Who's To Blame?
By the end of September, a Parliamentary Committee was chosen to investigate the fire. During the investigation a French Protestant watchmaker, Robert Hubert, admitted to having intentionally started the fire at the bakery with 23 accomplices. His colleagues stated he was unstable and the facts of his confession changed as flaws were frequently discovered. The Earl of Clarendon remarked that 'Neither the judges, nor any present at the trial did believe him guilty; but that he was a poor distracted wretch, weary of his life, and chose to part with it'. He was helped by a jury - that included three Farynors - and was hanged at Tyburn.
The Parliamentary committee reported in January 1667 that 'nothing hath yet been found to argue it to have been other than the hand of God upon us, a great wind, and the season so very dry'. Yet with Farynor declaring - as expected - that his ovens had been entirely extinguished on the night in question, the committee was as widely believed as the Warren Report, and the cause of the fire became the grassy knoll of late seventeenth century conspiracy theorists. In 1678, during the Popish Plot, Titus Oates declared that Jesuit priests were to set fire to the city, prompting a Commons resolution declaring that 'the City of London was burnt in the year 1666 by the Papists... to introduce arbitrary power and Popery into this Kingdom'. In 1685 the Duke of Monmouth, fighting back against the new King, the Catholic James II, accused him
of purposely starting the fire. It was not until 1831 that the writing on the fire's commemorative Monument, blaming 'the treachery and malice of the Popishfaction', was removed. An inferno caused by a neglectful baker, increased by astrong wind and hesitant leadership, was blamed on Catholics for over 150 years.
The Parliamentary committee reported in January 1667 that 'nothing hath yet been found to argue it to have been other than the hand of God upon us, a great wind, and the season so very dry'. Yet with Farynor declaring - as expected - that his ovens had been entirely extinguished on the night in question, the committee was as widely believed as the Warren Report, and the cause of the fire became the grassy knoll of late seventeenth century conspiracy theorists. In 1678, during the Popish Plot, Titus Oates declared that Jesuit priests were to set fire to the city, prompting a Commons resolution declaring that 'the City of London was burnt in the year 1666 by the Papists... to introduce arbitrary power and Popery into this Kingdom'. In 1685 the Duke of Monmouth, fighting back against the new King, the Catholic James II, accused him
of purposely starting the fire. It was not until 1831 that the writing on the fire's commemorative Monument, blaming 'the treachery and malice of the Popishfaction', was removed. An inferno caused by a neglectful baker, increased by astrong wind and hesitant leadership, was blamed on Catholics for over 150 years.