hooks on the end, which were used to pull down buildings adjacent to those burning. This was meant to contain the fire by removing material it could spread to. However, this was also the destruction of property and was considered a serious matter, so the Mayor was summoned to permit it to take place. When Bloodworth arrived, he refused to allow the demolition to take place. Possibly, this was due to fear of complaints from the owners of the buildings which would be destroyed that such actions were unnecessary. According to Samuel Pepys' record of the events, he expressed a lack of concern that the fire would become dangerous, saying that "a woman might piss it out," before returning to his home and going back to sleep. Over the next three days, the fire destroyed more than 15 per cent of the city. Bloodworth was widely blamed for the failure to stop the fire, however, he appears to have been made a scapegoat. Without the King's authority, he could not pull down houses without being personally responsible for the cost of rebuilding them, and he was also faced with stiff resistance from the aldermen. Bloodworth continued to sit in parliament until 1679 and was one of the Court Assistants of the Levant Company from 1673 to 1675. He died in May 1682, aged 62, and was buried at Leatherhead, Surrey. Pepys wrote of Bloodworth as "a silly man, I think" (30 June 1666) and "a very weak man he seems to be" (1 December 1666). He was described as "a zealous person in the King's concernments; willing though it may be not very able, to do great things". Dr. Scott gave his funeral sermon in which he said "he had a mighty affection and zeal for the King and for the Church of England". Family Bloodworth married: Firstly Mary Rogers, daughter of Walter Rogers, a leather seller in London and Leatherhead and had two sons and a daughter. Secondly, on 6 January 1657, Mary Benn, widow of Henry Benn, slopseller of London and daughter of a boat-builder called Butcher, and had two sons and three daughters. His daughter Anne married firstly Sir John Jones, and secondly George Jeffreys, 1st Baron Jeffreys, James II's Lord Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor, and was ancestress of the Earls of Pomfret. She had the reputation of being a strong-minded woman, of whom even her