THE MARSHES OF EARLY LONDON

Many names still survive to show the presence of the islets I have mentioned. For instance, Chelsea is Chesil-ey—the Isle of Shingle (so also Winchelsea). Battersea has been commonly, but I believe erroneously, supposed to be Peter’s Isle; Thorney is the Isle of Bramble; Tothill means the Hill of the Hill; Lambeth is the “place of mud,” though it has been interpreted as the place where lambs play; Bermondsey is the Isle of Bermond. Doubtless there are many others, but their names, if they had names, and their sites have long since been forgotten.

Several streams fell into the river. Those on the north were afterwards called Bridge Creek, the Westbourne, the Tybourne, the Fleet or Wells River, the Walbrook, and the Lea. Those on the south were the Wandle, the Falcon, the Effra, the Ravensbourne, and other brooks without names. Of the northern streams the first and last concern us little. The Bridge Creek rose near Wormwood Scrubbs, and running along the western slope of Notting Hill, fell into the Thames a little higher up than Battersea Bridge. The Westbourne, a larger stream, is remarkable for the fact that it remains in the Serpentine. Four or five rills flowing from Telegraph Hill, at Hampstead, unite, and after running through West Hampstead receive the waters of another stream formed of two or three rills rising at Frognal. The junction is at Kilburn. The stream, thus increased in volume, runs south and enters Kensington Gardens at the head of the Serpentine, into which it flows, passing out at the south end. It crosses Knightsbridge at Albert Gate, passes along Cadogan Place, and finally falls into the Thames at Chelsea Embankment. Of the places which it passed, especially Kilburn Priory, we shall have more to say later on. Meantime we gather that Kilburn, Westbourne Terrace, Knightsbridge, and Westbourne Street, Chelsea, owe their names to this little stream.

The Tyburn, a smaller stream, but not without its importance, took its rise from a spring called the Shepherd’s Well, which formed a small pool in the midst of the fields called variously the Shepherd’s Fields, or the Conduit Fields, but later on the Swiss Cottage Fields. The site is marked by a drinking-fountain on the right hand rather more than half way up FitzJohn’s Avenue. The water was remarkable for its purity, and as late as fifty or sixty years ago water-carts came every morning to carry off a supply for those who would drink no other. The stream ran down the hill a little to the east of FitzJohn’s Avenue, crossed Belsize Lane, flowed south as far as the west end of King Henry’s Road, then turning west, crossed Avenue Road, and flowed south again till it came to Acacia Road. Here it received an affluent from the gardens and fields of Belsize Manor and Park. Thence south again with occasional deflections, east and west, across the north-west corner of Regent’s Park, receiving another little affluent in the Park; then down a part of Upper Baker Street, Gloucester Road, taking a south-easterly course from Dorset Street to Great Marylebone Lane. It crossed Oxford Street at the east corner of James Street, ran along the west side of South Molton Street, turned again to the south-west, crossed Piccadilly at Brick Street, and running across Green Park it passed in front of Buckingham Palace. Here the stream entered upon the marsh, which at high tide was covered with water. Then, as sometimes happens with marshes, the stream divided. One—the larger part—ran down College Street into the Thames; the other, not so large, turned to the north-east and presently flowed down Gardener’s Lane and across King’s Street to the river.

The principal interest attaching to this little river is that it actually created the island which we now call Westminster. The island was formed by the detritus of the Tyburn. How many centuries it took to grow one need not stop to inquire: it is enough to mark that Thorney Island, like the Camargue, or the delta of the Nile, was created by the deposit of a stream.

The Fleet River—otherwise called the River of Wells, or Turnmill Brook, or Holebourne—the fourth of the northern streams, was formerly, near its approach to London, a very considerable stream. Its most ancient name was the “Holebourne,” i.e. the stream that flows in a hollow. It was called the River of Wells on account of the great number of wells or springs whose waters it received; and the “Fleet,” because at its mouth it was a “fleet,” or channel covered with shallow water at high tide. The stream was formed by the junction of two main branches, one of which rose in the Vale of Health, Hampstead, and the other in Ken Wood between Hampstead and Highgate. There were several small affluents along the whole course of the stream. The spot where the two branches united was in a place now called Hawley Road, Kentish Town Road. Its course then led past old St. Pancras Church, on the west, between St. Pancras and King’s Cross Stations on the east side of Gray’s Inn Road, down Farringdon Road, Farringdon Street, and New Bridge Street, into the Thames. The wells which gave the stream one of its names were—Clerkenwell, Skinnerswell, Fagswell, Godwell (sometimes incorrectly spelt Todwell), Loderswell, Radwell, Bridewell, St. Chad’s Well. At its mouth the stream was broad enough and deep enough to be navigable for a short distance. It became, however, in later times nothing better than an open pestilential sewer. Attempts were made from time to time to cleanse the stream, but without success. All attempts failed, for the simple reason that Acts of Parliament without an executive police and the goodwill of the people always do fail. Three hundred years later Ben Jonson describes its condition:—

Whose banks upon

Your Fleet Lane Furies and not Cooks do dwell,

That, with still scalding steam, make the place Hell;

The banks run grease and hair of meazled hogs,

The heads, houghs, entrails, and the hides of dogs;

For, to say truth, what scullion is so nasty

To put the skins and offals in a pasty?

The banks continued to be encumbered with tenements, lay-stalls, and “houses of office,” until the Fire swept all away. After this they were enclosed by a stone embankment on either side, and the lower part of the river became a canal forty feet wide, and, at the upper end, five feet deep, with wharves on both sides. Four bridges were built over the canal—viz. at Bridewell, at Fleet Street, at Fleet Lane, and at Holborn. But the canal proved unsuccessful, the stream became choked again and resumed its old function as a sewer. Everybody remembers the Fleet in connection with the Dunciad—

To where Fleet Ditch with disemboguing streams

Rolls its large tribute of dead dogs to Thames.

In the year 1737 the canal between Holborn and Fleet Street was covered over, and in 1765 the lower part between Fleet Street and the Thames was also covered.

So much for the history of the stream. Its importance to the city was very great. It formed a natural ditch on the western side. Its eastern bank rose steeply, much more steeply than at present, forming originally a low cliff; its western bank was not so steep. Between what is now Fleet Lane and the Thames there was originally a small marsh covered with water at high tide, part, in fact, of the great Thames marsh; above Fleet Lane the stream became a pleasant country brook meandering among the fields and moors of the north. The Fleet determined the western boundary, and protected the city on that side.

The Walbrook, like the Westbourne, was formed by the confluence of several rills; its two main branches rose respectively in Hoxton and in Moorfields. It entered the city through a culvert a little to the west of Little Bell Alley, London Wall. It ran along the course of that alley; crossed Lothbury exactly east of St. Margaret’s Church; passed under the present Bank of England into Princes Street; and next under what is now the Joint Stock Bank, down St. Mildred’s Court, and so across the Poultry. It did not run down the street called “Walbrook,” but on the west side of it, past two churches which have now vanished—St. Stephen’s, which formerly stood exactly opposite its present site; and St. John, Walbrook, on the north-east corner of Cloak Lane,—and it made its way into the river between the lanes called Friars’ Alley and Joiners’ Hall. The outfall has been changed, and the stream now runs under Walbrook, finding its way into the Thames at Dowgate Dock.

When the City wall was built the water was conducted through it by means of a culvert; when the City ditch was constructed the water ceased, or only flowed after a downfall of heavy rain. But the Walbrook did not altogether cease; it continued as a much smaller stream from a former affluent rising under the south-east angle of the Bank of England. The banks of the Walbrook were a favourite place for the villas of the wealthier people in Roman London; many Roman remains have been found there; and piles of timber have been uncovered. A fragment of a bridge over the stream has also been found, and is in the Guildhall Museum.

It has been generally believed that the Walbrook was at no time other than a very small stream. The following passage, then, by Sir William Tite (Antiquities found in the Royal Exchange) will perhaps be received with some surprise. The fact of this unexpected discovery seems to have been neglected or disbelieved, because recent antiquaries make no reference to it. Any statement, however, bearing the name of Sir William Tite deserves at least to be placed on record.

“With respect to the width of the Walbrook, the sewerage excavations in the streets called Tower-Royal and Little St. Thomas Apostle, and also in Cloak Lane, discovered the channel of the river to be 248 feet wide, filled with made-earth and mud, placed in horizontal layers, and containing a quantity of black timber of small scantling. The form of the banks was likewise perfectly to be traced, covered with rank grass and weeds. The digging varied from 18 feet 9 inches in depth, but the bottom of the Walbrook was of course never reached in those parts, as even in Princes Street it is upwards of 30 feet below the present surface. A record cited by Stow proves that this river was crossed by several stone bridges, for which especial keepers were appointed; as also that the parish of St. Stephen-upon-Walbrook ought of right to scour the course of the said brook. That the river was navigable up to the City wall on the north is said to have been confirmed by the finding of a keel and some other parts of a boat, afterwards carried away with the rubbish, in digging the foundations of a house at the south-east corner of Moorgate Street. But whether such a discovery were really made or not, the excavations referred to appear at least to remove all the improbability of the tradition that ‘when the Walbrook did lie open barges were rowed out of the Thames or towed up to Barge yard.’ As the Church of St. Stephen-upon-Walbrook was removed to the present site in the year 1429, it is probable that the river was ‘vaulted over with brick and paved level with the streets and lanes through which it passed’ about the same period; the continual accumulation of mud in the channel, and the value of the space which it occupied, then rapidly increasing, equally contributing to such an improvement.”

Whether Sir William’s inference is correct or no, the river in early times, like the Fleet, partook of the tidal nature of the Thames.

Attempts have been made to prove that a stream or a rivulet at some time flowed along Cheapside and fell into the Walbrook. It is by no means impossible that there were springs in this place, just as there is, or was, a spring under what is now the site of the Bank of England. The argument, or the suggestion, is as follows:—

Under the tower of St. Mary-le-Bow were found the walls and pavement of an ancient Roman building, together with a Roman causeway four feet in thickness. The land on the north side of London was all moorish, with frequent springs and ponds. The causeway may have been conducted over or beside such a moorish piece of ground. Of course, in speaking of Roman London we must put aside altogether West Chepe as a street or as a market. Now it is stated that in the year 1090, when the roof of Bow Church was blown off by a hurricane, the rafters, which were 26 feet long, penetrated more than 20 feet into the soft soil of Cheapside. The difficulty of believing this statement is very great. For if the soil was so soft it must have been little better than a quagmire, impossible for a foot-passenger to walk upon, and it would have been beyond the power of the time to build upon it. But if the rafters were hurled through the air for 400 feet or so, they might fall into the muddy banks of the Walbrook.[14] A strange story is told by Maitland:—

“At Bread Street Corner, the North-east End, in 1595, one Thomas Tomlinson causing in the High Street of Cheap a Vault to be digged and made, there was found, at 15 feet deep, a fair Pavement, like that above Ground. And at the further End, at the Channel, was found a Tree, sawed into five Steps, which was to step over some Brook running out of the West, towards Walbrook. And upon the Edge of the said Brook, as it seemeth, there were found lying along the Bodies of two great Trees, the Ends whereof were then sawed off; and firm Timber, as at the first when they fell: Part of the said Trees remain yet in the Ground undigged. It was all forced Ground, until they went past the Trees aforesaid; which was about seventeen Feet deep, or better. Thus much hath the Ground of this City (in that Place) been raised from the Main.” (Maitland, vol. ii. pp. 826-827.)

It would seem as if at some remote period there had been at this spot either a marsh, or a pond, or a stream. If a stream, when was it diverted, and how? Or when did it dry up, and why? And did the stream, if there was one, run north, west, south, or east? There is no doubt that the ground has been raised some 18 feet since Roman times, for not only were the buildings under Bow Church at that depth, but opposite, under Honey Lane Market, Milk Street, and Mercers’ Hall, Roman remains have been found at the same depth.

In any case, West Chepe could not have come into existence as a market on the site of a running stream or on a quagmire, and the diversion or the digging up of the stream, if there was one, must have taken place before the settlement by the Saxons.

The Lea can hardly be considered as belonging to London. It is within the memory of men still living that suburbs of London have grown up upon its banks. But the marshes which still remain formed anciently an important defence of the City. They were as extensive, and, except in one or two places, without fords. The river which ran through them was broad and deep. It was probably in these marshes that the Roman legions on one occasion fell into difficulties. And except for the fords the Lea remained impassable for a long way north—nearly as far as Ware.

As regards the streams of the south, they have little bearing upon the history of the City. The essential point about the south was the vast extent of the marsh spread out before the newly founded town. Until the causeway from Stonegate Lambeth to the rising ground at Deptford was constructed these marshes were absolutely impassable. Four or five streams crossed them. The most westerly of these, the Wandle, discharges its waters opposite to Fulham; it is a considerable stream, and above Wandsworth is still dear to anglers. At its mouth a delta was formed exactly like that at Thorney; this was called afterwards Wandsworth Island. The Falcon Brook ran into the Thames above Battersea; it seems to have been an inconsiderable brook. No antiquary, so far as I know, has ever explored its course. The Effra is an interesting stream, because until quite recently—that is, within the last fifty years—it ran, an open, clear, and very beautiful brook, through the Dulwich Fields and down the Brixton Road past Kennington Church. In Rocque’s map it is made to rise about half a mile west of Dulwich College, near a spot called Island Green, which now appears as Knights’ Hill; but I am informed by a correspondent that this is wrong, and that it really rose in the hills of Norwood. It was a pretty stream flowing in front of cottages to which access was gained by little wooden bridges. The stream was overhung by laburnums, hawthorns, and chestnut trees. I myself remember seeing it as a boy in Dulwich Fields, but it was by that time already arched over lower down. There was a tradition that ships could formerly sail up the Effra as far as Kennington Church. It falls into the Thames nearly opposite Pimlico Pier. Had it kept its course without turning to the west it might have formed part of King Cnut’s trench, which would have accounted for the tradition of the ships. Another and a nameless stream is represented on old maps as flowing through the marsh into the Thames opposite the Isle of Dogs. The most easterly stream is the Ravensbourne, which at its mouth becomes Deptford Creek. This, like the Wandle and the Lea, was higher up a beautiful stream with many smaller affluents.

As for the land north and south of this marsh, it rises out of the marsh as a low cliff from twenty to forty feet high. On the south side this cliff is a mile, two miles, and even three miles from the river. On the north side, while there are very extensive marshes where now are Fulham, South and West Kensington, the Isle of Dogs, and the Valley of the Lea, further eastward the cliff approaches the river, touches it and overhangs it at one point near Dowgate, and runs close beside it as far as Charing Cross, whence it continues in a westerly direction, while the river turns south.

Behind the cliff on the south rose in long lines, one behind the other, a range of gentle hills. They were covered with wood. Between them, on high plateaux, extended heaths of great beauty clothed with gorse, heather and broom, bramble and wild flowers.

On the north the ground also rose beyond the first ridge of cliff, but slowly, till it met the range of hills now known as Hampstead and Highgate. All the ground was moorland waste and forest, intersected with rivulets, covered with dark ponds and quagmires: a country dangerous at all times, and sometimes quite impassable. On the northern part was the great forest called afterwards the Middlesex Forest.

Such in prehistoric days was the site of London. A more unpromising place for the situation of a great city can hardly be imagined. Marsh in front, and moor behind; marsh to right, and marsh to left; barren heath on the south to balance waste moorland on the north. A river filled with fish; islets covered with wild birds; a forest containing wild cattle, bear, and wolf; but of arable land, not an acre. A town does not live by hunting; it cannot live upon game alone; and yet on this forbidding spot was London founded; and, in spite of these unpromising conditions, London prospered.

[CHAPTER III]
THE EARLIEST INHABITANTS

Who were the earliest settlers and inhabitants of London?

Those who have seen the lake-dwellings of Glastonbury—to take a familiar illustration—and have considered the conditions necessary to such a colony, will come to the conclusion that there, at all events, lake-dwellers would find everything that Nature could give them. Thus, at Glastonbury the huts of the inhabitants were planted on wooden foundations in a marshy place, covered with water at high tide, perhaps at low tide as well. There was land within reach where the people could keep cattle, or could plough and sow and reap. That they did keep cattle and grow corn there is evidence in the things found beside and around the huts. Again, at Glastonbury there were many islets and a large extent of low-lying ground which were the homes and the resting-places of countless wild birds. And at Glastonbury the people were on a creek of the sea, and, by rowing a mile or two down the creek they could find themselves in deep water abounding with fish. All these conditions were also present at London: a deep and broad stream containing fish in abundance; an extensive marsh covered with islets where were wild birds in multitudes; and raised lands, such as that lying between Ludgate Hill and Charing Cross, which might be used for pasture or for tillage. If any remains of lake-dwellings were ever found among the marshes and shallow backwaters of London, it must have been long before such things were understood, so that they were swept away without so much as a record of their existence. It is not certain that there were such settlements here. If vestiges of them had ever been found among the marshes and tidal lagoons of the Essex coast, it would strengthen the theory that this prehistoric people had villages here. I believe, however, that no such remains have been found in Essex. My theory wants confirmation. I cannot prove, though I believe, that lake-dwellings were the first settlements on the London marshes: that the people drove piles into the mud and laid beams across—there was plenty of wood either on the Surrey hills or on the northern heights; that they made a floor or foundation of clay; that they carried uprights round the circular foundation; that they made their cottages wind and rain proof, with wattle and daub at the sides, and thatch for the roof; that every house had its boat, its net, its slings; that they grew corn on the land around; that they had flocks and herds; that they lived in such comfort as they knew or desired.

Whence they came, how long they stayed, why they departed or disappeared, I know not.

What I surmise, however, is theory. Whether it is true or not matters little; what happened next is more certain.

