Earlier this year, ITV (other television channels are available!) announced its decision to commission a four-part period drama based on the events of the Great Fire of London. The forthcoming series (imaginatively entitled The Great Fire!) will no doubt present the occurrences of September 1666 as a great human tragedy that was received with universal sorrow. However, as a document in the British Library’s Dutch Language Collections reveals, there were those who rather than lamenting the fire took an altogether different view.

On 7 August 1666, during the course of the conflict between England and the Dutch Republic that would later become known as the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the English government wrote to Sir Robert Holmes, Admiral of the Restoration Navy, giving him detailed instructions for a raid upon the West Frisian islands of Vly and Terschelling, where some 150 Dutch ships were lying. As well as destroying the ships, Holmes was to take 500 men, land upon the island of Terschelling (on which was located the town of West-Terschelling) and ‘appoint such a number of men to rise and plunder the town as you shall think fit.’ Two days later, on 9 August, the instructions were carried out to considerable effect and Sir Robert was able to write to none other than King Charles II himself, narrating how he had ‘with little trouble set the fair town on fire, which consisted of at least 1000 houses.’ It may have been that the king was already well aware of this, for, as various Englishmen noted in their journals, columns of smoke were visible well out to sea.

In England, news of Holmes’ exploits was greeted with great enthusiasm, including by Charles II himself who, in a somewhat insensitive gesture, ordered celebratory bonfires to be lit. Indeed, the burning of West-Terschelling quickly became known as ‘Holmes’ Bonfire’ on the basis that, in order to signal to fellow Englishmen watching from afar that the mission had succeeded, Holmes had set-alight the town ‘as bonfires for his good success at sea.’ Unsurprisingly, there was a less celebratory reaction in Amsterdam, where various pamphlets and prints were published condemning the attack as a barbaric atrocity. An example is the print below, attributed to the well-known engraver, Harmen de Mayer.

Holmes’ Bonfire, engraving attributed to Harmen de Mayer (1650-1701). (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

If Holmes’ raid had been designed to bring about a Dutch capitulation it failed, for when just weeks later fire broke out at Thomas Farriner’s now infamous bakery on Pudding Lane, the two nations were still at war. News of the fire was quick to reach the Dutch, who were no doubt following events in England with great interest.

A sense of the Dutch reaction to the Great Fire can be gauged from a lengthy pamphlet printed in Rotterdam soon afterwards entitled, Londens Puyn-hoop. The pamphlet, copies of which are held by the British Library, is unequivocal in its explanation of events. After dismissing everyday causes it presents the fire as divine retribution against the English – and Charles II in particular – for the attack on the Vlie, as well as a warning to sinners everywhere: London had not so much been destroyed as purified.

Whilst the contents of Londens Puyn-Hoop are undoubtedly propagandist in part, they also appear to reflect a genuine belief that the Great Fire was an act carried out by God on behalf of a latter day children of Israel. Such a mind-set might well explain the relative restraint shown by Dutch forces on the towns they encountered in the Medway – something on which the diarist Samuel Pepys remarked – during the now legendary raid the following summer that brought the conflict to a conclusion in the Republic’s favour: there was no need for the Dutch to take revenge, God had already taken it for them.

The Great Fire, from S.V.V.H. Londen’s Puyn-hoop 3rd ed. (Rotterdam, 1666) 8122.ee.8.1(1.)

The image above appears as a fold-out page in one of the copies of Londens Puyn-hoop held by the British Library. (You can see another version from the Rijksmusem in Amsterdam here.) The way in which fire is represented in these prints is potentially very illuminating. In some, fire is presented in factual, almost scientific terms, the process of combustion and the idea that something is actually on fire being clearly visible. In others, the flames appear to hover miraculously above their apparent source without consuming it, in a fashion that recalls biblical fires, such as the burning bush and the pillar of flame. This duality reflects the somewhat conflicted world-view that characterised the 17th century: on the one hand a time of tremendous scientific progress and a growing recognition that the world was governed by discernible, universal laws with physical explanations but on the other an époque still dominated by superstition, powerful religious fervour and a belief that the forces of both evil and the divine were capable of interfering in everyday life. In this way, Londens Puyn-hoop – together with its associated imagery – has a great deal to tell us about the early-modern mind-set.

Robin Jacobs

References:

Downton, Peter, The Dutch Raid (Rochester, 1998)

Beer, E.S. de (ed.)The Diary of John Evelyn (Oxford, 2000). YC.2002.a.8453; Vol. 3 p. 452

Jones, J.R., The Anglo-Dutch Wars of the Seventeenth Century (London, 1996) YK.1996.a.20068

Latham, Robert (ed.), The Diary of Samuel Pepys (London, 2003) YC.2003.a.14343, entry 15 August 1666. Also available online at http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1666/08/15/

Ollard, R.L., Man of War: Sir Robert Holmes and the Restoration Navy (London, 1969) X.631/831 and W50/4391

Powell, J.R. / Timings, E.K., The Rupert & Monck Letter Book – 1666, (London, 1969) Ac.8109. [vol. 11 -2.]

Robin Jacobs is a barrister who specialises in education law. He recently completed a Graduate Diploma in Art History at the Courtauld Institute and wrote a dissertation on representations of fire in broadside prints from the Second Anglo-Dutch War.