state with the poet Milton as his secretary. Here he died, only two or
three years ago, and now the Palace is filled to overflowing with the
great Court of the present King. Let us walk across to the river front.”
They passed through many gardens and courts surrounded by houses built
in the Elizabethan fashion, with gabled roofs, and timbered fronts,
till they came to a long stone building facing the river, but divided
from it by a pretty garden.
“This is called the _Stone Gallery_,” said Godmother, “and here two
of the beauties of the Court have their apartments. One is Lady
Castlemaine, and the other the Duchess of Portsmouth.”
“What a lovely place to live in!” Betty exclaimed. “Overlooking this
garden and the beautiful river.”
“It has its disadvantages,” Godmother remarked drily. “Sometimes
the river floods the lower rooms at high tide. Only yesterday, for
instance, when Lady Castlemaine had invited the King to dine with her,
the cook came to tell her that the water had put the fire out in the
kitchen.”
Betty laughed. “What _did_ she do?”
“Pepys wrote it all down in his diary this morning, so we know. He
tells us that Lady Castlemaine exclaimed, ‘_Zounds!_’ (a favourite word
in these Restoration days), ‘_you may burn the palace, down but the
beef must be roasted!_’ ‘_So_,’ the ‘Diary’ goes on, ‘_it was carried
to Mrs. Sarah’s husband, and there roasted_,’ ‘Mrs. Sarah’ being the
housekeeper to one of Mr. Pepys’s friends.
[Illustration: CHARLES I.]
“Those are the Queen’s rooms,” Godmother went on, pointing to a row of
windows some distance from the Stone Gallery, but like it, facing
the river. “Poor Catherine! she is very much neglected, and these Court
ladies’ apartments are much grander and better furnished than hers.”
“Queen Catherine?” echoed Betty.
“Catherine of Braganza. She is a Portuguese lady whom King Charles has
lately married.”
“Shall we see the King?” Betty asked.
“We may have a glimpse of him in a moment. He is far from being a good
king, you know, though he is good-natured and witty, and easy to get on
with. He hates to be troubled with business, and doesn’t care about the
honour or welfare of his country so long as he has plenty of money, and
can spend his time in amusement. He lives here in the greatest luxury,
surrounded by frivolous courtiers. One of them wrote some amusing lines
about him the other day which he had the audacity to fasten up on the
door of the King’s bedroom:
‘Here lies our sovereign lord, the King
Whose word no man relies on.
He never said a foolish thing
And never did a wise one.’
And that very well describes Charles the Second. Now pay great
attention to the Banqueting Hall, not long ago built by Inigo Jones,
because it’s the only bit of all this scene that you will be able to
look at when we are in our own day once more. There, wonderful banquets
are held on a magnificent scale, when the King entertains ambassadors
from foreign courts. And now let us stroll into St. James’s Park. The
King has recently laid it out as part of the grounds of his palace,
though the public is allowed to enter it.”
“It’s quite different now,” said Betty, gazing at a long straight canal
which instead of the well-known winding lake, ran from end to end of
the Park. “Look at those stiff avenues of trees on each side of the
water! It isn’t a bit like an English park.”
“No. That’s because while he was in exile, Charles lived in Holland,
and became very fond of the Dutch style of formal gardening, which
he has copied here. But I’ll show you something that will be familiar
to you. Do you see that little island with the ducks and wild-fowl
swimming near it. The water birds that live in St. James’s Park now,
and had such a beautiful home before the Park was made ugly with sheds
during the war, are the descendants of those very birds belonging to
Charles the Second. He often comes here quite unattended to feed them.”
[Illustration]
“Godmother, I do believe he’s there now!” Betty exclaimed, pointing
to a dark, heavy-faced man with a long curling wig, throwing bread to
the ducks, as with loud quacks they came swimming towards him. “He’s
dressed like the pictures I’ve seen of Charles the Second anyhow.”
“Yes, that’s the King. And the man beside him, with the splendid satin
coat and the wide hat with the curling red feather, is the Duke of
Rochester, one of his favourites. See how they’re laughing together!”
