Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T18:37:00.206Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

QUANTITATIVE REASONING AND COMMERCIAL LOGIC IN REBUILDING PLANS AFTER THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON, 1666

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2020

AVITAL LAHAV Open the ORCID record for AVITAL LAHAV [Opens in a new window]
AVITAL LAHAV*
Affiliation:
The Hebrew University in Jerusalem
*
The Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Mount Scopus Campus, 9190501, IsraelAvital.lahav@mail.huji.ac.il
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Rebuilding plans submitted after the Great Fire of London in 1666 have been widely treated by historians of the Great Fire and in wide-scope histories of London and modern city planning. However, few attempts have been made to assign an overarching logic to all of them, while paying attention to their texts as well as to their maps. The following article highlights certain common features in these abortive efforts to plan London, assigns a common logic to all of them, and traces the origins of this logic. Such an analysis illuminates the economic principles in plans that are usually examined for their architectural features, and places them in a different historical context. Rather than seeing them as manifestations of contemporary architectural trends, or as a continuation of ongoing attempts to regulate London's cityscape, the plans are presented here as a response to emerging ideas in mid-seventeenth-century England about the nature of value and the economic function of cities within the world of commerce. Such a view reveals the complex interplay between London's early modern growth and the emergence of new forms of knowledge in seventeenth-century England and reasserts the importance of these plans as forerunners of present-day city planning.

Type
Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 63 , Issue 5 , December 2020 , pp. 1107 - 1131
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I wish to thank Dror Wahrman for his ongoing counsel and support, and the Mandel foundation for funding the research for this article, as a part of a larger project about the Great Fire of London. I am also grateful to Ted McCormick, Jaap Evert Abrahamse, the members of the Renaissance and Early Modern Studies Forum at the Hebrew University, and two anonymous reviewers of the Historical Journal for constructive comments on earlier drafts.

References

1 Henry Oldenburg to Robert Boyle, 10 Sept. 1666, London, Royal Society Archives (RSA), EL/OB/54.

2 Henry Oldenburg to Robert Boyle, 18 Sept. 1666, London, RSA, EL/OB/55.

3 Bray, William, ed., The diary of John Evelyn (2 vols., London, 1901), ii, p. 26Google Scholar.

4 Journals of the Court of Common Council, 28 Sept. 1666, London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), Col/cc/01/01/044/, fo. 141; Birch, Thomas, The history of the Royal Society of London for improving of natural knowledge, from its first rise (2 vols., London, 1756), ii, p. 115Google Scholar.

5 Colvin, Howard, A biographical dictionary of British architects, 1600–1840 (4th edn, New Haven, CT, 2007), pp. 695–7Google Scholar.

6 Richard Newcourt, Three maps of London, LMA, CLC/481/MS03441; Craig Spence, ‘Newcourt, Richard, the elder (c. 1610–1679)’, ODNB.

7 Francis Lodwick, Proposal for rebuilding the city of London, 1666, RSA, CI.P/17/7.

8 Valentine Knight, Scheme for rebuilding London, 20 Sept. 1666, English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) no. R224586.

9 Marquis of Lansdowne, ed., The Petty papers: some unpublished writings of Sir William Petty (2 vols., New York, NY, 1967), i, pp. 26–30Google Scholar.

10 Doornick, Marcus Willemsz, Platte grondt der verbrande stadt London (Amsterdam, 1666), LMA, Sc/gl/stp/006/004/016Google Scholar. The attribution of this map to Hooke has been convincingly challenged: Cooper, Michael, Robert Hooke and the rebuilding of London (Stroud, 2003), pp. 113–14Google Scholar.

11 Several examples are: Bell, Walter George, The Great Fire of London in 1666 (London, 2016; orig. edn 1920), pp. 230–42Google Scholar; Reddaway, Thomas Fiddian, The rebuilding of London after the Great Fire (Toronto, ON, 1940), pp. 30–9Google Scholar; Hearsey, John, London and the Great Fire (London, 1965), pp. 179–82Google Scholar; Porter, Stephen, The Great Fire of London (Stroud, 1996), pp. 95–105Google Scholar; Porter, Roy, London: a social history (Cambridge, MA, 1995), pp. 89–91Google ScholarPubMed; Eaton, Ruth, Ideal cities: utopianism and the (un)built environment (London, 2002), pp. 63, 90–2, 147Google Scholar; Morris, Anthony Edwin James, History of urban form (3rd edn, Harlow, 1994), pp. 255–60Google Scholar; Reps, John W., The making of urban America: a history of city planning in the United States (Princeton, NJ, 1965), pp. 15–18Google Scholar.

