The title of this book promises much. For years, the historiography of the Great Fire of London has concentrated on spectacular narrative, relying on the dramatic and justly famous accounts by diarists Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn; or on methodical rebuilding, lionizing Sir Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, and the Fire Court. Jacob Field seeks to break this mold by refocusing historical attention on London’s people, exploring the fire’s impact on their domestic and economic lives and their cultural memory. This is an entirely worthy approach that will interest all scholars of London, even if the author’s reach sometimes exceeds his grasp. Part 1 provides necessary background, consisting of a clear and concise account of the fire and rebuilding, with an especially full account of the two rebuilding acts. Many telling details emerge: that the charity of London’s livery companies fell off because of the cost of rebuilding halls; the degree to which dissenting communities spanning the Atlantic looked after each other; and that the new requirement to build in brick often put rebuilding out of reach of those of modest means.

The heart of the book is the second part, in which Field analyzes household movements after the fire, changes in London’s economic topography, and cultural reactions to the conflagration. To chart changes in residences and places of business, the author plunges into apprenticeship and hearth-tax records, taking samples from periods before and after the disaster. After a clear explanation of his methodology, and the pitfalls of using hearth-tax records, the results are not surprising: 67 percent of all Londoners, and 87.5 percent of all those burned out, moved to a different location between 1666 and 1675. More specifically, the fire accelerated the gradual movement of Londoners from the City to outlying suburbs, the prosperous moving west, the less prosperous, east. But many came back and some neighborhoods (St. Paul’s Churchyard and Paternoster Row, Cheapside, Fleet Street, and Fenchurch Street) demonstrated remarkable stability. People who stayed and rebuilt tended to be wealthier or to be involved in retail trades in which stability of location was crucial. To assess London’s economic topography Field takes samples of two groups: masters of the Merchant Taylors’ company, and booksellers. The fire spurred many of the former, generally more prosperous and diverse, to move out of the City and never look back. Taking advantage of the need for new construction and the custom of London allowing any liveryman to pursue any trade, many abandoned the sluggish textile trades for building. Booksellers, tied to a specific trade and understanding the necessity of reestablishing their business in the same or a nearby location, tended, after a brief diaspora, to return to their original place of business (often St. Paul’s Churchyard). Despite the numerous personal tragedies and dislocations attendant on the fire, the overall message is one of resilience and stability, refuting the notion that the fire significantly disrupted long-term demographic trends in seventeenth-century London. In part because of the diversity of its economy (court and government, port and trade, food and drink, theater and entertainment), in part because of the wise decision to rebuild quickly on the existing street plan rather than redesign the city from the ground up, London recovered quickly and was never in danger of losing its political, economic, or cultural dominance.

As a result, Field argues, the real significance of the fire was in art and memory. He surveys all extant monuments, poetry, prose accounts, and sermons, concluding that an author’s explanation for the cause of the fire had everything to do with their political and religious sympathies: those who inclined toward Royalism and Anglicanism accepted the official version promulgated in the London Gazette that the fire was an accident or an act of God. Those of a more radical or dissenting bent followed a credulous parliamentary commission report of 1667 in blaming foreigners (Dutchmen, but especially Frenchmen) and Catholics (especially Jesuits), who were said to have had a ready store of “fireballs” (whatever those are) prepared for this particular popish plot. Preachers of all stripes agreed that the fire was punishment for the nation’s, and particularly London’s, sins, but again, they disagreed on whether those sins included killing the previous king (Anglicans) or turning away from godliness (Dissenters). In other words, the fire was exactly what contemporaries needed it to be—a mirror of their respective individual darkest fears that tended to be evoked in moments of crisis like 1679–81. One suspects that the failure to come to a single, widely accepted meaning of the fire helps to explain Field’s finding that it lost its polemical power in the eighteenth century, once the last survivors had died.