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Print Culture and the Rebuilding of London after the Fire: The Presumptuous Proposals of Valentine Knight

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2017

Abstract

Histories of the Great Fire of London regularly mention and reproduce Valentine Knight's scheme for London's reconstruction, published in 1666, and note that he was imprisoned for his pains. His proposal, with new streets laid out on a rough grid and a canal through the heart of the city, has attained a walk-on part in longue durée histories of urban planning. However, Knight has remained a mysterious and little studied figure; the significance of his imprisonment and of the fact that his was the only scheme to be published remain unexplored. By reconstructing his biography and discovering the reason for his incarceration, and by relating his and the other proposals for the rebuilding of the capital after the fire to the history of public opinion, this article uses this episode to explore the tacit rules governing the discussion of public affairs in Restoration England. Further, by examining the publication history of all the immediate post-fire schemes for rebuilding London from 1666 to 1750, it traces how architectural plans gradually became objects for critical discussion in the worlds of print and periodical.

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Articles
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Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2017 

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References

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17 These are Wing K693 (double counted as ESTC R224586 and R41646) and K694 (ESTC R29936).

18 TNA, SP29/179/97. It has no Wing number and is ESTC R206528.

19 Valentine Knight, Proposals of a new Model for Rebuilding the City of LONDON (n.d.) was produced in 1749–50. The Huntington Library copy is Wing K694A, it has the ESTC number R25444, and it is on Early English Books Online. Cataloguers followed the date on Knight's proposal: “20 September 1666.” Some are correcting this: Prints and Drawings, k1268420, London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter LMA).

20 Knight, Proposals. This caption is often cropped.

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33 TNA, PC2/59, p. 182.

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38 MJ/SR/1258/277, LMA.

39 TNA PC2/59, 22 June 1666, 68. Gray's Inn records do not mention this petition, although they comment on many nearby building developments: Gray's Inn Archives, London, Book of Orders, vol. 1 (2) and vol. 2.

40 It probably lay behind an alleged assault on Knight in 1665, MJ/SR/1308/81, 85 and 91, LMA.

41 TNA, C10/81/64; C10/102/101; C10/168/5; C6/34/43; C5/48/77, Answer of Perkins and Langeford; C78/750, no. 20, http://aalt.law.uh.edu/AALT7/C78/C78no750/IMG_0038.htm.

42 TNA, C5/48/77, Answer of Perkins and Langeford; C6/181/72, Answer of Perkins.

43 This is captured in a petition to Charles asking for a commission in a privately endowed military force designed to serve the king, TNA, SP29/281A/79.

44 In the 1660s and 1670s both were engaged in West End property development. Henning, Basil Duke, ed., The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1660–1690, 3 vols. (London, 1983)Google Scholar, s. n., “Guy, Henry”; Cruickshanks, Eveline, Handley, Stuart and Hayton, D. W., eds., The History of Parliament: the House of Commons, 1690–1715, 5 vols. (Cambridge, 2002)Google Scholar, s. n., “Pulteney, Sir William”; London Planning Committee, Survey of London, vols. 29 and 30, Parish of St. James Westminster (London, 1960), 22, 27, 467n, 533; idem, Survey of London, vols. 31 and 32, Parish of St. James Westminster (London, 1963), 116–19, 341n, 367.

45 TNA, SP29/448/14. This must date from between 7 May 1662, when the statute became law, and 27 May 1662 when the commission was issued. Worcester College, Oxford TC 20.14(38), hackney coach licenses.

46 TNA, C181/7, p. 151; E101/263/1, fol. 3; E101/628/1, Items 2 and 6 (1663); E101/635/14. Knight's salary was £80pa. For his work, E101/623/2, Order of 23 March 1664; E351/1744. By spring 1667 Knight was no longer in post, E101/623/5.

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61 A schematic plan appeared on Platte Grandt de Stadt Londen met de Aenwysinghe hoe die Afgebrandt is (Amsterdam, 1666). Cooper, “More Beautiful City,” 112–13, debunks suggestions that this was Hooke's.

62 I can find no evidence for Joseph Monteyne's suggestion that Knight had a drawing at his house that “interested parties” could consult, in The Printed Image in Early Modern London: Urban Space, Visual Representation, and Social Exchange (Aldershot, 2007), 131. He cannot recall what led him to suggest this. I am grateful to him for helpful e-mail discussions about this matter and for checking his notes. See also note 134.

63 Knight did not visualize cartographically: the later drawing reveals that the absence of north-south streets in part of the city, Knight, Proposals.

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74 TNA, PC2/59, p. 182.

