ks and on the interior with plaster. During
the reign of James I. it was enacted that the fronts of city houses
should be of brick or stone. In many cases, however, a compromise was
made in favor of heavy timber fronts, which were often richly carved and
moulded, the panels filled with bricks and plastered, the sides away
from the street being still built of wood. In these houses we find
numerous instances of the picturesque oriels and windows adopted by the
designers of the modern Queen Anne school.

The fire wrought a complete change in building-construction and in the
health of the city. The plague, until then a constant visitor,
disappeared. The streets and courts were widened and much improved, and
an entirely new class of buildings arose above the ruins of ancient
London. Immediately after the fire a proclamation was issued by the
king, giving instructions for certain reforms in building-construction.
This may be called the birth of the movement which later on developed
into the Queen Anne or Free Classic style of the early eighteenth
century. In this proclamation the king commands as follows: "In the
first place, the woful experience in this late heavy visitation hath
sufficiently convinced all men of the pernicious consequences which have
attended the building with timber, and even with stone itself, and the
notable benefit of brick, which in so many places hath resisted and even
extinguished the fire; and we do hereby declare that no man whatsoever
shall presume to erect any house or building, great or small, but of
brick or stone; and if any man shall do the contrary, the next
magistrate shall forthwith cause it to be pulled down and such further
course taken for his punishment as he deserves; and we suppose that the
notable benefit many men have received from those cellars which have
been well and strongly arched will persuade most men who build good
houses to practise that good husbandry by arching all convenient
places." By an act of the Common Council, passed on the 29th of April,
1667, in furtherance of the king's proclamation, it is ordered, among
other details, that the purveyors "do encourage and give directions to
all builders, for ornament sake, that the ornaments and projections of
the front of buildings be of rubbed bricks, and that all the naked parts
of the walls be done of rough bricks neatly wrought, or all rubbed, at
the discretion of the builder." Permission was at the same time given
to enri