=The Fire.=--The house and Navy office of Samuel Pepys were in Seething Lane, Crutched Friars, near where Fenchurch Street Station now is. About three in the morning of Sunday, September 2, 1666, Samuel and his wife were called by their servant Jane, who told them of a fire visible in the south-west towards London Bridge. After looking out, not thinking it a great matter, the couple returned to bed; but getting up at seven Pepys heard a far worse account, and instead of attending morning service went to the Tower, and called on his neighbour Sir John Robinson, the Lieutenant. Robinson told him that the house of Faryner, baker to the king, in Pudding Lane had just caught fire, that Fish Street was in flames, and the church of St. Magnus destroyed. These were near the north end of London Bridge, as the Monument and St. Magnus both remind us. The origin of the Fire Pepys learnt later (February 24, 1667). Faryner's people had occasion to light a candle at midnight; they went as usual into their bakehouse to light it, but as the fire had gone out, had to seek elsewhere. This striking a light in an unusual place by Faryner, his son and daughter, is asserted to have been, somehow and all unknown to them, the origin of the Fire. "Which is," says Pepys, "a strange thing, that so horrid an effect should have so mean and uncertain a beginning." About two in the morning, when the family were upstairs and asleep again, the choking sensation of smoke woke them up, just in time to escape and tell the tale. [Illustration: ST. PAUL'S IN FLAMES. _Originally engraved by Hollar for the title of Dean (afterwards Archbishop) Sancroft's sermon on the Great Fire._]