Great Fire of London the confession of a simple-minded French watchmaker named Robert Hubert, who claimed that he was an agent of the Pope and had started the Great Fire in Westminster. He later changed his story to say that he had started the fire at the bakery in Pudding Lane. Hubert was convicted, despite some misgivings about his fitness to plead, and hanged at Tyburn on 28 September 1666. After his death, it became apparent that he had been on board a ship in the North Sea, and had not arrived in London until two days after the fire started. These allegations that
Pudding Lane by the Company of Bakers in 1986, commemorates the fire. According to the chronicler John Stow, it is named after the "puddings" (a medieval word for offal) which would fall from the carts coming down the lane from the butchers in Eastcheap as they headed for the waste barges on the River Thames. In Stow's words, "the Butchers of Eastcheape have their skalding House for Hog there, and their puddings with other filth of Beasts, are voided down that way to their dung boats on the Thames." The original name of the lane was "Offal Pudding Lane", which changed to