In the meantime two extraordinary calamities had befallen the
metropolis. In the summer of 1665, London was visited by a plague,
which swept off about 100,000 people, and did not experience any
abatement till the approach of cold weather. On this occasion the city
presented a wide and heartrending scene of misery and desolation. Rows
of houses stood tenantless, and open to the winds; the chief
thoroughfares were overgrown with grass. The few individuals who
ventured abroad, walked in the middle of the streets, and when they
met, declined on opposite sides to avoid the contact of each other. At
one moment were heard the ravings of delirium, or the wail of sorrow,
from the infected dwelling; at another the merry song or careless
laugh from the tavern, where men were seeking to drown in debauchery
all sense of their awful situation. Since 1665, the plague has not
again occurred in London, or in any other part of the kingdom.
The second calamity was a conflagration, which commenced on the night
of Sunday the 2d of September 1666, in the eastern and more crowded
part of the city. The direction and violence of the wind, the
combustible nature of the houses, and the defective arrangements of
that age for extinguishing fires, combined to favor the progress of
the flames, which raged during the whole of the week, and burnt all
the part of the city which lies between the Tower and the Temple. By
this calamity, 13,200 houses and 89 churches, covering in all 430
acres of ground, were destroyed. The flame at one time formed a column
a mile in diameter, and seemed to mingle with the clouds. It rendered
the night as clear as day for ten miles around the city, and is said
to have produced an effect upon the sky which was observed on the
borders of Scotland. It had one good effect, in causing the streets to
be formed much wider than before, by which the city was rendered more
healthy. By the populace, this fire was believed to have been the work
of the Catholics, and a tall pillar, with an inscription to that
effect, was reared in the city, as a monument of the calamity. This
pillar with its inscription still exists; but the fire is now believed
to have been occasioned purely by accident.