One moment Betty saw them thus. Then, the whole scene vanished, and
instead of standing in the sunlight in the Park under the trees, she
found herself in a gorgeous ball-room, lighted by hundreds of wax
candles in sconces against the gilded walls. It was filled with men
and women beautifully dressed in the costume of Stuart days, which
Betty recognized from portraits she had seen of people belonging to
Restoration times. The men carried in their hands big felt hats with
sweeping feathers, and they all wore wigs with long curls to the
shoulders, while the ladies were gay in rich brocades, and sparkled
with jewels. A buzz of talk and laughter almost drowned the music
played in a gallery above.
[Illustration]
“They are waiting for the King and Queen to come in and open the
ball,” Godmother said. “Do you see Mr. Pepys in that corner under the
musicians’ gallery? He is talking to his friend Mr. Povey, a member of
Parliament, who has brought him here to-night to see this particular
ball.”
Presently the doors at one end of the room were flung open and the
King, leading the Queen by the hand, entered, followed by his brother,
the Duke of York, who led the Duchess.
Then the dancing began. At first it was a stately dance called the
_Brantle_, in which the couples followed one another round the room,
keeping step to the music.
“That’s the Duke of Monmouth bowing low to Lady Castlemaine,” Godmother
said, seeing that Betty was watching a very handsome young man whose
partner was a pretty lady in a wonderful gown of blue and silver. “You
will read about his tragic end in your history. But now he is young and
gay and in high favour with the King.”
“Look! the King and a lady are dancing alone!” cried Betty. “Doesn’t he
dance well?”
“That dance is called a _Coranto_. You see that every one in the room
stands up when the King dances. There! He is calling to the musicians
for a merrier tune, and now we shall see a country dance, very
different from these stately measures.”
In a moment or two indeed the whole gay throng was jigging to a lively
air such as Betty had heard the fiddler play for the milkmaids in Drury
Lane.
“It’s a Morris dance,” she exclaimed. “We learn it at school.”
“Yes, there’s a fashion in our day to bring back the old-fashioned
country dances that were common in England two or three hundred years
ago. See how the King is enjoying it,” she added. “You can understand
why, in spite of his failings as a ruler, he is so popular with his
subjects. They love his free and easy ways, and his lazy good-nature.”
“I suppose Mr. Pepys will write about this ball?” Betty suggested.
[Illustration: THE KING ENTERED, LEADING THE QUEEN BY THE HAND]
“Oh yes. The ‘Diary’ says, ‘_Mr. Povey and I to Whitehall: he taking me
thither on purpose to carry me into the ball this night before the
King_,’ and a few lines further on we read, ‘_Then to country dances;
the King leading the first, which he called for_.’”
“And we’ve actually seen him do it!” Betty exclaimed.
But almost before she finished speaking, a thick mist swallowed up the
ball-room with its sparkling lights and its whirling men and women....
The sun was shining, and they were once more in the open air.
“We are in the Chepe now,” Betty said, recognizing it immediately, for
it had scarcely changed at all since the reign of Elizabeth.
It was decorated now in honour of May Day. Scarlet hangings draped the
front of the houses not only of the market-place itself, but of those
in the narrow streets leading from it. Wood Street, a dirty dark lane
overhung by its picturesque wooden dwellings, was especially gay, Betty
noticed. It was full of life and bustle. At every doorway people stood
talking and laughing, and where the top stories almost met overhead,
she noticed children leaning from the windows to exchange handfuls of
flowers with little opposite neighbours who could reach them easily.
“Now,” said Godmother, “that we have seen London gay and merry on this
May Day in the early part of Charles the Second’s reign, I’m afraid
you must have just a glimpse of the city a few years later in terrible
trouble. Shut your eyes.”
Betty obeyed, and when after a moment Godmother said, “Open them,” she
looked round her in horror. They were standing on the same spot in the
Chepe, for there was the entrance to Wood Street, just opposite. But
what was this terrible change? The Chepe was silent and deserted. Grass
was growing between the cobblestones with which it was paved, and the
only creature in sight, was a man walking beside a covered cart ringing
a bell. What was he repeating in that hoarse voice of his? She listened
and with a shudder heard the words, “_Bring out your dead! Bring out
your dead!_”
“We will walk a few steps down Wood Street,” Godmother said.
Betty followed her along the narrow lane. The doors of the houses were
all closed. No groups of gossiping people stood there now, and there
were no laughing children high above, throwing flowers to one another.
On almost every other door Betty saw a red cross drawn in chalk, and
beneath it was scrawled _God have mercie upon us_. The air was full of
the sound of tolling bells.
