as at least
100,000.

It is easy to write down these figures. It is difficult to understand
what they mean. Among them, a quarter at least, would be the
breadwinners, the fathers of families. In many cases all perished
together, parents and children: in others, the children were left
destitute. Then there was no work. There were 100,000 working men out of
employment. All these people had to be kept. The Lord Mayor, assisted by
his Aldermen and two noble Lords, Albemarle and Craven, organised a
service of relief. The King gave a thousand pounds a week: the City gave
600_l._ a week: the merchants contributed thousands every week. And so
the people were kept from starving.

When it was all over Pepys, who kept his Diary through the time of the
Plague but was not one of those who stayed in the infected City, notes
the enormous number of beggars. Who should they be but the poor
creatures, the women and the children, the old and the infirm who had
lost their breadwinners, the men who loved them and worked for them? The
history is full of dreadful things: but this amazing crowd of beggars is
the most dreadful.

52. THE TERROR OF FIRE.

PART I.

[Illustration: A CITIZEN. A CITIZEN'S WIFE.

ORDINARY CIVIL COSTUME; _temp._ CHARLES I.

(_From Speed's map of 'The Kingdom of England,' 1646._)]

The City of London has suffered from fire more than any other great
town. In the year 961 a large number of houses were destroyed: in 1077,
1086, and 1093, a great part of the City was burned down. In 1136, a
fire which broke out at London Stone, in the house of one Aylward,
spread east and west as far as Aldgate on one side and St. Erkinwald's
shrine in St. Paul's Cathedral on the other. London Bridge, then built
of wood, perished in the fire, which for five hundred years was known
as the Great Fire. In these successive fires every building of Saxon
erection, to say nothing of the Roman period, must have perished.

But the ravages of all the fires together did less harm than the
terrible fire which laid the greater part of London in ashes in the year
1666. If you will refer to the map of London you may mark off within the
walls the North-East angle: that part contained by the wall and a
straight line running from Coleman Street to Tower Hill. With the
exception of that corner the whole of London within the walls, and
beyond as far as the Temple, was entirely destroyed.

The fire broke out at a baker's in Pudding Lane, Th