masters, and shone like morning stars? No, the houses are fallen, and the householders dropped with them. We have nothing but naked streets, naked fields for shelter; not so much as a chamber to couch down our children or repose our own members, when we are spent or afflicted with sickness. Woe unto us! our sins have pulled down our houses, shaken down our city. We are the most harbourless people in the world; like foreigners rather than natives; yea, rather like beasts than men. Foxes have holes and fowls have nests, but we have neither holes or nests: our sins have deprived us of couch and covert. We should be glad if an hospital would receive us, dens or caves shelter us. The bleak air and cold ground are our only shades and refuges. But, alas! this is but the misery of the stonework, of arches, roofs, &c."

The following paragraph is taken from Mr. Rosewell's causes and cures of the pestilence, printed at London, in the year of the great plague 1665—a year before the fire of London.

"Is it not of the Lord that the people shall labour in the very fire, and weary themselves for vanity? It is of the Lord, surely! It comes to pass, by the secret counsel of God, that these houses and cities which they build, shall either come to be consumed by fire; or else, the people shall weary themselves in vain, for vanity to no purpose; seeing it comes so soon to be destroyed and ruinated, what they build."

SECTION II.

ACCOUNT OF THE FIRE OF LONDON, PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY, FROM
THE “LONDON GAZETTE.”

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 thereabouts: 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 2nd inst., at one o'clock in the morning, there happened to break out a sad and deplorable fire in Pudding-lane, 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 continuing itself, even through those places, and raging in a bright flame all Monday and Tuesday, notwithstanding his Majesty's own, and his royal highness's indefatigable and personal pains to apply all possible means to prevent it; calling upon and helping the people with their guards, and a great number of nobility and gentry unweariedly assisting therein, for which they were requited with a thousand blessings from the poor distressed people. By the favour of God the wind slackened a little on Tuesday night, and the flames meeting with brick buildings at the Temple, by little and little it was observed to lose its force on that side, so that on Wednesday morning we began to hope well, and his royal highness never departing nor slackening his personal care, wrought so well that day, assisted in some parts by the lords of the council before and behind it, that a stop was put to it at the Temple Church; near Holborn Bridge; Pye Corner; Aldersgate; Cripplegate; near the lower end of Coleman-street; at the end of Basinghall-street; by the Postern at the upper end of Bishopsgate-street; and Leadenhall-street; at the Standard, in Cornhill; at the church in Fenchurch-street; near Clothworkers' Hall in Mincing-lane; in the middle of Mark-lane; and at the Tower-dock.

On Thursday, by the blessing of God, it was wholly beat down and extinguished. But so as that evening it burst out afresh at the Temple, by the falling of some sparks (as is supposed, upon a pile of wooden buildings); but his royal highness, who watched there the whole night in person, by the great labour and diligence used, and especially by applying powder to blow up the houses about it, before day, happily mastered it.

Divers strangers, Dutch and French, were, during the fire, apprehended, upon suspicion that they contributed maliciously to it, who are all imprisoned, and informations prepared to make severe inquisition hereupon by my Lord Chief Justice Keeling, assisted by some of the Lords of the privy council, and some principal members of the city: notwithstanding which suspicions, the manner of the burning all along in a train, and so blown forward in all its ways by strong winds, makes us conclude the whole was an effect of an unhappy chance, or to speak better, the heavy hand of God upon us, for our sins, shewing us the terror of his judgment, in thus raising the fire, and immediately after, his miraculous and never enough to be acknowledged mercy, in putting a stop to it when we were in the last despair, and that all attempts for the quenching it, however industriously pursued, seemed insufficient. His Majesty then sat hourly in council, and ever since hath continued making rounds about the city, in all parts of it where the danger and mischief was greatest, till this morning that he hath sent his Grace the Duke of Albemarle, whom he hath called for to assist him in this great occasion: to put his happy and successful hand to the finishing this memorable deliverance.

About the Tower, the seasonable orders given for pulling down houses to secure the magazines of powder, was most especially successful, that part being up the wind; notwithstanding which, it came almost to the very gates of it, so as, by the early provision, the several stores of war lodged in the Tower were entirely saved; and we have hitherto this infinite cause particularly to give God thanks that the fire did not happen in any of those places where his Majesty's naval stores are kept; so as though it hath pleased God to visit us with his own hand, he hath not, by disfurnishing us with the means of carrying on the war, subjected us to our enemies.

It must be observed, that this fire happened at a part of the town, where, though the commodities were not very rich, yet they were so bulky that they could not be removed, so that the inhabitants of that part where it first began, have sustained very great loss; but, by the best inquiry we can make, the other parts of the town, where the commodities were of greater value, took the alarm so early, that they saved most of their goods of value, which possibly may have diminished the loss; though some think, that if the whole industry of