One effect of the Fire was to drive out of the City many of the shopkeepers. Thus Maitland says that before the Fire, Paternoster Row was chiefly occupied by mercers, silkmen, lacemen; “and these shops were so much resorted unto by the nobility and gentry in their carriages that ofttimes the street was so stopped up, that there was no room for foot-passengers.” After the Fire, however, the tradesmen settled themselves in other parts; one supposes that they opened temporary shops, and, finding them convenient, they stayed where they were. They went to Henrietta Street, Bedford Street, and King Street, Covent Garden. Ludgate Hill, however, remained for a long time the principal street for the best shops of mercers and lacemen. Were so great and overwhelming a calamity to befall a City in our times, we should have abundant materials for estimating not only the total value of the destruction, but also its effect upon individuals. We learn next to nothing of the Fire as it affected classes, such as merchants, shopkeepers, or craftsmen. The Plague ruined its thousands by slaying the breadwinner; the Fire ruined its tens of thousands by destroying everything that the breadwinner possessed, warehouse, goods, and all. Credit remained, one supposes; by the aid of credit many recovered. Yet, one asks, what amount of credit could possibly replace the trader’s stock? What amount of credit could once more fill the great warehouse crammed to the very roof with commodities? Those who were debtors found their debts wiped off; one supposes that all prisoners for debt were enlarged; those who were creditors could not collect their amounts; rents could neither be asked nor paid; the money-lender and the borrower were destroyed together; almshouses were burnt down—what became of the poor old men and women? The City charities were suspended—what became of the poor? In such a universal dislocation, revolution, and cessation of everything, the poor man lost all that he had to lose, and the rich were sent empty away. Would that some limner of the time had portrayed for us a faithful picture of the first meeting of the Common Council after the Fire! Dryden speaks of the Fire:— “Those who have homes, when home they do repair To a last lodging call their wandering friends: Their short uneasy sleeps are broke with care To look how near their own destruction ends. Those who have none sit round where it was, And with full eyes each wonted stone require: Haunting the yet warm ashes of the place, As murdered men walk where they did expire. The most in fields like herded beasts lie down To dews obnoxious on the grassy floor, And while their babes in sleep their sorrow drown, Sad parents watch the remnant of their store.”