increased as new buildings tended to encroach on the roadway and vehicles in-
creased in size and number.^128 The fire razed the jumble of wooden buildings
within the walls and provided an opportunity to ease some of the difficulties that
the unregulated growth of the City had created. The Rebuilding Acts of 1667
imposed new standards ofhouse construction, required streets to be of a certain
width, and prevented buildings from encroaching into the streets as so many
had in the old City. If only indirectly, these measures almost certainly encour-
aged improvements in the way the City was illuminated at night.^129
An entirely new start was not feasible: the cost ofbuying land to lay out a new
street plan would have been prohibitive, and in any case rebuilding and rehous-
ing had to begin quickly. But something could be done to widen major streets
and to remove bottlenecks, and some of this was successfully managed in the re-
building of the City in 1667 and after, much of it due to Charles II’s involvement
and prodding. In the rebuilding not only were controls imposed to prohibit the
encroachment of newly-built houses into the street, but the streets themselves
were classified, and attempts were made to establish minimum widths for at
least some of the more important of them. The Rebuilding Acts established cat-
egories of streets: high or principal streets; streets and lanes of note; and the by-
streets and alleys and passages that connected residential courts to the streets.^130
The principal streets like Cheapside and the Poultry, Cornhill and Lombard
Street were widened and made uniform; and the more important secondary
streets and lanes were sufficiently enlarged to enable two drays to pass safely
without endangering the houses on either side. In addition, as we have seen, the
gates at the western edge of the City—Ludgate and Newgate—were rebuilt and
widened after being completely destroyed, and posterns or side gates were built
to accommodate pedestrians who would otherwise impede the road traffic.
These measures did something to alleviate the fearful traffic jams that had long
been common at these gates astride the two main routes between the City and
West End because of the narrowness of the passages they had provided.^131
How these new streets might be lit was not apparently considered by the re-
builders. The old system of street lighting was simply continued under new cir-
cumstances. But the old standard clearly did not suit the new City, perhaps
because individuals were slow to work out ways of putting out lanterns on the
new brick houses, or the old lanterns failed to light a sufficient portion of the
newly widened streets, or because the new houses simply seemed to require
grander illumination. The reconstruction after the fire may thus have suggested
the inadequacies of the old lighting arrangements. They were to be increasingly
exposed by even more profound changes in the City than those wrought by the
Policing the Night Streets 209(^128) Norman G. Brett-James, The Growth of Stuart London( 1935 ), ch. 17.
(^129) Reddaway, Rebuilding of London, chs 3 – 4, 6, 10.
(^13019) Chas II, c. 3 ( 1666 ), s. 6 ; Peter Earle, A City Full of People: Men and Women of London, 1650 – 1750
( 1994 ), 11.
(^131) Reddaway, Rebuilding of London, 102 – 11, 142–5, 288– 99.