t at the trial
did believe him guilty; but that he was a poor distracted wretch, weary
of his life, and chose to part with it in this way. Certain it is that
upon the strictest examination that could be afterwards made by the
king's command, and then by the diligence of the House, that upon
the jealousy and rumour made a committee, that was very diligent and
solicitous to make that discovery, there was never any probable evidence
(that poor creature's only excepted) that there was any other cause of
that woful fire than the displeasure of God Almighty: the first accident
of the beginning in a baker's house, where there was so great a stock of
faggots, and the neighbourhood of such combustible matter, of pitch and
rosin, and the like, led it in an instant from house to house, through
Thames Street, with the agitation of so terrible a wind to scatter and
disperse it."

But belief that the dreaded papists had set fire to the city, lingered
in the minds of many citizens. When the city was rebuilt, this opinion
found expression in an inscription cut over the doorway of a house
opposite the spot where the fire began, which ran as follows:

"Here, by the permission of heaven, hell broke loose on this protestant
city from the malicious hearts of barbarous papists, by the hand of
their agent Hubert, who confessed, and on the ruins of this place
declared the fact, for which he was hanged. Erected in the mayoralty of
Sir Patience Ward, Knight."

The loss caused by this dreadful conflagration was estimated at ten
million sterling. According to a certificate of Jonas Moore and Ralph
Gatrix, surveyors appointed to examine the ruins, the fire overrun
373 acres within the walls, burning 13,200 houses, 89 parish churches,
numerous chapels, the Royal Exchange, Custom House, Guildhall, Blackwell
Hall, St. Paul's Cathedral, Bridewell, fifty-two halls of the city
companies, and three city gates.

As speedily as might be, the king and his parliament then sitting at
Oxford, sought to restore the city on a scale vastly superior to its
former condition. And the better to effect this object, an act of
parliament was passed that public buildings should be rebuilt with
public money, raised by a tax on coals; that the churches and the
cathedral of St. Paul's should be reconstructed from their foundations;
that bridges, gates and prisons should be built anew; the streets made
straight and regular, such as were steep made level, such as were narr