Upon St. Peter's Day last, the playhouse or theatre called the Globe, upon the Bankside, near London, by negligent discharge of a peal of ordnance, close to the south side thereof, the thatch took fire, and the wind suddenly dispersed the flames round about, and in a very short space the whole building was quite consumed; and no man hurt: the house being filled with people to behold the play, _viz._ of Henry the Eight.[404] [Footnote 404: Howes's continuation of Stow's _Annals_ (1631), p. 1003.] Sir Henry Wotton, in a letter to a friend, gives the following gossipy account: Now to let matters of state sleep. I will entertain you at the present with what happened this week at the Bankside. The King's Players had a new play, called _All is True_, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the Eighth, which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage; the Knights of the Order with their Georges and Garter, the guards with their embroidered coats, and the like--sufficient in truth within awhile to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now King Henry, making a masque at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain cannons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where being thought at first but an idle smoke, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole house to the very ground. This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabrick; wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broiled him, if he had not, by the benefit of a provident wit, put it out with bottle ale.[405] [Footnote 405: _Reliquiae Wottonianae_ (ed. 1672), p. 425.] John Chamberlain, writing to Sir Ralph Winwood, July 8, 1613, refers to the accident thus: The burning of the Globe or playhouse on the Bankside on St. Peter's Day cannot escape you; which fell out by a peal of chambers (that I know not upon what occasion were to be used in the play), the tampin or stopple of one of them lighting in the thatch that cover'd the house, burn'd it down to the ground in less than two hours, with a dwelling house adjoining; and it was a great marvel and fair grace of God that the people had so little harm, having but two narrow doors to get out.[406] [Footnote 406: Ralph Winwood, _Memorials of Affairs of State_ (ed. 1725), III, 469.] [Illustration: THE FIRST GLOBE From Visscher's _View of London_, published in 1616, but representing the city as it was several years earlier.]