On Candlemas eve following in divers places of England was great
weathering of wind, hail, snow, rain with thunder and lightning, whereby
the church of Baldock in Hertfordshire and the church and part of the
town of Walden in Essex, with other neighbouring villages, were sore
shaken, and the steeple of St. Pauls in London about two in the
afternoon was set on fire in the midst of the shaft first on the west
side and then on the south, and divers people espying the fire came to
quench it in the steeple, which they did with vinegar, so far as they
could find, so that when the Lord Mayor with much people came to Pauls
to have holpen if need had been they returned again every man to his own
home, trusting in God all had been well, but anon after between eight
and nine of the clock the fire burst out again afresh out of the
steeple, by reason of the wind more hot and fervent then before, and did
much hurt to the lead and timber thereof. Then the Lord Mayor and many
people came thither again and with vinegar quenched the fire which was
so violent, but no man received any hurt.
Moreover in Sir Richard Whittington's time lived one Richard Fleming,
Bishop of Lincoln, in the year 1430 who founded Lincoln Colledge in
Oxford, which was afterwards in Richard the third's time in the year of
our Lord 1479 by Thomas Rotherham Bishop of the same sea (_sic_) much
augmented and enlarged with great revenues.
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