If you consider the site of London once more you will realise—I have already called attention to the point—that the cliff on the north side closes in and overhangs the river in two little hillocks beside the Walbrook. Between the feet of the two hills there is no marsh; the stream running down between the hills forms a natural port; either hillock is fit for the construction of a fort, such as forts were then. Hunters in the forest discovered these two hill-tops, with the moorland and the woods behind, and the river and the marsh in front. They came; they built their fort, protected partly by the steeply sloping sides to south and east, partly by stockade and trench; and they called the place Llyn Din, the Lake-Fortress. Why they came, when they came, how they dispossessed the lake-dwellers, against what real or imaginary foe they constructed their fort, I know not.

Nor do I know how long the people continued to occupy peacefully the fortress they had constructed. It may have been a period of many hundreds of years. The fort may have been besieged and taken a hundred times. Meantime there began, either before or after the construction of this fort or settlement of Llyn Din, some communication between the people of the island and those of the Continent. Trade was opened up; the islanders learned that there were many things which they could exchange and sell. There were Phœnicians who came for tin; there were Germans and Gauls who came for iron, skins, and slaves.

Trade began, but not yet in London, where the fisherman’s coracle was the only boat upon the river, and the cry of the wild duck, the song of the lark, and the swish of the water or the whistle of the wind among the reeds were the only sounds.

Higher up the Thames, as we know, there was an island, named, long afterwards, Thorney. It was a very large island, considering its position, being about a quarter of a mile in length and rather less in breadth. On the west side of this island was a branch of the great marsh already described; on the east side the river was broad and shallow and could be forded at low water, the ford conducting the traveller to another low island, afterwards called Lamb Hythe, probably meaning the Place of Mud. This was the lowest ford on the river, and the most convenient for those desirous of passing from Dover or the districts of Kent and Surrey to the north, or from the north and midland to Dover, then the principal, perhaps—unless Southampton had been founded already—the only trading port. So that the great highway which ran right through the country from Dover to Chester, with branches or affluents on either side, crossed the Thames at this point, passing straight through the marsh and ford. In other words, before the Port of London came into existence at all, Thorney was a stage or station on the highway up and down which flowed the whole trade of the island. Again, in other words, while London was as yet only a rude hill fortress, perhaps while it was only a village of lake-dwellers in the marsh, perhaps before it came into existence at all, Thorney was a place thronged with those who daily went across the ford and marsh, a busy and a populous place. This statement may not be readily accepted. Let us therefore examine more closely into the reasons which support it.

Archæological conclusions of every kind rest upon evidences which may be classified under five heads: (1) the evidence of situation; (2) the evidence of excavation; (3) the evidence of ancient monuments; (4) the evidence of tradition; and (5) the evidence of history, to which may be added the evidence of coins.

1. The Evidence of Situation.—This we have seen already. Thorney was a stepping-stone lying between a marsh and a tidal river fordable at low tide. It was on the great highway of trade from the north to the south. At high tide the marsh was covered with water and extended from the site of the future Abbey to the site of the future Buckingham Palace; it covered the sites of St. James’s Park, Tothill Fields, the Five Fields, part of Chelsea, Earl’s Court, and Victoria. At low tide it was a broad expanse of mud, relieved by patches of sedge and rush. One could wade across the marsh either at high or low tide. The way was marked by stakes, and by large stones laid in the mud. On the other side, the river, here much broader than below, was fordable at low water. The way, also marked by stakes, conducted the traveller from Thorney to Lamb Hythe, afterwards called Lambeth.

2. Evidence of Excavation.—Excavation has shown, what nothing else could have disclosed, the presence on this spot of the Romans. In 1869, a date at which the Roman occupation of Thorney had not been surmised, a very fine sarcophagus was found in the nave of the Abbey with the name of Valerius Amandinus upon it. A cross is cut upon the cover, so that the occupant—perhaps not the first—was a Christian. Probably he was a Christian of the third or fourth century. The sarcophagus is now placed at the entrance of the Chapter-House (see p. [67)]. Ten years ago another discovery was made: in digging a grave under the pavement of the nave a fine mosaic pavement was discovered. There was therefore a Roman villa on this spot. And during the last few years, which have witnessed a great deal of digging at Thorney, Roman fragments have been found in great quantities. There was therefore, most certainly, a Roman settlement upon this island.

3. Evidence of Ancient Monuments.—The evidence of monuments is simply this. The great high road through the Midlands to Chester and to York, found here as a beaten track by the Romans, converted by them into a Roman road after the customary fashion, named afterwards by the Saxons Watling Street, ran formerly straight along what is now the Edgware Road; when it reached the spot now covered by the Marble Arch it continued down Park Lane, or, as it was once called, Tyburn Lane, till it reached the end of the marsh already described. There it broke off abruptly. At this point the traveller began to wade through the marsh. Arrived at Thorney, he made of it a resting-place for the night. In the morning, when he proceeded with his journey, he forded the river at low tide, and presently found himself once more upon a solid road, the memory of which is still preserved in Stangate Street, Lambeth.

SIDE OF FONT, EAST MEON CHURCH, HAMPSHIRE
From Archæologia, vol. x.

4. We have next the Evidence of Tradition.—According to this authority we learn that the first Christian king was one Lucius, who in the year 178 addressed a letter to the then Pope, Eleutherius, begging for missionaries to instruct his people and himself in the Christian faith. The Pope sent two priests named Ffagan and Dyfan, who converted the whole island. Bede tells this story; the old Welsh chroniclers also tell it, giving the British name of the king, Lleurwg ap Coel ap Cyllin. He it was who erected a church on the Isle of Thorney, in place of a temple of Apollo formerly standing there. We are reminded, when we read this story, that St. Paul’s Cathedral was said to have been built on the site of a temple of Diana.

This church, it is said, continued in prosperity until the arrival, two hundred and fifty years later, of the murderous Saxon. First, news came up the river that the invader was on the Isle of Rum, which we call Thanet; next, that he held the river on both banks; then that he had overrun Essex, that he had overrun Kent. And when that happened the procession of merchandise stopped suddenly, for the ports of Kent were in the hands of the enemy. There was no more traffic on Watling Street. The travellers grew fewer daily, till one day a troop of wild Saxons came across the ford, surprised the priests and the fisher-folk who still remained, and left the island as desolate and silent as could be desired for the meditation of holy men. This done, the Saxons went on their way. They overran the midland country; they drove the Britons back—still farther back—till they reached the mountains. No more news came to Thorney, for, though the ford continued, the island, like so many of the Roman stations, remained waste.

SIDE OF FONT, EAST MEON CHURCH, HAMPSHIRE

In fulness of time the Saxon himself settled down, became a man of peace, obeyed the order of the convert king to be baptized and to enter the Christian faith; and when King Sebert had been persuaded to build a church to St. Paul on the highest ground of London, he was further convinced that it was his duty to restore the ruined church of St. Peter on the Isle of Thorney beside the ford. Scandal, indeed, would it be for the throng that once more daily passed through the ford and over the island to see, in a Christian country, the neglected ruins of a Christian church. Accordingly the builders soon set to work, and before long the church rose tall and stately. The Miracle of the Hallowing, often told, may be repeated here. On the eve of the day fixed by the Bishop of London for the hallowing and dedication of the new St. Peter’s, one Edric, a fisherman, who lived in Thorney, was awakened by a loud voice calling him by name. It was midnight. He arose and went forth. The voice called him again from the opposite side of the river, which is now Lambeth, bidding him put out his boat to ferry a man across the river. He obeyed. He found on the shore a venerable person whose face and habiliments he knew not. The stranger bore in his hands certain vessels which, as Edric perceived, could only be intended for church purposes. However, he said nothing, but received this mysterious visitor into his boat and rowed him across the river. Arrived in Thorney, the stranger directed his steps to the church and entered the portal. Straightway—lo! a marvel—the church was lit up as by a thousand wax tapers, and voices arose chanting psalms—sweet voices such as no man had ever heard before. He stood and listened. The voices, he understood, could be none other than those of angels come down from heaven itself to sing the first service in the new church. Then the voices fell, and he heard one voice loud and solemn; and then the heavenly choir uplifted their voices again. Presently all was still: the service was over; the lights went out as suddenly as they had appeared; and the stranger came forth.

“Know, O Edric,” he said, while the fisherman’s heart glowed within him, “know that I am Peter. I have hallowed the church myself. To-morrow I charge thee that thou tell these things to the Bishop, who will find in the church a sign and a token of my hallowing. And for another token, put forth again upon the river, cast thy nets, and thou shalt receive so great a draught of fishes that there will be no doubt left in thy mind. But give one-tenth to this my holy church.”

So he vanished, and the fisherman was left alone upon the river bank; but he put forth as he was directed, and cast his net, and presently brought ashore a miraculous draught.

In the morning the Bishop with his clergy, and the King with his following, came up from London in their ships to hallow the church. They were received by Edric, who told them this strange story. And within the church the Bishop found the lingering fragrance of incense far more precious than any that he could offer; on the altar were the drippings of wax candles (long preserved as holy relics, being none other than the wax candles of heaven), and written in the dust certain words in the Greek character. He doubted no longer. He proclaimed the joyous news. He held a service of thanksgiving instead of a hallowing. Who would not hold a service of praise and humble gratitude for such a mark of heavenly favour? And after service they returned to London and held a banquet, with Edric’s finest salmon lying on a lordly dish in the midst.

How it was that Peter, who came from heaven direct, could not cross the river except in a boat was never explained or asked. Perhaps we have here a little confusion between Rome and Heaven. Dover Street, we know, broke off at the edge of the marsh, and Dover Street led to Dover, and Dover to Rome.

5. We are now prepared for the Evidence of History, which is not perhaps so interesting as that of tradition. Clio, it must be confessed, is sometimes dull. One misses the imagination and the daring flights of her sister, the tenth Muse—the Muse of Fiction. The earliest document which refers to the Abbey is a conveyance by Offa, King of Mercia, of a manor called Aldenham to “St. Peter and the people of the Lord dwelling in Thorney, that ‘terrible’—i.e. sacred—place which is at Westminster.” The date of this ancient document is A.D. 785; but Bede, who died in 736, does not mention the foundation. Either, therefore, Bede passed it over purposely, or it was not thought of importance enough to be mentioned. He does relate the building of St. Paul’s; but, on the other hand, he does not mention the hundreds of churches which sprang up all over the country. So that we need not attach any importance to the omission. My own opinion is that the church—a rude country church, perhaps—a building like that of Greenstead, Essex, the walls of split trees and the roof of rushes, was restored early in the seventh century, and that it did succeed an earlier church still. The tradition connected with this church is as ancient as anything we know about it, and the legend of Lucius and his church is at least supported by the recent discoveries of Roman remains and the certainty that the place was always of the greatest importance.

OFFA BEING INVESTED WITH SPURS
Nero MS., D. 1.

There is another argument—or an illustration—in favour of the antiquity of some church, rude or not, upon this place. I advance it as an illustration, though to myself it appears to be an argument. I mean the long list of relics possessed by the Abbey at the Dedication of the year 1065. We are not concerned with the question whether the relics were genuine or not, but merely with the fact that they were preserved by the monks as having been the gifts of various benefactors—Sebert, Offa, Athelstan, Edgar, Ethelred, Cnut, Queen Emma, and Edward himself. A church of small importance and of recent building would not dare to parade such pretensions. It takes time even for pretences to gain credence and for legends to grow. The relics ascribed to Sebert and Offa could easily have been carried away on occasion of attack. As for the nature of these sacred fragments, it is pleasant to read of sand and earth brought from Mount Sinai and Olivet; of the beam which supported the holy manger; of a piece of the holy manger; of frankincense presented by the Magi; of the seat on which our Lord was presented at the Temple; of portions of the holy cross presented by four kings at different times; of bones and vestments belonging to Apostles and Martyrs and the Virgin Mary, and saints without number, whose very names are now forgotten. In the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle you may see just such a collection as that which the monks of St. Peter displayed before the reverent and uncritical eyes of the Confessor. We may remember that in the ninth and tenth centuries the rage for pilgrimising extended over the whole of Western Europe; pilgrims crowded every road, they marched in armies, and they returned laden with treasures—water from the Jordan, sand from Sinai, clods of earth from Gethsemane, and bones and bits of sacred wood without number. When Peter the Hermit arose to preach, it was but putting a match to a pile ready to be fired. But for such a list as that preserved by history, there was need of time as well as of credulity.

Roman Britain, we have said, was Christian for at least a hundred and fifty years. Therefore it would be nothing out of the way or unusual to find monastic buildings on Thorney in the fourth century. There was as yet no Benedictine Rule. St. Martin of Tours introduced the Egyptian Rule into Gaul—whence it was taken over to England and to Ireland. It was a simple Rule, resembling that of the Essenes. No one had any property; all things were in common; the only art allowed to be practised was that of writing. The older monks devoted their whole time to prayer; they took their meals together—bread and herbs with salt—and, except for common prayer and common meals, they rarely left their cells; these were at first simple huts constructed of clay and bunches of reeds; their churches were of wood; they shaved their heads to the line of the ears; they wore leather jerkins, probably because these lasted longer than cloth of any kind; many of them wore hair shirts. The wooden church became a stone church; the huts became cells built about a cloister; next, the cells themselves were abolished, and a common dormitory was substituted.

All this evidence very clearly, in my opinion, points to the main fact that Thorney was occupied by the Romans because it was a busy and crowded station on the high road of British trade.

I have dwelt at some length upon this subject, because the theory of the earlier antiquity of a town at Thorney, if it can be proved, brings the foundation of London to a comparatively recent period, though it still leaves us in the dark as to the date.

We have various records as to this trade. We need not suppose that Himilco visited and described the island, but we must not hastily reject the evidence of Pytheas, whose travels took place about the middle of the fourth century B.C. Pytheas coasted round Gaul, landed on the shores of Brittany, and worked up the Channel till he came to a place called “Cantion,” which is perhaps Dover, and perhaps the North Foreland. Here he landed, and here he stayed for some time, namely, during the whole of the summer. He found that a great deal of wheat was raised in the fields; that it was threshed in covered barns instead of unroofed floors as in the south of France; that the climate was cloudy and wet; that the longest day was nineteen hours, and that on the shortest day the sun does not rise more than three cubits above the horizon; that there were cultivated fruits, a great abundance of some domestic animals and a scarcity of others; that the people fed on millet, vegetables, roots, and fruit; and that they made a drink of honey and wheat—a kind of beer.

The next traveller in Britain of whom an account remains was Posidonius, about a hundred years before Christ. He described the tin mines in Cornwall. He says that the tin is made up into slabs shaped like knuckle-bones, and carried to an island named Ictis, “lying in front of Britain”—another account makes this island six days’ sail from Cornwall. The channel between Ictis and Britain was dry at low tide, when the tin was carried over. It was then taken across to Gaul, and carried across the country by thirty days’ journey to Marseilles. The estuary between Thanet and Kent, now silted up, was formerly open for ships at high tide, and fordable at low tide.

The following is the account given by Avienus, a writer of the fourth century (quoted in Charles I. Elton’sOrigins of English History):—

“Beneath this promontory spreads the vast Œstrymnian gulf, in which rise out of the sea the islands Œstrymnides, scattered with wide intervals, rich in metal of tin and lead. The people are proud, clever, and active, and all engaged in incessant cares of commerce. They furrow the wide rough strait, and the ocean abounding in sea-monsters, with a new species of boat. For they know not how to frame keels with pine or maple, as others use, nor to construct their curved barks with fir; but, strange to tell, they always equip their vessels with skins joined together, and often traverse the salt sea in a hide of leather. It is two days’ sail from hence to the Sacred Island, as the ancients called it, which spreads a wide space of turf in the midst of the waters, and is inhabited by the Hibernian people. Near to this again is the broad island of Albion.”

Elton quotes Posidonius on the trade in tin. The merchants, he says, buy the tin from the natives, and carry it over to Gaul.

Here, then, we have proof of an ancient and extensive trade in tin, and of a certain stage in civilisation.

There is, however, more.

In the second century B.C. the people had towns, which were stockaded forts, and villages. They lived in beehive huts, built with wood and wattle, having roofs of fern and thatch. They were skilled in some of the arts. They could make cloth and linen for summer and for winter use; they could dye these materials various colours. They could work in gold, and wore collars, bracelets, and rings of gold. They dyed their hair red. They wore a cuirass of plaited leather or chain mail; for arms they carried sword, pike, bow and arrow, and the sling. They also had scythed war-chariots. Their weapons were of steel, they could therefore work in iron; they used a wheeled plough.

Fifty years before the Roman invasion the King of Soissons, Divitiacus, had made a partial conquest of South Britain, but for generations before this there had been immigration into the island from Belgium and settlements had been made along the coast and the rivers.

The internal and external trade of the country is proved by the evidence of coins.

AN ARCHER
Strutt’sSports and Pastimes.

Where there is a coinage there is trade. That is to say, trade may be carried on without a coinage, but the existence of a coinage is a proof that the art of trading is understood, and has long been carried on. Now the people of this island had their own coinage before Julius Cæsar landed. How long before is quite uncertain. Some of their ancient coins are believed to be of the second century B.C. These are supposed to have been modelled on the coins of the Greeks of the age of Philip of Macedon, but taken from Gaulish patterns. At the same time, some of the coins have the appearance of being “centuries older than Cæsar’s first expedition” (Monumenta Historica Britannica, Introd. 151). In either case they are a proof of long-standing trade, and may have been of very remote antiquity. That the trade was internal is proved by the fact that ancient British coins belonging to the south of the country have been found in the north.

We may, therefore, safely conclude that all these facts point to the existence of a large trade between the island and the Continent. It was not out of charity that the tin mines were worked, and the tin sent to Thanet for exportation.