[Illustration]
“Oh! how dreadful!” she cried. But the words were uttered in
Godmother’s parlour, and she was thankful to be whisked so suddenly
into her own day.
“The Plague was in London then, I suppose?” she asked.
“Yes. A moment ago, we were in the year 1665, and the Chepe, and Wood
Street, showed you the terrible state of things that existed then all
over the city. Nearly all the richer people had left London by the time
we had that glimpse of only one of the streets in which the disease
raged. The Court had moved from Whitehall; most of the clergy had run
away. So had many of the doctors. The people died by thousands, and
still in those narrow dirty streets the plague spread. Trade was at a
standstill, and multitudes were starving, and only kept alive by money
sent for their relief to the Lord Mayor and the Archbishop and two or
three noblemen who bravely refused to desert the city.”
“Did Mr. Pepys go away?” Betty asked with interest.
“No. His work kept him in London nearly all the time, and of course he
tells us much about this awful year. Let us look at his ‘Diary.’”
She opened the book which had been responsible for the magic scenes
Betty had already beheld, and began to turn the leaves.
“Here,” she said, “on June 7th, 1665, long before the terrible disease
had reached its height, Mr. Pepys wrote, ‘_The hottest day that ever I
felt in my life. This day, much against my will, I did in Drury Lane
see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and
Lord have mercy upon us writ there._’ But though Pepys owns that he is
often afraid, he keeps quite calm, and does not forget to mention when
he puts on new clothes. (He is very vain, you know, and fond of dress.)
“On September 3rd, when the plague was at its height, this is what
appears in his ‘Diary’: ‘_Up; and put on my coloured silk suit very
fine_.’ He goes on to say how he dares not put on his new ‘periwigg’
(that is the sort of long curling wig we saw him wearing just now)
because he thinks it might hold the infection. Still Mr. Pepys was no
coward during this terrible time, and seems to have done what he could
to help the poor. Well, we will not linger over the misery of London
during that awful year of 1665. A hundred thousand Londoners died of
it, and even before it was quite over, another terrible misfortune
fell upon the poor city, of which you shall just have a second’s
glimpse. Hold this book. Shut your eyes, and think yourself on Bankside
in Southwark, near St. Saviour’s Church.”
Betty had no sooner done this, than even before she opened her eyes
she was conscious of a fierce glare. Then just for a flashing second
she saw on the opposite side of the river, London burning. From the
Tower on the right hand, across the river, to St. Paul’s far down on
the left, the city was a sheet of flame, and the night sky overhead was
deep crimson with the reflected glare!
Before she had time to feel frightened she was in the quiet parlour
where Godmother still sat, turning over the leaves of the “Diary.”
“How wonderful, but _awful_ it looked, Godmother! I couldn’t have borne
to see it a second longer. What does it say about it in Mr. Pepys’s
book?”
“He describes the Fire very fully. He tells how at three o’clock on
Sunday morning, Jane, the maid, called him up, saying there was a big
blaze near them. But it is some hours later before he understands that
this is something more than an ordinary fire. Then he goes to the
Tower, and from one of the roofs there, sees all the wharves and quays
and the houses in Thames Street (Chaucer’s street, you remember,) in
a blaze. The houses on London Bridge were beginning to burn also. He
tells of the scenes on the river where the people were rushing from
their blazing houses on the bank and crowding into boats carrying all
they could snatch up in their flight, ‘_poor people staying in their
houses as long as till the very fire touched them_,’ he writes, ‘_and
then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by
the waterside to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons,
I perceived were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the
windows and balconys till they burned their wings and fell down._’”
“We went down one of those very stairs on to the quay when we saw the
sailor man telling the boys of his travels—in Queen Elizabeth’s days,”
interrupted Betty. “And I remember the pigeons were flying about then!
Do go on, Godmother.”
“Well, then Pepys goes on to say he takes a boat and rows down
the river to Whitehall and informs the King and the Duke of York
(afterwards, you know, James the Second) that this fire is very
serious. So the King orders him to tell the Lord Mayor to have houses
pulled down as fast as he can, to stop the flames, if possible, by
making big gaps in the streets. For the wooden houses were burning
furiously, as you saw just now, and the fire leapt from one to another.
