Great Fire of London able to tread on them." The cathedral was quickly a ruin. During the day, the flames began to move eastward from the neighbourhood of Pudding Lane, straight against the prevailing east wind and towards Pepys's home on Seething Lane and the Tower of London with its gunpowder stores. The garrison at the Tower took matters into their own hands after waiting all day for requested help from James's official firemen who were busy in the west. They created firebreaks by blowing up houses on a large scale in the vicinity, halting the advance of the fire. In a letter to
Robert Hubert severe inquisition [...] Catholics were also chief suspects, and accusations were so formal as to be added to the Monument in 1668, which stayed (with brief interruptions) until 1830: [...] the most dreadful Burning of this City; begun and carried on by the treachery and malice of the Popish faction. Hubert had convenient attributes. He was convicted and sentenced to death at the Old Bailey. Despite the contradictoriness of both Hubert's account and of public opinion, the Farriner family, in whose bakery the fire had started, was naturally under pressure — they needed to show that their ovens had been