Who did people blame?

London was a suspicious city after years of war and religious tensions. Almost as soon as the fire began, rumours spread that it was a deliberate act of arson by the French or Dutch, or by Catholics wanting to punish London as a Protestant city. Mobs attacked foreigners living in London. False rumours of a French invasion spread. Dutch residents were also suspected because English ships were on the brink of battle with the Netherlands.

Cornelius Riedtveldt, a Dutch baker from Westminster, was set upon and his bakery looted. The king went to speak to homeless Londoners at Moorfields to assure them that the fire was not a plot.

On 25 September 1666, the government set up a committee of 70 members to investigate the causes of the fire. They questioned witnesses and searched the houses of foreigners and Catholics to find evidence of a plot.

The committee presented their first report on 22 January 1667 but made no judgement. Some of the evidence from the report was printed and distributed anyway, causing great anti-Catholic feeling in London and beyond.

Before the government investigation was over, a Frenchman, Robert Hubert, confessed to starting the fire and was hanged on 27 October 1666. At first Hubert said that he had started a fire in Whitehall but later he changed his story, saying that he had put a fireball into the Pudding Lane bakery where the fire began.

The jury believed his mental health to be unstable, but he was a convenient scapegoat. Thomas Farriner, who owned the bakery where the fire began, signed the ‘True Bill’ against Hubert that sentenced him to death. Hubert was probably innocent but his confession saved the baker from blame.

Ten-year-old Edward Taylor from Covent Garden also claimed he and his uncle started the Great Fire by throwing two fireballs through the window of Thomas Farriner’s bakery in Pudding Lane. He said they did the same thing in houses across the City.