75 Hereafter Knight fades from the historical record. In 1668 he remarried, Lambeth Palace Library VMI/5 25 May 1668; 1668 and 1672 saw law suits over his London property, TNA, C78/750, no. 20; C10/168/5. He was probably the Valentine Knight of St. Andrew Holborn indicted for recusancy in 1679, MJ/SBB/361, 20, LMA; Jeaffreson, John Cordy, ed., Middlesex County Records, vol. 4 (London, 1892), 130 Google Scholar. If so, he died that year, P82/AND/A/010/MS06673/5, 7 October 1679, LMA; TNA, PROB11/362/243. A son sued about Holborn property in 1698, TNA, C5/137/18.

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85 Charles II, His Majestie's Declaration, 1–3, 9–10; Reddaway, The Rebuilding of London after the Great Fire, 49–53.

86 Hobart to Verney, 13 September 1666, BL Microfilm 636/21; Broderick to Ormonde, 27 October 1666, Carte MS 35, fol. 109v, Bodl.

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92 Raine, Depositions, 145; R. Davies, A Memoir of the York Press (repr., York, 1988), 98; Plomer, H. R. and Peddie, R. A., “Stephen Bulkley, Printer,” Library 8, no. 29 (January 1907): 4256, at 54–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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97 Monteyne, Printed Image, chap. 3; Hinds, Peter, “The Horrid Popish Plot”: Roger L'Estrange and the Circulation of Political Discourse in Late Seventeenth-Century London (Oxford, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 10. Five of the forty-four items published in York during the 1660s concerned the Great Fire, ESTC, 6 August 2013.

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101 Walker, Matthew, “The Limits of Collaboration: Robert Hooke, Christopher Wren and the Designing of the Monument to the Great Fire of London,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society 65, no. 2 (June 2011): 121–43, esp. at 124–25, 138–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reddaway, The Rebuilding of London after the Great Fire, 54–90; E. S. de Beer, review London in Flames, London in Glory: Poems on the Fire and Rebuilding of London, 1666–1709, by Aubin, Robert Arnold, Review of English Studies 20, no. 78 (April 1944): 166–68, at 167Google Scholar; Patterson, Long Parliament, 14–16.

102 Jnl 46, fols. 120v, 121v, LMA.

103 London Gazette, 13–17 September 1666; Charles II, His Majestie's Declaration, 8–9; Stevenson, City and the King, 136–39.

104 At the Court at Whitehall the eight of May 1667 (London, 1667); London, Court of Common Council, An ACT declaring what Streets and streight and narrow passages (London, 1667). See also, A Table of the severall scantlings & sorts of tymber that shall bee used … within the citty of London (London, 1666); London, Court of Common Council, Whereas in the act of this present Parliament for re-building the City of London (London, 1667); London Gazette, 30 December 1666–2 January 1667. The rebuilding statute was in A collection of all the statutes at large (London, 1667), 161–75, bought by provincial gentlemen: Dominic Winter Auctions, Printed Books and Maps 19–20 April 2014, lot 308.

105 City of London, Commissioners of Sewers, Rules and Directions … for the Pitching … the Streets (London, 1667); Rules and Directions … for the Pitching … the Streets (London, 1668).

106 Mears et al., Special Worship since the Reformation, 690–91; Wren Society Publications 13: 105, 125, 168; Frances Maguire, “The Power of the Ephemeral: Print, Record Making and Government in Seventeenth-Century England” (MA thesis, University of York, 2013), chap. 2; Field, Jacob F., “Charitable Giving and Its Distribution to Londoners after the Great Fire, 1666–1676,” Urban History 38, no. 1 (May 2011): 323 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

107 Borsay, Peter, The English Urban Renaissance (Oxford, 1989), 4547, 90–95Google Scholar; Farr, Michael, ed., The Great Fire of Warwick 1694 (Hertford, 1992), xiiixiv Google Scholar.

108 Grub Street Journal (hereafter GSJ), 280 (8 May 1735). This has hitherto escaped scholarly notice.

109 Hillhouse, James T., The Grub-Street Journal (Boston, 1928)Google Scholar; Goldgar, Bertrand A., introduction to The Grub Street Journal, 1730–33, 4 vols. (London, 2002) 1:vii–xvGoogle Scholar; Pettit, Alexander, Illusory Consensus: Bolingbroke and the Polemical Response to Walpole, 1730–1737 (London, 1997), chap. 5Google Scholar. On the wider culture of criticism that emerged in the early eighteenth century, see Solkin, Painting for Money.

110 This architectural turn was not without precedent; see Brownell, Morris R., Alexander Pope and the Arts of Georgian England (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar, part 3 and esp. plate 54.