12 The tendency to focus on the maps rather than the texts of these plans has recently been noticed: Jenner, Mark S. R., ‘Print culture and the rebuilding of London after the fire: the presumptuous proposal of Valentine Knight’, Journal of British Studies, 56 (2017), pp. 1–26, at pp. 13–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Hanson, Julienne, ‘Order and structure in urban design: the plans for the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire of 1666’, Ekistics, 56 (1989), pp. 22–42Google Scholar; Porter, The Great Fire, pp. 95–7; Harrison, Michael, London growing: the development of a metropolis (London, 1965), pp. 148–50Google Scholar; Condorelli, Stefano, ‘Développement et modèles urbains: l'exemple de Londres en 1666’, LES CAHIERS DE L'ASPAN: Modèles, urbanisme et territoire, 3 (2008), pp. 3–4Google Scholar.

14 For a broader view of the economic changes of the era, see Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice, The modern world system II: mercantilism and the consolidation of the European world-economy, 1600–1750 (Berkeley, CA, 2011)Google Scholar; on the particular role of London in this process, see Braudel, Fernand, Civilization & capitalism, 15th–18th century: the perspective of the world, trans., Reynolds, Sian (Berkeley, CA, 1992), pp. 352–86Google Scholar.

15 Petty, William, Political arithmetic: or a discourse concerning the extent and value of lands, people, buildings (London, 1687), ESTC no. R17628, prefaceGoogle Scholar.

16 Dierig, Sven, Lachmund, Jens, and Mendelsohn, Andrew J., ‘Towards an urban history of science’, Osiris, 18 (2003), pp. 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hochadel, Oliver and Nieto-Galan, Augusti, eds., Urban histories of science (London, 2017)Google Scholar; O'Brian, Patrick, Keene, Derek, Hart, Marjolein T., and van der Wee, Herman, eds., Urban achievement in early modern Europe: golden ages in Antwerp, Amsterdam and London (Cambridge, 2001)Google Scholar; Harkness, Deborah E., The jewel house: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (New Haven, CT, 2007)Google Scholar; De Munck, Bert, ‘Disassembling the city: a historical and epistemological view on the agency of cities’, Journal of Urban History, 43 (2017), pp. 811–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 De Munck, Bert and Romano, Antonella, eds., Knowledge and the early modern city: a history of entanglements (Abingdon, 2019), esp. introductionCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Jenner, ‘Print culture’, pp. 4–5.

19 British Library (BL), ADD MS 25071, fo. 52v.

20 Bennett, J. A., ‘A study of Parentalia, with two unpublished letters of Sir Christopher Wren’, Annales of Science, 30 (1973), pp. 129–47CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

21 Evelyn, John, London revived: consideration for its rebuilding in 1666, ed. de Beer, Esmond Samuel (Oxford, 1938), pp. 37–8, 49Google Scholar.

22 Knight, Scheme for rebuilding, articles i–v; Newcourt, Three maps, pp. 2–3.

23 Knight, Scheme for rebuilding, article i; Lodwick, Proposal for rebuilding, article 5.

24 Newcourt, Three maps, pp. 2–3, 4–5; Evelyn, London revived, p. 38.

25 On the ongoing challenge which this smoke presented, see Jenner, Mark S. R., ‘The politics of London air: John Evelyn's Fumifugium and the Restoration’, Historical Journal, 38 (1995), pp. 535–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cavert, William M., The smoke of London: energy and environment in the early modern city (Cambridge, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Evelyn, John, Fumifugium, or the inconvenience of the air and smoak in London dissipated (London, 1661), ESTC no. R31456Google Scholar.

