So that, though we know their refusal of the place, yet
they know not that we know it, nor the King obliged to show his
sense of the affront. That the Dutch are in very great straits,
so as to be said to be not able to set out their fleet this year.
By and by comes Sir Robert Viner and Lord Mayor [Sir William
Bolton.] to ask the King's direction about measuring out the
streets according to the new Act for building of the City,
wherein the King is to be pleased. But he says that the way
proposed in Parliament by Colonel Birch would have been the best,
to have chosen some persons in trust, and sold the whole ground,
and let it be sold again by them with preference to the old
owner, which would have certainly caused the City to be built
where these Trustees pleased; whereas now great differences will
be, and the streets built by fits, and not entire till all
differences be decided. This, as he tells it, I think would have
been the best way. I enquired about the Frenchman that was said
to fire the City, and was hanged for it by his own confession,
that he was hired for it by a Frenchman of Roane, and that he did
with a stick reach in a fire-ball in at a window of the house:
whereas the master of the house, who is the King's baker, and his
son, and daughter, do all swear there was no such window, and
that the fire did not begin there-abouts.
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