“It is reasonable to conjecture, that the accumulation of ruins these extensive fires occasioned left the distressed inhabitants little choice in their determination; and as it would have caused infinite trouble and inconvenience to have cleared and removed the same, they wisely preferred sacrificing a few (to them) useless buildings, raised and levelled the ground, and began a foundation for new dwellings on the site of the roofs of some of their remaining habitations. The amazing descent to the banks of the Thames from several parts of the City confirms the opinion that most of the buildings denominated crypts, oratories, or undercrofts, were, in their pristine states, level in their foundations with the dwelling-places of their original builders. What greatly adds to the probability is the circumstance of our being informed that near Belzeter’s Lane (Billiter Lane) and Lime Street, three new houses being to be built, in the year 1590, in a place where was a large garden plot enclosed from the street by a high brick wall, upon taking down the said wall and digging for cellarage, another wall of stone was found directly under the brick wall with an arched gateway of stone, and gates of timber to be closed in the midst towards the street. The timber of the gates was consumed, but the hinges of iron were then remaining on their staples on both sides: moreover, in that wall were square windows with bars of iron on each side this gate. The wall was above two fathoms deep under the ground, supposed to be the remains of those great fires before mentioned. Again, we learn, on the east side of Lime Street opening into Fenchurch Street, on that site, after the fire of 1666, Sir Thomas Cullum built thirty houses, and that a short time previous to 1757, the cellar of one of the houses giving way, there was discovered an arched room, ten feet square and eight feet deep, with several arched doors round it stopped up with earth” (Wilkinson, _Londina Illustrata_, vol. ii. p. 43). In 1660 the mayor, Sir Thomas Allen, resided in Leadenhall Street and entertained Monk. At the corner of St. Mary Axe stood, in the fifteenth century, the town-house of the De Veres, Earls of Oxford. Gibbon’s great-grandfather, one of the last of the younger sons of county families who came to London and went into trade, had his shop as a draper in Leadenhall Street. In this street Peter Anthony Motteux, translator of _Don Quixote_, kept an “East India” shop. He was a Huguenot, and could speak and understand many languages. He was also employed as a linguist at the Post Office. In addition to his shop and his office, he worked as a poet and man of letters generally; being the author of plays, prologues, and epilogues. He is best known by his completion of Urquhart’s _Translation of Rabelais_. He was a loose liver, and died in a disorderly house in St. Clement Danes. Like the lady of Père la Chaise, “Resigned unto the Heavenly Will, His wife kept on the business still.”