Great Fire of London general; and more particularly in this business of the fire, laying it all upon him." Pepys was a senior official in the Navy Office by then, and he ascended the Tower of London on Sunday morning to view the fire from a turret. He recorded in his diary that the eastern gale had turned it into a conflagration. It had burned down several churches and, he estimated, 300 houses and reached the riverfront. The houses on London Bridge were burning. He took a boat to inspect the destruction around Pudding Lane at close range and describes a "lamentable" fire, "everybody
Great Plague of London Great Plague of London The Great Plague, lasting from 1665–1666, was the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in England. It happened within the centuries-long time period of the Second Pandemic, an extended period of intermittent bubonic plague epidemics which began in China in 1331, the first year of the Black Death, an outbreak which included other forms such as pneumonic plague, and lasted until 1750. The Great Plague killed an estimated 100,000 people—almost a quarter of London's population—in 18 months. The plague was caused by the "Yersinia pestis" bacterium, which is usually transmitted through the bite