“I have now left your houses, and am passing that of your streets, but not in a coach, for they are uneasily hung, and so narrow, that I took them for sedans upon wheels: nor is it safe for a stranger to use them till the quarrel be decided whether six of your nobles, sitting together, shall stop and give way to as many barrels of beer. Your city is the only metropolis in Europe where there is wonderful dignity belonging to carts. I would now make a safe retreat, but that methinks I am stopt by one of our heroic games, called foot-ball: which I conceive (under your favour) not very conveniently civil in the streets, especially in such irregular and narrow roads as Crooked Lane. Yet it argues your courage much like your military pastime of throwing at cocks: but your metal would be much magnified (since you have long allowed those two valiant exercises in the streets) to draw your archers from Finsbury, and during high market let them shoot at butts in Cheapside. I have now no more to say but what refers to a few private notes, which I shall give you in a whisper when we meet in Moorfields, from whence (because the place was meant for public pleasure, and to shew the munificence of your City) I shall desire you to banish the laundresses and bleachers, whose acres of old linen make a shew like the fields of Carthagena when the five months’ shifts of the whole fleet are washt and spread.” To this satirical note let us add a glance at the suburbs with the help of Hollar’s map of 1665. In this map Lambeth is evidently a small village lying south of the church and Palace, with at least one street running along the road on the east leading across to St. George’s Fields. On the north there are no houses; the Palace Gardens stretch out behind the Embankment, covered with trees; then comes the Lambeth Marsh, a broad field bare of trees; there is a broad mile where the river bends, and here, buried among the trees, houses begin, and continue along Bankside; on the east of Lambeth Marsh is St. George’s Fields, with houses on the north side, and St. George’s Church. According to Hollar, South London at this time must have been a charming and rural place divided into gardens and set with trees. Unfortunately his picture becomes unintelligible when we find St. Mary Overies on the other side of the river. CHAPTER IV II. THE FIRE OF LONDON