单选题 The fire broke out in a bakery in the early hours of Sunday, 2 September 1666. The baker was a man called Thomas Farrinor, whose premises were in Pudding Lane. No-one knows exactly how it happened, but he probably left a pile of sticks too near the oven. They caught fire and then set the kitchen alight. The wooden houses nearby were very dry because of a long, hot summer and were joined together by narrow streets. A strong East wind caused the flames to spread quickly from the bakery to other houses.
At first, no-one took any notice of the fire. Samuel Pepys woke up at three a.m., but "thought it far enough off, and so to bed again and to sleep", as he wrote in his diary. The Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bludworth, also thought it was just a minor outbreak and so he too returned to bed. Many of the houses nearby, especially near the river, were warehouses full of oil and spirits. These very inflammable materials quickly added to the fire. By the morning over three hundred houses were burning.
Pepys at last realized the seriousness of the situation and went to warn the King, Charles II, who sent him to the Lord Mayor with instructions to pull down the houses. But few people listened to him, and many of them refused to allow soldiers to demolish their shops and houses.
On Tuesday, 4 September, the King put his brother, the Duke of York, in charge of operations. He organised demolition immediately. The King himself helped fight the fire and distributed gold coins to encourage the workmen. Finally, on Thursday, the fire was brought under control. To the North-West, soldiers stopped it at Pie Corner. Pepys' house remained untouched by the fire. Miraculously, only eight people had died, but over 13,000 houses had been destroyed. Almost a quarter of a million people were homeless and many went to the country. Eighty churches in the city had been burnt including St Paul's Cathedral, and the streets were filled with smoldering timbers. Five-sixths of the medieval city had disappeared forever.