The Great Fire Of London Samuel Pepys Best 🎁 Limited Time

But his greatest act came on Wednesday, September 5.

At 4:00 a.m., Pepys climbed into a waterman’s boat and rowed up the Thames to Whitehall Palace. He burst into the presence of King Charles II and his brother, James, Duke of York. While other courtiers were still yawning, Pepys delivered a calm, precise report: the fire was spreading west, the Lord Mayor had failed, and if nothing was done, the entire city would burn.

He returned to the city on Monday, September 3rd. The fire had now jumped the river, threatening his beloved Navy Office on Seething Lane. He describes the air burning like "a fiery shower." The heat was so intense that pigeons fell from the sky, singed, dropping at his feet. He saw people flinging their goods into the Thames, people sleeping in carts, people weeping. the great fire of london samuel pepys

Furthermore, Pepys corrects the myths. Contrary to popular legend, the fire did not stop the Great Plague of 1665 (the plague had already subsided by the summer of 1666). And while the fire was a tragedy, it cleared the way for Christopher Wren’s new London—a city of brick and stone, of wide streets, of the magnificent new St. Paul’s we see today.

On Monday, September 3, he took a coach to the royal palace at Hampton Court (20 miles away) to personally inform the king that the fire was unstoppable. He returned with written orders for gunpowder demolitions. On Tuesday, he commandeered carts, horses, and boats to evacuate the Navy Office’s records—including centuries of irreplaceable maritime contracts. He even dug a pit in his garden and buried his prized Parmesan cheese and a bottle of wine. But his greatest act came on Wednesday, September 5

For historians, the diary of Samuel Pepys is the perfect primary source. Official reports from 1666 list property damage. The diary lists human emotion. We learn that the fire did not stop people from looting. We learn that the King himself was seen passing buckets of water. We learn that the poor fled to the fields of Islington and Highgate, homeless and hopeless.

Yet even then, he was taking notes. He listed which streets survived, which wharves could still land goods, which bakers were already selling bread from tents. He was not a poet of grief; he was a logistics officer of survival. While other courtiers were still yawning, Pepys delivered

On the night of September 1, 1666, a fire broke out at a bakery on Pudding Lane, near the River Thames. The bakery, owned by Thomas Farrinor, was located in a densely populated area of the city, with many wooden buildings nearby. At around 1:00 a.m. on September 2, a bakery apprentice, who had been left in charge of the bakery, discovered the fire. However, despite efforts to extinguish the flames, the fire quickly spread, fueled by strong easterly winds and the largely wooden construction of the city.

To understand Pepys’s terror, you must first understand the city he loved. London in 1666 was a medieval labyrinth of over 350,000 souls crammed into a one-square-mile area. The houses were built almost entirely of oak timber, pitch, and tar. They leaned so close together across the narrow alleys that neighbors could shake hands from opposite upper windows.