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
Town Clerk of London Lord Mayor and other officials, and amended the functions of the City of London courts via writs. This was successful, leading to the similar expansion of the City of London courts which had jurisdiction outside London as a type of county court. This gradually took over from the now obsolete circuit criminal court called the Assize Court. The format strongly influenced the development of the High Court of Chancery and Lord Chancellor's jurisdiction based in Westminster. During the early 17th century, before and after the 1666 Great Fire of London, the Town Clerk's function began to evolve into more complex