As by the dreadful ravages of the plague the preceding year, the city was depopulated, and the houses deprived of their inhabitants, so by this conflagration the surviving citizens were deprived of their habitations, and many thousands of them compelled to retire to the fields, with such of their effects as they were able to save, where they continued destitute of the conveniencies, and almost all the necessary accommodations of life; lying in the open air, till tents and slight wooden huts could be erected, to secure them from the inclemencies of the weather. Meanwhile the King had the goodness to order a considerable quantity of naval bread to be immediately distributed among the poor, and a proclamation was wisely published, ordering the neighbouring Justices to encourage the bringing in of all sorts of provisions. It has been much disputed, whether this dismal catastrophe was occasioned by accident or design. An attempt was first made to fix it upon the dissenters, who suffered as much by this calamity, as any other body of men; but having not the least colour for such a pretence, it dropped of course; and the English being then at war with the French and the Dutch, the latter were charged with concerting this diabolical scheme; but this was found to be only an injurious aspersion: however, Robert Hubert, a Frenchman, of the Romish church, confessed, that he, at the sollicitation of one Stephen Piedloe, set fire to the baker’s house in Pudding lane, by means of a fire-ball which he fixed to the end of a long pole, and lighting it a match, put it in at a window; and that for this villainy he was to be rewarded on his return to France; but it is generally allowed, that this man was at that time disordered in his senses; and great pains have been taken to prove that he had no hand in that calamity: however, he was condemned and executed, though he surrendered himself, and though there was no other evidence of his guilt than that of his own confession. It is observable, that the preceding spring and summer had been the dryest in the memory of man; whereby the houses, which were all built of wood, and without party walls, were prepared, as it were, by Heaven, to become fuel for this terrible conflagration, which, together with the east wind abovementioned, might possibly be alone sufficient to reduce the city to a heap of ashes.