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
Great Fire of London were designed to use, but parts of the river bank could still be reached. Gangs of men tried desperately to manoeuvre the engines right up to the river to fill their reservoirs, and several of the engines toppled into the Thames. The heat from the flames by then was too great for the remaining engines to get within a useful distance; they could not even get into Pudding Lane. The personal experiences of many Londoners during the fire are glimpsed in letters and memoirs. The two best-known diarists of the Restoration are Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) and John Evelyn (1620–1706), and