any things, but chiefly want of money, and the straits the King brings
himself and affairs into for want of it. Captain Cocke did tell me what I
must not forget: that the answer of the Dutch, refusing The Hague for a
place of treaty, and proposing the Boysse, Bredah, Bergen-op-Zoome, or
Mastricht, was seemingly stopped by the Swede's Embassador (though he did
show it to the King, but the King would take no notice of it, nor does
not) from being delivered to the King; and he hath wrote to desire them to
consider better of it: so that, though we know their refusal of the place,
yet they know not that we know it, nor is the King obliged to show his
sense of the affront. That the Dutch are in very great straits, so as to
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 pla