Lord Russell and Sir Henry Capel observed to the House of Commons (1680) that those that were taken in carrying on that wicked act, were generally discharged without trial.
In 1679, the House of Commons were suddenly alarmed with an information of a fresh design of the Papists to burn London a second time. The house of one Bird, in Fetter-lane, being set on fire, his servant Elizabeth Oxly, was suspected of firing it wilfully, and sent to prison. She confessed the fact, and declared she had been employed to do it by one Stubbs, a Papist, who had promised her five pounds. Stubbs being taken up, confessed he persuaded her to do it, and that Father Giffard, his confessor, put him upon it; telling him it was no sin to burn all the houses of heretics. He added he had frequent conferences on this affair with Giffard and two Irishmen. Stubbs and the maid declared, the Papists were to make an insurrection, and expected an army of sixty thousand men from France. It was generally inferred from this incident, that it was not Giffard's fault (nor that of his party), that the city of London was not burnt, as in the year 1666; and confirmed those in their opinion who thought that general conflagration was the contrivance and work of the Papists.
The hand of man was made use of in the beginning and carrying on of this fire. The beginning of the fire at such a time when there had been so much hot weather which had dried the houses, and made them the more fit for fuel; the beginning of it in such a place, where there were so many timber houses, and the shops filled with so much combustible matter; and the beginning of it just when the wind did blow so fiercely upon that corner toward the rest of the city, which then was like tinder to the sparks; this doth smell of a popish design, hatched in the same nest with the gunpowder plot. The world sufficiently knows how correspondent this is to popish principles and practices; they might, without any scruple of their kinds of conscience, burn an heretical city, as they count it, into ashes: for beside the dispensations they can have from his holiness (rather his wickedness) it is not unlikely but they count such an action as this meritorious.
Lord Chancellor (Earl of Nottingham) in his speech in giving judgment against Lord Viscount Stafford, said, "Who can doubt any longer that London was burnt by Papists?" though there was not one word in the whole trial relating to it.
The inscription on the plinth of the lower pedestal of the Monument has given an opportunity to the Reverend Mr. Crookshanks to say, it appears that the Papists were the authors of the fire, and that the Parliament being of the same persuasion, addressed the king.
The inscription is in English:
"This pillar was set up in perpetual remembrance of the most dreadful burning of this protestant city, begun and carried on by the treachery and malice of the popish faction, in the beginning of September, in the year of our Lord 1666. In order to the carrying on their horrid plot for extirpating the protestant religion and old English liberty, and introducing popery and slavery."[14]
This inscription was erased by King James upon his succession to the crown; but reinscribed presently after the revolution, in such deep characters as are not easily to be blotted out.
The latter part of the inscription on the north side (Sed furor papisticus, qui tam dira patravit, nondum restinguitur) containing an offensive truth, was erased at King James's accession, and reinscribed soon after the revolution.
Mr. Pope differs much in his opinion concerning these inscriptions, when he says—