26 Evelyn, London revived, pp. 47–8.

27 BL, ADD MS 25071, fo. 52v, article 8.

28 Ibid., articles 3 and 6.

29 Newcourt, Three maps, p. 6.

30 Lansdowne, ed., Petty papers, p. 29.

31 Giedion, Sigfried, Space, time and architecture: the growth of a new tradition (Cambridge, MA, 1954), pp. 75–106Google Scholar; Pollak, Martha D., Turin, 1564–1680: urban design, military culture, and the creation of the absolutist capital (Chicago, IL, 1991), pp. 27, 48–9, 73–7Google Scholar; Bloomfield, Sir Reginald, Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban, 1633–1707 (New York, NY, 1971), passimGoogle Scholar; Walton, Guy, Louis XIV's Versailles (Chicago, IL, 1986), passimGoogle Scholar; Tazzara, Corey, The free port of Livorno and the transformation of the Mediterranean world, 1574–1790 (Oxford, 2017), pp. 1–12, 26–8Google Scholar.

32 Reddaway, The rebuilding, pp. 38–40, 66–70; Seaward, Paul, The Cavalier Parliament and the reconstruction of the old regime (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 236–75, 293Google Scholar.

33 Evelyn, London revived, p. 33; Knight, Scheme for rebuilding, article vii; BL, ADD MS 25071, fo. 52v, article 5.

34 Larkin, James F. and Hughes, Paul L., eds., Tudor royal proclamations (3 vols., New Haven, CT, 1964–9), ii, proclamation 649, iii, proclamation 815Google Scholar; idem, Stuart royal proclamations, i (Oxford, 1973), proclamations 25, 78, 87, 120, 121, 152, 175, 186, 204, 234, 255Google Scholar; Larkin, James F., ed., Stuart royal proclamation, ii (Oxford, 1983), proclamations 9, 136Google Scholar.

35 For earlier attempts to plan London, see Lilley, Keith D., ‘Urban planning after the Black Death: townscape transformation in later medieval England (1350–1530)’, Urban History, 42 (2015), pp. 22–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dyson, Tony, ‘King Alfred and the restoration of London’, London Journal, 15 (1990), pp. 99–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Booth, Phillip, ‘From property rights to public control: the quest for public interest in the control of urban environment’, Town Planning Review, 73 (2002), pp. 153–70, at pp. 163–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barnes, Thomas G., ‘The prerogative and environmental control of London building in the early seventeenth century: the lost opportunity’, California Law Review, 58 (1970), pp. 1332–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Lodwick, Proposal for rebuilding, article 2.

38 On the relation between commerce and fires in the late seventeenth-century city, see Garrioch, David, ‘1666 and London's fire history: a re-evaluation’, Historical Journal, 59 (2016), pp. 319–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Lodwick, Proposal for rebuilding, articles 2, 5, 6, and 9.

40 Ibid., articles 3 and 7.

41 Ibid., articles 7–8.

42 Evelyn, London revived, p. 37.

43 Ibid., pp. 42–3.

44 Knight, Scheme for rebuilding, opening remarks.

45 Newcourt, Three maps, p. 2.

46 Lansdowne, ed., Petty papers, p. 29.

47 Botero, Giovanni, The greatness of cities: a treatise concerning the causes of the greatness and the magnificence of cities (London, 1606)Google Scholar, trans. Robert Peterson, book 1, ch. 8, book 2, pp. 57–8.

48 Stow, John, A survey of London (London, 1598), ESTC no. S117887, pp. 467–72Google Scholar; Howell, James, Londinopolis (London, 1657), ESTC no. R13420, pp. 381–407, esp. p. 385Google Scholar.

49 Lubbock, Jules, The tyranny of taste: the politics of architecture and design in Britain: 1550–1960 (New Haven, CT, 1995), pp. xiv, 23–30Google Scholar; Smuts, Malcolm R., ‘The court and its neighborhood: royal policy and urban growth in the early Stuart West End’, Journal of British Studies, 30 (1991), pp. 117–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Brewer, John, ‘The number 45: a Wilkite political symbol’, in Baxter, Stephen B., ed., England's rise to greatness, 1660–1763 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1983), pp. 349–80, at p. 374Google Scholar.

51 Firth, C. H. and Rait, R. S., eds., Acts and ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660 (London, 1911), pp. 722–53Google Scholar.

52 Toby Barnard, ‘Petty, Sir William (1623–1687)’, ODNB.

53 Petty, William, The history of the Down Survey in Ireland (Dublin, 1851), ed. Larcom, Thomas Aiskew, esp. pp. 56–7, 93–101Google Scholar.

