HE great plague, of which we gave an account in the last chapter, had no sooner abated, than a most dreadful fire broke out in London, and raged with ungovernable fury. It was on a Sunday, the 2d of September, A.D. 1666, that the fire began in a baker's shop, kept by one Farryner, in Pudding Lane, near Fish Street. This shop and all the other buildings in the neighbourhood were of wood, very old and very rotten, and as many of them were at this time filled with combustible goods, the whole of Billingsgate Ward, in which the baker's shop was situated, was laid in ashes in a few hours. The fire, after this, took a westerly direction towards London Bridge. It crossed Thames Street, assailed St. Magnus Church, at the foot of the bridge, and from the Sunday to the following Thursday continued its work of destruction, sweeping down all that opposed it from Tower Hill to St. Dunstan's Church, Fleet Street. Accounts differ as to the exact hour when this frightful calamity first made its appearance. Evelyn says it was about ten at night on the 2d of September; but the City Remembrancer, following Vincent, seems to make out that the fire began before it was light on the Lord's day morning; and with this agrees the time mentioned in the certificate of the surveyors appointed by government to view the ruins, and in several other wellauthenticated documents. The following extracts from the London Gazette, a periodical in circulation at the time of the fire, and published by authority, will be found to contain a full and particular account of the progress of the flames. 66 Sept. 2.-About two o'clock this morning, a sudden and lamentable fire broke out in this city, beginning not far from Thames Street, near London Bridge, which continues still with great violence, and hath already burnt down to the ground many houses thereabout: which said accident affected his majesty with that tenderness and compassion that he was pleased to go himself in person, with his royal highness, to give orders that all possible means should be used for quenching the fire, or stopping its further spreading. In which care the right honourable the Earl of Craven was sent by his majesty to be more particularly assisting to the lord mayor and magistrates; and several companies of his guards sent into the city to be helpful in what means they could in so great a calamity. Whitehall, Sept. 8.--The ordinary course of this paper being interrupted by a sad and lamentable accident of fire lately happened in the city of London, it hath been thought fit to satisfy the minds of so many of his majesty's good subjects, who must needs be concerned for the issue of so great an accident, to give this short but true account of it. On the 2d instant, at one o'clock in the morning, there happened to break out a sad and deplorable fire in Pudding Lane, near new Fish Street, which falling out at that hour of the night, and in a quarter of the town so close built with wooden pitched houses, spread itself so far before day, and with such distraction to the inhabitants and neighbours, that care was not taken for the timely preventing the further diffusion of it by pulling down houses, as ought to have been; so that the lamentable fire in a short time became too big to be mastered by any engines, or working near it. It fell out most unhappily too, that a violent easterly wind fomented it, and kept it burning all that day and the night following, spreading itself up to Gracechurch Street, and downward from Cannon Street to the water-side as far as the Three Cranes in the Vintry. The people in all parts about it were distracted by the vastness of it, and their particular care was to carry away their goods. Many attempts were made to prevent the spreading of it by pulling down houses, and making great intervals, but all in vain, the fire seizing upon the timber and rubbish, and so |