Soldiers were sent to help in this work, but all in vain, for fiery
flakes were carried by the wind and fell on other roofs which began
to blaze. Then he describes the streets blocked with carts in which
furniture and treasures were stacked, and thronged also with escaping
people, crying and lamenting. In Cannon Street he meets the distracted
Lord Mayor who exclaims, ‘_Lord! what can I do?... I have been pulling
down houses, but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it._’
“The same night, Pepys and his wife and some friends took a boat
at Whitehall steps and rowed downstream towards the Tower, meeting
hundreds of boats loaded with people escaping with their treasures,
and seeing furniture and household goods floating about in the water.
As they drew nearer to London Bridge, the heat from streets of flaming
buildings was so great that they were obliged to land on Bankside
opposite. There, from a little inn, they watched London burning, as you
saw it just now. When he reached home he wrote in his ‘Diary’ that as
it grew darker, the fire appeared more and more ‘_and in corners, and
upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see
up the hill of the City in a most horrid malicious bloody flame, not
like the fine flame of an ordinary fire_.’ At last it seemed ‘_as only
one entire arch of fire from this to the other side of the bridge, and
in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep
to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire and flaming at once;
and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their
ruine._’”
“That was as I saw it!” cried Betty. “Was his house burnt? Because
Seething Lane isn’t far from London Bridge.”
“No. It was in great danger, but it escaped. For two or three days
after that Sunday, Pepys worked hard removing his treasures to a
friend’s house at a distance, and burying his wine and important papers
belonging to the Admiralty in a hole he dug in his garden. All that
time London burnt, and the wildest scenes of confusion went on all
round him, as the flames, helped by a strong wind, spread farther and
farther. For nearly a week it raged, and when at last it was stopped in
Smithfield——”
“At Pie Corner,” interrupted Betty.
Godmother smiled. “No child will ever forget that the fire began in
Pudding Lane and ended at Pie Corner!” she remarked. “Well, when at
last it was stopped, nearly the whole of London as it then existed, was
in ruins, and two hundred thousand people were homeless.”
“Whatever became of them, poor things?”
“Thousands of them camped out in tents and huts, on what were then
_real_ fields in Moorfields, outside Moorgate (then a _real_ gate in
the City wall). But before we learn what became of them later, let us
flash back for a moment or two and look at the city in ruins. It will
be a sad sight, but we shall understand London better if we see it.”
The magic rite with the ‘Diary’ was once more performed, and in a flash
they found themselves standing near one of the wharves close to London
Bridge, on to which Mr. Samuel Pepys was just stepping from a boat. He
was richly and trimly dressed as usual (having got over the fright of
the Fire), and his face was full of importance and curiosity.
“He is going to look at the ruins,” Godmother said. “Let us follow him.”
Their unconscious guide led them over mounds of hot ashes into
Cheapside.
“Oh, Godmother, the beautiful Chepe! All in ruins!” cried Betty. A
moment later she saw what had been the Exchange, and was now nothing
but a blackened skeleton. Mr. Pepys was standing before its remains,
looking from the heaps of broken statues on the ground to one still
standing, upon which he gazed in astonishment.
“It’s the statue of its founder, Sir Thomas Gresham—the only one on
the building not burnt, strangely enough,” Godmother said.
“Oh! that’s St. Paul’s; with the roof all fallen in. Scarcely any of it
left,” Betty exclaimed sorrowfully.
“_A miserable sight, my Lord!_” she heard Mr. Pepys remark with a low
bow to a gentleman who stood near him among the crowd of dejected
sightseers.
“The old Grey Friars’ church is gone, you notice,” Godmother said.
“This, you remember, was Christ’s Hospital—the Blue Coat School, now
all in ruins. Acres of streets and houses are destroyed, with more than
eighty churches and an enormous number of schools and hospitals and
public buildings of all sorts. In fact, old London, as you see, has
practically vanished.”
“It’s too sad,” sighed Betty, looking round her at the ruin and
desolation. “I don’t want to see any more. Look at those people crying.
I suppose that heap of rubbish was their home?... Do let us go back to
our own time, Godmother!”
In another flash they were there, and Betty, as usual when she returned
so mysteriously to everyday life, rubbed her eyes.
“Poor London!” she sighed. “First the Plague, and then that awful Fire.
I should think it was the worst fire that ever happened to a city,
wasn’t it?”
