“That sorrowful exclamation, ‘No sooner born than dead!’ may well, at the period at which we are now arrived, be uttered over this scarcely completed edifice; for in the night of the 10th of July, 1212, within four years after its being finished, a dreadful conflagration took place upon it. Stow, at page 60 of his ‘_Survey_,’ cites the Book of Dunmow, William de Packington, and William of Coventry, as his authorities for that excellent account of it which I shall presently repeat to you. Let me, however, first observe, that Packington was Secretary and Treasurer to Edward the Black Prince, in Gascoigne, about 1380. For _William_ of Coventry, I conceive that we should read _Walter_ of Coventry; because the former, who wrote about 1360, is celebrated in page 148 of Bishop Nicolson’s ‘_Historical Libraries_,’ already cited, as the Author of a work ‘concerning the coming of the Carmelites into England.’ Walter, on the contrary, at page 61, is mentioned as having compiled three books of Chronicles, about the year 1217, which yet remain in Manuscript in Bennet College, Cambridge. The ‘_Chronicle of Dunmow_,’ which is the other authority quoted by Stow, is now to be found only in a small quarto volume in the Harleian Library of Manuscripts, No. 530, article ii. page 2 a. It consists of a miscellaneous collection of notes, in the hand writings of Stow, Camden, and perhaps Sir Henry Savile; transcribed upon old, stained, and worn-out, paper. The notice of this great fire is very brief, and, with the heading of the extracts, runs thus: ‘_Collectanea ex Chronico de Dunmowe_.’--‘1213. London was burned and the Brydge also, and many peryshed by violence of the fyre.’ Stow’s own account, however, is the most interesting extant, and is as follows. ‘The Borough of Southwark,’ says he, ‘upon the South side of the River of Thames, as also the Church of our Lady of the Canons there,’--that is to say the Church of St. Mary Overies, which changed its name upon being re-founded, in 1106, for Canons Regular, by William de Pont de l’Arche, and William D’Auncy, Norman knights,--these ‘being on fire, and an exceeding great multitude of people passing the Bridge, either to extinguish and quench it, or else to gaze and behold it; suddenly the North part, by blowing of the South wind was also set on fire; and the people which were even now passing the Bridge, perceiving the same, would have returned, but were stopped by the fire: and it came to pass, that as they stayed or protracted the time, the other end of the Bridge also, namely, the South end was fired; so that the people, thronging themselves between the two fires, did nothing else but expect present death. Then there came to aid them many ships and vessels, into which the multitude so unadvisedly rushed, that the ships being thereby drowned, they all perished. It was said, that through the fire and shipwreck, there were destroyed above three thousand persons, whose bodies were found in part