Godalming, April 19. 1851.
_Great Fire of London_.--Our popular histories of England, generally,
contain very indefinite statements respecting the extent of destruction
wrought upon the city of London by the Great Fire. I have therefore thought
it may be interesting to others, as it has been to myself, to peruse the
following, which purports to be "extracted from the Certificates of the
Surveyors soon after appointed to survey the Ruins."
"That the fire that began in London upon the second of September, 1666,
at one Mr. Farryner's house, a baker in Pudding Lane, between the hours
of one and two in the morning, and continued burning until the sixth of
that month, did overrun the space of three hundred and seventy-three
acres within the walls of the city of London, and sixty-three acres
three roods without the walls. There remained seventy-five acres three
roods standing within the walls unburnt. Eighty-nine parish churches,
besides chappels burnt. Eleven parishes within the walls standing.
Houses burnt, Thirteen thousand two hundred.
"JONAS MOORE, }
"RALPH GATRIX, } Surveyors."
I copy this from a volume of tracts, printed 1679 to 1681; chiefly
"Narratives" of judicial and other proceedings relating to the (so called)
"Popish Plots" in the reign of Charles II.