Great Fire Pudding Lane plaque

This inscription was set up in 1681 on the site of the Pudding Lane bakery where the Great Fire of London started. It blames the fire on 'barbarous Papists' and Robert Hubert, the Frenchman who confessed to starting the fire. Hubert was hanged for the crime in October 1666, though it is likely that he was innocent. His story changed several times during his imprisonment and his trial, and according to the Earl of Clarendon's memoirs 'neither the judges nor any present at the trial did believe him guilty'. Clarendon felt that Hubert 'was a poor distracted wretch, weary of his life, and chose to part with it this way'. Conspiracy theories of a Catholic plot to burn London persisted for years. The slab was taken down after the accession of the Catholic king, James II, but reinstated in 1689 after the Protestant William III and Mary II took the throne. It appears to have been removed sometime in the 18th century as a large number of people were stopping to read it and blocking the street. It was found in 1876 in the backyard of 25 Pudding Lane during building work.

The inscription reads:
'Here by ye permission of heaven, hell broke loose upon this protestant city from the malicious hearts of barbarous papists, by hand of their agent Hubert, who confessed, and on ye ruines of this place declared the fact for which he was hanged (vizt) that here began that dredfull fire, which is described and perpetuated on and by the neighbouring pillar. Erected Anno 1681 in the Majoraltie of Sr Patience Ward Kt'