Subject

A watchmaker from Rouen, France, who was executed following his false confession of starting the Great Fire of London. There were many obvious flaws and impossibilities in Hubert's confession. He had not even been in the country at the time. His confession is often attributed to mental simplicity, an inability to understand what it was he was doing; or it may have been induced through torture, since a scapegoat for the fire was needed and a Frenchman satisfied many political needs. He was tried and convicted at the Old Bailey and hung at Tyburn.