If now we consider the Roman highways, which were certainly based on the more ancient tracks, we shall find, not only that five of them converge on London, but also that London, considering the vast forests as well as the course of the rivers and the conformation of the coast, was actually the true centre for the reception and distribution of imports, and for the reception and forwarding of exports. And we may further conclude that since Pytheas and Posidonius were evidently received with hospitality and travelled about everywhere without fear of violence, the people of the island were accustomed to visits of foreigners who came to trade. In a word, it is impossible to say when trade first began between Britain and the Continent; impossible to estimate its extent; and impossible to ascertain when the principal centre of trade was found to be most conveniently placed at or near the site of London.

FIGURES RECONSTRUCTED FROM ANCIENT CLOTHES AND REMAINS FOUND IN A BOG
From Archæologia, vol. vii.

When first we hear of London at all we learn several very suggestive facts. First, that the City was already the resort of merchants; next, that there was a close connection with, and a great intercourse between, Gallia and Britannia; thirdly, that the people of the south, at least, possessed the same arts, the same civilisation, as the Gauls. And the latter had already arrived at that stage when certain things, impossible to be grown or produced on their own soil, had ceased to be luxuries, and had become necessaries. Again, we learn shortly afterwards that the island was thickly populated. Queen Boadicea’s army, raised wholly in the eastern counties, contained many thousands; so many that the scattered bands of her army were able to destroy a great number—history loosely says 70,000, which we may take to stand for a great number—of the inhabitants of Verulam, London, and Camulodunum. Again, another point, never yet considered in this connection, seems also to indicate dense population. All the way from London down to the Nore, round a large part of the coast of Essex, and along the coast of Lincolnshire where the foreshore is a marsh, there runs a great and magnificent embankment. It is not, so far as can be judged, Roman; that is to say, it has none of the Roman characteristics: it is a great solid wall of earth faced with stone which has stood for ages, only giving way at points here and there, as at Barking in the reign of King Stephen, and at Dagenham in the reign of Queen Anne. Now, in order to construct such a work two things are necessary: there must be abundance of labour, also new ground for cultivation must be in demand. Both these requisites point to a large population. Given a large population; given also a demand for foreign commodities among the wealthier class; given, further, the production of goods wanted abroad—slaves, metals, skins, wool—we can have no doubt that the trade of Britain, the northern and midland part of which passed over Thorney, was continuous and very considerable.

In other words, this islet in the midst of marsh and ford, which we have been always assured was in early times a wild and desolate spot; chosen, we are also told, as the site of a monastery on account of its seclusion and remoteness; was, long before any monastery was built there, the scene of a continuous procession of those who journeyed south and those who journeyed north. It was a halting and a resting place for a stream of travellers which flowed continuously all the year round. By way of Thorney passed the merchants, with the wares which they were going to embark at Dover bestowed upon pack-horses. By way of Thorney they drove the long strings of slaves to be sold in Gaul and perhaps carried into Italy. By way of Thorney passed the caravans for the north. Always, day after day, even night after night, there was the clamour of those who came and of those who went: such a clamour as used to belong, for instance, to the courtyard of an old-fashioned inn, in and out of which lumbered the loaded waggon grinding heavily over the stones, the stage-coach, the post-chaise, the merchant rider on his nag—all with noise. The Isle of Thorney was like that courtyard: it was a great inn, a halting-place, a bustling, noisy, frequented place, the centre, and, before the rise of London, the heart of Britain. No quiet, desolate place, but the actual living centre of the traffic of the whole island. Not a fortress or a place of strategic importance, but, as regards the permanent population, a gathering of people drawn together in order to provide for the wants of travellers—a collection of inns and taverns.

Thus far we have got. In very early times London was a settlement of lake-dwellers, then it became a British fortress. Meantime, communications were established with Gaul by way of Dover, trade began; the natural highway for trade from the midland and the north was by way of the most easterly ford over the Thames, therefore Thorney became a busy and important place, as lying on the trade route of London.

At some time or other merchants found out that London was a much more convenient and more central place than Dover. The voyage was along the Kentish coast, for a few miles beyond Dover, and passed by the strait which parted Thanet from the mainland into the estuary of the Thames, whence it was safe and easy sailing up the stream to the new trading port of the lake-fortress.

The next development, naturally, was the diversion of a large part of the trade from Thorney to London. This diversion took place at the spot we now call Marble Arch, where the course of the highway was abandoned, and a new road traced along what is now Oxford Street and Holborn into the City of London. And thus, gradually, the importance of Thorney dwindled away. That it remained the stepping-stone for a large part of the trade till the building of London Bridge there can be no reason to doubt. Perhaps a considerable part of the trade would have been carried by the old way still but for the embankment of the river, which destroyed the ford. There remained the Ferry, which continued until the middle of the last century. A good deal of trade, no doubt, still crossed by the Ferry, but when London Bridge was built, and the shipping lay in the river for the reception of the merchandise, the route to Dover became gradually abandoned. This we may readily believe would be some time in the fourth century.

It has been said that no dates can be ascertained which will guide us in assigning any period to these events. There is, however, one fact which gives a negative evidence: when Pytheas made his famous voyage to Britain he does not seem to have seen London. He says nothing about it. It seems from his account that trade with Gaul had not yet assumed considerable proportions; that with the Phœnician ships for tin was confined to the south-western district, and London, which has never been anything but a place of trade, was not even mentioned to this traveller. Perhaps—but I do not think that this was so—London did not yet exist.

FIGURES IN WOOD AT WOOBURN IN
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, SUPPOSED TO
REPRESENT ITINERANT MASONS
From Archæologia, vol. xviii.

Who were the people that built this fortress over the lake and received the merchants? They were Celts, and the name that they gave to their citadel, Llyn Din, is Celtic. Their manners and customs are as well known as those of any ancient people; their religion is described at length by many historians; they had poets, musicians, and priests. They wore on occasion robes embroidered with gold; they had copied the civilisation of their neighbours the Gauls. The evidence of the barrows in which the dead were buried shows a great variety of implements and the knowledge of some arts. Their weapons were mostly of bronze; their swords were of the “leaf” shape; the spear-heads were of bronze, and their long knives also of bronze. They carried shields of bronze. They wore neither helmet nor cuirass; round the neck they placed an iron collar and round the body an iron belt. They had stone clubs and flint-headed arrows; they had bronze trumpets; they knew how to coin money; they practised the art of pottery, making very good vases and pots; and they made, and used, the terrible war-chariot—a piece of one was discovered some time ago in Somersetshire.

Again, it is necessary to clear up our ideas concerning the early trade of London. When we speak on the subject, we are naturally inclined to think of a mediæval town settled with government residents, a better class, market-places, trade regulations, and all the accessories of a late period. Let us, therefore, with a view to this clearance of understanding, consider the conditions of trade in the centuries—I repeat that I do not consider that the coming of the Romans had anything to do with the foundation of London—before the Roman period.

I. The first trading port of the Thames, as we have seen, was that of Thorney Island—a small place at best, and incapable of enlargement on account of the marsh-land all round it in every direction except the south.

II. The discovery of London—with its high ground overhanging the river, its port of the outflow of the Walbrook, its greater safety, its ease of access by sea and river—diverted much of the trade from Thorney, and gradually all the trade.

III. It is impossible to assign any date for this diversion: only one point is certain, that some importance was attached to Thorney as a trading centre in Roman times, because the islet is full of Roman remains.

IV. We take up the story, therefore, at some indefinite period which began as long before the arrival of the Romans as the reader pleases to assume, and continued until after the massacre by Boadicea’s insurgents.

The first and most important condition to be observed is that the trade of London could only be carried on during the summer months. It was only in the summer that the ships ventured to cross the Channel; crept along the coast of Kent, and passed through the channel between Thanet and the mainland into the river. During the winter months the sailing of the ships was entirely stopped; the ocean was deserted. This condition was observed for many centuries afterwards: no ships ventured to put out for six months at least in the year; even the pirates of the North Sea hauled up their vessels, and when the Danes came, they remained for six months every year in their winter quarters.

It was also only in the summer that inland trade could be carried on. During the winter intercommunications were most difficult, and in many places impossible; towns were isolated and had to depend on their own resources; village was separated from village by fenland, moorland, forest, and trackless marsh: there could be no transport of goods; there were no markets.

The main limitation, therefore, of early trade was that it had to be carried on during the summer months alone: allowing for the time taken up by the voyage to and from the port at either end, the foreign trade on which the inland trade depended was of necessity confined to a few weeks.

What does this mean? That the exports had to be brought to the Port by a certain time: they came on the backs of slaves or by pack-horses. The imports had to be carried into the country for sale and distribution as a return journey by the same slaves and pack-horses. The goods were brought from the country down to the quays, which were rough and rude constructions on piles and baulks of timber on either side of the mouth of the Walbrook, and were there exchanged for the imports. The ships discharged one cargo, then took in another, and sailed away. Nothing was left over; there was no overlapping of one year with another; there was no storage of goods over the winter. When the ships were gone and the caravans had started on their journey through the country, there was nothing more to be done at the Port till the next season. London might fall asleep, if there were any London.

In other words, the trade of London at this period was nothing more than an annual Fair held in the months of July and August, frequented by the foreign merchants bringing their imports and carrying off the exports in their vessels, and by the traders, who led their long processions of pack-horses and slaves from the country to the port, arriving at the time when the ships were due; they exchanged what they brought for the goods that came in the ships, and then went away again. Where they spent the winter it is impossible to say. It is, however, quite certain that they came to London in the summer from north, east, south, and west; that they could not come at any other time. These considerations enable us to understand that London was crowded every summer during the few weeks of trade, but that in winter there was no trade, no communication with any other place, and no communication with abroad. Were there no merchants who stored goods and kept them over who lived in London permanently? None. As yet, none.

The place was, in fact, exactly like Sturbridge beside Cambridge. During the annual Fair in summer Sturbridge was a considerable town; trading of all kinds and from all countries crowded to the place; the shops and booths were arranged in streets; these streets were filled with traders and private persons who came from all parts of the country to the Fair. When the Fair was over the traders disappeared, the booths were swept away, the place became a large common, empty and deserted till the next season.

This was the case with London. The trading season was in July and August, as I read the story: during these months the high ground either on the east or the west of Walbrook was covered with shops and booths made of wattle and clay. When the Fair was over the temporary structures were taken down, or perhaps left to be repaired in the following season; the conflux of people vanished, and there was no Port of London for another year. London had no importance at all except during the short season of the Fair. Nor were there any residents of importance. There were left none others than the humble folk who fished in the river, trapped the birds of the marsh, hunted in the forests, and worked for the ships while they were in the Port.

I think that the annual Fair was held on the west side of Walbrook, for the simple reason that the Romans, when they built their citadel, chose the eastern side—that is to say, they took the eastern hill because they were unwilling to interfere with the trade of the place, which was mainly carried on upon the western hill. There was no bridge as yet—otherwise there could have been no massacre by the offended Queen (see p. [59]). As to the time when trade became large, and so continuous as to demand the erection of warehouses and the creation of a body of wholesale merchants, I am not able to offer even an approximate opinion. My conclusions belong to an earlier time, yet partly a Roman time, when London represented nothing but an annual Fair, while there were no public buildings, no municipal institutions, no officers or rulers, except the temporary administrators of a temporary exhibition. And, as at a Fair, when it was over nothing was left in store or warehouse for the next year. The ships left their imports behind them, and brought back exports with them.

It would be interesting to inquire into the continuance of the summer trade and the slackness of the winter long after the character of the annual Fair had left London. Galleys came, we know, from Venice and Genoa every summer; ships laden with wine came every summer from Bordeaux; ships of the Hanseatic League put out and came into port every summer from north Europe and the Baltic. What was done in the twelfth century, for example, during the winter? What amount of trade could have been carried over roads which for two-thirds of the year were practically impassable?

The theory of the Fair explains why Cæsar made no mention of London, and why the Romans at first placed no permanent garrison in the place: they saw it crowded for a few weeks, and then deserted and of no account. The massacre of Boadicea first awakened them to a sense of its strategic as well as its commercial importance. When they built their citadel and their bridge it was not only to defend the trade of a few weeks and the scanty population of fisher-folk, but also to seize and to occupy a stronghold of capital importance as a great military as well as a great commercial centre. It also explains why no remains of pre-Roman buildings have been found on the site of London. Because there were none. The copia mercatorum came, stayed a few weeks or days, and went away. They found inns and booths for their accommodation; when they left, the inns and booths were closed, or left to fall to pieces, for another twelve months.

In the course of time, when the bulk of trade increased and goods of all kinds began to be stored in warehouses and kept over from year to year, the limits of the busy time were naturally extended. There was a great deal to be done in the way of warehousing, arrangement for the next summer, arrangement with retail merchants and the owners of caravans which went about the country. But there still remained the time—six or eight months—during which no ships arrived in port, and the roads of the country were impassable.

The warehousing, with the rise of a class of men who held the warehouses and became wholesale merchants, marks a period of extension and increase in the trade of the Port.

PAVEMENT BEFORE THE ALTAR OF THE PRIOR’S CHAPEL AT ELY
From Archæologia, vol. x.

With the Romans came the time of good roads, warehouses, a settled and continuous trade, a class of wholesale merchants, quays of convenient size, new and artificial ports, and the residence for life of a wealthy and highly civilised community who built villas along the banks of the Walbrook, and imitated, though imperfectly, the arts and civilisation of Bordeaux, Marseilles, Treves, and even of Rome.

One point more may be noticed before we step into the open light of history. The position of London from the very first has been that of a town which has had to depend upon outside or distant places for her supplies. In front of her, on either side of her stretched marshes; behind her stretched moorland: she could grow nothing for her own people. Outside other towns lay farms, gardens, and pastures: outside London there was neither farm, nor garden, nor pasture; except the fish in the river and the fowl in the marsh-land, there was nothing. The merchant in the time of Agricola, as much as the merchant in the time of Victoria, lived upon food brought in by private enterprise.

The prehistoric monuments existing in and round London are two in number: they are the river embankment and the Hampstead barrow. The date of the embankment cannot be guessed: there is nothing at all to mark the time of its construction. For trade purposes an embankment must have been made as soon as trade in London began to develop. We shall see presently what happened on the north bank. But it was not enough to improve the river at London Port: it was necessary to reclaim the marsh-land all along the river north and south. The wall so built has often been repaired, but it is substantially the same as that originally constructed. Few know or consider the greatness of the work or the extent of ground it has converted from marsh-land into pasture. Those who wish to see it may walk along it from Barking to Tilbury, or from Tilbury to Southend.

The Hampstead barrow has been called Queen Boadicea’s grave. There is, however, nothing to lead to the belief that the British Queen lies buried here. In November 1894 the barrow was opened and carefully examined. Nothing was found in it—no weapons, no cups, no ornaments, no bones, no human dust; nothing but “pockets” of charcoal. There may have been interments in the barrow; the bodies may have been entirely destroyed so as to leave no trace behind: such things have been known; but they are not customary. Prof. Hales has suggested that the barrow is a simple boundary hillock, a position which he has defended with much learning. However, the question cannot be determined.

There is one name still surviving in London which may possibly belong to the London of pre-Roman times. The Welsh name for London is Caer Ludd—the City of Ludder Lud. Now Lludd among the Welsh was the same as Lir, an ocean-god (Charles Elton, Origins of English History). Can we see in the name Ludgate the survival of the name of a Celtic god to whom perhaps a temple stood on the hillock overlooking the Thames in the south and the Fleet in the west?

[BOOK II]
ROMAN LONDON

[CHAPTER I]
THE COMING OF THE ROMANS

In August of the year 55 B.C., Cæsar landed on the coast of Britain with eighty ships, and two legions, the 7th and the 10th. He stayed in the country three weeks, and during that short period he fought two battles. In the summer of the following year he landed again with an army of thirty or forty thousand men and eight hundred ships. The Britons retreated before his advance, and fought him first at the passage of the Stour, when they were defeated, and next at a fortified ford across the Thames, perhaps the place indicated by tradition, now called “Cowey Stakes,” near Walton on Thames, where they were again defeated. He then marched upon the stronghold of Cassivellaunus, the British general, took it by storm, accepted the submission of the tribes and departed, leaving the island nominally submissive to the Roman power. He tells us that the manners and customs of the people of Kent closely resembled those of the Gauls, but that in the more northern parts the people were much ruder. He also tells us that the trade with Gaul was carried on by way of Kent.

I have shown the reasons for believing that there was an extensive trade with Gaul; that it passed through Kent by the road afterwards called Watling Street and over Thorney Island; that Thorney was a populous and prosperous place; and that London when the Romans came was already a port with a considerable amount of trade.

Nearly a hundred years passed away before the islanders were again disturbed by their Roman conquerors. The prudence of Augustus would not allow any increase to the garrisoned frontier of the vast Empire. During this century great changes took place in the island. Many of the Gauls, escaping from their conquered country, had crossed the Channel and settled in Britannia: the Atrebates on the country north and south of the upper Thames; the Parisii in Yorkshire; the Belgæ between the Solent and the Bristol Channel. The islanders knew the use of money; they adopted iron and steel for their weapons instead of bronze; they worked their gold, silver, and iron mines; they exported cattle, hides, slaves, wheat and barley, and sporting dogs; their chieftains grew rich; they built cities.

During this century of development London may possibly have been founded. As we explained in the last chapter, the first essential fact to be discovered was the central position of London as a port. This once grasped, the rest would follow easily and quickly. However, this guessing at a date in a prehistoric event is of little use. The fact is, we do not know when London was founded, but I have attempted to prove that the City began with an annual Fair.

It was eighty-eight years after Cæsar’s first visit that Britain was again invaded. The invasion was undertaken partly at the instigation of one Bericus, a British prince who had fled to Rome for protection; partly because, though a so-called province, the country paid no tribute and sent no hostages; partly because of the belief that it was rich in gold, silver, and pearls.

