This method of making fire breaks had followed upon action by the Navy in the east of the City. Mr. Pepys’s Navy Office was threatened by a spread of the fire when the east wind slackened on the third day of the conflagration. He moved his papers further east to Woolwich and managed to enlist the serving Navy from the Fleet to hold back the fire.
This they did with considerable success. Accustomed to battling with repairs and taking in sails from slender spars at great heights above rolling and pitching decks, the men found it easy to destroy flimsy houses no more than twenty feet high for the most part. Nor, used to gunpowder and its use, in blowing apart rows of such houses to make gaps too wide and too well controlled to allow the flames to spread across them.
Other fire posts began to succeed in their efforts. But at Blackfriars and Ludgate and the Duke’s efforts at the Fleet they did not manage to stem the advance. The great cathedral of St. Paul’s was engulfed that evening. St. Paul’s School, where John Churchill and earlier Mr. Pepys himself had been scholars, was lost. Also the Old Bailey and much of Holborn. The actual stone walls of the City remained standing, for the most part in a ruined state, but the fire spread along Fleet Street to the Temple and the Strand, where only by blowing up houses could Somerset House be saved. Houses were destroyed up to Charing Cross in order to save Whitehall.
On Wednesday morning the Queen and the Duchess of York took a coach to Hampton Court, from whence they had not long returned after the plague subsided. Their immediate household went with them, including all the maids of honour and the ladies in waiting. But many of the gentlemen remained to attend Charles and his brother, who were still closely and actively concerned with the fire.
The voice of the people grew louder and firmer as the peril spread. This was not in anger against the fate of those victims who had perished. In fact there were astonishingly few fatal casulaties. Of all the thousands who had lost their homes and their property, their livelihoods and their recreations, only six deaths, six corpses recorded, were ever found. Others may have been reduced to ashes or were lost and drowned fleeing by water. But only the Farriners’ maidservant, an old woman trying to shelter near St. Paul’s and four other bodies were found when it was all over and the desert of ash cooled enough to allow a search to be made. The general anger was directed overwhelmingly against foreigners and this greatly alarmed the King. He informed the Lords Lieutenant of surrounding counties to be prepared for insurrection. General Monk, now Lord Albemarle, was also warned.
All through the day on Wednesday the fight went on, but now the fire posts, with more aid from the Navy, began to gain control. The top end of Chancery Lane was saved. Lord Craven held back the fire at Holborn Bridge and at Smithfield. At Cripplegate the Lord Mayor was in belated action, watched by both the King and the Duke.
But the danger was not yet over. The Inner Temple was again threatened and again saved. It was not until Friday that no fresh outbursts were reported, the smoke, the falling mass of paper, clothing, blown charcoal, scraps of smouldering wood, began to subside. Those curious enough to visit the deserted acres of ruin found progress impossible in the lost streets because the heaped ash there burned the soles of their shoes. And because the air was heavy with the stench of burning. But not with decay. Human ordure, rotting food, infecting parasites had been removed, purified by burning. The bugs and the lice, the germ-filled water conduits, all had gone. The plague-ridden rats with their infected fleas had burned.
Then began the huge task of recovery. At first it appeared insuperable. The terrified citizens, many encamped in the surrounding countryside, still threatened violence against foreigners, Papists, Quakers; anyone or anything in fact but their own incompetence and greed in saving their movable property rather than making any real effort to control the fire. Also they now had to be fed; thousands were without real shelter, and the winter was before them with its very real threats of cold, famine and all the usual diseases that stem from the hardships of poverty.
At this stage Charles proved his real ability. He sent out a proclomation setting up markets for food, clothing and other necessary domestic goods. He took measures to control the false rumours among the refugees outside the City walls, using his army and the guards where necessary. He named Gresham House as a meeting place instead of the ruined Exchange and there addressed the people in person, promising aid and denying the existence of any human plot to start the fire. In the ruined churches the clergymen preached that it was the will of God, to punish the people for their sins.
