Now for another twice-told tale.
The last cross had not been removed from the last infected house, the last person dead of the Plague had not been buried, before the Great Fire of London broke out and purged the plague-stricken city from end to end.
Three great fires had destroyed London before this of the year 1666, viz., in 962, in 1087, which swept away nearly the whole of the City, and in 1212, when a great part of Southwark and of the City north of the bridge was destroyed.
This fire began early in the morning of Sunday, September 2d. It broke out at the house of one Farryner, a baker in Pudding Lane, Thames Street. All the houses in that lane, and, one supposes, in all the narrow lanes and courts about this part of the City, were of wood, pitched without; the lane was narrow, and the projecting stories on either side nearly met at the top. The baker's house was full of faggots and brushwood, so that the fire instantly broke out into full fury and spread four ways at once. The houses stood very thick in this, the most densely populated part of the City. In the narrow lanes north and south of Thames Street lived those who made their living as stevedores, watermen, porters, carriers, and so forth; in Thames Street itself, on either side, were warehouses filled with oil, pitch, and tar, wine, brandy, and such inflammable things, so that by six o'clock on Sunday morning all Fish Street was in flames, and the fire spreading so fast that the people barely had time to remove their goods. As it drew near to a house they hurriedly loaded a cart with the more valuable effects and carried them off to another house farther away, and then to another, and yet another. Some placed their goods in churches for safety, as if the flames would respect a consecrated building. The booksellers, for instance, of Paternoster Row carried all their books into the crypt of St. Paul's, thinking that there, at least, would be a safe place, if any in the whole world. Who could look at those strong stone pillars with the strong arched roof and suspect that the stones would crumble like sand beneath the fierce heat which was playing upon them? All that Sunday was spent in moving goods out of houses before the flames caught them; the river was covered with barges and lighters laden with furniture. Pepys watched the fire from Bankside. "We stayed till, it being darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side of the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long; it made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire and flaming at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and the crackling of houses at their ruin." On Monday morning Pepys puts his bags of gold and his plate into a cart with all his best things, and drove off to Sir William Rider's, at Bethnal Green. His friend, Sir W. Batten, not knowing how to move his wine, dug a pit in his garden and put it there. In this pit, also, Pepys placed the papers of the Admiralty.
OLD EAST INDIA HOUSE
On Wednesday he walked into the town over the hot ashes. Fenchurch Street, Gracechurch Street, Lombard Street, Cheapside, he found in dust. Of the Exchange nothing standing of all the statues but that of Sir Thomas Gresham—a strange survival. On Saturday he went to see the ruins of St. Paul's: "A miserable sight; all the roofs fallen, and the body of the Quire fallen into St. Faith's; Paul's school, also Ludgate and Fleet Street."
The fire was stayed at length by blowing up houses at the Temple Church, at Pie Corner, Smithfield (where the figure of a boy still stands to commemorate the fact), at Aldersgate, Cripplegate, and the upper part of Bishopsgate Street. It had consumed five-sixths of the City, together with a great piece beyond the western gates. It had covered an area of 436 acres, viz., 387 acres within the walls, and 73 without; it had destroyed 132,000 dwelling-houses, St. Paul's Cathedral, eighty-nine parish churches, four of the City gates, Sion College, the Royal Exchange, the old Grey Friars Church, the Chapel of St. Thomas of Acon, and an immense number of great houses, schools, prisons, and hospitals. The area covered, roughly speaking, an oblong nearly a mile and a half in length by half a mile in breadth. The value of the property destroyed was estimated at £10,000,000. There is no such fire of any great city on record, unless it is the burning of Rome under Nero.