houses, and payment of rents
which, if they should not be determined with speed and without
charge, would much obstruct the rebuilding of the s^d City. And for
that it is just that everyone concerned should bear a proportionate
share of this loss according to their several interests wherein in
respect of the multitude of cases, varying in their circumstances, no
certain general rule can be prescribed."

After this recital it was enacted that the judges of the King's Bench
and Common Pleas and the Barons of the Exchequer, or any three or more
of them, should form a Court of Record to hear and determine every
possible dispute or difference arising out of the great fire, whether
relating to liability to repair, and rebuild, or to pay rent, or for
arrears of rent (other than arrears which had accrued due before the 1st
of September) or otherwise howsoever. The proceedings were to be by
summary process, _sine forma et figura judicii_ and without court fees.
The judges were to be bound by no rules either of law or equity, and
might call for what evidence they chose, including that of the
interested parties, and try the case as it best could be tried. Their
orders were to be final and not (save in a single excepted case) subject
to any appeal. All persons in remainder and reversion were to be bound
by these orders, although infants, married women, idiots, beyond seas,
or under any other disability. A special power was given to order the
surrender of existing leases, and to grant new ones for terms not
exceeding forty years. The judges gave their services for nothing, and,
for once, released from all their own trammels, set to work to do
substantial justice between landlord and tenant, personalty and realty,
the life interest and the remainder, covenantor and covenantee, after a
fashion which excited the admiration and won the confidence of the whole
City. The ordinary suitor, still left exposed to the pitfalls of the
special pleader, the risks (owing to the exclusion of evidence) of a
non-suit and the costly cumbersomeness of the Court of Chancery, must
often have wished that the subject-matter of his litigation had perished
in the flames of the great fire.

This court sat in Clifford's Inn, and was usually presided over by Sir
Matthew Hale, whose skill both as an arithmetician and an architect
completed his fitness for so responsible a position. Within a year the
work was done.

The Act for rebuilding the