As the light of history falls on all this, it becomes clear to fair judges that whilst there was widespread ungodliness and worldliness, there were good and earnest men belonging to the two religious parties, who were striving after Reformation. The Puritan divines in the early times of the Stuarts were learned and most devout. Their commentaries on the Bible are well worth study. So are the men on the other side: Andrewes, Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, for example. The collision came, the Puritan triumph and failure, the godless reaction. The history of London during all this time again exhibits beautiful examples of men who saw opposite sides of the same good shield, and strove for the love of God to make the world better. The hand of God was visible, as J. R. Green once put it, shaping the course of the middle age, and we believe and are assured that there is still a nobler future for the City which we love, under the same Fatherly and Almighty hand. The epitaph of the noble mediæval city which we have endeavoured to describe is engraved on the north side of the Monument on Fish Street Hill:--"In the year of Christ 1666, the second day of September, eastward from hence at the distance of two hundred and two feet (the height of this column), about midnight, a most terrible fire broke out, which, driven on by a high wind, not only wasted the adjacent parts, but also places very remote, with incredible noise and fury. It consumed eighty-nine churches, the City gates, Guildhall, many public structures, hospitals, schools, libraries, a vast number of stately edifices, thirteen thousand two hundred dwelling-houses, four hundred streets. Of the six and twenty wards it utterly destroyed fifteen, and left eight others shattered and half-burnt. The ruins of the City were four hundred and thirty-six acres, from the Tower by the Thames side to the Temple Church, and from the north-east along the City wall to Holborn Bridge. To the estates and fortunes of the citizens it was merciless, but to their lives very favourable, that it might in all things resemble the last conflagration of the world. The destruction was sudden, for in a small space of time the City was seen most flourishing, and reduced to nothing. Three days after, when this fatal fire had baffled all human counsels and endeavours in the opinion of all, it stopped as it were by a command from Heaven, and was on every side extinguished." INDEX Aggas' Map of London, 20, 59 Aldermanbury, 22 Aldermen, 5, 23, 37, 41 Aldersgate, 10 Aldgate, 10 Alfred, King, 1, 3 Alfune, 12 Alleyn, Edward, 43 Anchorites, 51 Angevins, The, 5 Arches, Court of, 9 Arms, City, 18 Arundel House, 70 Athelstan, 17 Aubrey, 44 Augustinians, The, 13, 53 Ayloffe, Sir John, 41 Bankside, 43 Bartholomew Fair, 26, 51 Basing Hall, 8 Baynard's Castle, 10, 47, 68 Beaufort, Cardinal, 42 Beck, Anthony de, 71 Becket, Gilbert, 59