy orders and become a clergyman, as I first intended.” There was nothing to stop him continuing any medical studies at the same time. There would still, thank God, be the Royal Society.
Only for O Be Joyful Carpenter did the fire bring despair. For after parting from Eugene, he had not returned to his family, but walked about watching the fire; and as he did so, the boy’s words had come back to mock him. “A brave man” indeed. It was no use, he told himself, to pretend that Martha’s death had been inevitable. “I could have brought her down and saved her. Yet by my fear and cowardice I let her burn.” Was he the son of Gideon, the spiritual heir of Martha? No. He was unworthy.
And what of their vision of the shining city? What had become of that now? As the fire made its way along Fleet Street, like some powerful chariot of destruction, its crackles seemed like the grinding of huge wheels upon the road, and their message was terrible yet plain: “All gone. All destroyed. All gone.”
Medical opinion is still divided on why, after the Great Fire, the plague scarcely returned to London again. The causes of the fire similarly remained in dispute. Most Londoners believed it was the Catholics. The view of the Parliamentary Committee called to report on the Great Fire soon afterwards was more measured. The blame, it concluded with great firmness, could not be placed upon any group of men, either foreigners or even Catholics. London’s fire, it stated plainly, was an Act of God. It was God’s Fire.
ST PAUL’S
1675
The sun was catching the southern face of the strange little building on the hill. Eugene Penny waited patiently for the two men to finish their conversation. The building cast a long shadow down the green and silent slope. Far below, the Queen’s House gleamed white by the waterside at Greenwich. He wondered whether Meredith would be up there at night, gazing through the great tube at the stars. He felt a rush of embarrassment when he thought of what he had to tell the kindly clergyman, for he knew that Meredith would tell him he was mad.
Though Richard Meredith saw Eugene waiting for him, he could not easily break away, since he had a problem with Sir Julius Ducket. It was all the more irritating as he had been looking forward to the celebration of the opening of the building.
It had been especially appropriate, Meredith thought, that his friend and fellow member of the Royal Society, Sir Christopher Wren, the astronomer who had so brilliantly turned his mathematical talents to architecture, should have been the one to design the building. For the small brick, octagonal structure that now presided over the slope above Greenwich was the first of its kind in England: it was the Royal Observatory.
Strangely enough, its primary purpose was not to study the stars – though it contained a telescope of course. The main objective, as Meredith had explained to Sir Julius earlier that morning, was entirely practical.
“It’s to help our mariners,” he told him. “A sailor at present, by using a quadrant, can measure the angle of the sun at its zenith, or certain stars, and work out how far north or south he is. But what they do not know,” he continued “is how far they are to east or west – their longitude. Until now, sailors have had to make a rough guess, usually by how many days they have sailed: hardly satisfactory. Yet there is a way of discovering one’s longitude.
“For consider, Sir Julius. Each day, as the Earth makes its way round the sun – as, despite the old objections of the Roman Church we know it does – the Earth also spins. Because of this, as we know, the sun appears over the eastern horizon here in London, for instance, several minutes before it is seen in the west of England.” Indeed, so well aware of this were men that local time was a highly variable affair. Each city normally set its own clocks according to the hours of daylight, so that the western port of Bristol kept a different time from London.
“We calculate that a difference of four minutes represents one degree of longitude; an hour is fifteen degrees. So you see, if a mariner could take his own time, which he can by the sun, he has only to compare it with our time here in London to discover how far east or west of us he is.”
“If he had a clock that kept perfect London time he could do it.”
“Yes. But we haven’t discovered how to build a clock that will keep time like that at sea. However,” Meredith continued, “we can make such accurate tables of the moon’s position against the backdrop of the heavens that, by reading off his sightings in an almanac, a mariner will know what the time is, at a particular moment, in London. By comparing this standard astronomical clock, as it were, with his local time, he’ll be able to know his longitude.”
“Will it take long to complete these tables?”
“Decades, I should guess. It’s a huge task. But that’s what the Royal Observatory is for: to make a great map of all the heavenly bodies and their motions.”
“So all sailors – from other countries too, I should think – will work out their bearings from a standard London time?”
“Precisely,” Meredith smiled. “If they want to know where they are they’ll follow the time of the Royal Observatory. We shall call it Greenwich time,” he added.
But having taken Sir Julius to the Observatory and shown him its telescope, clock and apparatus, Meredith had suddenly been sidetracked into this stupid conversation. Worse still, he had to admit, it was largely his own fault.
It was a month now since he had allowed the matter to slip out. In doing so – of course he saw that now – he had carelessly assumed that as he himself did not take the matter seriously, the baronet would feel the same. He had been entirely wrong; Sir Julius had been deeply concerned. In fact, he had been terrified; rich Sir Julius Ducket, friend of the king, had shaken with fear, all because poor Jane Wheeler, dying of plague, had laid a curse upon him.
“If she was a witch,” Sir Julius was saying urgently, “aren’t there prayers you could say? Or do you think,” he continued, “we should dig her body up and burn her?”