54 Goodacre, Hugh, The economic thought of William Petty: exploring the colonialist roots of economics (Abingdon, 2018), pp. 2–7, 95–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCormick, Ted, William Petty and the ambitions of political arithmetic (Oxford, 2009), pp. 113–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 McRae, Andrew, ‘To know one's own: estate surveying and the representation of land in early modern England’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 56 (1993), pp. 333–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Petty, William, A treatise of taxes and contributions (London, 1662), ESTC no. R33399Google Scholar.

57 Ibid., p. 31.

58 Ibid., pp. 31–2.

59 Graunt, John, Natural and political observations mentioned in the following Index and made upon the bills of mortality (London, 1662), ESTC no. R13975Google Scholar. Some evidence suggests that Petty was the co-author of this work: Hull, Charles Henry, The economic writings of Sir William Petty (2 vols., London, 1899), i, pp. xxxix–livGoogle Scholar.

60 Graunt, Natural and political observations, pp. 72–4.

61 Glass, D. V., ‘John Graunt and his natural and political observations’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 159: 974 (Dec. 1963), pp. 2–37, at p. 4Google ScholarPubMed; Evelyn refers to Graunt's book in: Evelyn, London revived, pp. 38–9.

62 Ash, Eric H., The draining of the Fens: projectors, popular politics, and state building in early modern England (Baltimore, MD, 2017), passimGoogle Scholar.

63 Idem, ‘Reclaiming a new world: fen drainage, improvement, and projectors in seventeenth-century England’, Early Science and Medicine, 21 (2016), pp. 445–69, esp. pp. 457–67Google Scholar; Hartlib, Samuel, A discovery for division or setting out of land, as to the best form (London, 1653), ESTC no. R9861Google Scholar; Blith, Walter, The English improver, or a new survey of husbandry (London, 1649), ESTC no. R16946Google Scholar.

64 Hartlib, A discovery for division, pp. 1–12; Grove, Richard, ‘Cressy Dymock and the draining of the Fens: an early agricultural model’, Geographical Journal, 147 (1981), pp. 27–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 Hartlib, A discovery for division, pp. 3–8.

66 Ibid., p. 11.

67 Hartlib, Samuel, The reformed commonwealth of bees (London, 1655), ESTC no. R207475, 50–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Petty, William, The advice of W.P. to Mr. Samuel Hartlib, for the advancement of some particular parts of learning (London, 1648)Google Scholar; John Beale to Samuel Hartlib, 10 Feb. 1660, Hartlib papers, 67/22/7B, www.dhi.ac.uk/hartlib; Samuel Hartlib to John Evelyn, 21 May 1660, BL, ADD MS 15948, fo. 100A; Lodwick, Francis, A common writing (London, 1647), ESTC No. R201386CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vivian Salmon, ‘Lodwick, Francis (bap. 1619, d. 1694)’, ODNB.

68 Ash, The draining of the Fens, ch. 8.

69 Bell, Adrian R., Brookes, Chris, and Killick, Helen, ‘Medieval property investors, ca. 1300–1500’, Enterprise & Society, 20 (2019), pp. 575–612CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nichols, David, The later medieval city, 1300–1500 (London and New York, NY, 2014), pp. 84–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Keene, Derek, ‘The property market in English towns, a.d. 1100–1600’, Collection de L'École Française de Rome, 122 (1989), pp. 201–26Google Scholar; Catherin Casson and Marc Casson, ‘Property rents in medieval English towns: Hull in the fourteenth century’, Urban History, n.d., pp. 1–24, doi:10.1017/S096392681800041X; idem, ‘Location, location, location? Analyzing property rents in medieval Gloucester’, Economic History Review, 69 (2016), pp. 575–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Stone, Laurence, ‘The residential development of the West End of London in the seventeenth century’, in Malament, Barbara C., ed., After the Reformation: essays in honor of J. H. Hexter (Philadelphia, PA, 1980), pp. 167–212Google Scholar; Baer, William C., ‘The house-building sector of London's economy, 1550–1650’, Urban History, 39 (2012), pp. 409–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clarke, Linda, Building capitalism: historical change and the labour process in the production of the built environment (London and New York, NY, 1992), pp. 35–45Google Scholar.

