ames Street. It was
early on Sunday morning on the second day of September, 1666. It was
then, and is now, a place where the houses stood very thick and close
together: all round were warehouses filled with oil, wine, tar, and
every kind of inflammable stuff. The baker's shop contained a large
quantity of faggots and brushwood, so that the flames caught and spread
very rapidly. The people, for the most part, had time to remove their
most valuable things, but their furniture, their clothes, the stock of
their shops, the tools of their trade, they had to leave behind them.
Some hurriedly placed their things in the churches for safety, as if the
fire would respect the sanctity of these buildings. A stranger Sunday
was never spent than this, when those who had escaped were asking where
to go, and those upon whom the flames were advancing were tearing out of
their houses whatever they could carry away, and the rest of the town
were looking on and asking whether the flames would be stayed before
they reached their houses.

Among those who thought that a church would be a safe place were the
booksellers of Paternoster Row. They carried all their books into St.
Paul's Cathedral and retired--their stock in trade was safe. But the
flames closed round upon the Cathedral: they seized on Paternoster Row,
so that the booksellers like the rest were fain to fly: and presently
towering to the sky flamed up the lofty roof of nave and chancel and
tower. Then with an awful crash the flaming timbers fell down into the
church below. Even the Cathedral was burned with the rest, and with it
all the books.

[Illustration: A GENTLEMAN. A GENTLEWOMAN.

ORDINARY CIVIL COSTUME; _temp._ CHARLES I.

(_From Speed's map of 'The Kingdom of England,' 1646._)]

All Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and part of Wednesday, the fire raged, till
it seemed as if there would be no end until the City was utterly
destroyed. Happily a remnant was saved, as you have seen. The fire was
stopped at last by blowing up houses everywhere to arrest its progress.
Close by the Temple Church (which barely escaped) they stopped it in
this way. At Aldersgate, Cripplegate, and Bishopsgate, they used the
same means, and at Pye Corner, Smithfield. Nearly opposite Bartholomew's
Hospital, you may still see the image of a boy set up to commemorate the
stopping of the fire at that point. Had it gone further we should have
lost St. Bartholomew the Great and the houses of Cloth Fair.

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