Popular faith for a long time swayed between two ultimate reasons for the Great Fire. It was either a visitation from God upon London for its vices and its lack of religion, or it was a dispensation of Providence to clear the City altogether from the germs of the Plague. But, as a fact, mediæval London was neither more wicked nor more unhealthy than any large city of those days. More than one foreign Chronicler, indeed, pays his tribute to the beauty of the City, its gardens and clear springs, and to the orderly character of its inhabitants; though, to be sure, we must measure those eulogies by the standards of the times. London, like any other mediæval town, was especially liable to fire; its streets were narrow to begin with, and, to make things worse, permissions were readily granted for the extensions of the upper storeys upon pillars. These extensions called “Hautpas,” were no doubt conceded because they formed a protection against the weather to passers-by and the shops beneath. They were no less warmly welcomed by the owner because they increased the size of his house without necessitating the purchase of additional ground. London, indeed, was as crowded then as it is to-day. The streets and alleyways were thick with a jostle of people from morning until late at night, and decree after decree of the City Fathers sought in vain to restrain the invasion from the countryside. All this press of people made carelessness more common and the danger of fire more likely, and when the King with his Court came to the Tower of London, the demand upon the City space became almost intolerable, for there was never room within the Tower for the retinue which he carried with him. There was a permanent officer upon his staff called the “Sergeant Harbourer,” whose business it was to find lodgings for the household servants and dependants of the King. The houses were built of wood and roofed with thatch. Glass was rare--probably none was imported into England until the reign of Henry the Third, and although a hundred years afterwards, in the reign of Edward the Third, glass was so far known that a Guild of Verrers or Glaziers was definitely established, most of the houses, especially of the poorer class, were unprotected by it. Let a fire once get hold of one of these houses, in a dry season, it would roar through the narrow streets as through a funnel, driving burning fragments of wood and cloth and paper through the unglazed windows into the mansions on either side. London was thus ripe for fires, but she was chastised out of all measure. Both in the first year of Stephen’s reign and in 1212, fires ravaged the City. Indeed, in the latter case, many more lives were lost than in the Great Fire of 1666.