111 Weekly Register, 189–213 (20 October 1733–6 April 1734); Craske, “From Burlington Gate.”

112 James Ralph, Critical Review of the Publick Buildings, Statues and Ornaments In, and about London and Westminster (London, 1734; facsimile ed., Farnborough, 1971). On Ralph, poet, historian, and partisan of Hogarth, see Harris and Savage, British Architectural Books, s.n.; Ronald Paulson, Hogarth His Life, Art and Times, 3 vols. (New Brunswick, 1991), 2:52–57, 78–79, 137–38.

113 Craske, “From Burlington Gate”; Hillhouse, Grub-Street Journal, 71–74; Ralph, Critical Review, 5.

114 Ibid., 47, 8–9.

115 Craske, “From Burlington Gate.” The Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey took great umbrage when it suggested that they might be profiting from the viewing of the tombs, Weekly Miscellany, 73 (4 May 1734); Gentleman's Magazine, 4 (May 1734), 246; Ralph, New Critical Review, 2nd ed. (London, 1736), 84–91.

116 Pope, Alexander, The Dunciad, ed. Sutherland, James (London, 1963), 165 Google Scholar. On derivative expression, see Universal Spectator, 300 (6 July 1734).

117 GSJ, 230 (23 May 1734) and 240 (1 August 1734); Gentleman's Magazine, 4 (May 1734), 261.

118 Some issues are reprinted in Knoop, Douglas, Jones, G. P., and Hamer, Douglas, eds., Early Masonic Pamphlets (Manchester, 1945)Google Scholar.

119 GSJ, 237–71.

120 GSJ, 237; Harris and Savage, Architectural Books, s.n. Langley. For Hawksmoor's response to Ralph's views, see Kerry Downes, Hawksmoor (London, 1959), 255.

121 GSJ, 280.

122 Ralph, Critical Review, 1. Langley would soon take up cudgels in the next architectural pamphlet war of the 1730s: the dispute about Westminster Bridge in the mid-1730s. See O'Byrne, Alison, “Composing Westminster Bridge: Public Improvement and National Identity in Eighteenth-Century London,” in The Age of Projects, ed. Novak, Maximilian E. (Toronto, 2008), 243–70Google Scholar.

123 Ralph, Critical Review, sheet facing p. 1, 3–4. See also GSJ, 227 (13 July 1734).

124 Hawksmoor, N., Remarks on the founding and carrying on the buildings of the Royal Hospital at Greenwich (London, 1728), 7 Google Scholar.

125 Hart, Vaughan, Nicholas Hawksmoor: Rebuilding Ancient Wonders (London, 2002)Google Scholar.

126 Harris and Savage, Architectural Books, s.n., Wren; Timothy Clayton, “Hulsbergh, Henry (d. 1729),” ODNB, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/14120, accessed 28 September 2016; Wren Society Publications, 9: plates 25, 26; Wren Society Publications, 14: xii–xiv, plates 1–5 and 12–13; BL Add. MS 25071, fols. 65–65v; Bennett, J. A., “A Study of Parentalia, with Two Unpublished Letters of Sir Christopher Wren,” Annals of Science 30, no. 2 (June 1973): 129–47, at 136n, 139nCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Moore, John E., “The Monument, or, Christopher Wren's Roman Accent,” Art Bulletin 80, no. 3 (September 1998): 498533, at 512CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fourdrinier, Paul, A Plan of the city of London, after the great fire in the year of Our Lord 1666 with the modell of the new city according to the design and proposal of Sr Christopher Wren ([London], 1744)Google Scholar, http://purl.pt/3475.

127 Rosemary Sweet, Antiquaries (London, 2004); Clayton, English Print, chap. 2; Enright, “Richard Rawlinson,” 319–21; Myrone, Martin, “Graphic Antiquarianism in Eighteenth Century Britain: The Career and Reputation of George Vertue,” in Producing the Past, ed. Myrone, Martin and Pelz, Lucy (Aldershot, 1999), 3549 Google Scholar; Evans, Joan, A History of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford, 1956), chaps. 4–7Google Scholar.

128 Society of Antiquaries, London (hereafter SoA) MS 264B, 199–201; SoA Minute Book 1, 51; SoA Minute Book 3, 95. Vertue's 1737 version of Agas is Victoria and Albert Museum, Prints and Drawings, 29190:1–8, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/name/ralph-agas/79077/; Vertue, George, Vertue Notebooks, vol. 5 (Oxford, 1937–38), 108 Google Scholar; An Exact Surveigh of the Streets, Lanes, and Churches, Comprehendd. within the Ruins of the City of London (London, 1723)Google Scholar; Pettit, Illusory Consensus, 36; Evans, History of the Society of Antiquaries, 70.

