Adrian Tinniswood

At the time, it was an accident.

It was a confluence.

It was a meeting of three or four different events that any one of them wouldn't have done the harm they did.

The August 1666 was hot, it was dry.

There'd been a drought all summer, so the buildings were tinned to dry.

Then there's this general sense of foreboding as well.

It's weird that there have been rumors about Cromwellian Republicans mounting a coup.

There was talk about a mysterious character called the Precious Man who was mobilizing a militia to march on London.

There was talk about a messiah from the East, a man called Sabbatai Levi, who was gathering followers and was marching on Europe.

People were twitchy.

But the big thing that was twitching people on the afternoon of September the 2nd, 1666, the big thing was the war.

We were at war.

And that's what mattered most.

We were at war with the Dutch.

The war had been going quite well.

But that particular afternoon, what everybody was talking about was the fact that a huge English fleet, commanded by Prince Rupert and General Monk, was converging on the Dutch off Boulogne.

And they were going to whoop them.

They were going to absolutely whoop them.

That's what everybody cared about.

That's what everyone was talking about in the streets.