A singular feature of all these fires is that they took their origin in the neighbourhood of London Bridge. Thus the great Fire began early on a Sunday morning, the 2nd September, in the house of Farryner, the King’s baker, in Pudding Lane. Pepys, from a window of his house in Seething Lane, noticed the blaze at about 3 o’clock in the morning, but thought little of it and returned to his bed. The summer, however, had been hot; the houses were little better than tinder and a high wind was blowing. Appliances and regulations there were of a kind, but of too primitive a kind to check the progress of this fire. Each Ward, for instance, was equipped with a hook to pull down houses, two chains and two strong cords, all in charge of the Beadle. Large houses were compelled to keep one or two ladders and, during the summer, a barrel of water in the courtyard. Certain houses too had stone partitioned walls, since, by the Assize of Fitz-Ailwyne, special civic privileges were given to those who built in stone rather than in wood. But such houses were few. For instance, if a stone house stood at any boundary which you wished to indicate, you had but to say “The Stone House” and no one would mistake you. The fire spread up Thames Street, drove north and west along Gracechurch Street, Lombard Street, Cornhill, Austin Friars, Lothbury, Bartholomew Lane. All were devoured. The Exchange was utterly destroyed. “A sad sight,” says Pepys, “nothing standing there of all the statues or pillars, but Sir Thomas Gresham’s picture in the corner.” By September 4th the flames had reached St. Paul’s, round about the roof of which a mass of scaffolding had been erected, so that it fell an easy prey. The stones of the walls burst asunder with the noise of cannon under the heat, and the lead rolled down in streams. To recall the glory of that historic building with its marvellous rose-window, only Dr. Donne’s tomb and the charred stumps of a few cloister pillars remained. Eighty-four of the old City churches were swept away with St. Paul’s, and but for the courage and energy of the Duke of York, the Temple Church would have vanished too. Every kind of ill-luck, indeed, seemed to help on the work of destruction. London was afflicted by a weak and inefficient Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bludworth. “Lord, what can I do?” he fluttered; “I am spent and my people pay me no heed. We pull down houses, but Oh! Lord, the fire goeth on the same, and burns others before we have done.”