Nevertheless Parliament took a hand in the matter, forming its own committee of inquiry into how the disaster had begun. They took the opportunity to demand fresh measures against all Roman Catholics as well as making a close search for arms in the burned-out houses of known Papists. But they made little real progress and the whole question of cause was in the end left undecided.
It was amazing, however, with what speed the City magnates sorted out their affairs and began to restore their vital trading and manufacture, finding premises for their various offices all over the still standing parts of the town, and even for the Law Offices in the shell of Guildhall. Throughout this period the people of London showed their true spirit. Panic had made them cowards, fire being almost irresistible in producing it. Adversity brought out their innate courage. Recovery and rebuilding, as soon as the rubbish was cleared and materials and plans produced, was quite unexpectedly rapid.
Through it all the King worked untiringly to encourage, to provide, to induce Parliament to vote funds. Though by now he had war on his hands with both the Dutch and the French, he never forgot the needs of his ruined capital, nor failed to give wise advice on the rebuilding. He ordered that all new buildings must be made of brick or stone or a combination of the two. He insisted that workmen be allowed to come in from outside to increase the labour force, with the inducement that they might stay as freemen of the City if they worked there for seven years.
Complete plans for the whole area, by Wren and again by Evelyn, were not accepted, but in the course of the following years Sir Christopher’s designs for churches were embodied in over fifty new places of worship, including the great new cathedral of St. Paul’s.
Later on, at the site of Farrinder’s bakery, where the fire began, a monument was built to commemorate the disaster. Wren wanted to put a statue of Charles on the top in recognition of his great services during and after the fire. But the monarch decided in favour of a stone urn with stone flames, made by Robert Hooke of the Royal Society, whose plan for London had been preferred.
On a plinth below, however, a statue of the King did appear, dressed as a Roman General and described as ‘—affording protection to the desolate City,’ which appeared as a distracted young woman, lying down, scantily dressed, with the ‘General’ leaning tenderly over her ample naked bosom.
When Charles inspected this tribute, his gentlemen found it difficult to contain their mirth. They noticed that the lines about the King’s mouth grew deeper and his black eyes began to sparkle as he stared at the work of art. But when he turned away he only said, very gravely, to the respectful dignitaries near him, ‘We thank you, my Lord Mayor and the people of London, for this kindness.’ And with equal gravity to Rochester, the celebrated, but often bawdy poet, ‘A most telling pose, my lord, do you not agree? But not, we insist, a fit subject for your verse.’
Chapter Six
Lady Churchill had been greatly pleased and flattered by the Duchess of York’s favour in taking Arabella into her household as one of her maids of honour. The other three maids at that time were Dorothy Howard, Anne Ogle and Mary Blagge. They were looked after by a Mrs. Lucy Wise, performing the duty known as ‘mother’ or ‘governess’ of the maids.
Arabella went to live at the palace of St. James’s, where the Duke and Duchess lived and held their Court. The girls had suitable apartments near to one another, with Mrs. Wise not far off.
The young Arabella was delighted with her appointment. It was
the culmination of a long-continuing effort to escape from the rural desert of Wootton Glanville. Ireland had been interesting, but the company there round Sir Winston had not provided anyone to attract her growing adolescense or satisfy her longing for amusements, pleasures and activities of a more sophisticated kind. In England at the Duke’s Court, and on the many occasions when the Duchess attended the Court of Charles himself, she had found almost a surfeit of all she had dreamed of. Her only fear had been that it might not last.
From Arabella’s still innocent account of both courts and her husband’s more informed but somewhat astonished ones, Lady Churchill began to understand something of the moral jungle below the magnificence, the richness, the display.
