A passage in the “Diary” in which Pepys remarks on the great streets “marked out with piles drove in the ground,” and expresses the opinion that, if ever so built, they will form “a noble sight,” would seem to show that at one time a better plan of building was contemplated.[160]
Had the plan suggested in Parliament by Colonel Birch been carried out, great difficulties would have been avoided. His proposal was, that the whole ground should be sold and placed in trust. Then the trustees were to sell again, with preference to the former owners, by which means a general plan of building might have been adopted; but an unequalled opportunity of making London into a fine city was let slip.[161]
At one time it was supposed that the Fire would cause a westward march of trade, but the City asserted the old supremacy when it was rebuilt.
Soon after the conclusion of the “Diary,” Pepys left the Navy Office, and the latter years of his life were spent partly in York Buildings and partly at Clapham. It was after the Restoration that the West End grew into importance, and the house at the foot of Buckingham Street, from the windows of which Pepys could look out upon the river, was not built when the Diarist was settled in Crutched Friars. It was erected upon part of the site of York House, whose last resident was the worthless Buckingham:—
“Beggar’d by fools, whom still he found too late,
He had his jest, and they had his estate.”
This house, in which Pepys was pleased to find “the remains of the noble soul of the late Duke of Buckingham appearing, in the door-cases and the windows,”[162] was sold by his son and demolished in 1672.
As Pepys left London so it remained in its chief features for more than one hundred years, and it was not until the beginning of the present century that the vast extension of the town to the north and south began to make itself felt.