From a New Book. FIRE OF LONDON

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 111, 4 February 1935, Page 7

From a New Book. FIRE OF LONDON

One morning in September, 1666, Samuel Pepys burst into Whitehall, dishevelled and dismayed, but not disenjoying the exigency which excused such an unceremonial approach to royalty.- The City of London was in flames. The fire had ,broken out in a bakehouse in Pudding' Lane in the early hours of Sunday, September 2. By way of Fish Street and St. Magnus’s Church it spread to the low-lying streets and the wharves by the riverside. .'. . The Lord Mayor was distracted. Dispatched to, him with a message to pull down houses as fast as he could and requisition the aid of any soldiers he required, Pepys found him in Cannon Street, “like a man spent, with a handkerchief round his neck, crying like a fainting woman, ‘Lord what can I, do? I am spent, people, will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses but the tire overtakes us faster than we do it.’” . . . On Monday, the Duke of Monmouth was constituted general, and took over the complete charge of the distracted scene. By his “example and princely courage, he put fresh heart into those who fought the flames, and by his calm authority allayed the panic that was on the point of breaking out.” . , By Wednesday the flames were well under control; there remained tile wretched sights of-women “tiruiik as devils’’- oil sweetened beer, of ruined citizens who had lost their homes and most of their possessions, of the ‘squirming body of a cat, and the unutterable misery of the stricken town. "You would have thought for five ; days it had been Domesday from the fire and cries and howling of the people,”—From King James 11. by F. M. G. Higham.