The magnificence was certainly there. It was spread before the general public in countless set pieces such as balls, theatre plays and masques. Also in river excursions, both by day and by night, when fireworks lit up the brilliant throng in the decorated barges, to the delight of all who watched from the banks. There were musical concerts, both indoors and at times outdoors, too. There were masquerades, particularly favoured by the Queen, when all the guests whom her Majesty commanded to appear must go dressed in some character not their own but taken from myth or history, from well-known poetry or prose.
And with it all the men spent much of their time in gaming and betting, horse racing and hunting in the open spaces and woods still quite near in the country about London. Both sexes filled any empty hours they had left in the day, between eating and drinking and the unending pursuit of love.
It was from all the tales brought to her as well as from her own observation and experience that Lady Churchill began to develop a certain uneasiness. As she had struck up a measure of acquaintance with the maids’ governess, Mrs. Wise, she sought an occasion to hear more of the truth of it.
‘I feel anxious for Arabella, madam,’ she said, after polite exchanges between them became exhausted.
‘In what way, my lady?’ Mrs. Wise asked cautiously.
‘I think I have let her walk into a lion’s den all innocent and unprepared,’ Lady Churchill explained.
Mrs. Wise pursed her lips, considering.
‘At least, I know she was innocent and unknowing until her service with the Duchess began,’ Lady Churchill insisted, still more alarmed.
‘What have you heard, my lady?’ Mrs. Wise asked.
‘Tales. Shocking tales, madam. Of pursuit, seduction, scandal. Young gallants everywhere, stalking their prey more particularly among the maids of honour, whom they consider fair game, without a thought of marriage.’
‘That shocks you, my lady?’
‘It doth indeed, madam.’
They stared at one another. Mrs. Wise guessed that Lady Churchill had hoped for some advantage from her plain girl’s position. Lady Churchill saw that Mrs. Wise had understood her without being told. She also saw that the governess had as little fear of Arabella’s seduction as she had of the girl being pursued by a would-be husband.
‘At least,’ Lady Churchill said, ‘I take it there is no fear of my poor girl being approached by that unnatural harpy, Miss Hobart?’
‘None,’ answered the governess, ‘and I thank God for it.’
Miss Hobart had been one of the original maids of honour to the Duchess of York, together with Miss Bagot, Miss Blagge, who was still in that office with Arabella, a Miss Price and a Miss Firth. Miss Hobart had become notorious through her friendship with that Miss Stewart who had recently won the King’s favour. She had supported the empty-headed beauty in her reputed rivalry with the Countess of Castlemaine, less from a friendly feeling of support than for the gratification of her own desires. When the connection came to an end with her undoubted repudiation by Miss Stewart, Hobart transferred her affection to Miss Bagot, her fellow maid of honour at the time. This girl returned the affection at first, but when she found much more was expected of her, she too extricated herself from such a dangerous situation, in a way that could not fail to be noticed by the maids’ governess, who took the tale to Lord Rochester.
This unprincipled but brilliant satirist received the gossip with joy. It fitted several other tales he had had of Miss Hobart’s unusual behaviour. Besides, he had enjoyed a wider education than the anxious governess of the maids. His knowledge of the ways of high society in ancient Greece gave him a better insight into this new appearance of an age-old vice. So his verses on the subject held a fiercer cutting edge which he used to the best advantage.
In consequence Miss Hobart lost her position as a maid of honour, but since the Duchess of York was sorry for her and perhaps did not understand, certainly did not seem to be revolted by, Miss Hobart’s pursuit of her own sex, the culprit was made a woman of the bedchamber in the Duchess’s entourage.
In contrast with Miss Hobart, one of the other maids gave clear evidence of a notably pure life and spirit. Miss Blagge was a friend of John Evelyn, the scholar and patron of the arts, a man of exemplary character whom the girl regarded almost as a father and who encouraged her in piety and religious observance.
So on the whole the Churchill parents were reassured about their daughter. Moreover the longer they lived on the fringe of the two Courts, that of the King, slowly becoming the more brilliant, not only for pleasure, display, gallantry and gaming, but also for wit and the pursuit of both science and the arts, so by degrees these two country folk came to lower their own moral standards. They accepted situations and behaviour that would have filled their provincial souls with horror in the old days of repression and honest poverty. In the end they made no great ado over Arabella’s fate: in fact they almost brought themselves to consider it an honour.