The Emperor Claudius therefore resolved upon a new invasion of Britain. Four legions, the 2nd, the 9th, the 14th, and the 20th, together with cavalry and auxiliaries, making perhaps 50,000 men, formed the army of invasion under Aulus Plautius in the year A.D. 43. Some delay was caused by the mutinous conduct of the troops, who declared that Britain lay beyond the limits of the world and refused to embark. However, they agreed at length to follow their General. With Aulus Plautius were Vespasian, afterwards Emperor, and Vespasian’s brother, Flavius Sabinus. What happened next to the Roman army is vaguely told by Dion Cassius. The whole passage is confused: it is evidently written by one who has no map before him: there is only one thing clear, viz. that at high tide there was a broad expanse of water, and at low tide a marsh. Consider the passage—Dion’s account is quoted in Edwin Guest’sOrigines Celticæ, vol. ii. p. 397:—

“When they had come to a certain river which the barbarians did not think the Romans could pass without a bridge, and on that account were encamped on the opposite side somewhat carelessly, he sends forward the Keltoi, whose custom it is to swim, with their arms, even over the most rapid rivers; and they having thus fallen on their opponents unexpectedly, though they hit none of the men, and only wounded the horses that drew the chariots, yet, as they were thus thrown into confusion, the riders could no longer be sure of their safety. He sent over also Flavius Vespasianus, the same who afterwards obtained the supreme power, and his brother Sabinus, who served under him as lieutenant, and so they also, having somewhere passed the river, slew many of the barbarians who were not expecting them. The rest, however, did not fly; but on the following day, having again come to an engagement, they contended on almost equal terms, till Cneius Osidius Geta, after running the risk of being captured, so thoroughly defeated them that he obtained triumphal honours, though he had never been Consul. The Britons having withdrawn themselves thence to the river Thames whence it empties itself into the ocean and at flow of tide forms a lake, and having easily passed it, as being well acquainted with such parts as were firm and easy of passage, the Romans followed them, but on this occasion failed in their object. The Keltoi, however, having again swum over, and certain others having passed by a bridge a little higher up, engaged them on several sides at once, and cut off many of them; but following the rest heedlessly, they fell into difficult marshes, and lost many of their men.”

The learned antiquary, Dr. Guest, is of opinion that London had as yet no existence, for it lay beyond the limits of the Trinobantes; that the marshes in which Aulus Plautius found himself entangled were those of the river Lea; that when he withdrew his soldiers he encamped on what is now the site of London, and that his camp began the City. He also supposes an uninhabited marsh-land stretching from the Lea to the Brent. All this is pure assumption. Nothing is said by the historian about any camp on the site of London. Moreover, Dion Cassius says nothing about the foundation of London, which, when he wrote his history about the end of the second century, was a very great and important city. And, as we have seen, Tacitus, writing in A.D. 61, speaks of London—it is the first mention of the town—as a populous and much-frequented place. One cannot believe that such a city would spring up and flourish in eighteen years. That London is on the confines or outside the confines of the Trinobantes does not affect the question, because most assuredly the foundation of London and its importance were due to its central position as a port and place of trade. My own opinion, already advanced, is simply that, at the coming of the Romans, London had arrived at importance on account of the annual Fair, but on no other account.

The first observation, however, that occurs on reading this passage is that the historian wrote without a map and without any knowledge of the country. It is perfectly impossible even to guess where the “certain river” was; how far it was from the Thames; where, upon the Thames, the Romans fell into the marshes; or where was the bridge over which some of the army passed. Dr. Guest thinks that the historian or the document from which he obtained his account confused the Lea with the Thames. That, however, brings us no nearer his point, which is that the Roman camp in which, after the engagements, Aulus Plautius awaited the arrival of the Emperor Claudius, was on the site of London and was the actual origin of the City. We may observe that there was not any bridge over the Thames for at least a hundred years after this battle. The only British bridges were those of which two or three examples, perhaps, survive, as on Dartmoor, where a narrow and shallow stream is crossed by slabs of stone lying on boulders or upright blocks. It is perfectly certain that there was no such bridge over the Thames; there may have been one over the Lea, but higher up. For “bridge” read ford perhaps. But the whole narrative is too confused. If the camp had been upon one of the twin hillocks overhanging the Walbrook, the historian would scarcely fail to call attention to the fact that on this spot had grown up one of the largest and most important towns in the Roman Empire. But a little consideration will show that Aulus Plautius would not have placed his camp on that place. First, even a Roman army did not march through thick forest and over trackless swampy moorland without an object. Either London was already settled, or it was a desolate and unknown place. If the former, Aulus may very well have encamped there, using the ordinary roads of communication. But in that case he cannot be said to have founded the town. If the latter, there was no road, or path, or way of getting at the place at all, save through the forests and moors which closed it in on the north and west, or over the marshes, or across the river. Now the first thing the Romans did on getting into a marsh was to get out of it as best they could—and to encamp on this hillock with marshes and forest all around, without a road of any kind or description, without any means of procuring supplies, would have been a military blunder which a Roman general was incapable of committing. It seems to me, therefore, perfectly certain that Aulus did not encamp upon the hill above Walbrook.

For the purposes of this work it is not necessary to inquire where he did encamp. We may, however, point out that the road from Dover to the north broke off near Lambeth, where the marsh began, and that it began again where the marsh ended on the other side opposite Thorney; that the invaders would certainly use this road; that there was here a ford at low tide, and that at high tide the marsh became a lake; so that I think we need go no higher up the river. The place was Lambeth or Westminster as I read it.

The taking of Camulodunum (Colchester) was followed by the submission of the tribes. The Emperor was himself present at the conclusion of the war, and held a splendid triumph, at which was exhibited an imitation of Camulodunum, which was attacked and defended by thousands of British captives reserved to kill each other in this mimic war.

The story of the Roman conquest reveals a people stubborn and brave. Tribe after tribe, nation after nation, fought for freedom; they were defeated, submitted, revolted, and were defeated again. Their young men were taken prisoners, were sent to Rome to grace the shows by fighting in the arena, or were enrolled in regiments and served in foreign countries. Vespasian and Titus won the south with thirty pitched battles; Aulus Plautius conquered the Midlands. A line of forts was constructed from the Severn to the fens; a colony of discharged soldiers was planted at Camulodunum, and the Britons were turned out of their farms to make room for these colonists.

[CHAPTER II]
THE ROMAN RULE

The second appearance of London in history springs out of the revolt of the Iceni under Boudicca, or, as her name is Latinised, Boadicea. She was the widow of Prasutagus, King of the Iceni, who bequeathed his kingdom, hoping thereby to make the possession safe, to the Roman Cæsar jointly with his wife and daughters. The precaution proved useless. His kingdom was pillaged by the captains, and his wife and daughters were dishonoured. With the swiftness of a summer storm, the Britons from Norfolk, from the fens, from the north, rose with one consent and poured down upon the Roman colony. The town of Camulodunum was unfortified; there were no troops except the veterans. Suetonius Paulinus was far away in North Wales when the great revolt broke out. The veterans fought for their lives: those were happy who fell in battle: the prisoners were tortured to death; the women and children were slaughtered like the rest; the 9th Legion, marching to relieve the colony, was cut to pieces, only the cavalry escaping.

Paulinus hastened to London—observe that on its first appearance in history London is a large town. But he judged it best not to make this place his seat of war, and marched out, in spite of the prayers of the inhabitants. He allowed, however, those who wished to follow with the army. As soon as the Roman army was out of the town, the Britons—there was clearly more than one army of rebels—entered it and slaughtered every man, woman, and child. At the same time they entered Verulam and murdered all the population. Over 70,000 people are said to have been massacred in the three towns of London, Camulodunum, and Verulam. We need not stop to examine into the figures. It is enough that the three towns were destroyed with, we are told, all their inhabitants. The battle at which Suetonius Paulinus defeated the rebels was decisive. The captive Queen killed herself; the tribes dispersed. Then followed a time of punishment; and, as regards London, some must have escaped, for those who still lived went back to the City, rebuilt their houses, and resumed their ordinary occupations.

The Roman conquest, however, was by no means complete. That remained to be accomplished by Agricola. There was continual trouble north of Hadrian’s Wall, but the rest of the island remained in peace for more than a hundred years after the defeat of Boadicea. As for London, the City increased every year in wealth and population. The southern part of the island became rapidly Romanised; tranquillity and order were followed by trade and wealth; the country was quickly covered with populous and prosperous towns; the Roman roads were completed; the Roman authority was everywhere accepted.

STATUE OF A ROMAN WARRIOR FOUND IN A BASTION OF THE LONDON WALL

The distribution of the Roman legions after the defeat of the British Queen is significant. Five only remained: the 2nd, stationed at Isca Silurum—Caerleon; the 6th and 9th, at York; the 14th, at Colchester for a time until it was sent over to Germany; and the 20th, at Deva—Chester. There was no legion in the east—the country of Queen Boadicea; therefore there was no longer anything to fear from that quarter. There was none in London; there was none in the south country. In addition to the legions there were troops of auxiliaries stationed along the two walls of Antoninus and Hadrian, and probably along the Welsh frontier.

We may pass very briefly in review the leading incidents of the Roman occupation, all of which are more or less directly connected with London.

There can be little doubt that after the massacre by the troops of Boadicea the Romans built their great fortress on the east side of the Walbrook. Some of the foundations of the wall, of a most massive kind, have been found in five places. The fortress, which extended from the Walbrook to Mincing Lane, and from the river to Cornhill, occupied an area of 2250 by 1500 feet, which is very nearly the space then considered necessary in laying out a camp for the accommodation of a complete legion. It seems as if the Romans had a certain scale of construction, and laid out their camps according to the scale adopted.

Within this fortress were placed all the official courts and residences: here was the garrison; here were the courts of law; this was the city proper. I shall return to the aspect of the fort in another chapter.

We may safely conclude that the massacre of London by the troops of Boadicea would not have occurred had there been a bridge by which the people could escape. It is also safe to conclude that the construction of a bridge was resolved upon and carried out at the same time as that of the fortress. In another place will be found my theory as to the kind of bridge first constructed by the Roman engineers. In this place we need only call attention to the fact of the construction and to the gate which connected the fort with the bridge.

After the campaigns of Agricola, history speaks but little of Britain for more than half a century; though we hear of the spread of learning and eloquence in the north and west:—

Nunc totus Graias nostrasque habet orbis Athenas;

Gallia causidicos facunda Britannos;

De conducendo loquitur jam rhetore Thule.

And Martial says, with pride, that even the Britons read his verses:—

Dicitur et nostros cantare Britannia versus.

These, however, may be taken as poetic exaggerations.

The Romans, it is quite certain, were consolidating their power by building towns, making roads, spreading their circle of influence, and disarming the people. It has been remarked that the tessellated pavements found in such numbers frequently represent the legend of Orpheus taming the creatures—Orpheus was Rome; the creatures were her subjects.

The first half-century of occupation was by no means an unchequered period of success: the savage tribes of the north, the Caledonii, were constantly making raids and incursions into the country, rendered so much the easier by the new and excellent high roads.

In the year 120, Hadrian visited Britain, and marched in person to the north. As a contemporary poet said—

Ego nolo Cæsar esse,

Ambulare per Britannos,

Sythicas pati pruinas.

He built the great wall from the Solway to the Tyne: a wall 70 miles long, with an earthen vallum and a deep ditch on its southern side, and fortified by twenty-three stations, by castles, and wall towers.

ROMAN KNIFE-HANDLE
—FIGURE OF
CHARIOTEER,
BRONZE
In the collection of
C. Roach Smith, Esq., F.S.A.

Twenty years later, the Proprætor, Lollius Urbicus, drove the Caledonians northwards into the mountains, and connected the line of forts erected by Agricola from the Forth to the Clyde by a massive rampart of earth called the wall of Antoninus.

Again, after twenty years, the Caledonians gave fresh trouble, and were put down by Ulpius Marcellus under Commodus. On his recall there was a formidable mutiny of the troops. Pertinax, afterwards, for three short months, Emperor, was sent to quell the mutiny. He failed, and was recalled. Albinus, sent in his place, was one of the three generals who revolted against the merchant Didius Julianus, when that misguided person bought the throne.

At this time the Roman province of Britain had become extremely rich and populous. Multitudes of auxiliary troops had been transplanted into the island, and had settled down and married native women. The conscription dealt with equal rigour both with their children and the native Britons. Albinus, at the head of a great army, said to have consisted of 150,000 men, crossed over to Gaul and fought Severus, who had already defeated the third competitor, Niger, at Lyons, when he too met with defeat and death.

Severus, the conqueror, came over to Britain in 208-209. His campaign in the north was terminated by his death in 212.

For fifty years the island appears to have enjoyed peace and prosperity. Then came new troubles. I quote Wright[15] on this obscure period:—

CARAUSIUS
From Dr. Stukeley’sMedallic History of Carausius.

“Amid the disorder and anarchy of the reign of Gallienus (260 to 268), a number of usurpers arose in different parts of the Empire, who were popularly called the thirty tyrants, of whom Lollianus, Victorinus, Postumus, the two Tetrici, and Marius are believed on good grounds to have assumed the sovereignty in Britain. Perhaps some of these rose up as rivals at the same time; and from the monuments bearing the name of Tetricus, found at Bittern, near Southampton, we are perhaps justified in supposing that the head-quarters of that commander lay at the station of Clausentum and along the neighbouring coasts. We have no information of the state of Britain at this time, but it must have been profoundly agitated by these conflicting claimants to empire. Yet, though so ready to rise in support of their own leaders, the troops in Britain seem to have turned a deaf ear to all solicitations from without. When an officer in the Roman army, named Bonosus, born in Spain, but descended of a family in Britain, proclaimed himself Emperor, in the reign of Aurelian, and appealed for support to the western provinces, he found no sympathy among the British troops. Another usurper, whose name has not been recorded, had taken advantage of his appointment to the government of the island by the Emperor Probus to assume the purple. The frequency of such usurpations within the island seem to show a desire among the inhabitants to erect themselves into an independent sovereignty. We are told that a favourite courtier of Probus, named Victorinus Maurusius, had recommended this usurper to the proprætorship, and that, when reproached on this account by the Emperor, Victorinus demanded permission to visit Britain. When he arrived there, he hastened to the Proprætor, and sought his protection as a victim who had narrowly escaped from the tyranny of the Emperor. The new sovereign of Britain received him with the greatest kindness, and in return was murdered in the night by his guest. Victorinus returned to Rome to give the Emperor this convincing proof of his ‘loyalty.’ Probus was succeeded in the Empire by Carus, and he was followed by Diocletian, who began his reign in the year 284, and who soon associated with himself in the Empire the joint Emperor Maximian. Their reign, as far as regards Britain, was rendered remarkable chiefly by the successful usurpation of Carausius.”

By far the most remarkable of the British usurpers whose history is connected with that of London was Carausius.

This successful adventurer belonged to a time when there sprang up every day gallant soldiers, men who had risen from the ranks, conspicuous by their valour, fortunate in their victories, beloved and trusted by their soldiers. The temptation to such an one to assume the purple was irresistible. Examples of such usurpation were to be found in every part of the unwieldy Empire. To be sure they ended, for the most part, in defeat and death. But, then, these men had been facing death ever since they could bear arms. On any day death might surprise them on the field. Surely it was more glorious to die as Imperator than as the mere captain of a cohort. Such usurpers, again, held the crown as they won it, by the sword. They were like the King of the Grove, who reigned until a stronger than he arose to kill him. Carausius was a King of the Grove.

His history, so far as it has been told at all, is written by his enemies. But he was an important man. During his time of power he caused an immense number of coins to be struck, of which there remain some three hundred types. These were arranged about the year 1750 by that eminent antiquary Dr. Stukeley, who not only figured, described, and annotated them, but also endeavoured to restore from the coins the whole history of the successful usurper. Dr. Stukeley—a thing which is rare in his craft—possessed the imagination of a novelist as well as the antiquary’s passion for the chase of a fact.

Carausius was a Briton, born in Wales, at the city now called St. David’s. He was of royal descent. He was of noble presence and great abilities. Maximian found it necessary to continue him in his commands, and bestowed upon him the distinction of a command in the Empress’s Regiment, the Ala Serena—Diocletian’s wife was named Eleutheria Alexandra Serena,—and committed to him the conduct of the expedition against the revolted Gauls. Carausius executed his trust faithfully and effectually. In reward for this service Maximian appointed him to the important dignity of Comes littoris Saxonici, with command of the fleet, whose duty it was to beat back the pirates always cruising about the narrow seas in search of booty. The head-quarters of the fleet were at Gesoriacum (Boulogne), a central position for operations in the Channel or the North Sea.

In the following year Carausius again fought loyally on the side of Maximian. But, says Stukeley, “in person, character, and behaviour he so outshone the Emperor that he exercised an inveterate envy against him.” Shortly afterwards Carausius, being informed that the Emperor’s purpose was to murder him, called his officers together, harangued them, gained them over, secured the fortifications of Boulogne, and awaited events. Maximian prepared to attack him, but was prevented by a mutiny of the troops. Carausius, who had now the 4th Legion and many other troops, was saluted Emperor, and in September A.D. 288 he crossed the Channel, bringing with him the whole of the fleet. It was the most serious rebellion possible, because it could not be put down so long as Carausius maintained by his fleet the command of the sea. It may be doubted whether the joy of London which Dr. Stukeley sees recorded on the coins in consequence of this arrival was real or only official. One thing is certain, there had been a revolt in Britain on account of the tyranny of the Roman Præfect. This was put down, but not by Carausius. He did not enter the country as its conqueror, in which case his welcome would not have been joyous: he was the enemy of the Emperor, as represented by the tyrannical Præfect; and he was a fellow-countryman. National pride was probably appealed to, and with success, and on these grounds a demonstration of joy was called for. The first coin struck by the usurper shows Britannia, with the staff emblematic of merchandise, grasping the hand of the Emperor in welcome, with the legend “Expectate veni”—“Come thou long desired.” Another coin shows Britannia with a cornucopia and a mercurial staff with the legend “Adventus Aug.” The words “Expectate veni” were used, Dr. Stukeley thinks, to flatter the British claim of Phrygian descent. They were taken from Æneas’s speech in Virgil:—

Quae tantae tenuere morae, quibus Hector ab oris

Expectate venis.

