and His Majesty's Ministers, yet nothing hath been yet found to argue it to have been other than the hand of God upon us, a great wind and the season so very dry.'1 The popular excitement refused to be satisfied. Rumours of Popish plots were rife throughout the kingdom. It was said that designing Catholics were hidden in country houses, that they held secret meetings in the taverns of the villages, and that they bribed the watchmen to take no notice of their proceedings. A letter was intercepted from Paris exhorting the English Catholics to rise and fire the remainder of London. A chambermaid at the Unicorn' inn, at Banbury, was brought up before the justices of the peace, and said that certain foreigners had stayed at the inn, that she overheard them whispering, and one said, 'When we have done our mischief we will take our horses and ride out, because we should not be thought to have a hand in it; and afterwards will come in again and bemoan their condition, that they may conclude that we have no hand in it. Then they read a paper, and talked of what the rich devils would do when they saw fire about their ears, and said their charges would be borne, and that they would want no money when in London.' One unhappy Frenchman, Robert Hubert by name, confessed to having fired London,' and was executed at Tyburn, but denied the fact at the gallows, though before he had stood obstinately to it, and would hardly have been believed on account of his varying answers, but that he took his keeper to the place he had so long affirmed that he 1 State Papers, Domestic, September 1666.

fired, and it was the very house where the flames first broke out.' There is little doubt but that this Frenchman was one of those persons, which seasons of great excitement invariably produce, who out of love for notoriety accuse themselves of offences of which they are perfectly innocent. The country was thoroughly alarmed, and informers everywhere readily appeared to give evidence. One charming youth, only ten years of age, an apothecary's errand-boy, accused his father and mother, John and Mary Taylor, of York Street, Covent Garden, of having helped to fire the city, and of having taken him down to Acton to burn a house in that village! Throughout the principal towns, guiltless persons suspected of having fire-balls in their possession were frequently arrested and confined in the city prison. It was scarcely possible for strangers to stand about in groups, or to join in earnest conversation, without being looked upon as Papists or plotters. Guests on arriving at an inn were searched, their names written down, and then severely cross-examined as to their future proceedings. England was more like a city in a state of siege than a free country.1

To calm this agitation, the rigours of intolerance were freely invoked. For those outside the pale of the Church of England there was no security. It was impossible for one who was an Anglican to treat with an enemy or to plot for the overthrow of the city but with a Papist, a Quaker, a Dissenter, every treachery and diabolical undertaking were within the compass of his creed. All priests and Jesuits, at 1 State Papers, Domestic, October-December, 1666.

the express wish of the House of Commons, were expelled the country. The laws against Roman Catholics were rigidly enforced. A vote was passed that members of the House of Commons were to receive the Sacrament according to the Church of England, on penalty of imprisonment. All who refused to take the oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance were to be disarmed. Quakers and other Nonconformists were sent to prison, and their numerous petitions for release constitute no small portion of the State Papers of this period. In Holland it was said that the Court had set fire to London, whilst in Padua an account of the conflagration was circulated in Italian, the most remarkable portion of which is that 'at Moorfields the King, the Duke of York, and nobles, came to see Charles the First avenged, but, moved with compassion, stimulated the people to exertion by working themselves.' 1

London, east of the Temple, being one mass of ruins, the first matter to be attended to, now that the flames had been got under and the national fears and prejudices fully avenged by the imprisonment of foreigners, Papists, and Dissenters, was the rebuilding of the city. Accordingly

His Majesty issued a declaration 'To his City of London, upon occasion of the late calamity by the lamentable fire.' No man's loss in the late fire, said Charles, was comparable to his; yet he hoped to live to see a much more beautiful city than the one that had been consumed, one well provided against accidents by fire. There must, therefore, he directed, be no hasty rebuilding. Should any persons, on pretence

1 State Papers, Domestic, October 22, 1666.

that the ground was their own, erect 'unskilful' houses, the Lord Mayor was authorised to give orders to have the same pulled down. Brick having been found to resist and even extinguish fire, all houses were for the future to be built of brick and stone, with strongly-arched cellars in the basement. The principal streets were to be broad and open, and no alleys allowed unless absolutely necessary. No houses were to be erected within some few feet of the river, and those built were to be 'fair structures for ornament.' Brewers, dyers, sugar-bakers, and others whose trades were carried on by smoke, were to dwell together in some quarter to be specially assigned to them. (Thus, even in the seventeenth century, the desirableness of a fair river frontage and the nuisance of smoke were at least recognised: we certainly have taken our time in acting upon these sensible ideas.) A survey was to be made of the whole ground, and each person was to have his land secured him by Act of ParliaWith regard to the rebuilding of the churches, they were to be recommended to the charity of well-disposed persons. His Majesty then concluded by promising that 'those who shall erect any buildings acccording to this declaration' shall have the hearth-money duties remitted for seven years.1 The following year the Rebuilding Act (19 Chas. II. c. 3) was passed.

ment.

The loss occasioned by the Great Fire of London was estimated at 13,000 houses, 89 churches, including St. Paul's Cathedral, and property to the amount of nearly ten millions sterling. 1 State Papers, Domestic, September 13, 1666.

A NATIONAL SCARE.

Going out of church immediately after sermon, some people of St. James' parish passed by and told me the enemy had entered the town.'

HARTE.

A FEW years after Charles II. had been restored to the throne of his ancestors, a war, disgraceful in its origin, and doubly disgraceful by the marked incapacity with which it was conducted, was forced upon the United Provinces.

The prosperity of the Dutch, their commercial rivalry with the English, and their superiority in every department of trade, were viewed with extreme jealousy by our merchants. It was hoped that the commercial predominance we could not obtain by superior industry and ability might be attained by superior strength. Charles, who thought he saw a prospect of filling his rapidly emptying treasury, and who hoped, by defeating De Witt, the Grand Pensionary, to reinstate the young Prince of Orange on the throne, and thus bring the States to a dependence upon England, had no objection to the war. His brother, the Duke of York, who hated the Dutch because they opposed a new African company of which he was the head, and who wished for an opportunity of gaining distinction, cordially sided with the war party,