Whatever motive the Duchess of York had in taking this plain young woman into her service, a part of it at least was no doubt to be found in the girl’s appearance. She was tall and very thin, with a long pale face and lank brown hair, very difficult to bring into any state of elegance, however much it was twisted and tied to form fashionable ringlets. Her mouth was too large, her eyes too small; her complexion could not be improved by cosmetics. Indeed she looked better without them.
She had few accomplishments. She walked with a graceful freedom of movement, but without elegance or distinction. She danced passably well, a little too vigorously. She had a very poor seat on a horse. Indeed she was afraid of the animals and never rode if she could help it, preferring to walk short distances or ride in a coach if the destination was far off.
This lack of ability on horseback did not escape the notice of the Duke himself. He had always liked to supervise the outdoor activities of his household, including those of his Duchess. When she elected to go riding with her maids of honour and her ladies in waiting, he would appear, also on horseback, to watch the turn-out and criticise it. After all, he had spent most of his life in military service, either in the armies of France or of England. Though he had been for a time High Admiral of England’s Navy and had been to sea in service against the Dutch, now that this war was clearly in being, with Lord Albermarle promoted to command of the Fleet, his real interest lay with the Army and particularly with the cavalry regiments. The control and management of horses was, with him, a particular and paramount interest.
Arabella Churchill’s lack of horsemanship was something of a joke among her fellow maids. Their raillery at her expense certainly did nothing to allay her nervousness. It also brought her to the notice of the Duke, who resented it, not for pity that she should be tormented by her companions; it was not an age of sentimentality; practical jokes were popular and often cruel. But rather, in the Duke’s view, because her mortification added to her fear, it was communicated to her horse and he felt sorry for the beast and indignant on its behalf.
He took it upon himself to speak to her after one of these excursions, mainly to advise her to take further lessons in riding.
‘Your horsemanship is most deficient,’ he told her. ‘You bounce hither and thither like a sack of turnips. Your reins fall slack at one mo
ment and so tight at another your poor animal cannot know if it be meant to crop the grass or leap into a charge.’
Poor Miss Churchill hung her head, then curtseyed deeply and looking up said clearly, ‘Your Highness speaks only as I deserve. I have little to say that may excuse me, except that I never learned to ride a horse in childhood, for my parents were too poor at that time of oppression to keep a stable. My father did for many years have one poor old hack only for his own use, though he seldom went abroad for fear of his life.’
The Duke found this explanation from a girl in Arabella’s position far longer than correct etiquette allowed her. On this occasion he waved her away without speaking to her again. But he found himself remembering her words and more particularly the voice she had used. A charming, even a beautiful voice. Rich, low, gentle; very well-spoken. There were too many shrill young women about St. James’s and Whitehall, each trying to impress their gallants with their wit and gaiety and above all their beauty. Well, Miss Churchill had no beauty in her face but there was beauty in the voice that came out from her wide mouth. He decided to hear it again.
It was quite easy for him to make occasion to do so. Just now, having given up his former position with the Navy he was not taking any active part in military matters. He had time on his hands to devote to personal affairs. Perhaps Arabella Churchill—
Churchill. The young man who had tried to prop up the young Duke of Monmouth in the Great Fire. The young man who sought every opportunity to attend him in his efforts to support the fighting forces, watch the raw soldiers drilling, hear, if he could, the officers’ reports and discussions. The Churchills. Was there not another brother, younger than his own page, John, also placed as page with my Lord Sandwich. Well, Sandwich had fallen of late and justly so for his failure in dealing with the Dutch and the waste of funds for the Fleet. Never mind, his own young Churchill was the one that interested him.
A Question of Loyalties Page 6