Perhaps the figure which we have called Britannia may have been meant for Augusta. It is hard to understand why the whole country should be represented by the symbol of trade. On another coin the Emperor’s public entry into London is celebrated. He is on horseback; a spear is in his left hand, and his right hand is raised to acknowledge the acclamations of the people.

Maximian lost no time in raising another fleet, with which, in September 289, a great naval battle was fought, somewhere in the Channel, with the result of Maximian’s complete defeat, and as a consequence the arrangement of terms by which Maximian and Diocletian agreed to acknowledge Carausius as associated with them in the Imperial dignity; it was further agreed that Carausius should defend Britain against the Scots and Picts, and that he should continue to act as Comes littoris Saxonici and should retain Boulogne—the head-quarters of the fleet. The full title of the associated Emperor thus became—

Imp. M. Aur. Val. Carausius Aug.

The name of Aurelius he took from Maximian and that of Valerius from Diocletian as adopted by them.

Coins celebrated the sea victory and the peace. Carausius is represented on horseback as at an ovation; not in a chariot, which would have signified triumph. The legend is “IO X”; that is to say, “Shout ten times.” This was the common cry at acclamations. Thus Martial says of Domitian—

Rursus IO magnos clamat tibi Roma triumphos.

In March 290, Carausius associates with himself his son Sylvius, then a youth of sixteen. A coin is struck to commemorate the event. The legend is “Providentia Aug.”—as shown in appointing a successor.

In the same year Carausius, whose head-quarters had been Clausentum (Bitterne), near Southampton, and London alternately, now marched north and took up his quarters at York, where he began by repairing and restoring the work now called the Cars Dyke.

On his return to London he celebrated his success with sports and gladiatorial contests. Coins were struck to commemorate the event. They bear the legend “Victoria Aug.”

In the year A.D. 291, Carausius appointed a British Senate, built many temples and public buildings, and, as usual, struck many coins. On some of these may be found the letters S.C. He completed the Cars Dyke and founded the city of Granta. He also named himself Consul for Britain.

In the year 293 the two Emperors, Diocletian and Maximian, met at Milan and created two Cæsars—Constantius Chlorus, father of Constantine the Great, and Galerius Armentarius. And now the pretence of peace with Carausius was thrown away. Chlorus began operations against him by attacking the Franks and Batavians, allies of Carausius. He also urged the Saxons and sea-board Germans to invade Britain. Carausius easily drove off the pirates, and addressed himself to the more formidable enemy. Chlorus laid siege to Boulogne, which was defended by Sylvius, son of Carausius. The British Emperor himself chased his assailant’s fleet triumphantly along the coasts of Gaul and Spain; he swept the seas; he even entered the Mediterranean, took a town, and struck Greek and Punic coins in celebration. He also struck coins with his wife as Victory sacrificing at an altar, “Victoria Augg.”—the two “g’s” meaning Carausius and his son Sylvius.

In May 295, while the Emperor was collecting troops and ships to meet Constantius Chlorus, he was treacherously murdered by his officer Allectus. Probably his son Sylvius was killed with him.

This is Dr. Stukeley’s account of a most remarkable man. A great deal is perhaps imaginary; on the other hand, the coins, read by one who knows how to interpret coins, undoubtedly tell something of the story as it is related.

The history of Carausius as gathered by other writers from such histories as remain differs entirely from Dr. Stukeley’s reading. It is as follows:—

He was of obscure origin, belonged to the Batavian tribe of Menapii; and he began by entering, or being made to enter, the service of the British fleet. The people, afterwards called collectively Saxons, were already actively engaged in piratical descents upon the eastern and the southern coast of Britain. They came over in their galleys; they landed; they pillaged, destroyed, and murdered everywhere within their reach; then they returned, laden with their spoil, to their homes on the banks of the Elbe.

To meet these pirates, to destroy their ships, to make them disgorge their plunder, it was found necessary, in addition to constructing a line of fortresses along the shore—of which Richborough, Bradwell, Pevensey, and Porchester still remain,—to maintain a large and well-formed fleet always in readiness. This was done, and the British fleet, whose head-quarters were at Gesoriacum (Boulogne), was constantly engaged in chasing, attacking, and destroying the pirate vessels. It was a service of great danger, but also one which gave a brave man many opportunities of distinction. These opportunities were seized by Carausius, who obtained so great a reputation as a sailor that he was promoted grade after grade until he became Admiral, or Commander of the Fleet.

His courage, which had been shown in a thousand dare-devil, reckless acts, was known to all who manned the galleys; every captain and every cabin-boy could rehearse the exploits of Carausius. Moreover, he had in his hands the power and authority of promotion; he was affable and kindly in his manner; he was, in his way, considerate of the men, whom he rewarded generously for bravery; he was eloquent, too, and understood how to move the hearts of men; his portrait can be seen both full face and profile on his coins, and we can judge that he was a handsome man: in short, he possessed all the gifts wanted to win the confidence, the affection, and the loyalty of soldiers and sailors. With an army—for the service of the fleet was nothing less—at his command, with the example of other usurpers before him, and with the rich and fertile province of Britannia in his power, it is not astonishing that this strong, able man should dream of the Purple.

But first it was necessary to become rich. Without a Treasury the army would melt away. How could Carausius grow rich? By seizing London and pillaging the City? But then he would make the whole island his enemy. There was a better way, a more secret way. He redoubled his vigilance over the coasts, but he did not attack the pirates till they were returning laden with their plunder. He then fell upon them and recaptured the whole. But he did not restore the spoils to their owners: he kept them, and in this way became very quickly wealthy. Presently the peculiar methods of the Admiral began to be talked about; people began to murmur; complaints were sent to Rome. Then Carausius learned that he was condemned to death. He was therefore forced to instant action. He proclaimed himself Emperor with Maximian and Diocletian, and he made an alliance with the Franks.

So long as he could rely on his troops, so long as he was victorious, he was safe; and for a long time there could be no opposition. Britain and the legions then in the island acknowledged him. He crossed over and made his head-quarters at Clausentum (Bitterne), near Southampton. He was certainly some time at London, where he had a mint; and he ruled the country undisturbed for some years.

We know nothing whatever about his rule, but there is probably very little to learn. He kept back the Picts and Scots; he kept back the pirates—that is clear from his coins, which speak of victory. We must remember that the reign of a usurper differed very little from that of a recognised Emperor. He preserved the same administration conducted by the same officers; it was only a change of name. Just as the government of France under the Republic is practically the same as that under the Empire, so the province of Britain under Maximian knew no change except a change of proprietor when it passed to Carausius.

But the end came. Carausius had to fight when he was challenged, or die.

The two Emperors appointed two Cæsars. To one, Constantius, was given the Empire of the West. He began his reign by attempting to reduce the usurper. With a large army he advanced north and invested Gesoriacum, where Carausius was lying; next, because the port was then, as it is now, small and narrow and impossible of entrance, except at high tide, he blocked it with stones and piles, so that the fleet could not enter to support him.

A SEA FIGHT
From a MS. in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

It is impossible to know why Carausius did not fight. Perhaps he proposed to gather his troops in Britain and to meet Constantius on British soil. Perhaps he reckoned on Constantius being unable to collect ships in sufficient number to cross the Channel. Whatever his reasons, he embarked and sailed away. The King of the Grove had run away. Therefore his reign was over.

In such cases there is always among the officers one who perceives the opportunity and seizes it. The name of the officer swift to discern and swift to act in this case was Allectus. He murdered the man who had run away, and became himself the King of the Grove.

Very little is known about Allectus or about his rule. Historians speak of him contemptuously as one who did not possess the abilities of Carausius; perhaps, but I cannot find any authority for the opinion. The facts point rather in the opposite direction. At least he commanded the allegiance and the loyalty of the soldiers, as Carausius had done; he seems to have kept order in Britain; as nothing is said to the contrary, he must have kept back the Caledonians and Saxons for four years; he maintained the Frankish alliance; and when his time came, his men went out with him to fight, and with him, fighting, fell. In this brief story there is no touch of weakness. One would like to know more about Allectus. Like Carausius, he was a great coiner. Forty of his coins are described by Roach Smith. They represent a manly face of strength and resolution crowned with a coronet of spikes. On the other side is a female figure with the legend “Pax Aug.” Other coins bear the legends “Pietas Aug.,” “Providentia Aug.,” “Temporum felicitas,” and “Virtus Aug.”

TOMB OF VALERIUS AMANDINUS (A ROMAN GENERAL)
In Westminster Abbey.

He was left undisturbed for nearly four years. Constantius employed this time in collecting ships and men. It is rather surprising that Allectus did not endeavour to attack and destroy those ships in port. When at last the army was in readiness Constantius crossed the Channel, his principal force, under Asclepiodotus, landing on the coast of Sussex. It was said that he crossed with a side wind, which was thought daring, and by the help of a thick fog eluded the fleet of Allectus, which was off the Isle of Wight on the look-out for him.

Allectus was in London: he expected the landing would be on the Kentish coast, and awaited the enemy, not with the view of sheltering himself behind the river, but in order, it would seem, to choose his own place and time for battle. Asclepiodotus, however, pushed on, and Allectus, crossing the bridge with his legions, his Frankish allies, and his auxiliaries, went out to meet the enemy. Where did they fight? It has been suggested that Wimbledon was the most likely place. Perhaps. It is quite certain that the battle was very near London, from what followed. I would suggest Clapham Common; but as the whole of that part of London was a barren moorland, flat, overgrown with brushwood, the battle may have taken place anywhere south of Kensington, where the ground begins to rise out of the marsh. We have no details of the battle, which was as important to Britain as that of Senlac later on, for the invader was successful. The battle went against Allectus, who was slain in the field. His routed soldiers fled to London, and there began to sack the City and to murder the people. Constantius himself at this moment arrived with his fleet, landed his troops, and carried on a street fight with the Franks until every man was massacred. Two facts come out clearly: that the battle was fought very near to London; and that when Allectus fell there was left neither order nor authority.

This is the third appearance of London in history. In the first, A.D. 61, Tacitus speaks of it, as we have seen, as a City of considerable trade; in the second, the rebellion of Boadicea, it furnishes the third part of the alleged tale of 70,000 victims; at this, the third, the defeated troops are ravaging and plundering the helpless City. In all three appearances London is rich and thickly populated.

We may also remark that we have now arrived at the close of the third century, and that, so far, there has been very little rest or repose for the people, but rather continued fighting from the invasion of Aulus Plautius to the defeat of Allectus.

It is true that the conscription of the British youth carried them out of the country to serve in other parts of the Roman Empire; it is also true that the fighting in Britain was carried on by the legions and the auxiliaries, and that the Lex Julia Majestatis disarmed the people subject to Roman rule. Looking, however, to the continual fighting on the frontier and the fighting in the Channel, and the incursions of the Scots and Picts, one cannot believe that none of the British were permitted to fight in defence of their own land, or to man the fleet which repelled the pirate. Those who speak of the enervating effects of the long peace under the Roman rule—the Pax Romana—would do well to examine for themselves into the area covered by this long peace and its duration.

It was not in London, but at York, that Constantius fixed his residence, in order to restrain the Picts and Scots. The importance attached to Britain may be inferred from the fact that the Emperor remained at York until his death in A.D. 306, when his son, Constantine the Great, succeeded him, and continued in the island, probably at York, for six years. Coins of Constantine and also of his mother, Helena, have been found in London.

In the year 310, Constantine quitted the island. A period of nearly forty years, concerning which history is silent, followed. This time may have been one of peace and prosperity.

The government of the country had been completely changed by the scheme of defence introduced by Diocletian and modified by Constantine. Under that scheme the Roman world was to be governed by two Emperors—one on the Danube, and the other in the united region of Spain, Gaul, and Britain. The island was divided into five provinces of Britannia Prima and Britannia Secunda; Lower Britain became Flavia Cæsariensis and Maxima Cæsariensis; between the walls of Hadrian and Antoninus was the Province of Valentia. Each province had its own Vicarius or Governor, who administered his province in all civil matters.

The Civil Governor of Britain was subject to the Præfectus of Gaul, who resided at Treviri (Treves) or Arelate (Arles). He was called Vicarius, and had the title Vir Spectabilis (your Excellency). His head-quarters were at York. The “Civil Service,” whose officers lived also in the fort, consisted of a Chief Officer (Princeps), a Chief Secretary (Cornicularis), Auditors (Numerarii), a Commissioner of Prisons (Commentariensis), Judges, Clerks, Serjeants, and other officers. For the revenues there were a Collector (Rationalis summarum Britanniarum), an Overseer of Treasure (Præpositus Thesaurorum). In the hunting establishment there were Procuratores Cynegiorum. The military affairs of the state were directly under the control of the Præfect of Gaul. The Vicarius had no authority in things military. We have seen also how one general after another fixed his head-quarters, not in London, but at York, or elsewhere. London played a much less important part than York in the military disposition of the island. There were three principal officers: the Count of the Saxon Shore (Comes littoris Saxonici), the Count of Britain, and the Duke of Britain. The first of these had the command of the fleet—Carausius, we have seen, was Comes littoris Saxonici—with the charge of the nine great fortresses established along the coast from Porchester to Brancaster. The Duke of Britain had his head-quarters at York, with the command of the 6th Legion and charge of the wall. It is not certain where were the head-quarters of the Count of Britain. Each of these officers, like the Vicarius, had his own establishment. The permanent forces in Great Britain were estimated at four, afterwards two, legions with auxiliaries, the whole amounting to 19,200 infantry and 1700 cavalry. Surely a force capable of repelling the incursions of Irish, Scots, and Saxons all together!

It is not possible to estimate the effect upon the country of these military settlements; we do not know either the extent of the territory they occupied or the number of the settlers at any colony. Britannia is a large island, and many such settlements may have been made without any effect upon the country. One thing, however, is certain, that foreign settlers when they marry women belonging to their new country very speedily adopt the manners and the language of that country, and their children belong wholly to their mother’s race. Thus Germans and Scandinavians settling in America and marrying American women adapt themselves to American manners and learn the English tongue, while their children, taught in the public schools, are in no respect to be accounted different from the children of pure American parentage. Even the most marked and most bigoted difference of religion does not prevent this fusion. The Polish Jew becomes in the second generation an Englishman in England, or an American in America. And in Ireland, when the soldiers of Cromwell settled in County Kerry and married women of the country, their children became Irish in manners and in thought. The descendants of those soldiers have nothing left from their great-grandfathers—not religion, not manners, not Puritan ideas—nothing but their courage.

So that one can neither affirm nor deny that these settlers in any way influenced or changed the general character of the people. Religion would be no hindrance, because all the ancient religions admitted the gods of all people. It is sufficient to note the fact, and to remember that the people so called Britons were after four hundred years of Roman rule as mixed a race as could well be found. In London the mixture was still greater, because the trade of Roman London at its best was carried on with the whole habitable world.

The language spoken among the better sort—the language of the Court, the Forum, and the Port—was undoubtedly Latin. All the inscriptions are in Latin; none are in Celtic. The language of the common people of London was like that of the modern pidgin-English, a patois composed of Latin without its trappings of inflexions and declensions—such a patois as that from which sprang Mediæval French and Provençal, mixed with words from every language under the sun: words brought to the Port by sailors who still preserved the Phœnician tongue; by Greeks from Massilia; by Italians from Ostia and Brundusium; by Norsemen from Gotland and the Baltic; by Flemings, Saxons, and Germans.

The legionaries contributed their share to the patois as spoken by the country folk. But there were few soldiers in the fort of Augusta; the London dialect, except among the slaves working at the Port or waiting in their barracoons to be exported for the gladiatorial contests, was pidgin-Latin.

The Emperor Constans came over in 347. He was murdered, three years after leaving this country, by Magnentius, a native of Britain. The rise and fall of this pretender involved the ruin of many of his own countrymen and the soldiers of the Roman occupation. One Paulus, surnamed Catena, was sent to London in order to punish the adherents of Magnentius. Then follows a very singular story. The cruelties of Paulus excited the deepest indignation, insomuch that the Civil Governor of the province, the “Vicarius,” Martinus by name, endeavoured to interpose on behalf of the victims. Failing to move the judge to mercy, he tried to save his friends by murdering him. When this attempt also failed, he committed suicide. Paulus returned to Rome, carrying with him a multitude of prisoners, who were tortured, imprisoned, executed, or exiled.

The Picts and Scots took advantage of the disorder to invade the country after the departure of Paulus. It is evident that the regular troops had been withdrawn or were in confusion, because troops were brought over from Gaul to drive back the invaders.

COFFIN LIDS FOUND IN LONDON
A H Burkitt FSA 1851

Some ten years later the Picts and Scots renewed their attacks. They defeated and slew the Count of the Saxon Shore, and they defeated the Duke of Britain. The Emperor Valentinian therefore sent Theodosius with a very large force into the island. He found the enemy ravaging the country round London—it was probably at this period, and in consequence of the repeated invasions from the north, that the wall of London was built. In another place will be found an account of the wall. It is sufficient to state here, that it was most certainly built in a great hurry and apparently at a time of panic, because stones in the City—from public buildings, the temples, the churches, and cemeteries—were seized wherever possible and built up in the wall.

However, Theodosius drove back the invaders with great slaughter. He found that there were many of the native population with the enemy. He adopted a policy of conciliation: he relieved the people of their heavy taxation, and rebuilt their cities and fortresses.

