IN the midst of all this calamity and confusion there was, I know not how, an alarm begun that the French and Dutch with whom we were now in hostility, were not only landed but even entering the city.* There was, in truth, some days before, great suspicion of these two nations joining; and now, that they had been the occasion of firing the town.* This report did so terrify, that on a sudden there was such an uproar and tumult that they ran from their goods, and taking what weapons they could come at, they could not be stopped from falling on some of those nations when they casually met, without sense or reason. The clamour and peril grew so excessive that it made the whole Court amazed, and they did with infinite pains and great difficulty reduce and appease the people, sending troops of soldiers and guards to cause them to retire into the fields again, where they were watched all this night.* I left them pretty quiet, and came home sufficiently weary and broken.
Still, the plague continuing in our parish, I could not without danger adventure to our church.
abridged
* The Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-1667), over freedom to trade, especially with Britain’s North American and Caribbean colonies. The French waded into it in January 1666. The fire was a key factor in compelling London to make terms at Breda in 1667.
* Evelyn himself was worried that the fire might mean that some prisoners of war held in the City might escape and do real damage. On the Thursday, he says, “I represented to his Majesty the case of the French prisoners at war in my custody, and besought him that there might be still the same care of watching at all places contiguous to unseized houses.” In his capacity as one of four Commissioners ‘for taking Care of Sick and Wounded Seamen and for the Care and Treatment of Prisoners of War’, Sir John was also very concerned about “the Hospital of St Bartholomew, near Smithfield, where I had many wounded and sick men”, and was an early advocate of using explosives to stop the flames leaping from house to house — a plan agonisingly delayed because the nice properties owned by city aldermen would have been the first to go.
* Modern estimates put the homeless at about 80,000 from some 13,500 properties. Official deaths were extremely low, fewer than ten; but Sir John speaks of “the stench that came from some poor creatures’ bodies, beds, and other combustible goods”, which (if ‘creatures’ is not simply a word for pets and animals reared for food) might imply that, as later historians have surmised, there were many more bodies burnt beyond recognition.