129 SoA Minute Book 4, fols. 198–99; Minute Book 5, 205, 227; Londinum Redivivum (London, 1748); A Plan of London (London, 1748).

130 Moore, “The Monument,” 512; Fourdrinier, Plan of the city of London, http://purl.pt/3475.

131 Nichols, John, Illustrations of Literature of the Eighteenth Century, 6 vols. (1817–31), 4:206Google Scholar; Brian J. Enright, “Richard Rawlinson: Collector, Antiquary, and Topographer,” (PhD diss., Oxford University, 1956), Appendix D, v; GSJ, 280 (8 May 1735).

132 SoA Minute Book 6, 11, 34.

133 Knight, Proposals. The Society's minutes wrote of “a proff Print from a drawing of Valintine Knight's, intended for a Scheem for the rebuilding of London after the fire Septr 1666,” raising the possibility that Vertue had copied from a manuscript of Knight's proposals, SoA Minute Book 6, 11. However, the Society's clerk was probably mistaken. First, he erroneously described Knight as “Dr .” Secondly, whereas Vertue's engravings of Wren's and Evelyn's plans faithfully followed how they had drawn St. Paul's, presenting floor plans which were nothing like Wren's final cathedral, the rendition of Knight's design was clearly based on London's post-fire fabric. If he had been engraving a drawing of Knight's for Rawlinson, it is most unlikely that Vertue would have redrawn it so freely and anachronistically or have described it as a “sketch.” I conclude, therefore, that the design was engraved from a sketch drawn in 1749.

134 Clayton, Timothy, The English Print 1688–1802 (New Haven, 1997), esp. 62–63, 75–76, 161–64Google Scholar; Hallett, Mark, “The View across the City: William Hogarth and the Visual Culture of Eighteenth-Century London,” in Hogarth: Representing Nature's Machines, ed. Ogée, Frédéric, Wagner, Peter, and Bindman, David (Manchester, 2001)Google Scholar; Hyde, Ralph, “Images of St Paul's,” in St Paul's: The Cathedral Church of London, 604–2004, ed. Keene, Derek, Burns, Arthur, and Saint, Andrew (New Haven, 2004), 317–34Google Scholar.

135 Clayton, English Print, 62–63; The Oxford Almanack (Oxford, 1716); Downes, Kerry, Hawksmoor (London, 1959), 87, 141Google Scholar; Salmon, Frank, “Public Commissions,” in William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain, ed. Weber, Susan (New Haven, 2013), 314–63, at 321Google Scholar; Smith, Charles Suarez, The Rise of Design (London, 2000), esp. 1–14, 33–41, 59–64Google Scholar.

136 Wren Society Publications, 14: ix–xii; Nicholas Hawksmoor to Dean of Westminster, London, Westminster Abbey Muniments, 34573.

137 Fourdrinier, Plan of the city of London, http://purl.pt/3475.

138 Colen Campbell, Vitruvius Britannicus (London, 1715–25; facsimile ed., New York, 2002), sig. Bv; Kent, William, Designs of Inigo Jones (London, 1727)Google Scholar; Palladio, Andrea, Fabbriche Antiche (London, 1730)Google Scholar.

139 Maitland, William, The History of London from its Foundation to the Present Time, 2 vols. (London, 1756), 1:facing 446Google Scholar; Public Advertiser, 9 March 1753. In 1749–50, engravings of Wren's designs prepared in the 1720s were published, London Evening Post, 11–14 November 1749.

140 Bonehill, “Centre of Pleasure,” 367–75.

141 A PLAN of the City of London after the great FIRE (London, 1749). See also the plan advertised in Public Advertiser, 9 March 1753, as for the consideration of the mayor and aldermen.

142 Wren, Parentalia, 269. On the genesis of this text, Bennett, “Parentalia”; Jardine, Grander Scale, 477–79. Historians of the Great Fire have been rebutting this argument for over a century. Ogborn, “Designs on the City,” 25–30.

143 It was never advertised in the press. Several copies survive in eighteenth-century antiquarian collections: http://catalog.huntington.org/; MS Rawlinson B 388 at front, Bodl; Rawlinson Prints a 2; Gough Maps 41f.

144 Jenner, “Politics of London Air”; Denton, Peter, “‘Puffs of Smoke, Puffs of Praise’: Reconsidering John Evelyn's Fumifugium ,” Canadian Journal of History 35, no. 3 (December 2000): 441–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cavert, William M., The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City (Cambridge, 2016), 183–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.