By Permission of Heaven

Adrian Tinniswood

4 ideas

1. Robert Hubert's false confession and hanging

   After the fire, Robert Hubert, a French watchmaker, confessed to throwing a fireball into Thomas Farriner's Pudding Lane bakery, and he was hanged at Tyburn in October 1666. The court convicted him even though his account was inconsistent and evidence later showed he had not reached London until two days after the fire began. His case shows a traumatized public accepting a plainly unreliable foreign culprit because a human villain was more satisfying than an accident.

2. Lord Mayor Bloodworth's hesitation over firebreaks

   When the fire broke out on 2 September 1666, Lord Mayor Thomas Bloodworth dismissed it, reportedly saying a woman could piss it out. He then refused to pull down houses to create firebreaks because he feared liability to their owners. Only after the King ordered demolitions, and gunpowder was later used, did the four-day blaze begin to stop, by which point about 13,000 houses, 87 churches and St Paul's were lost.

3. Disasters demand human culprits over natural causes

   The official finding blamed the fire on the hand of God, a great wind and a very dry season, but that explanation did not satisfy the public. People needed an agent with intent, so blame moved onto existing objects of fear: Catholics, the French and the Dutch. A Parliamentary committee gave rumor official standing, and in 1681 an inscription blaming 'popish frenzy' was added to the Monument, fixing the scapegoat in stone for generations.

4. Property rights beat utopian rebuilding plans

   Wren, Evelyn and Hooke drew up grand rational plans for a new London, but the city was rebuilt largely on its medieval street lines. Redrawing thousands of property boundaries would have delayed the recovery of trade and housing. What changed instead was regulation: the Rebuilding Act of 1667 required brick and stone and set building standards, and a special Fire Court quickly settled landlord and tenant disputes over who should pay to rebuild.

Save and mark ideas in the app