t further, both below and above and no
likelihood of stopping it. Met with the King and Duke of York in their
barge, and with them to Queenhith and there called Sir Richard Browne
to them. Their order was only to pull down houses apace, and so below
bridge the water-side; but little was or could be done, the fire coming
upon them so fast. Good hopes there was of stopping it at the Three
Cranes above, and at Buttolph's Wharf below bridge, if care be used; but
the wind carries it into the City so as we know not by the water-side
what it do there. River full of lighters and boats taking in goods, and
good goods swimming in the water, and only I observed that hardly one
lighter or boat in three that had the goods of a house in, but there was
a pair of Virginalls

[The virginal differed from the spinet in being square instead of
triangular in form. The word pair was used in the obsolete sense of
a set, as we read also of a pair of organs. The instrument is
supposed to have obtained its name from young women, playing upon
it.]

in it. Having seen as much as I could now, I away to White Hall by
appointment, and there walked to St. James's Parks, and there met my
wife and Creed and Wood and his wife, and walked to my boat; and there
upon the water again, and to the fire up and down, it still encreasing,
and the wind great. So near the fire as we could for smoke; and all over
the Thames, with one's face in the wind, you were almost burned with
a shower of firedrops. This is very true; so as houses were burned by
these drops and flakes of fire, three or four, nay, five or six houses,
one from another. When we could endure no more upon the water; we to a
little ale-house on the Bankside, over against the 'Three Cranes, and
there staid till it was dark almost, and saw the fire grow; and, as it
grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners and upon steeples,
and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of
the City, in a most horrid malicious bloody flame, not like the fine
flame of an ordinary fire. Barbary and her husband away before us. We
staid till, it being darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch
of fire from this to the other side 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 cracking of houses at their ruins.