<P> Fears were as high as ever among the traumatised fire victims, fear of foreign arsonists and of a French and Dutch invasion . There was an outbreak of general panic on Wednesday night in the encampments at Parliament Hill, Moorfields, and Islington . A light in the sky over Fleet Street started a story that 50,000 French and Dutch immigrants had risen, widely rumoured to have started the fire, and were marching towards Moorfields to finish what the fire had begun: to cut the men's throats, rape the women, and steal their few possessions . Surging into the streets, the frightened mob fell on any foreigners whom they happened to encounter, and were only appeased, according to Evelyn, "with infinite pains and great difficulty" and pushed back into the fields by the Trained Bands, troops of Life Guards, and members of the court . </P> <P> The mood was now so volatile that Charles feared a full - scale London rebellion against the monarchy . Food production and distribution had been disrupted to the point of non-existence; Charles announced that supplies of bread would be brought into the City every day, and safe markets set up round the perimeter . These markets were for buying and selling; there was no question of distributing emergency aid . </P> <P> Only a few deaths from the fire are officially recorded, and deaths are traditionally believed to have been few . Porter gives the figure as eight and Tinniswood as "in single figures", although he adds that some deaths must have gone unrecorded and that, besides direct deaths from burning and smoke inhalation, refugees also perished in the impromptu camps . </P> <P> Hanson takes issue with the idea that there were only a few deaths, enumerating known deaths from hunger and exposure among survivors of the fire, "huddled in shacks or living among the ruins that had once been their homes" in the cold winter that followed, including, for instance, dramatist James Shirley and his wife . Hanson also maintains that "it stretches credulity to believe that the only papists or foreigners being beaten to death or lynched were the ones rescued by the Duke of York", that official figures say very little about the fate of the undocumented poor, and that the heat at the heart of the firestorms was far greater than an ordinary house fire, and was enough to consume bodies fully or leave only a few skeletal fragments . </P>

Who tried to help remedy the great plague