Inn from the Strand into Covent Garden, the street and passage by and near Exeter House and the Savoy (being obstructed by a rail and the unevenness of the ground thereabouts), the passage and street of St. Martin's-lane out of the Strand, the passage or street of Field-lane, commonly called Jack-an-apes-lane, going between Chancery-lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields, the passage and Gatehouse of Cheapside into St. Paul's Churchyard, the passage against St. Dunstan's Church in the West (being obstructed by a wall), the street and passage by and near the west end of the Poultry in London, and the passage at Temple Bar." After the great fire in 1666, various additional streets in the part of the city that had to be rebuilt were ordered to be widened by two other acts (the 18 and 19 Car. II. c. 8, s. 21, 22; and the 22 Car. II. c. 11, s. 1). This terrible visitation, and the pestilence by which it was preceded, instead of half destroying and depopulating the metropolis, only gave a new impulse to its increase both in size and in number of inhabitants. After a few years the portion of it that had been laid waste rose again from its ruins greatly improved in many respects—with the old narrow and crooked streets for the most part straightened and made comparatively spacious and airy, and with the substitution everywhere of houses of brick, separated by substantial party-walls, for the former tenements of wood offering one continued dry forest to whatever chance spark might at any time fall among them. New buildings also continued to spread faster than ever beyond the ancient limits. In 1674 an order in council was issued to restrain such extension,—for the last time, it is believed, that that exercise of the prerogative was attempted. The increase of the west end continued to proceed at so great a rate that, in the first year of the next reign (1685), acts of parliament were passed erecting two new parishes in that quarter: the one, that of St. Anne's, Westminster, consisting principally of streets that had recently been erected on a piece of ground formerly called Kemp's Field; the other, that of St. James's, Westminster, comprehending Jermyn-street and other
