At length St. Paul's succumbed. It had stood tall and strong in the space of its churchyard, lifting its head loftily amid the billows of flame; but at last the terrible fire, driven toward it by the east wind, lapped the roof, and seized some scaffold-poles standing around. The lead on the roof melted in the fierce heat, and ran down the walls in streams; the stones split, and pieces flew off with reports like cannon-shots; and beams fell crashing like thunder to the ground.
Evelyn notes, under date September 4th: "The burning still rages, and it was now gotten as far as the Inner Temple; all Fleet Street, the Old Bailey, Ludgate Hill, Warwick Lane, Newgate, Paul's Chain, Watling Street now flaming, and most of it reduced to ashes; the stones of Paul's flew like granados, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream, and the very pavements glowing with fiery redness, so as no horse nor man was able to tread on them, and the demolition had stopped all the passages, so that no help could be applied. The eastern wind still more impetuously driving the flames forward. Nothing but the almighty power of God was able to stop them, for vain was the help of man."
On the eastern side of St. Paul's, the old Guildhall fell to the fire. On Tuesday night, it was, says a contemporary writer, the Rev. Thomas Vincent, in a little volume published a year afterwards, "a fearfull spectacle, which stood the whole body of it together in view, for several hours together, after the fire had taken it, without flames (I suppose because the timber was such solid oake), in a bright shining coale as if it had been a Pallace of gold, or a great building of burnished brass."
The fire had now become several miles in circumference. It had reached the Temple at the western end of Fleet Street by the river, and was blazing up by Fetter Lane to Holborn; then backward, its course lay along Snow Hill, Newgate Street--Newgate Prison being consumed--and so past the Guildhall and Coleman Street, on to Bishopsgate Street and Leadenhall Street. It seemed as though all London would be burnt, and that it would spread westward even to Whitehall and Westminster Abbey.
But now the King (Charles II.) and his brother the Duke of York and their courtiers were fully aroused; and it must have become clear to even the meanest intelligence that houses must be blown down on an extensive scale, in order to create large gaps over which the fire could not pass. All through Tuesday night, therefore, the sound of explosions mingled with the roaring of the fire.