from Westminster he saw, about eight
o'clock, the fire burst forth, and before nine he could read by the
blaze a 16mo "Terence" which he had with him. The boy at once set out
for St. Paul's, resting by the way upon Fleet Bridge, being almost faint
with the intense heat of the air. The bells were melting, and vast
avalanches of stones were pouring from the walls. Near the east end he
found the body of an old woman, who had cowered there, burned to a coal.
Taswell also relates that the ashes of the books kept in St. Faith's
were blown as far as Eton.

On the 7th (Friday) Evelyn again visited St. Paul's. The portico he
found rent in pieces, the vast stones split asunder, and nothing
remaining entire but the inscription on the architrave, not one letter
of which was injured. Six acres of lead on the roof were all melted. The
roof of St. Faith's had fallen in, and all the magazines and books from
Paternoster Row were consumed, burning for a week together. Singularly
enough, the lead over the altar at the east end was untouched, and among
the monuments the body of one bishop (Braybroke--Richard II.) remained
entire. The old tombs nearly all perished; amongst them those of two
Saxon kings, John of Gaunt, his wife Constance of Castile, poor St.
Erkenwald, and scores of bishops, good and bad; Sir Nicholas Bacon,
Elizabeth's Lord Keeper, and father of the great philosopher; the last
of the true knights, the gallant Sir Philip Sidney; and Walsingham, that
astute counsellor of Elizabeth. Then there was Sir Christopher Hatton,
the dancing chancellor, whose proud monument crowded back Walsingham and
Sidney's. According to the old scoffing distich,

"Philip and Francis they have no tomb,
For great Christopher takes all the room."

Men of letters in old St. Paul's (says Dean Milman) there were few. The
chief were Lily, the grammarian, second master of St. Paul's; and
Linacre, the physician, the friend of Colet and Erasmus. Of artists
there was at least one great man--Vandyck, who was buried near John of
Gaunt. Among citizens, the chief was Sir William Hewet, whose daughter
married Osborne, an apprentice, who saved her from drowning, and who was
the ancestor of the Dukes of Leeds.

After the fire, Bishop Sancroft preached in a patched-up part of the
west end of the ruins. All hopes of restoration were soon abandoned, as
Wren had, with his instinctive genius, at once predicted. Sancroft at
once wrote to the great architect,