_July_ 31, 1662. I sat with the commissioners about reforming the buildings and streets of London, and we ordered the paving of the way from St. James's north, which was a quagmire, and also of the Haymarket about Piqudillo [Piccadilly].
_August_ 23. I was spectator of the most magnificent triumph that ever floated on the Thames, considering the innumerable boats and vessels, dressed and adorned with all imaginable pomp, but above all, the thrones, arches, pageants, and other representations, stately barges of the Lord Mayor and Companies, with music and peals of ordnance from the vessels and the shore, going to meet and conduct the new queen from Hampton Court to Whitehall, at the time of her first coming to town. His majesty and the queen came in an antique-shaped open vessel, covered with a canopy of cloth of gold, made in the form of a cupola, supported with high Corinthian pillars, wreathed with flowers and festoons.
_July_ 16, 1665. There died of the plague in London this week 1,100, and in the week following above 2,000.
_August_ 28. The contagion still increasing, I sent my wife and whole family to my brother's at Wotton, being resolved to stay at my house myself and to look after my charge, trusting in the providence and goodness of God.
_September_ 7. Came home from Chatham. Perishing near 10,000 poor creatures weekly. However, I went all along the city and suburbs from Kent Street to St. James's, a dismal passage, and dangers to see so many coffins exposed in the streets, now thin of people; the shops shut up, and all in mournful silence, as not knowing whose turn might be next. I went to the Duke of Albemarle for a pest-ship, for our infected men.
_September_ 2, 1666. This fatal night, about ten, began that deplorable fire near Fish Street in London.
_September_ 3. After dinner I took coach with my wife and son, and went to the Bank Side in Southwark, where we beheld the dismal spectacle, the whole city in dreadful flames near the water-side.
The fire having continued all this night, which was as light as day for ten miles round, in a dreadful manner, I went on foot to the same place. The conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonished, that from the beginning they hardly stirred to quench it, so that there was nothing heard or seen but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures, without attempting to save even their goods. It leapt after a prodigious manner from house to house, and street to street, at great distances one from the other. Here we saw the Thames covered with goods floating, all the barges and boats laden with what some had time and courage to save. And the fields for many miles were strewn with movables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away. Oh, the miserable and calamitous spectacle! London was, but is no more!