Meredith sighed. Was this all, after seeing the Observatory that would chart the heavens, his friend could think of? It offended him, as a man of science, that people should still believe in all this superstition, yet he knew very well that even educated men still believed in witchcraft. There had been a crop of officially sanctioned witch-burnings in the countryside only recently. Nor was this just a hangover from the medieval religion of Rome: the stern Puritans of Scotland and even Massachusetts, he had heard, were positively eager to burn witches.
“She wasn’t a witch,” he said calmly. “And anyway, you can’t dig her out of a plague pit.”
“But the curse . . .”
“It died with her.” He could see, however, that Ducket was by no means satisfied. Sir Julius was not his parishioner. After the Great Fire, the little church of St Lawrence Silversleeves, along with several others in the area, had not been rebuilt. Nor had Sir Julius continued to live in the city by St Mary-le-Bow, but moved westwards, while a new mansion, built on the site of his old house, had now become the official residence of the mayor. Soon after his ordination however, Meredith had been lucky enough to get the living at St Bride’s in Fleet Street.
Although it went against his common sense, he comforted the older man. “I will pray for you,” he reassured him gently. But he was not sorry, a few moments later, when Sir Julius left and he could turn his attention to the patiently waiting Eugene Penny.
Meredith liked the Huguenot, even if he was a member of an alien Church. O Be Joyful Carpenter had first introduced them and he had been able to help the young watchmaker to find a place with the great London clockmaker T
ompion, who was installing the timepiece in the Royal Observatory. He listened carefully to what Penny had to say and then, as expected, he gave his judgement: “You must be mad.”
The Huguenots of London formed a thriving community; the pastor of the French congregation was as busy as he could wish. They had also fitted in well. Some like the rich Des Bouveries family, had already risen to social prominence. Their French names – Olivier, LeFanu, Martineau, Bosanquet – had either acquired an English sound or they had been converted, as Penny had, to an English equivalent: Thierry into Terry, Mahieu into Mayhew, Crespin into Crippen, Descamps into Scamp. Their liking for such culinary delicacies as snails might seem strange, but other dishes they brought with them, such as oxtail soup, were soon popular with the English. Their skills in making furniture, perfumes, fans and the newly fashionable wigs were welcome; and though, like all newcomers, they were regarded with some suspicion, English Puritans respected their Calvinist religion. As for the king, he had reached a reasonable compromise. The first French churches – at the Savoy and at Threadneedle Street – might use a Calvinist form of service as long as they remained loyal and discreet. Any new churches must use a form of the Anglican service, in the French language; though if a few differences crept in to salve their Puritan consciences, they were unlikely to be troubled. Strangely enough, because they were devout and, unlike so many English Puritans, anxious not to offend, the Anglican bishops of London were usually rather protective towards them.
So why should Eugene Penny want to leave?
“Is it the riots?” Meredith asked. There had been several attacks on Huguenots in the eastern suburb of the city that year, and he supposed this might have worried Penny. Yet since he was convinced that the real cause of the trouble had little to do with the Huguenots as such, he continued immediately: “For if it is, let me reassure you.”
It was true, of course, that there was always some friction between the “foreigners” – which still meant anybody from outside the city – and the Londoners who feared competition for their skills and jobs. But the real problem, Meredith realized, had come as a direct result of the Great Fire; and it concerned the city’s ancient government.
In the first months when the old walled city was a charred and empty ruin, people had even wondered if it might be abandoned. Gradually it was rebuilt, but its medieval structure had gone. New fashionable developments were starting to spring up around the court area at Whitehall; the rich were more inclined to live there. Craftsmen meanwhile, who had been obliged to carry on in the northern and eastern suburbs of the city, found it cheaper to stay put. The mayor and the aldermen lacked the will to extend their authority over all these spreading areas, and the guilds felt much the same. If a man wanted the freedom of the city, and the benefits of guild membership, the old rules and the apprenticeship remained the same. But if traders and craftsmen chose to evade the rules and operate in the suburbs, there was not much the guilds could do about it. So when a group of Huguenot silk-weavers had moved into the little suburb of Spitalfields, just outside the city’s eastern wall, and their hard work and imported skill had brought them instant success, some of the low-wage earners in the area had grown jealous.
“It’s just a local affair,” Meredith told him. “The Londoners aren’t against the Huguenots, I promise you.”
But Eugene was shaking his head. He had taken off his spectacles and was polishing them – a trick he often had when he was embarrassed. During his twenties, his face had become thinner, so that now it looked finely chiselled. His eyes, though short-sighted, were a deep, lustrous brown. He’s a handsome fellow, thought Meredith; he might almost be Spanish. But the real problem for Eugene Penny was that he was French.
He had been sent to England by his father. Cautious, always planning ahead, quietly persistent, they both agreed what must be done. “The kings of France have sworn, by the Treaty of Nantes, to allow us to worship freely in perpetuity,” he had told Eugene. “But the Church of Rome is strong; the king is devout. Go to England therefore. If we are sure we are safe here, you can return. If not, you must prepare a new home for your brothers and sisters there.”
