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"fire insurance marks." These were distinctive, brightly colored metal plaques featuring the emblem of the insurance company, which were nailed to the front of insured houses. If a fire broke out, several different insurance brigades would rush to the scene. If they arrived and saw that the burning building did not display their company's mark, they would simply pack up their buckets, sit on the curb, and watch the house burn, occasionally cheering on the rival brigade if they happened to show up. It was a highly competitive, utterly mercenary system, but it was the beginning of the modern fire service, born directly out of the ashes of Pudding Lane. Legacy of the Flame Today, a massive, stone Doric column known simply as the Monument stands in the heart of the City of London. Designed by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke, it stands exactly 202 feet tall, which is the precise distance from its base to the site of Thomas Farriner's bakery in Pudding Lane. For many years, the inscription on the pedestal of the Monument officially blamed the fire on the "treachery and malice of the popish faction," a lingering testament to the xenophobic panic that had claimed the life of poor Robert Hubert. It was not until 1831, in a more enlightened and skeptical era, that the city finally voted to have these offensive words erased, vindicating the innocent French watchmaker at last. The Great Fire of London was a catastrophe of biblical proportions, but it also demonstrated the extraordinary resilience of the British people. In the face of bureaucratic paralysis, royal paranoia, and terrifying physical destruction, the common citizens did not give up. They adapted, they rebuilt, and they did so with a characteristic blend of practical skepticism and dark humor. As London transformed from a crowded, timber-framed medieval labyrinth into a grand, brick-and-stone metropolis, the nation itself was also changing. The old, chaotic ways of the early seventeenth century were slowly giving way to a new era of scientific inquiry, commercial innovation, and political stability. But as the city grew more modern, its rulers remained just as eccentric as ever. In the next chapter, we will leave the smoke of London behind and travel to the court of a new king, William of Orange, whose obsession with a certain delicate Dutch flower would spark a horticultural revolution and prove that even the most rational of monarchs can be driven to distraction by the beauty of a tulip.