THE flames of the Great Fire were under control on 5 September 1666. On 11 September
Dr Wren submitted to the King his sketch-plan for the rebuilding. ¹ On 13 September
John Evelyn submitted another plan, and on the same day a royal Proclamation was
issued announcing, among other things, that the City would be rebuilt in brick and stone
with wider streets, that a survey was to be made, and that a new plan for the burnt area
would be adopted.

To implement this Proclamation, six men were immediately given instructions -- three
acting for the King in Council and three for the City. The King's three men (called
Commissioners for Rebuilding the City of London') were Dr Christopher Wren, Hugh
May, and Roger Pratt. The City's representatives were Robert Hooke, Edward Jerman,
and Peter Mills. This joint committee had two main tasks. First, to get the burnt area
surveyed. Second, to formulate proposals for future procedure in such a way that they
could be embodied in legislation. In their first task they failed. For a variety of reasons,
which need not detain us, the making of a Survey, with a view to a fundamental redis-
tribution of sites, was simply not possible. For technical, economic, and psychological
reasons it failed. ²

The Committee's second task, to formulate methods of rebuilding, was consummated
in the first Act for Rebuilding the City of London, passed in 1667. This Act provided, in the
first place, for the structural standardization of the new houses in three types -- all of brick
and all with specified floor-heights and wall-thicknesses. In the second place, it provided
for a certain number of public improvements, notably for the conversion of part of the
Fleet River into a canal and for the provision of a Thames-side quay. In the third place it
authorized the collection of a tax on coals coming into the Port of London, the proceeds
to be applied to compensation connected with the improvements and to the building of
gaols, as being the most essential of public works. The Act made no provision for either
the City Churches or St Paul's Cathedral, nor were the proceeds of the tax adequate even
for compensation. Accordingly, a further Act was passed in 1670, trebling the tax on coal
and allocating specific proportions of it to the Churches, the Cathedral, and the City's
own public works.

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