Fire Ended

‘I lay down in the office again upon W. Hewer’s, quilt, being mighty weary, and sore in my feet with going till I was hardly able to stand. About two in the morning my wife calls me up and tells me of new cryes of fire, it being come to Barkeing Church, which is the bottom of our lane. I up, and finding it so, resolved presently to take her away, and did, and took my gold, which was about 2350l., W. Hewer, and Jane, down by Proundy’s boat to Woolwich; but, Lord! what sad sight it was by moone- light to see, the whole City almost on fire, that you might see it plain at Woolwich, as if you were by it. There, when I come, I find the gates shut, but no guard kept at all, which troubled me, because of discourse now begun, that there is plot in it, and that the French had done it. I got the gates open, and to Mr. Shelden’s, where I locked up my gold, and charged, my wife and W. Hewer never to leave the room without one of them in it, night, or day.’… I up to the top of Barking steeple, and there saw the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw; every where great fires, oyle-cellars, and brimstone, and other things burning. I became afeard to stay there long, and therefore down again as fast as I could, the fire being spread as far as I could see it; and to Sir W. Pen’s, and there eat a piece of cold meat, having eaten nothing since Sunday, but the remains of Sunday’s dinner. Here I met with Mr. Young and Whistler; and having removed all my things, and received good hopes that the fire at our end; is stopped, they and I walked into the town, and find Fanchurch-streete, Gracious-streete; and Lumbard-streete all in dust.’…’

The Great Fire of London began on September 2nd, 1666, burning out on finally on September 5^th, 1666, as Samuel Pepys records in his dairy.  Sir Walter Scott mentions the fire in his “Fortunes of Nigel”, including the location of George Heriot’s resting place in St. Paul’s Cathedral, at ’Saint Gregory's, before the Great Fire of London which consumed the cathedral, formed one of the towers of Old Saint Paul's, and occupied the space of ground now filled by Queen Anne's statue…’

Robert Fergusson

The poet Robert Fergusson was born on September 5, 1750.  Fergusson, led a raucous life and short life, dying three years after Walter Scott was born (died Oct 16, 1774), at the age of 24.  The circumstances of his death are unfortunate.  He died while under medical care after receiving a head injury. Nonetheless, Fergusson, who wrote in both Scottish and English dialects, left a mark on Scottish life and literature, notably influencing Robert Burns' work.

Fergusson's works are collected in  "The Works of Robert Fergusson", by Robert Fergusson and Alexander Balloch Grosart, which was published in 1857.  Brosart includes several references to Walter Scott in this collection, as in the following from a poem titled "Mutual Complaint of Plainstanes and Causey" (Scottish dialect):

CAUSEY

I dinna care a single jot,
Tho' summon'd by a shelly-coat,
Sac leally I'll propone defences,
As get ye flung for my expcnces;
Your libel I'll impugn verbatim,
And hae a magnum damnum datum;
For tho' frae Arthur's seat I sprang,
And am in constitution strang,
Wad it no fret the hardest stane
Beneath the Luckenbooths l to grane ?
Tho' magistrates the Cross 2 discard,
It makes na whan they leave the Guard, 3

1 Where Ramsay had his 'Shop' in which the first circulating library was established, and from which issued his peerless Pastoral and subsequently Burns's Poems, and many of the most celebrated works of the last century, from the press of Creech. The Luckenbooths consisted of a series of tenements which rose nearly to the height of the adjacent houses, built within a few yards of the church of St. Giles headed at their western extremity by the Old Tolbooth of Edinburgh.— Vide Arnot—Wilson—Cliambers.

2 The market-cross had been removed in 1752, as touchingly and with levin-fire lamented by Sir Walter Scott, at whose seat of Abbotsford the ornamental stones of it are still preserved.


Dun Edin's Cross, a pillar'd stone,
Rose on a turret octagon ;
But now is razed that monument,
Whence royal edict rang,
And voice of Scotland's law was sent
In glorious trumpet clang.
0 ! be his tomb as lead to lead,
Upon its dull destroyer's head!—
A minstrel's malison is said.

Marmion, Canto V. v. 25.

3 " The Guard-house was a long, low, ugly building (removed in 1787-8) which to a fanciful imagination might have suggested the idea of a long black snail crawling up the middle of the High Street, and deforming its beautiful esplanade."—Scott:—Heart of Midlothian, c. vi. A portrait of the Guard-house forms one of the curious Collection by Kay, No. CLXX. Edin. 2 vols. 4to.