But before another week had passed an effectual end was put for many a day to all plans for the “repair of the cathedral.”  Pepys begins his diary of September 2nd with the following words:—­“Lord’s Day.—­Some of our maids sitting up late last night to get things ready against our feast to-day, Jane calls us up about three in the morning to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City; so I rose and slipped on my night-gown and went to her window, and thought it to be on the back of Mark Lane at the farthest.”  He thought this was far enough off and went to bed again.  But next day he realises that it is all a terrible business, and so he goes on to tell how he walked about the streets and in some places burned his shoes; went on the river, where the hot fiery flakes pursued him; went to the King and gave advice and received instructions; met the Lord Mayor who seemed out of his senses.  So he goes on with his well-known description until September 7th, when he was “Up by five o’clock, and blessed be God! find all well, and by water to Paul’s Wharf.  Walked thence and saw all the town burned, and a miserable sight of Paul’s Church, with all the roof fallen, and the body of the choir fallen into St. Faith’s; Paul’s School also, Ludgate, and Fleet Street.”

Evelyn’s note of the disaster is written in a higher key.  “September 3rd ...  I went and saw the whole south part of the City burning from Cheapeside to the Thames, and all along Cornehill (for it likewise kindl’d back against the wind as well as forward), Tower Streete, Fen-church Streete, Gracious Streete, and so along to Bainard’s Castle, and was now taking hold of St. Paule’s Church, to which the scaffolds contributed exceedingly.  The conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonish’d, that from the beginning, I know not by what despondency or fate, they hardly stirr’d to quench it, so that there was nothing heard or seene but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures, without at all attempting to save even their goods—­such a strange consternation there was upon them, so as it burned both in breadth and length, the churches, public halls, Exchange, hospitals, monuments, and ornaments, leaping after a prodigious manner from house to house and streete to streete, at greate distances one from the other; for the heate, with a long set of faire and warme weather, had even ignited the aire and prepar’d the materials to conceive the fire, which devoured after an incredible manner, houses, furniture, and everything.  Here we saw the Thames cover’d with goods floating, all the barges and boates laden with what some had time and courage to save, as, on the other, the carts, &c., carrying out to the fields, which for many miles were strew’d with moveables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away.  Oh, the miserable and calamitous spectacle, such as haply the world had not seene the like since the foundation of it,