“One of the worst, certainly. But out of the evil came one good at
least. London has never since been visited by that dreadful Plague
which before the Fire was always hovering in its narrow lanes ready
to break out violently at intervals. In sweeping away the picturesque
buildings, many of which had been standing for hundreds of years, it
also swept the city free of the poisonous germs in it, which had never
before died out. The new houses were healthier, many of the streets
were made broader. There was air and light where formerly there had
been stuffy darkness. And light and air are the good spirits that drive
away the demons of disease.”
“But how did London ever get built again? I can’t think how ever the
people found homes once more?”
“There was terrible suffering, of course, but they were brave and
energetic. They did not sit down and cry for long, but helped by money
from the rich, they began to build their city again. The part by the
riverside that was needed for shipping and trade of all kinds, rose
first out of the ashes, and then by degrees new churches and mansions,
and public buildings arose on the ruins of the old. You must remember
one man in particular who lived at this time, because it was he who
designed most of the new churches and a great many of the public
buildings. His name was Sir Christopher Wren.”
“Oh! It was Sir Christopher Wren who built the new St. Paul’s, wasn’t
it?”
“Yes, and many of the other London churches we see every day. After
the Great Fire, when most of the city was in ruins, it was at first
proposed to rebuild it in an altogether different way, and Sir
Christopher Wren was asked to prepare a plan for New London. If it had
been built according to his drawing, we should see a very different
London now. It would be a _regular_ city, with broad streets all more
or less similar, running parallel to one another; rather like modern
Paris or New York.”
“But it isn’t a bit like that, is it? There are lots of little curly
streets and narrow lanes in the city in our own time,” said Betty.
“That’s because the people couldn’t wait to build till all these new
arrangements were settled. They began putting up their new houses in
the same places, following the lines of the old streets.”
“I’m so glad they did,” Betty remarked. “Because at least you can
tell now exactly where the old places stood. It wouldn’t have been
interesting to have a perfectly different city.”
“Well, it has stopped raining now,” said Godmother as a gleam of
sunshine lighted her pretty parlour. “Shall we go to Whitehall and look
at the only part of the Palace that is left?”
“Oh yes. I want to hear what happened to it after Charles the Second’s
time. It wasn’t burnt, of course, because the Great Fire didn’t reach
so far as Whitehall.”
“Not in the Great Fire certainly, but it _was_ burnt down only about
thirty years later, in the reign of William and Mary. Afterwards St.
James’s Palace, which you know well by sight, was the London home of
royalty till Buckingham Palace took its place.”
In less than half an hour, they were driving from Westminster up
Whitehall, and the car stopped before that building opposite the Horse
Guards which is now called the United Service Museum.
“The famous Banqueting Hall has been turned into a museum, you see,
where all sorts of interesting relics connected with the Army and Navy
are preserved. We’ll go in and look at it,” said Godmother.
They went upstairs into the lofty hall, and Betty gazed up at the
painted ceiling high above her head and at the flags hanging in a line
just below it.
“The ceiling is the work of Rubens, a famous Dutch painter, and the old
flags hanging up there once belonged either to famous ships or famous
regiments. Now come and look at this model of Whitehall Palace as you
saw it half an hour ago.”
Betty followed her eagerly to a glass case near the door.
“Oh, it’s a splendid model of it!” she exclaimed. “Here’s the part
that went along by the river, where the Queen lived, and some of the
beautiful ladies of the Court as well. And there are all the gabled
houses round the big garden in the middle.”
“And that’s the building we’re standing in at the present moment,”
Godmother added, pointing out the Banqueting Hall in the model. “The
beginning of what the architect intended as a great new palace, and the
only part of it either built or remaining now.”
“That’s where the Tilt Yard was,” Betty exclaimed, when having examined
the model, she went to one of the big windows of the Hall and looked
across at the Horse Guards, with the scarlet-coated soldiers on their
horses standing on either side of the gateway. “And just under this
window poor King Charles was beheaded.”
There were numberless interesting things besides the model to be seen
in the Hall, but Betty’s mind was full of Restoration days, and when
Godmother proposed that they should drive to the place where the Great
Fire ended, she readily agreed.
“You know where it began, because you’ve been up the Monument at London
Bridge, and that commemorates the place of its outbreak. We must go to
Smithfield to find the spot where it was checked.”
“Close to the Charterhouse, then?” murmured Betty.