Some difference of opinion, however, there seems to have been among the philosophers about the choice of their patron saint. Pepys did not care much who the saint was, but he grumbled at having to pay two shillings for the badge.[273] Aubrey once confided to Sir William Petty that he would have preferred St. George, or, failing him, St. Isidore—“a philosopher canonised.” “No,” said the irrepressible Petty, “I had rather have had it been St. Thomas’s Day, for he would not believe till he had seen and putt his finger into the holes, according to the motto, _Nullius in Verba_.”[274] CHAPTER XV THE PLAGUE AND THE FIRE “It hath commonly been looked upon as very strange that a diligent Cultivator of Experimental Philosophy should be a zealous Embracer of the Christian Religion; and that a great Esteem of Experience and a High Veneration for Religion should be compatible in the same Person; but....”—ROBERT BOYLE, _The Christian Virtuoso_. “The hottest day that ever I felt in my life ... I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and ‘Lord have mercy upon us’ writ there....”—PEPYS’S _Diary_, June 7, 1665. “... it still encreasing, and the wind great ... and all over the Thames, with one’s faces in the wind, you were almost burned with a shower of fire-drops ... 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 ... one entire arch of fire from this to the other side of the bridge.... 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 ruine....”—PEPYS’S _Diary_, September 2, 1666.