Meantime the conflagration continued to rage with unabated fury.  It burnt throughout the whole of Monday night, and having destroyed Saint Paul’s, as before related, poured down Ludgate-hill, consuming all in its way, and, crossing Fleet Bridge, commenced its ravages upon the great thoroughfare adjoining it.  On Tuesday an immense tract was on fire.  All Fleet-street, as far as the Inner Temple, Ludgate-hill, and the whole of the city eastwards, along the banks of the Thames, up to the Tower Dock, where the devastation was checked by the vast gap of houses demolished, were in flames.  From thence the boundary of the fire extended to the end of Mark-lane, Lime-street, and Leadenhall, the strong walls of which resisted its fury.  Ascending again by the Standard on Cornhill, Threadneedle-street, and Austin Friars, it embraced Drapers’ Hall, and the whole mass of buildings to the west of Throgmorton-street.  It next proceeded to the then new buildings behind Saint Margaret’s, Lothbury, and so on westward to the upper end of Cateaton-street, whence it spread to the second postern in London Wall, and destroying the ramparts and suburbs as far as Cripplegate, consumed Little Wood-street, Mungwell-street, and the whole of the city wall on the west as far as Aldersgate.  Passing a little to the north of Saint Sepulchre’s, which it destroyed, it crossed Holborn Bridge, and ascending Saint Andrew’s-hill, passed the end of Shoe-lane, and so on to the end of Fetter-lane.  The whole of the buildings contained within this boundary were now on fire, and burning with terrific fury.  And so they continued till the middle of Wednesday, when the wind abating, and an immense quantity of houses being demolished according to Lord Argentine’s plan, the conflagration was got under; and though it broke out in several places after that time, little mischief was done, and it may be said to have ceased on the middle of that day.

On Saturday morning in that week, soon after daybreak, a young man, plainly yet richly attired in the habiliments then worn by persons of high rank, took his way over the smouldering heaps of rubbish, and along the ranks of ruined and blackened walls denoting the habitations that had once constituted Fleet-street.  It was with no little risk, and some difficulty, that he could force his way, now clambering over heaps of smouldering ashes, now passing by some toppling wall, which fell with a terrific crash after he had just passed it—­now creeping under an immense pile of blackened rafters; but he at length reached Fleet Bridge, where he paused to gaze at the scene of devastation around him.