Here follows an incident which illustrates at once the dangers of the time and the wisdom of Theodosius. I quote it from Wright (The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, 1852 edition, p. 378):—

“There was in Britain at this time a man named Valentinus, a native of Valeria, in Pannonia, notorious for his intrigues and ambition, who had been sent as an exile to Britain in expiation of some heavy crime. This practice of banishing political offenders to Britain appears to have been, at the time of which we are now speaking, very prevalent; for we learn from the same annalist, that a citizen of Rome, named Frontinus, was at the time of the revolt just described sent into exile in Britain for a similar cause. Men like these no sooner arrived in the island than they took an active part in its divisions, and brought the talent for political intrigue which had been fostered in Italy to act upon the agitation already existing in the distant province. Such was the case with Valentinus, who, as the brother-in-law of one of the deepest agitators of Rome, the vicar Maximinus (described by Ammianus as ille exitialis vicarius), had no doubt been well trained for the part he was now acting. As far as we can gather from the brief notices of the historian, this individual seems, when Theodosius arrived in Britain, to have been actively engaged in some ambitious designs, which the arrival of that great and upright commander rendered hopeless. Theodosius had not been long in Londinium when he received private information that Valentinus was engaged with the other exiles in a formidable conspiracy, and that even many of the military had been secretly corrupted by his promises. With the vigour which characterised all his actions, Theodosius caused the arch-conspirator and his principal accomplices to be seized suddenly, at the moment when their designs were on the point of being carried into execution, and they were delivered over to Duke Dulcitius, to receive the punishment due to their crimes; but, aware of the extensive ramifications of the plot in which they had been engaged, and believing that it had been sufficiently crushed, Theodosius wisely put a stop to all further inquiries, fearing lest by prosecuting them he might excite an alarm which would only bring a renewal of the scenes of turbulence and outrage which his presence had already in a great measure appeased. The prudence as well as the valour of Theodosius were thus united in restoring Britain to peace and tranquillity; and we are assured that when, in 369, he quitted the island, he was accompanied to the port where he embarked by crowds of grateful provincials.”

In the year 383 Britain furnished another usurper or claimant of the people, in the person of Magnus Maximus. He was a native of Spain, who had served in Britain with great distinction, and was a favourite with the soldiers. Now the troops then stationed in Britain are stated by the historian to have been the most arrogant and turbulent of all the Imperial troops.

The career of Maximus, and his ultimate defeat and death at Aquileia, belong to the history of the Roman Empire.

One of the officers of Theodosius, named Chrysanthus, who afterwards became a bishop at Constantinople, pacified Britain—one hopes by methods less brutal than those of Paulus Catena.

The people, however, had little to congratulate themselves upon. Their country with its five provinces was regarded as a department of the Court of Treves. When there was any trouble in the Empire of the West, the legions of Great Britain were withdrawn without the least regard for the defence of the country against the Picts and Scots; and the division into provinces was a source of weakness. Moreover, the general decay of the Empire was accompanied by the usual signs of anarchy, lawlessness, and oppression. The troops were unruly and mutinous; time after time, as we have seen, they set up one usurper and murdered another; they were robbed by their officers; their pay was irregular. The complexity of the new system added to the opportunities of the taxing authorities and the tax-collector. The visit of the Imperial tax-gatherers was worse than the sack of a town by the enemy. Torture was freely used to force the people to confess their wealth; son informed against father, and father against son; they were taxed according to confessions extorted under torture.

The end of the Roman occupation, however, was rapidly approaching. Theodosius died in 395, and left his Western dominions to Honorius. There were still two legions in Britain: the 6th, at Eboracum (York); and the 2nd, at Rutupiæ (Richborough). There were also numerous bodies of auxiliaries. Early in the fifth century these soldiers revolted and set up an Emperor of their own, one Marcus. They murdered him in 407, and set up another named Gratian, whom they also murdered after a few months, when they chose an obscure soldier on account of his name, Constantine.

He at once collected his army and crossed over to Gaul. His subsequent career, like that of Maximus, belongs to the history of Rome.

It would appear that the withdrawal of the legions by Constantine was the actual end of the Roman occupation. The cities of Britain took up arms to repel invasion from the north and the descent of the pirates in the west, and in 410 received letters from Honorius telling them to defend themselves.

The story told by Gildas is to the effect that Maximus took away all the men capable of bearing arms; that the cities of Britain suffered for many years under the oppression of the Picts and Scots; that they implored the Romans for help; and that Roman legions came over, defeated the Picts and Scots, and taught the Britons how to build a wall. This is all pure legend.

The commonly received history of the coming of the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons is chiefly legendary. It is impossible to arrive at the truth, save by conjecture from a very few facts ascertained. Thus it is supposed that the Saxons began, just as the Danes did four hundred years afterwards, by practical incursions leading to permanent settlements; that the words littus Saxonicum signified, not the shore exposed to Saxon pirates, but the shore already settled by Saxons; that in some parts the transition from Roman to Saxon was gradual; that the two races mixed together—at Canterbury, Colchester, Rochester, and other places we find Roman and Saxon interments in the same cemetery; that the Saxons had gained a footing in the island long before the grand invasions of which the Saxon Chronicle preserves the tradition.

This long history of warfare, of civil commotion, of mutiny and usurpation, of conscription and taxation, is not a pleasant picture of Britain under the famous Pax Romana. How did the City of London fare? It was the residence of the Proprætor before the new scheme of Diocletian. This is proved by the discovery of certain inscribed tiles. These tiles record the legions or the officers stationed in various places. At Chester they bear the name of the 20th Legion; at York, those of the 6th and the 9th. At Lymne and Dover the usual inscription is Cl.Br., supposed to mean Classiarii Britannici. Some of the tiles above referred to are inscribed PRB. Lon., or PPBR. Lon., or P.PR.BR. Roach Smith reads these letters Prima Cohors Britanniæ Londinii, and assumes that the first British Cohort was once stationed in London. Wright, however, reads Proprætor Britanniæ Londinii, thus showing that London was the seat of government. As there is no hint elsewhere that the first British Cohort served in Britain, but plenty of evidence as to its being elsewhere, as in Egypt and Germany, Wright’s interpretation is probably the correct one.

Except for the attempted sack of the City after the defeat of Allectus and for the sanguinary revenge by Paulus Catena, London seems to have been but little disturbed by the invasions and the mutinies and the usurpations. Her trade went on. In bad times, as when Magnentius or Maximus drew off the soldiers, and the invaders fell upon the country on the north, the east, and the west, destroying the towns and laying waste the country, London suffered. In the intervals of peace her wharves were crowded with merchandise and her port with ships.

The introduction of Christianity into London, as into Britain generally, began, there can be little doubt, in the second century. The new religion, however, made very slow progress. The first missionaries, believed to have been St. Paul or St. Joseph of Arimathæa, with Lazarus and his two sisters, were probably converts from Gaul who came to Britain in pursuit of their ordinary business. In the year 208 Tertullian mentions the existence of Christians in Britain. Early in the fourth century there were British Bishops at the Council of Arles.

In 324 Christianity was recognised as the religion of the State.

In the year 325 the British Church assented to the conclusions of the Council of Nicæa. In 386 there was an Established Christian Church in Britain, in habitual intercourse with Rome. As to the reality of the Christianity of the people and how far it was mixed up with remains of Mithraism and the ancient faiths of Rome and Gallia, we have no means of judging.

BRONZE ROMAN LAMP FOUND
IN CANNON STREET

What was the government of London itself at this time? We can find an answer in the constitution of other Roman towns. London never became a municipium—a town considered by the Imperial authorities as of the first importance. There were only two towns of this rank in Britain, viz. Eboracum (York) and Verulam (St. Alban’s). It was, with eight other towns, a colonia. Wright[16] is of opinion that there was very little difference in later times between the colonia and the municipium. These towns enjoyed the civitas or rights of Roman citizens; they consisted of the town and certain lands round it; and they had their own government exempt from the control of the Imperial officers. In that case the forum would not necessarily be placed in the fort or citadel, which was the residence of the Vicarius when he was in London with his Court and establishment. At the same time this citadel occupied an extensive area, and the City being without walls till the year 360 or thereabouts, all the public buildings were within that area. The governing body of the City was called the curia, and its members were curiales, decuriones, or senators; the rank was hereditary, but, like every hereditary house, it received accessions from below. The two magistrates, the duumviri, were chosen yearly by the curia from their own body. A town council, or administrative body, was also elected for a period of fifteen years by the curiales from their own body; the members were called principales. The curia appointed, also, all the less important officers; in fact it controlled the whole municipality. The people were only represented by one officer, the defensor civitatis, whose duty it was to protect his class against tyrannical or unjust usurpations of power by the curiales. No one could be called upon to serve as a soldier except in defence of his own town. The defence of the Empire was supposed to be taken over by the Emperor himself. Let every man, he said, rest in peace and carry on his trade in security. But when the Emperor’s hands grew weak, what had become of the martial spirit? The existence of this theory explains also how the later history of the Roman Empire is filled with risings and mutinies and usurpations, not of cities and tribes, but of soldiers. At the same time, since we read of the British youth going off to fight in Germany and elsewhere, the country lads had not lost their spirit.[17] The people of London itself, however, may have become, like those of Rome, unused to military exercises. Probably there was no fear of any rising in London, and there was not a large garrison in the citadel. The citizens followed their own trade, unarmed, like the rest of the world; even their young men were not necessarily trained to sports and military exercises. Their occupations were very much the same as those of later times: there were merchants, foreign and native, ship-builders and ship-owners, sailors, stevedores and porters, warehousemen, clerks, shopmen, lawyers, priests, doctors, scribes, professors and teachers, and craftsmen of all kinds. These last had their collegia or guilds, each with a curialis for a patron. The institution is singularly like the later trade guilds, each with a patron saint. One would like to think that a craft company, such as the blacksmiths’, has a lineal descent from the Collegium Fabrorum of Augusta. But as will be proved later on, that is impossible. London was a city of trade, devoted wholly to trade. The more wealthy sort emulated the luxury and effeminacy of the Roman senators—but only so long as the Empire remained strong. When one had to fight or be robbed, to fight or to be carried off in slavery, to fight or to die, there was an end, I believe, of the effeminacy of the London citizens.

Let us consider this question of the alleged British effeminacy. We have to collect the facts, as far as we can get at them, which is a very little way, and the opinion of historians belonging to the time.

Gildas, called Sapiens, the Sage—in his Book of Exclamations,—speaks thus contemptuously of his own people:—

1. The Romans, he says, on going away, told the people that “inuring themselves to warlike weapons, and bravely fighting, they should valiantly protect their country, their property, wives and children, and what is dearer than these, their liberty and lives; that they should not suffer their hands to be tied behind their backs by a nation which, unless they were enervated by idleness and sloth, was not more powerful than themselves, but that they should arm those hands with buckler, sword, and spear, ready for the field of battle.

2. He says: “The Britons are impotent in repelling foreign foes, but bold and invincible in raising civil war, and bearing the burdens of their offences; they are impotent, I say, in following the standard of peace and truth, but bold in wickedness and falsehood.”

3. He says: “To this day”—many years after the coming of the Saxons—“the cities of our country are not inhabited as before, but being forsaken and overthrown, lie desolate, our foreign wars having ceased, but our civil troubles still remaining.”

Bede, who writes much later, thus speaks, perhaps having read the evidence of Gildas: “With plenty, luxury increased, and this was immediately attended with all sorts of crimes: in particular, cruelty, hatred of truth, and love of falsehood: insomuch that if any one among them happened to be milder than the rest, and inclined to truth, all the rest abhorred and persecuted him, as if he had been the enemy of his country. Nor were the laity only guilty of these things, but even our Lord’s own flock and His pastors also addicted themselves to drunkenness, animosity, litigiousness, contention, envy, and other such-like crimes, and casting off the light yoke of Christ. In the meantime, on a sudden, a severe plague fell upon that corrupt generation, which soon destroyed such numbers of them that the living were scarcely sufficient to bury the dead; yet those who survived could not be drawn from the spiritual death which their sins had incurred either by the death of their friends or the fear of their own.” This declaration of wickedness is written, one observes, ecclesiastically—that is, in general terms.

METHOD OF SWATHING THE DEAD
Claud MS., II. iv.

The opinion of an ecclesiastic who, like Gildas, connects morals and bravery, and finds in a king’s alleged incontinence the cause of internal disasters, may be taken for what it is worth. One undeniable fact remains, that for two hundred years this effeminate people fought without cessation or intermission for their lives and their liberties. Two hundred years, if you think of it, is a long time for an effeminate folk to fight. Deprived of their Roman garrison, they armed themselves; deprived of a government which had kept order for four hundred years, they elected their own governors; unfortunately their cities were separate, each with its own mayor (comes civitatis). They fought against the wild Highlander from the north; against the wild mountain man from the west; against the wild Irish from over the western sea; against the wild Saxon and Dane from the east. They were attacked on all sides; they were driven back slowly: they did nothing but fight during the whole of that most wretched period while the Roman Empire fell to pieces. When all was over, some of the survivors were found in the Welsh mountains; some in the Cumbrian Hills; some in the Fens; some beyond the great moor of Devon; some in the thick forests of Nottingham, of Middlesex, of Surrey, and of Sussex. Most sad and sorrowful spectacle of all that sad and sorrowful time is one picture—it stands out clear and distinct. I see a summer day upon the southern shore and in the west of England; I think that the place is Falmouth. There are assembling on the sea-shore a multitude of men, women, and children. Some of them are slaves; they are tied together. It is a host of many thousands. Close to the shore are anchored or tied up a vast number of ships rudely and hastily constructed, the frame and seats of wood, the sides made out of skins of creatures sewn together and daubed with grease to keep out the water. The ships are laden with provisions; some of them are so small as to be little better than coracles. And while the people wait, lo! there rises the sound of far-off voices which chant the Lamentation of the Psalmist. These are monks who are flying from the monastery, taking with them only their relics and their treasures. See! they march along bearing the Cross and their sacred vessels, singing as they go. So they get on board; and then the people after them climb into their vessels. They set their sails; they float down the estuary and out into the haze beyond and are lost. In this way did England give to France her province of Bretagne.

[CHAPTER III]
THE ASPECT OF THE CITY

Such, then, was the condition and the government of Roman London-Augusta. It is a City of great trade when first we find it mentioned. The trade had been diverted by a new road, now called Oxford Street, from the old line which previously passed across the more ancient settlement in the Isle of Thorney. London had been at first a British fort on a hillock overhanging the river; then a long quay by the river-side; then a collection of villa residences built in gardens behind the quay. The whole was protected by a Roman fort. By the fourth century, practically the trade of the entire country passed through the port of London. The wealth of the merchants would have become very great but for the fluctuations of trade, caused first by the invasions of Picts, Scots, Welsh, Irish, and “Saxons,” which interfered with the exports and imports; and next by the civil wars, usurpations, and tumults, which marked the later years of the Roman occupation. London under the Romans never became so rich as Ephesus, for instance, or Alexandria.

Let us next inquire what manner of city was this of London under the Romans. At the time of the Roman Conquest it was an unwalled village, protected partly by its situation, which was such as to leave it exposed to attack from one quarter only, before the construction of roads across the marsh; partly by its stockade fort between the Fleet and the Walbrook, and partly by the valour of its inhabitants—there are rumours of battles between the men of London and the men of Verulam. When Paulinus went out to meet Boadicea he left behind him a city without protection, either of walls or soldiers. Evidently there was then no Roman fort or citadel. That was built later. It was placed on that high ground already described, east of Walbrook; it had the advantage of a stream and a low cliff in the west, and a broad river and a low cliff on the south. This citadel was of extraordinary strength and solidity. Its foundations have been laid bare (1) at its south-west angle, under Cannon Street Railway Terminus; (2) at its east side, at Mincing Lane, twenty years ago; and (3) part of the north side was uncovered in 1892, on the south side of Cornhill. The wall of this fortress was, no doubt, much like the walls of Porchester and Pevensey which are still standing: it was quadrangular, and set with circular bastions. Its length was about 750 yards, its breadth about 500, so that the area enclosed must have been 375,000 square yards. There is no mention in history of this fortress; it was probably taken for granted by the historians that the castra stativa—the standing camp, the citadel—belonged to London in common with every other important town under Roman rule.

On the north side the wall of the fortress was protected by a ditch which ran from the eastern corner to the Walbrook. Traces of this ditch remained for a long time, and gave rise to the belief that there had been a stream running into the Walbrook; hence the name Langbourne. The main street of the fortress ran along the line of Cannon Street. London Stone, removed from its original position on the south side of the road, probably marked the site of the western gate.

As the town grew, houses, villas, streets arose all round the fortress and under its protection. Within the walls many remains have been found, but none of cemeteries. There were no interments within the walls, a fact which proves by itself the theory of the Roman fortress, if any further proof were needed. Outside the fort there is evidence of cemeteries that have been built over; pavements lie over forgotten graves. A bath has been found by the river-side: this was probably a public bath. When one reads of the general making London his head-quarters, it was in this walled place that his troops lay. In the enclosure were the offices of state, the mint, the treasury, the courts of justice, the arsenal, the record office, and the official residences. Here was the forum, though no remains have been discovered of this or any other public buildings. Here the civil administration was carried on; hither were brought the taxes, and here were written and received the dispatches and the reports.

This citadel was official London. If we wish to know what the City was like, we can understand by visiting Silchester, which was also a walled town. However, at Silchester as yet no citadel has been discovered. There are the foundations of a great hall larger than Westminster Hall. It had rooms and offices around it; it had a place of commerce where were the shops, the verandahs or cloisters in which the lawyers, the orators, the rhetoricians, and the poets walked and talked. Near at hand the guards of the Vicarius had their barracks.

