The area having been over the course of time drained, St. George's Fields, comprised broad open meadows. At the restoration, during Charles II's progress from Dover to London, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen feted the king under a large tent erected in St. George's Fields, where on 29 of May 1660, a great banquet was held prior to the king's entering the City. According to Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, six years later, St. George's Fields were one of the places of refuge to which the poorer citizens retreated with such of their goods and chattels as they could save from the Great Fire of London. It also became a place much favoured by open-air preachers, who were not allowed to hold forth in London.