The Great Fire - page 1
The London Gazette, Sunday, September 2, 1666.
"About two a clock this morning a sudden and lamentable fire brake out in the city, beginning not far from Thames Street, near London Bridge, which continues still with great violence and hath already burnt down to the ground many houses thereabouts; which sad accident affected His Majesty with that tenderness and compasion, that he was pleased to go himself in person, with his Royal Highness, to give order that all possible means should be used for quenching the fire, or stopping its further spreading. In which case, the Right Honourable the Earl of Craven was sent by His Majesty, to be more particularly assistingto the Lord Mayor and magistrates; and several companies of his guards sent into the City to be helpful by what ways they could in so great calamity."
The London Gazette, September 8, 1666.
"The ordinary course of this paper having been interuppted by a sad and lamentable accident of Fire lately hapned in the City of London: It hath been thought fit for satisfying the minds of so many of his Majesties good subjects who must needs be concerned for the Issue of so great an accident, to give this short, but true Accompt of it.
"On the second instant, at one of the clock in the Morning, there hapned to break out, a sad in deplorable Fire in Pudding-lane, neer New Fish-street, which falling out at that hour of the night, and in a quarter of the Town so close built with wooden pitched houses spread itself so far before the day, and with such distraction to the inhabitants and Neighbours, that care was not taken for the timely preventing the further diffusion of it, by pulling down houses, as ought to have been; so that this lamentable Fire in a short time became too big to be mastred by any Engines or working neer it. It fell out most onhappily too, That a violent Easterly wind fomented it, and kept it burning all that day, and the night following spreading itself up to Grace-church-street and downwards from Cannon-street to the Water-side, as far as the Three Cranes in the Vintry.
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16 January, 2008