<P> The relationship was often tense between the City and the Crown . The City of London had been a stronghold of republicanism during the Civil War (1642--1651), and the wealthy and economically dynamic capital still had the potential to be a threat to Charles II, as had been demonstrated by several republican uprisings in London in the early 1660s . The City magistrates were of the generation that had fought in the Civil War, and could remember how Charles I's grab for absolute power had led to that national trauma . </P> <P> They were determined to thwart any similar tendencies in his son, and when the Great Fire threatened the City, they refused the offers that Charles made of soldiers and other resources . Even in such an emergency, the idea of having the unpopular Royal troops ordered into the City was political dynamite . By the time that Charles took over command from the ineffectual Lord Mayor, the fire was already out of control . </P> <P> The City was essentially medieval in its street plan, an overcrowded warren of narrow, winding, cobbled alleys . It had experienced several major fires before 1666, the most recent in 1632 . Building with wood and roofing with thatch had been prohibited for centuries, but these cheap materials continued to be used . The only major stone - built area was the wealthy centre of the City, where the mansions of the merchants and brokers stood on spacious lots, surrounded by an inner ring of overcrowded poorer parishes whose every inch of building space was used to accommodate the rapidly growing population . These parishes contained workplaces, many of which were fire hazards--foundries, smithies, glaziers--which were technically illegal in the City but tolerated in practice . </P> <P> The human habitations were crowded to bursting point, intermingled with these sources of heat, sparks, and pollution, and their construction increased the fire risk . The typical six - or seven - storey timbered London tenement houses had "jetties" (projecting upper floors). They had a narrow footprint at ground level, but maximised their use of land by "encroaching" on the street, as a contemporary observer put it, with the gradually increasing size of their upper storeys . The fire hazard was well perceived when the top jetties all but met across the narrow alleys; "as it does facilitate a conflagration, so does it also hinder the remedy", wrote one observer--but "the covetousness of the citizens and connivancy (corruption) of Magistrates" worked in favour of jetties . In 1661, Charles II issued a proclamation forbidding overhanging windows and jetties, but this was largely ignored by the local government . Charles's next, sharper message in 1665 warned of the risk of fire from the narrowness of the streets and authorised both imprisonment of recalcitrant builders and demolition of dangerous buildings . It, too, had little impact . </P>

Who put out the great fire of london