Where did Pepys view the city from?
The wind dropped on Tuesday evening, and the firebreaks created by the garrison finally began to take effect on Wednesday 5 September. Stopping the fire caused much fire and demolition damage in the lawyers' area called the Temple. Pepys walked all over the smouldering city, getting his feet hot, and climbed the steeple of Barking Church, from which he viewed the destroyed City, "the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw." There were many separate fires still burning themselves out, but the Great Fire was over. The following Sunday, rain fell over the city extinguishing the fire. However, it took until the following March before embers stopped reigniting.Pepys visited Moorfields, a large public park immediately north of the City, and saw a great encampment of homeless refugees, "poor wretches carrying their good there, and every body keeping his goods together by themselves". He noted that the price of bread had doubled in the environs of the park. Evelyn also went out to Moorfields, which was turning into the main point of assembly for the homeless, and was horrified at the numbers of distressed people filling it, some under tents, others in makeshift shacks: "Many [were] without a rag or any necessary utensils, bed or board ... reduced to extremest misery and poverty." Evelyn was impressed by the pride of these distressed Londoners, "tho' ready to perish for hunger and destitution, yet not asking one pennie for relief."
Fears were as high as ever among the traumatised fire victims, fear of foreign arsonists and of a French and Dutch invasion. There was an outbreak of general panic on Wednesday night in the encampments at Parliament Hill, Moorfields, and Islington. A light in the sky over Fleet Street started a story that 50,000 French and Dutch immigrants had risen, widely rumoured to have started the fire, and were marching towards Moorfields to finish what the fire had begun: to cut the men's throats, rape the women, and steal their few possessions. Surging into the streets, the frightened mob fell on any foreigners whom they happened to encounter, and were appeased, according to Evelyn, only "with infinite pains and great difficulty" and pushed back into the fields by the Trained Bands, troops of Life Guards, and members of the court.
The mood was now so volatile that Charles feared a full-scale London rebellion against the monarchy. Food production and distribution had been disrupted to the point of non-existence; Charles announced that supplies of bread would be brought into the City every day, and safe markets set up round the perimeter. These markets were for buying and selling; there was no question of distributing emergency aid.
the steeple of Barking Church