be said to be not
able to set out their fleete this year. By and by comes Sir Robert Viner
and my Lord Mayor to ask the King's directions about measuring out the
streets according to the new Act for building of the City, wherein the
King is to be pleased.

[See Sir Christopher Wren's "Proposals for rebuilding the City of
London after the great fire, with an engraved Plan of the principal
Streets and Public Buildings," in Elmes's "Memoirs of Sir
Christopher Wren," Appendix, p.61. The originals are in All Souls'
College Library, Oxford.--B.]

But he says that the way proposed in Parliament, by Colonel Birch, would
have been the best, to have chosen some persons in trust, and sold the
whole ground, and let it be sold again by them, with preference to the
old owner, which would have certainly caused the City to be built where
these Trustees pleased; whereas now, great differences will be, and the
streets built by fits, and not entire till all differences be decided.
This, as he tells it, I think would have been the best way. I enquired
about the Frenchman

["One Hubert, a French papist, was seized in Essex, as he was
getting out of the way in great confusion. He confessed he had
begun the fire, and persisted in his confession to his death, for he
was hanged upon no other evidence but that of his own confession.
It is true he gave so broken an account of the whole matter that he
was thought mad. Yet he was blindfolded, and carried to several
places of the city, and then his eyes being opened, he was asked if
that was the place, and he being carried to wrong places, after he
looked round about for some time, he said that was not the place,
but when he was brought to the place where it first broke out, he
affirmed that was the true place. "Burnet's Own Time," book ii.
Archbishop Tillotson, according to Burnet, believed that London was
burnt by design.]

that was said to fire the City, and was hanged for it, by his own
confession, that he was hired for it by a Frenchman of Roane, and that
he did with a stick reach in a fire-ball in at a window of the house:
whereas the master of the house, who is the King's baker, and his son,
and daughter, do all swear there was no such window, and that the fire
did not begin thereabouts. Yet the fellow, who, though a mopish besotted
fellow, did not speak like a madman, did swear that he did fire