Beneath and around the citadel of London the houses clustered in square insulæ; beyond, on the north side, stood the villas in their pretty gardens. The site of the great hall of the London citadel was perhaps discovered in 1666 after the Great Fire, when the workmen laid bare, east of what is now Cannon Street Railway Station, a splendid tessellated pavement.

Within the citadel was the forum, surrounded by lofty columns. One temple at least—probably more than one—lifted its columns into the air. One was to Fortune; another to Jupiter. In other parts of the town were temples to Cybele, to Apollo, to Baal or the sun god, to Mercury, to the Deæ Matres; to Bacchus, who stood for Osiris as well; and to Venus.

TESSELLATED PAVEMENT
From Lysons’ Account of the Roman Villa discovered at Woodchester.

The character of the Roman remains dug up from time to time within these walls shows that it was formerly a place of great resort. Under the protection of this citadel, and later under the protection of the Pax Romana, villas were built up outside the walls for the residence of the better sort. All round the walls also sepulchral remains have been discovered; they were afterwards included in the larger wall of the city which was built towards the close of the fourth century.

London was then, and for many years afterwards, divided into London east and west of the Walbrook. On the western side was the quarter of the poorer sort; they had cottages on the foreshore—as yet there was no wall. The better class lived outside the fort, along the eastern side of Walbrook, and in Cornhill, Threadneedle Street, and Bishopsgate Street. Down below were the three Roman ports, afterwards called Billingsgate, Dowgate, and Queenhithe. Walking down Thames Street one finds here and there an old dock which looks as if it had been there from time immemorial.

I have sometimes been tempted, when in Thames Street—that treasure-house of memories, survivals, and suggestions—to think that these narrow lanes sloping to the river are of Roman origin, left when all the rest was wrecked and lost, and that they are still of the same breadth as they were in the fourth century. This, however, is not the case. I shall show presently the origin and meaning of these narrow streets running up the hill from the river into Thames Street: they are all, in fact, connections of the quays on the foreshore with the merchants’ warehouses in Thames Street. Along the better streets, on the north of Thames Street, the traders put up their stalls and kept their shops; the stalls were at first mere temporary sheds resting against the walls of villas. These villas belonged, not to the millionaire Lucullus, for whose palace the whole world could be ransacked, but to the well-to-do merchant, whose taste was not much cultivated. He called in the best artist of the city. “Build me a villa,” he said, “as good as my neighbour’s. Let there be a fine mosaic pavement; let there be fountains; let there be paintings on the walls, lovely paintings—nymphs and fauns, nymphs bathing, plenty of nymphs, dancing girls, plenty of dancing girls; paint me Hercules drunk, Loves flying and playing tricks, warriors with shields, sea pieces, ships; paint me my own ships sailing. And take care of the hypocaust and the warming pipes, and see that the kitchen is suitably furnished.”

The earliest, the natural port of London was the mouth of the Walbrook, called afterwards Dowgate.

In the western wall of the Roman citadel was the gate which served at once for the road or street across the City to Newgate, and for that part of the trade which belonged to the citadel. The Walbrook at this time was a considerable stream. It was partly a tidal stream, but it was fed from above by many tributaries on the moorland. Here the ships first began to load and to unload. For their convenience quays were constructed on piles driven into the mud and shingle of the foreshore. As the trade increased, the piles were pushed out farther and the quays were broadened.

When trade increased and the difficulties of getting through the bridge were felt, another port was necessary. It was perfectly easy to construct one by cutting it out of the soft foreshore and then banking it up with strong piles of timber. Piles and beams were also driven in on either side for the support of quays, which could thus be extended indefinitely. The place chosen was what is now called Billingsgate. It was close to the bridge and the bridge gate; so that while goods could be landed here for the trade of the City—whence they could be easily distributed throughout the north and midland of the island,—communication was established with the south by means of the bridge (see Appendices I. and II.).

Later on, but one knows not when, the port of Queen Hythe, formerly Edred’s Hythe, was similarly constructed. I am inclined to believe also that Puddle Dock represents another ancient port; but whether Roman or Saxon, it is now impossible to decide.

The poorer part of the City was that part lying between Puddle Dock and Dowgate: we do not find tessellated pavements here, nor remains of great buildings. The houses which stood upon the pavements were modest compared with the villas of the Roman millionaire; but they were splendid compared with other houses of the City.

For the convenience of the better sort there was the bath, in which everybody spent a part of the day; for the merchants there were the quays; there was the theatre; and there was the amphitheatre. It is true that no trace has ever been found of theatre or of amphitheatre; but it is also true that until recently no trace was found of the Roman citadel, and, as I have said, no trace has ever been found of forum or of temples. We will return to this subject later.

To one standing at the south end of the narrow wooden bridge across the Thames, Augusta, even before the building of the wall, appears a busy and important place. Exactly opposite the bridge, on a low eminence, was a wall, strong though low, and provided with rounded bastions. Above the wall were seen the columns of the forum and of two temples, the roofs of the great hall of justice and of the official offices and residences.

Along the quays were moored the ships. On the quay stood sheds for warehouses in a line. Behind these warehouses were barracoons for the reception of the slaves waiting to be transported to some other part of the Empire, there to await what Fortune had in store for them—perhaps death in a gladiatorial fight, perhaps service on a farm, perhaps the greatest gifts of Fortune, viz. a place in a Roman cohort, opportunities for showing valour and ability, an officer’s commission, the command of a company, then of a legion, then of a victorious army; finally, perhaps the Purple itself and absolute rule over all the civilised world. The streets behind the warehouses were narrow and steep, the houses in them were mean. Everywhere within the area afterwards enclosed by the wall were villas, some small, some large and stately. It was a noisy city, always a noisy city—nothing can be done with ships without making a noise. The sailors and the stevedores and the porters sang in chorus as they worked; the carts rolled slowly and noisily along the few streets broad enough to let them pass; mules in single file carried bales in and out of the city; slaves marched in bound and fettered; in the smaller houses or in workshops every kind of trade was carried on noisily. Smoke, but not coal smoke, hung over all like a canopy.

In such a restoration of a Roman provincial town one seems to restore so much, yet to leave so much more. Religion, education, literature, the standard of necessities and of luxury, the daily food, the ideas of the better classes, the extent, methods, and nature of their trade, the language, the foreign element—none of these things can be really restored.

Under the protection of the citadel the merchants conducted their business; under its protection the ships lay moored in the river; the bales lay on the quays; and the houses of the people, planted at first along the banks of the Walbrook, stretched out northwards towards the moor, and westwards as far as the river Fleet.

It is strange that nothing should be said anywhere about so strong and important a place as the citadel. When was it built, and by whom? When was it destroyed, and by whom? Were the walls standing when the Saxons began their occupation? It appears not, because, had there been anything left, any remains or buildings standing, any tradition of a fortress even, it would have been carried on. The citadel disappeared and was forgotten until its foundations were found in our time. How did this happen? Its disappearance can be explained, according to my theory, by the history of the wall (see p. [112]): all the stones above ground, whether of citadel, temple, church, or cemetery, were seized upon to build the wall.

Across the river stood the suburb we now call Southwark, a double line of villas beside a causeway. It has been suggested that Southwark was older than London, and that it was once walled in. The only reasons for this theory are: that Ptolemy places London in Kent—in which he was clearly wrong; that the name of Walworth might indicate a city wall; that remains of villas have been found in Southwark; and that a Roman cemetery has been found in the Old Kent Road. But the remains of houses have only been found beside the high road leading from the bridge. They were built on piles driven into the marsh. Up till quite recent times the whole south of London remained a marsh with buildings here and there; they were erected on a bank or river wall, on the Isle of Bermond, on the Isle of Peter, beside the high road. And there has never been found any trace of a wall round Southwark, which was in Roman times, and has always been, the inferior suburb—outside the place of business and the centre of society. Every town on a river has an inferior suburb on the other side—London, Paris, Liverpool, Tours, Florence: all busy towns have inferior transpontine suburbs. Southwark was always a marsh. When the river-bank was constructed the marsh became a spongy field covered with ponds and ditches; when the causeway and bridge were built, people came over and put up villas for residence. In the Middle Ages there were many great houses here, and the place was by some esteemed for its quiet compared with the noise of London, but Southwark was never London.

Besides the bridge, there was a ferry—perhaps two ferries. The name of St. Mary Overies preserves the tradition. There are two very ancient docks, one beside the site of the House of St. Mary Overies, and one opposite, near Walbrook. In these two docks I am pleased to imagine that we see the ancient docks of London ferry to which belongs the legend of the foundation of the House.

Let us return to the question of amphitheatre and theatre. There must have been both. It is quite certain that wherever a Roman town grew up an amphitheatre grew up with it. The amphitheatre was as necessary to a Roman town as the daily paper is to an American town.

It has been suggested that there was no amphitheatre, because the city was Christian. There may have been Christians in the city from the second century; everything points to the fact that there were. It is impossible, however, to find the slightest trace of Christian influence on the history of the city down to the fourth century. W. J. Loftie thinks that the dedication of the churches in the lower and poorer parts of the town—viz. to SS. Peter, Michael, James, and All Saints—shows that there were Christian churches on those sites at a very early period. This may be true, but it is pure conjecture. It is absurd to suppose that a city, certainly of much greater importance than Nîmes or Arles—where were both theatre and amphitheatre,—and of far greater importance than Richborough—where there was one,—should have no trace of either. Since Bordeaux, Marseilles, Alexandria, and other cities of the Roman Empire were not Christian in the second and third centuries, why should London be? Or if there were Christians here in quite early times, theirs was not the dominant religion, as is clearly shown by the Roman remains. There must have been an amphitheatre—where was it? To begin with, it was outside the City. Gladiators and slaves reserved for mock battles which were to them as real as death could make them, wild beasts, the company of ribalds who gathered about and around the amphitheatre, would not be permitted within the City. Where, then, was the amphitheatre of London?

At first one turns to the north, with its gardens and villas and sparse population. The existence of the villas will not allow us to place the amphitheatre anywhere in the north near the Walbrook.

When the modern traveller in London stands in the churchyard of St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, he looks upon a bastion of the Roman wall where the wall itself took a sudden bend to the south. It ran south till it came to a point in a line with the south side of St. Botolph’s Churchyard (the “Postmen’s Park”), where it again turned west as far as Newgate.

It thus formed nearly a right angle—Why? There is nothing in the lie of the ground to account for this deviation. No such angle is found in the eastern part of the wall. There must have been some good reason for this regular feature in the wall. Was the ground marshy? Not more so than the moorland through which the rest of the wall was driven. Can any reason be assigned or conjectured? I venture to suggest, as a thing which seems to account for the change in the direction of the wall, that this angle contained the amphitheatre, the theatre, and all the buildings and places, such as the barracks, the prisons, the dens and cages, and the storehouse, required for the gladiatorial shows. I think that those who built the wall, as I shall presently show, were Christians; that they were also, as we know from Gildas, superstitious; that they regarded the amphitheatre, and all that belonged to it, as accursed; and that they would not allow the ill-omened place of blood and slaughter and execution to be admitted within the walls. It may be that a tradition of infamy clung to the place after the Roman occupation: this tradition justifies and explains the allocation to the Jews of the site as their cemetery. The disappearance of the amphitheatre can be fully explained by the seizure of the stones in order to build the wall.

Mr. C. Roach Smith, however, has proposed another site for the theatre, for which he tenders reasons which appear to me not, certainly, to prove his theory, but to make it very possible and even probable. Many Roman theatres in France and elsewhere are built into a hill, as the rising ground afforded a foundation for the seats. That of Treves, for instance, will occur to every one who has visited that place. Mr. Roach Smith observed a precipitous descent from Green Arbour Court into Seacoal Lane—a descent difficult to account for, save by the theory that it was constructed artificially. This indeed must have been the case, because there was nothing in the shape of a cliff along the banks of the Fleet River. Then why was the bank cut away? Observe that the site of the Fleet Prison was not on a slope at all, but on a large level space. We have therefore to account for a large level space backed by an artificial cliff. Is it not extremely probable that this points out the site of the Roman theatre, the seats of which were placed upon the artificial slope which still remains in Green Arbour Court?

Mr. Roach Smith read a paper (Jan. 1886) placing this discovery—it is nothing less—on record before the London and Middlesex Archæological Association. The remarkable thing is that no one seems to have taken the least notice of it.

Assuming that he has proved his case, I do not believe that he is right as to the houses being built upon the foundations of the theatre, for the simple reason that, as I read the history of the wall in the stones, every available stone in London and around it was wanted for the building of the wall. It was built in haste: it was built with stones from the cemeteries, from the temples, from the churches, from the old fortress, and from the theatre and the amphitheatre outside the wall. As regards the latter, my own view remains unaltered; I still think that the angle in the wall was caused by the desire to keep outside the amphitheatre with all its memories of rascality and brutality.

Treves (Colonia Augusta Treverorum) and Roman London have many points in common, as may be apprehended most readily from the accompanying comparison in which Roman Treves and Roman London are placed side by side. We may compare the first citadel of London on the right bank of the Walbrook with Treves; or we may compare the later London of the latter part of the fourth century, the wall of which was built about A.D. 360-390, with Treves.

1. The citadel of London had its western side protected by a valley and a stream whose mouth formed a natural port. The valley was about 140 feet across; the stream was tidal up to the rising ground, with banks of mud as far, at least, as the north wall of the citadel. On the south was a broad river spanned by a bridge. There were three gates: that of the north, that of the west, and that of the bridge on the south. Within the citadel were the official buildings, barracks, residences, and offices. Two main streets crossed at right angles. About half a mile to the north-west (according to my theory) was the amphitheatre. On the north and east was an open moor. On the south a marsh, with rising ground beyond. By the river-side, near the bridge, were the baths.

2. Colonia Augusta Treverorum.—These details are almost exactly reproduced in Treves. We have a broad river in front. On one side a stream which perhaps branched off into two. The gate which remains (the Porta Nigra) shows the direction of the wall on the north from the river. A long boulevard, called at present the Ost Allee, marks the line of the eastern wall, which, like that of London, occupied the site of the Roman wall. A bend at right angles at the end of this boulevard includes the Palace and other buildings. It therefore represents the site of the ancient wall or that of a mediæval wall. It is quite possible that the mediæval wall of the city included a smaller area than the Roman wall, and that the two round towers, here standing in position with part of the wall, represent the mediæval wall. It is also possible, and even probable, that they stand on the site of the Roman wall, which just below the second, or at the second, bent round again to the south as far as the stream called the Altbach, and so to the west as far as the river. That this, and not the continuation of the line of towers, was the course of the Roman wall, is shown by the fact that the baths, the remains of which stand beside the bridge, must have been within, and not outside, the wall. The river wall, just like that of London, ran along the bank to the bridge, and was stopped by the outfall of a small stream. The ground behind the river wall gradually rose. On the other side was a low-lying marsh, beyond which were lofty hills—not gradually rising hills as on the Surrey side of the Thames. The city was crossed by two main arteries, which may still be traced. An extensive system of baths was placed near the bridge on the east side. Within the wall were the Palace of the Governor or of the Emperor, and a great building now called the Basilica; and between them, the remains now entirely cleared away for the exercise ground, once the garden of the barracks. There were three gates, perhaps four. One of them, a most noble monument, still survives. A Roman cemetery has been found beyond the Altbach in the south, and another in the north, outside the Porta Nigra.

3. The comparison of Roman Treves with the later Roman London is most curious, and brings out very unexpectedly the fact that in many respects the latter was an enlargement of the citadel. We know that the wall was constructed hastily, and that all the stonework in the City was used in making it. Like the citadel, however, and like Treves, it had a stream on one side, baths and a bridge and a port within the walls; while the official buildings, as at Treves, were all collected together in one spot. We also find the curious angle, which at Treves may be accounted for by an enlargement of the wall, and at London by the custom of keeping the amphitheatre outside the City as a place foul with associations of battle, murder, massacre, and the ribald company of gladiators, retiarii, prisoners waiting the time of combat and of death, wild beasts and their keepers, and the rabble rout which belonged to this savage and reckless company.

That part of London lying to the west of Walbrook was crowded with the houses of the lower classes, and with the warehouses and stores of the merchants. These extended, as they do to this day, all the way from the Tower to Blackfriars. On the rising ground above were the villas of the better class, some of them luxurious, ample, decorated with the highest art, and provided with large gardens. These villas extended northwards along the banks of the little Walbrook. They are also found on the south side in Southwark, and on the west side on Holborn Hill. The principal street of Augusta was that afterwards called Watling Street, which, diverted from the old Watling Street where Marble Arch now stands, carried all the trade of the country through London by way of Newgate, over the present site of St. Paul’s, and so through the citadel, to the market-place and to the port. Another street led out by way of Bishopsgate to the north; and a third, the Vicinal Way, to the eastern counties. The bridge led to a road running south to Dover. There was also a long street, with probably many side streets out of it, as there are at this day, along the Thames.

The things which remain of Roman London and may be seen in our museums are meagre, but they yield a good deal of information as to the condition and the civilisation of the City. The foundation of large villas, the rich mosaics and pavements, the remains of statues, the capitals of pillars, the coins, and the foundations of massive walls, clearly indicate the existence of much wealth and considerable comfort. The smaller things in the glass cases, the keys, the hairpins, the glass bottles, the statuettes, the bells, the tools, the steelyards, the mirrors, all point to a civilisation closely imitating that of the capital itself.

ROMAN SANDALS TAKEN FROM THE BED OF
THE THAMES
Roach Smith’s Catalogue of London Antiquities.

