desert, or rather in some great city laid waste by a cruel enemy: to which
was added the stench that came from some poor creatures' bodies, beds, etc.
Sir Thomas Gresham's statue, though fallen from its niche in the Royal
Exchange, remained entire, when all those of the kings since the Conquest
were broken to pieces; also the standard in Cornhill, and Queen Elizabeth's
effigies, with some arms on Ludgate, continued with but little detriment,
while the vast iron chains of the city streets, hinges, bars, and gates of
prisons, were many of them melted and reduced to cinders by the vehement
heat.

I was not able to pass through any of the narrow streets, but kept the
widest; the ground and air, smoke and fiery vapor, continued so intense
that my hair was almost singed and my feet insufferably surheated. The
by-lanes and narrower streets were quite filled up with rubbish, nor could
one have known where he was but by the ruins of some church or hall that
had some remarkable tower or pinnacle remaining. I then went toward
Islington and Highgate, where one might have seen two hundred thousand
people of all ranks and degrees, dispersed and lying along by their heaps
of what they could save from the fire, deploring their loss, and, though
ready to perish for hunger and destitution, yet not asking one penny for
relief, which to me appeared a stranger sight than any I had yet beheld.

His majesty and council, indeed, took all imaginable care for their
relief, by proclamation for the country to come in and refresh them with
provisions. In the midst of all this calamity and confusion there was, I
know not how, an alarm begun that the French and Dutch, with whom we are
now in hostility, were not only landed, but even entering the city. There
was in truth some days before great suspicion of these two nations joining;
and now, that they had been the occasion of firing the town. This report
did so terrify that on a sudden there was such an uproar and tumult that