day. It forcibly call’d to my mind that passage--non enim hic habemus stabilem civitatem: the ruines resembling the picture of Troy. London was, but is no more! Thus I returned.’
For days the conflagration raged, although the whole situation might probably have been saved if the advice of seamen, then as now amongst the bravest and most practical of Britain’s sons, had been followed. When the court suburb of Whitehall began to be threatened,--‘but oh, the confusion there was then at the Court!’--the gentlemen, ‘who hitherto had stood as men intoxicated, with their hands acrosse,.... began to consider that nothing was likely to put a stop but the blowing up of so many houses as might make a wider gap than any had yet been made by the ordinary method of pulling them downe with engines; this some stout seamen propros’d early enough to have sav’d neere ye whole citty, but this some tenacious and avaritious men, aldermen, etc., would not permitt, because their houses must have been of the first.’ At length, however, the fire died out, the houseless citizens finding refuge in tents and miserable huts and hovels hastily erected about St. George’s fields and Moorfields as far as Highgate. But Evelyn’s abode had remained untouched. From reviewing the now poverty-striken people ‘in this calamitous condition I return’d with a sad heart to my house, blessing and adoring the distinguishing mercy of God to me and mine, who in the midst of all this ruine was like Lot, in my little Zoar, safe and sound.’
The plague and the fire were held to be the visitation of God’s anger, and Evelyn evidently thought the heavy punishment richly merited. ‘Oct. 10th. This day was order’d a generall fast thro’ the Nation, to humble us on ye late dreadfull conflagration, added to the plague and warr, the most dismall judgments that could be inflicted, but whiche indeed we highly deserv’d for our prodigious ingratitude, burning lusts, dissolute Court, profane and abominable lives, under such dispensations of God’s continu’d favour in restoring Church, Prince, and People from our late intestine calamities, of which we were altogether unmindfull, even to astonishment.’
Like Wren and Hooke, Evelyn submitted a scheme for the rebuilding of London upon an improved plan, but the new city was formed mainly upon the old lines.
Meanwhile the Dutch fleet was lying off the mouth of the Thames. Though England then happily produced all the food she required, yet the city became ‘exceedingly distress’d for want of fuell’ because of the traffic up and down the estuary being interrupted. Hence Evelyn was appointed one of a Committee to search the environs of London and find if any peat or turf were fit for use. Experiments were made with houllies or briquettes of charcoal dust and loam in the Dutch manner, and Evelyn shewed to many proof of his ‘new fuell, which was very glowing and without smoke or ill smell’. But the process never caught on, and was abandoned as giving no promise of commercial success.
Evelyn’s account against the Treasury now amounted to above £34,000, and he continued to urge for payment of it, or for the settlement of unpaid portions of it, as late as 1702, about three years before his death. Whether this straitened his means or not, he was at any rate eager to make money by speculation. So in 1667 he joined Sir John Kiviet, a Dutch Orangeman who had come over to England for protection and had been knighted by King Charles, in a scheme for making bricks on a large scale. Perhaps as a sort of advertisement of this commercial enterprise he subscribed 50,000 bricks towards building a college for the Royal Society. It was a big scheme, including the embankment of the river from the Tower to the Temple, and if successful it would have brought much gain to the partners.