But after his last trip back to his family, Eugene had been overcome by a terrible homesickness; and with every month it had grown worse. Now, with an apologetic face, he confessed to Meredith: “I just want to go home to France. My family has come to no harm there. It cannot really be necessary for me to be here.”
Meredith hardly knew what to say. He could not counsel Eugene about the situation in France, but it concerned him that the young watchmaker should leave such a good master. “At least write to your father first to seek his permission,” he suggested but he doubted that Eugene would take his advice.
When Meredith had gone, Eugene Penny walked back slowly. He acknowledged the wisdom of what the older man said, but his heart was very torn. Making his way across the top of the slope to the broad expanse of Blackheath, he picked up the old Kent road and began the long descent towards Southwark. It was a good four-mile walk, but he did not mind. As he came down from the ridge he saw all London spread out before him – the charred city, still rebuilding, the distant palace of Whitehall, the more distant wooded slopes of Hampstead and Highgate. And wherever he looked, from London Bridge, extending downstream past the Tower and all the way along the Pool of London to beyond Wapping, he saw the ships; a forest of masts so thick that they seemed, like trees, almost to touch one another. There must, he thought, be over a hundred great vessels there, proof positive that the mighty port of London would never allow anything – plague, fire or even war – to stop its worldwide trade. How could he want to leave such a place?
On a warm afternoon a few days later, a group of men gathered in a circle at the centre of a huge, empty ruin on the city’s western hill. Several of them were simple craftsmen and stonemasons wearing their aprons – which was appropriate since the pleasant, intelligent-looking man who had summoned them together was not only England’s greatest builder but also a devout Freemason himself.
“Today”, announced Sir Christopher Wren, “we begin a rebirth.”
The rebirth of London was already a remarkable feat. The city that was rising out of the ashes might, certainly, have been grander. Wren and others had submitted plans for a splendid series of noble squares, circuses and avenues that would have been the wonder of the northern world. But the huge difficulty of compensating the thousands of people who had property rights along the existing street lines, the fact that the need to commence work was urgent, and the sheer expense of such grandeur had forced the king and his government to take a more modest course. The layout of the new city was a modified version of the old medieval plan.
But there all resemblance ended. For now, with seven centuries of huddled, overhanging wooden buildings burned to ashes, there was a chance to avoid the mistakes of the past, and the government took it. Regulations were drawn up; streets were to be wider; some of the gradients of the hills were smoothed; houses were to be built in handsome terraces, in a simple classical style, according to precise and uniform dimensions – two storeys plus a cellar and garret in side streets, three or four storeys for the main streets. And above all, strictly enforced this time, they were of brick or stone with slate or tile roofs. When one or two merchants tried to break the rules, their houses were promptly pulled down.
Now, all around London, were brickfields, where men dug up and baked the London clay and the rich brickearth that a tropical sea and, later, Ice Age winds had deposited so generously millions of years before.
A few medieval landmarks remained. The Tower still stood sentinel by the waterside. Inside the eastern wall, a Gothic church or two survived; out at Smithfield, St Bartholomew’s kept its quiet peace from the days of the crusades. And on the river itself, one curiosity was retained: the tall old houses on London Bridge, which, though scorched, had mostly come through the fire, were left standing and were to remain, as a charming relic of London’s medieval glory, of
the days of Chaucer and the Black Prince, for another ninety years.
But the medieval city was gone: and in its place was arising something not unlike the Roman city that had been there once before. True, there was no amphitheatre looming over the western hill: the Guildhall occupied that site and men’s love of bloodshed had to be contented with public executions and cock-fights instead of gladiatorial conquests. True, it would be another two centuries until central heating was rediscovered, seventeenth-century roads would have made any Roman laugh, and literacy was almost certainly less widespread than in the ancient world; but despite these drawbacks, it could still be said that the new city had nearly returned to the standards of civilization enjoyed by the inhabitants of Londonium fourteen hundred years before.
Of all the builders of the new city, none was greater than Sir Christopher Wren. The astronomer turned architect was everywhere. Already he had rebuilt St Mary-le-Bow with a magnificent tower and classical steeple. As a charming and witty addition, he had put a little balcony in the tower overlooking Cheapside as a reminder of the old grandstand where once kings and courtiers had watched the jousts. St Bride’s in Fleet Street was going up, and numerous other projects were already in hand. But nothing compared with the vast undertaking before them now.
St Paul’s. Huge, almost roofless, cavernous: its high, blackened walls had stood for some years after the fire. Since gunpowder was too dangerous, Wren had ordered them slowly pounded with a battering-ram and section by section, they crumbled and fell. Except for the west wall, they were only a few feet high now. And in place of the tall old Gothic church Wren had designed a magnificent new edifice that would be the glory of London.
And all the assembled craftsmen were smiling – except one.
O Be Joyful Carpenter had never got over the Fire of London. Indeed, in a sense, it had destroyed him. The fire of truth had sought him out and exposed him, naked, for what he was: a coward. But no, it was worse than that. He was a Judas. Hadn’t his whole life afterwards proved it?
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