72 Stone, ‘The residential development’, pp. 186–9; and cf. Smuts, ‘The court and its neighborhood’, pp. 118–29.

73 Petty, A treatise of taxes, p. 23; Graunt, Natural and political observations, p. 56.

74 Booth, ‘From property rights’, pp. 157–63.

75 Idem, ‘Speculative housing and the land market in London, 1660–1730: four case studies’, Town Planning Review, 51 (1980), pp. 379–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harrison, London growing, pp. 141–5.

76 McKellar, Elizabeth, The birth of modern London: the development and design of the city, 1660–1720 (Manchester, 1999), pp. 38–42Google Scholar; Earle, Peter, The making of the English middle class: business, society and family in London, 1660–1730 (Berkeley, CA, 1989), pp. 152–7Google Scholar.

77 Phillippes, Henry, The purchaser's pattern (London, 1653), ESTC no. R218243Google Scholar; Willsford, Thomas, The scales of commerce and trade (London, 1659), ESTC no. R209647Google Scholar; Primatt, Stephen, The city and country purchaser and builder (London, 1667), ESTC no. R24068Google Scholar; Leybourn, William, A platform for purchasers, guide for builders, mate for measurers in three books (London, 1668), ESTC no. R2787Google Scholar.

78 Bell, The Great Fire, pp. 244–6; Primatt, The city and country purchaser, preface; Leybourn, A platform for purchasers, preface.

79 Phillippes, The purchaser's pattern, pp. 1–4; Primatt, The city and country purchaser, pp. 10–11, 15.

80 Baer, William C., ‘The institution of residential investment in seventeenth-century London’, Business History Review, 76 (2002), pp. 515–51, at pp. 539–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Sarah Bendall, ‘Leybourn, William (1626–1716)’, ODNB.

82 Baer, ‘The institution of residential investment’, pp. 529–32.

83 Wotton, Henry, The elements of architecture (London, 1624), ESTC no. S120324Google Scholar; Gerbier, Balthazar, Council and advice to all builders (London, 1663), ESTC no. R16624Google Scholar.

84 Leybourne, William, Planometria: or, the whole art of surveying of land (London, 1650), ESTC no. R227995Google Scholar; idem, Panarithmologia: being a mirror, breviate, treasure, mate, for merchants… (London, 1693), ESTC no. R2219Google Scholar.

85 Coleman, Donald Cuthbert, The economy of England, 1450–1750 (Oxford, 1977), pp. 138–40Google Scholar; Davis, Ralph, ‘English foreign trade, 1660–1700’, in Minchinton, Walter Edward, ed., The growth of English overseas trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (London, 1969), pp. 78–98Google Scholar; F. J. Fisher, ‘London's export trade in the seventeenth century’, in ibid., pp. 64–77; Zahedieh, Nuala, ‘Overseas expansion and trade in the seventeenth century’, in Canny, Nicholas, ed., The Oxford history of the British empire, i: The origins of empire (Oxford, 1998), pp. 398–422, at pp. 398–407Google Scholar.

86 Appleby, Joyce Oldham, Economic thought and ideology in seventeenth-century England (Princeton, NJ, 1978), p. 35Google Scholar.

87 Munn, Thomas, England's treasure by forraign trade (London, 1664), ESTC no. R25740, pp. 23–4Google Scholar.

88 Worsley, Benjamin, Free ports: the nature and necessity of them stated (London, 1652), ESTC no. R21067, p. 1Google Scholar.

89 Appleby, Economic thought, pp. 73–4.

90 Temple, William, Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands (London, 1673), ESTC no. R6158, p. 186Google Scholar.

91 Leng, Thomas, ‘Commercial conflict and regulation in the discourse of trade in seventeenth-century England’, Historical Journal, 48 (2005), pp. 933–54, at pp. 945–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

92 Keymer, John, A clear and evident way for enriching the nations of England and Ireland (London, 1650), ESTC no. R6727, pp. 2–3Google Scholar.

93 Robinson, Henry, Brief considerations, concerning the advancement of trade and navigation (London, 1650), ESTC no. R9629, p. 6Google Scholar.

94 Raithby, John, ed., Statutes of the realm, v: 1628–80 (s. l: Great Britain Record Commission, 1819), pp. 449–52, article viiGoogle Scholar.