It is not to a native of London that we must turn for the life of the better class in a provincial city of the fourth century, but to a native of Gaul. Ausonius is a writer whose works reveal the daily life of a great city in Gaul. He was born of good family on both sides. His father was a physician; his grandfather a so-called “Mathematician,” in reality one who still practised the forbidden mystery of astrology. Ausonius himself was educated at Toulouse, and he opened a school of rhetoric at Bordeaux. The rhetoricians not only taught, but also practised, the art of oratory. Whether all rhetoricians were also poets is uncertain: the mere making of verse is no more difficult to acquire than the composition of oratory. There were two classes of teachers: the grammarian, of whom there were subdivisions—the Latin grammarian, skilled in Latin antiquities, and the Greek grammarian, who had studied Greek antiquities; and, above the grammarian, the rhetorician. In every important town over the whole Empire were found the rhetorician and the grammarian; they exchanged letters, verses, compliments, and presents. In a time of universal decay, when no one had anything new to say, when there was nothing to stimulate or inspire nobler things, the language of compliment, the language of exaggeration, and the language of conceit filled all compositions. At such a time the orator is held in greater respect even than the soldier. In the latter the townsman saw the preserver of order, the guardian of the frontier, the slayer of the barbarians who were always pressing into the Empire. He himself carried no arms: he represented learning, law, literature, and medicine. Ausonius himself, in being elevated to the rank of consul, betrays this feeling. He compares himself with the consuls of old: he is superior, it is evident, to them all, save in one respect, the warlike qualities. These virtues existed no longer: the citizen was a man of peace; the soldier was a policeman. If this was true of Bordeaux, then far from the seat of any war, it was much more true in London, which every day saw the arrival and the dispatch of slaves captured in some new border fray, while the people themselves never heard the clash of weapons or faced the invader with a sword.

Another profession held greatly in honour was that of the lawyer. The young lawyer had a five years’ course of study. There were schools of law in various parts of the Empire which attracted students from all quarters, just as in later times the universities attracted young men from every country. From these lawyers were chosen the magistrates.

Medicine was also held greatly in honour; it was carefully taught, especially in southern Gaul.

THE LACONICUM, OR SWEATING BATH
From Lysons’ Account of the Roman Villa at Woodchester.

The learned class was a separate caste: with merchants and soldiers, the lawyers, orators, grammarians, and physicians had nothing to do. They kept up among themselves a great deal of the old pagan forms. If they could no longer worship Venus, they could write verses in the old pagan style about her. Probably a great many continued, if only from habit, the pagan customs and the pagan manner of thought. The Church had not yet given to the world a crowd of saints to take the place of the gods, goddesses, nymphs, satyrs, and sprites which watched over everything, from the Roman Empire itself down to a plain citizen’s garden.

The theatre was entirely given over to mimes and pantomimes: comedy and tragedy were dead. The pieces performed in dumb show were scenes from classical mythology. They were presented with a great deal of dancing. Everybody danced. Daphne danced while she fled; and Niobe, dancing, dissolved into tears. The circus had its races; the amphitheatre its mimic contests and its gladiatorial displays.

These things were done at Bordeaux; it is therefore pretty certain that they were also done in London, whose civilisation was equally Gallo-Roman. London was a place of importance equal with Bordeaux; a place with a greater trade; the seat of a Vicarius Spectabilis, a Right Honourable Lieutenant-Governor; one of the thirteen capitals of the thirteen Dioceses of the Roman Empire.

TESSELLATED PAVEMENT
From Lysons’ Account of the Roman Villa at Woodchester.

Any account of Roman London must include a description and plan of a Roman villa. The one I have chosen is the palatial villa which was recovered by Samuel Lysons exactly a hundred years ago at Woodchester. The plan is given in his book, An Account of Roman Antiquities discovered at Woodchester; it shows the arrangement of the rooms and the courts.

“The visitor approaching this villa when it was standing observed before him a long low wall with an entrance arch. The wall was probably intended as some kind of fortification; the people in the house numbered enough to defend it against any wandering company of marauders. Within the entrance, where he was received by a porter or guard, the visitor found himself in a large square court, the sides of which were 150 feet. On either side, to east and west, were buildings entered from the great court: in one there were twelve rooms; in the other a curious arrangement of rooms communicating with each other which were thought to be the baths. The rooms on the west side were perhaps the chambers and workshops of the slaves and servants.

On the north side a smaller gateway gave access to a court not so large as the first, but still a good-sized court, 90 feet square; it was surrounded on three sides by a gallery, which was closed in winter, as the hypocaust under it indicates. From this court access was obtained to a lovely hall, decorated with a mosaic pavement of great artistic value, with sculptures, paintings, vases, and glass. On either side of this hall were chambers, also decorated in the same way. Under the floors of the chambers was the hypocaust, where were kindled the fires whose hot air passed through pipes warming all the chambers. Fragments of statues, of which one was of Magnentius the usurper, also glass, pottery, marble, horns, coins. The building covered an area of 550 feet by 300 feet, and it is by no means certain that the whole of it has been uncovered.

It is interesting to note that on one of the mosaics found at this place is the injunction ‘... B][N][C ...’[18]—that is, Bonum Eventum Bene Colite—Do not forget to worship Good Luck. To this god, who should surely be worshipped by all the world, there was a temple in Rome.

The Roman Briton, if he lived in such state as this, was fortunate above his fellows. But in the smaller villas the same plan of an open court, square, and built upon one, two, or more sides, prevailed. The walls were made of stone up to a certain height, when wood took the place of stone; the uprights were placed near together, and the interstices made air-tight and water-tight with clay and straw; the roof was of shingles or stone tiles. Wall paintings have been found everywhere, as we have already seen; the pavements were in many cases most elaborate mosaics.”

The construction of a villa for a wealthy Roman Briton is easy to be understood. As to the question of the smaller houses, it is not so easy to answer. A small house, detached, has been found at Lympne. It was about 50 feet long and 30 feet broad. The plan shows that it was divided into four chambers, one of which had a circular apse. The rooms were all about the same size, namely, above 22 feet by 14 feet. A row of still smaller houses has been found at Aldborough. Almost all the streets in London stand upon masses of buried Roman houses. If we wish to reconstruct the city, we must consider not only the villas in the more open spaces as the official residences in the citadel, but also the streets and alleys of the poorer sort. Now at Pompeii the streets are narrow; they are arranged irregularly; there are only one or two in which any kind of carriage could pass. The same thing has been observed at Cilirnum (Chesters), in Northumberland, and at Maryport in Cumberland. Very likely the narrow streets leading north of Thames Street are on the same sites as the ancient Roman streets of London in its poorer and more crowded parts. It stands to reason that the houses of the working people and the slaves could not be built of stone.

The nature of the trade of London is arrived at by considering—(1) What people wanted; (2) what they made, produced, and grew for their own use; and (3) what they exported.

ROMAN ROADS RADIATING FROM LONDON

To take the third point first. Britain was a country already rich. The south part of the island, which is all that has to be considered, produced iron, tin, lead, and copper; coal was dug up and used for fuel when it was near the surface; skins were exported; and the continual fighting on the march produced a never-failing supply of slaves for the gladiatorial contests. Wheat and grain of all kinds were also largely grown and exported.

As for manufactures, pottery was made in great quantities, but not of the finer kinds. Glass was made. The art of weaving was understood. The arts of painting, mosaic work, and building had arrived at some excellence. There were workmen in gold and other metals.

As for what people wanted. Those who were poor among them wanted nothing but what the country gave them; for instance, the river was teeming with fish of all kinds, and the vast marshes stretching out to the mouth of the Thames were the homes of innumerable birds. No one need starve who could fish in the river or trap birds in the marsh. In this respect they were like the common sort, who lived entirely on the produce of their own lands and their own handiwork till tea, tobacco, and sugar became articles of daily use. The better class, however, demanded more than this. They wanted wine, to begin with; this was their chief want. They wanted, besides, silks for hangings and for dress, fine stuffs, statues, lamps, mirrors, furniture, costly arms, books, parchment, musical instruments, spices, oil, perfumes, gems, fine pottery.

The merchants of London received all these things, sent back the ships laden with the produce of the country, and dispatched these imported goods along the high roads to the cities of the interior and to the lords of the villas.

London was the centre of at least five great high roads. In this respect it was alone among the towns of Roman Britannia. These highways are laid down in Guest’sOrigines Celticæ. They connect the City with every part of the island: on the north-east with Colchester; on the north with Lincoln and York; on the north-west with Uriconium (Wroxeter), for Shrewsbury and Wales and Ireland; on the west with Silchester, for Winchester and Salisbury; on the south-east with Richborough, Dover, and Lympne or Lymne; and on the south with Regnum (Chichester)—if we may fill in the part between London and Dorking which Guest has not indicated.

This fact is by itself a conclusive proof that London was the great commercial centre of the island, even if no other proofs existed. And since the whole of the trade was in the hands of the London merchants, we can understand that in times when there was a reasonable amount of security on the road and on the Channel, when the Count of the Saxon Shore patrolled the high seas with his fleet, and the Duke of Britain kept back the Scot and the Pict, the city of Augusta became very wealthy indeed. There were, we have seen, times when there was no safety, times when the pirate did what he pleased and the marauder from the north roamed unmolested about the country. Then the London merchants suffered and trade declined. Thus, when Queen Boadicea’s men massacred the people of London, when the soldiers revolted in the reign of Commodus, when the pirates began their incursions before the establishment of the British fleet, when Carausius used the fleet for his own purposes, and in the troubles which preceded and followed the departure of the legion, there were anxious times for those engaged in trade. But, on the whole, the prosperity of London was continuous for three hundred and fifty years.

[CHAPTER IV]
REMAINS OF ROMAN LONDON

If one stands in the Museum of the Guildhall and looks round upon the scanty remains of Roman London there exhibited, one feels a cold doubt as to the alleged wealth and greatness of the ancient city. Is this all that has to be shown after an occupation of nearly four hundred years? There is not much more: one may find a room at the British Museum devoted to this subject; and there are a few small private collections containing nothing of importance. Yet when we consider the length of time since Roman London fell; the long history of reconstruction, fire, and successive occupations; the fact that twice—once for more than a hundred years—London was entirely deserted, we must acknowledge that more remains of Roman London than might have been expected. What exists, for instance, of that other great Roman city now called Bordeaux? What, even, of Lutetia Parisiorum? What of Massilia, the most ancient of Gallic cities?

ROMAN ALTAR TO DIANA FOUND
IN ST. MARTIN’S-LE-GRAND

There are, however, many remains of Roman London which are not preserved in any collection. Some are above ground; some have been dug up and carried away; some have been disclosed, examined, sketched, and again covered up.

Antiquaries have been pleased to find traces of Roman relics of which no memory or tradition remains. Thus, we are assured that there was formerly a Campus Martius in London; its site is said to have been that of the Old Artillery Ground. A temple of Diana is said to have stood on the south side of St. Paul’s. There was a mysterious and extensive crypt called the Camera Dianæ, supposed to have been connected with the worship of that goddess; it was standing in the seventeenth century. Probably it was the crypt of some mediæval house. Stukeley persuaded himself that he found in Long Acre the “magnificent circus, or racecourse, founded by Eli, father of Casvelhun”; he also believed that he had found in Hedge Lane the survival of the agger or tumulus of King Eli’s grave. The same antiquary preferred to trace Julius Cæsar’s Camp in the Brill opposite old St. Pancras Church.

It is sometimes stated that excavations in London have been few and scattered over the whole area of the City; that there has been no systematic and scientific work carried on such as, for instance, was conducted, thirty years ago, at Jerusalem by Sir Charles Warren. But when we consider that there is no single house in the City which has not had half a dozen predecessors on the same site, whose foundations, therefore, have not been dug up over and over again, no one can form any estimate of the remains, Roman, British, and Saxon, which have been dug up, broken up, and carted away. During certain works at St. Mary Woolnoth, for instance, the men came upon vast remains of “rubbish,” consisting of broken pottery and other things, the whole of which were carried off to St. George’s Fields to mend or make the roads there. The only protection of the Roman remains, so long as there was no watch kept over the workmen, lay in the fact that the Roman level was in many places too deep for the ordinary foundations. Thus in Cheapside it was 18 feet below the present surface; in other places it was even more.

The collection of Roman antiquities seems to have been first undertaken by John Conyers, an apothecary, at the time of the Great Fire. The rebuilding of the City caused much digging for foundations, in the course of which a great many Roman things were brought to light. Most of these were unheeded. Conyers, however, collected many specimens, which were afterwards bought by Dr. John Woodward. After his death part of the collection was bought by the University of Cambridge; the rest was sold by auction “at Mr. Cooper’s in the Great Piazza, Covent Garden.” Three other early collectors were John Harwood, D.C.L.; John Bagford, a bookseller, who seems to have had some knowledge of coins; and Mr. Kemp, whose collection contained a few London things, especially the two terra-cotta lamps found on the site of St. Paul’s, which were supposed to prove the existence of a temple of Diana at that spot.

Burial-places and tombs have been unearthed in various parts of the City, but all outside the walls of the Roman fortress. Thus, they have been found on the site of St. Paul’s, in Bow Lane, Queen Street, Cornhill, St. Dunstan’s Hill, near Carpenter’s Hall, in Camomile Street near the west end of St. Helen’s Church, in King’s Street and Ken Street, Southwark—outside Bishopsgate in “Lollesworth,” afterwards called Spitalfields. The last named was the most extensive of the ancient cemeteries.

Stow thus describes it:—

“On the East Side of this Churchyard lyeth a large Field, of old time called Lolesworth, now Spittlefield, which about the Year 1576 was broken up for Clay to make Brick: In the digging whereof many earthen Pots called Urnæ were found full of Ashes, and burnt Bones of Men, to wit of the Romans that inhabited here. For it was the custom of the Romans, to burn their Dead, to put their Ashes in an Urn, and then to bury the same with certain Ceremonies, in some Field appointed for that purpose near unto their City.

ROMAN BATH, STRAND LANE

Every of these pots had in them (with the Ashes of the Dead) one Piece of Copper Money, with the Inscription of the Emperour then reigning: Some of them were of Claudius, some of Vespasian, some of Nero, of Antoninus Pius, of Trajanus, and others. Besides those Urns, many other pots were found in the same place, made of a white Earth, with long Necks and Handles, like to our Stone Jugs: these were empty, but seemed to be buried full of some liquid Matter, long since consumed and soaked through. For there were found divers Phials, and other fashioned Glasses, some most cunningly wrought, such as I have not seen the like, and some of Crystal, all which had Water in them, nothing differing in clearness, taste, or savour from common Spring Water, whatsoever it was at the first. Some of these Glasses had Oil in them very thick, and earthy in savour. Some were supposed to have Balm in them, but had lost the Virtue: Many of these Pots and Glasses were broken in cutting of the Clay, so that few were taken up whole.

There were also found divers dishes and cups of a fine red coloured Earth, which shewed outwardly such a shining smoothness, as if they had been of Coral. Those had (in the bottoms) Roman Letters printed, there were also Lamps of white Earth, and red artificially wrought with divers Antiques about them, some three or four Images, made of white earth, about a Span long each of them: One I remember was of Pallas, the rest I have forgotten. I myself have reserved (amongst divers of those Antiquities there found) one Urna, with the Ashes and Bones, and one Pot of white Earth very small, not exceeding the quantity of a quarter of a Wine Pint, made in shape of a Hare, squatted upon her Legs, and between her Ears is the mouth of the pot.

There hath also been found (in the same Field) divers Coffins of Stone, containing the Bones of Men: These I suppose to be the Burials of some special Persons, in time of the Britons, or Saxons, after the Romans had left to govern here. Moreover, there were also found the Skulls and Bones of Men, without Coffins, or rather whose Coffins (being of great Timber) were consumed.” (Strype, vol. i. bk. ii. chap. vi.)

The description of all the Roman remains found in London would take too long. Let us, however, mention some of the more important (see App. III.).

An undoubted piece of Roman work is the old bath still existing in Strand Lane. This bath is too small for public use: it belonged to a private house, built outside London, on the slope of the low hill, then a grassy field, traversed by half a dozen tiny streams. The bath has been often pictured.

Many pavements, some of great length and breadth, have been discovered below the surface: of these some have been taken up; some have been drawn. More than forty pavements have been found north of the Thames. These were nearly all on the eastern side of the Walbrook, that side which has always been marked out as the original Roman settlement, and many of them were found within the assumed boundaries of the Roman Prætorium.[19]

Roman remains have been found under the Tower of Mary-le-Bow Church, where there was a Roman causeway; in Crooked Lane, in Clement’s Lane, in King William Street, in Lombard Street, in Warwick Square, on the site of Leadenhall Market, all along the High Street, Borough as far as St. George’s Church, in Threadneedle Street, Leadenhall Street, Fenchurch Street, Birchin Lane, Lime Street, Lothbury, Gracechurch Street, Eastcheap, Queen Street, Paternoster Row, Bishopsgate Street Within, and many other places.

Inscribed stones have also been found in Church Street, Whitechapel, in the Tenter Ground, Goodman’s Fields, Minories, in the Tower of London, at London Wall near Finsbury Circus, in Playhouse Yard, Blackfriars, at Pentonville, on Tower Hill, in Nicholas Lane, Lombard Street, in Hart Street, Crutched Friars.

A figure of a youth carrying a bow was found at Bevis Marks. A small altar was dug up in making excavations for Goldsmiths’ Hall.

A large number of objects were found in 1837 by dredging the Thames near London Bridge. They were engraved by the Society of Antiquaries, and published by Mr. C. Roach Smith in his Illustrations of Roman London.

Among other objects which he has used in illustration of his book are pottery, lamps, bronzes, glass, coins, and utensils of various kinds.

A very interesting figure was discovered in Queen Street in 1842. It is described by Mr. W. Chaffers in Archæologia, vol. xxx. p. 543:—

“While watching the progress of the excavations recently made in Queen Street, Cheapside (for the formation of a sewer), I was fortunately enabled to obtain possession of several rare and curious specimens of Roman art. A short distance from Watling Street, a fine piece of Roman wall, running directly across the street, was exposed to view in a remarkably perfect condition, built of flat red tiles embedded in solid and compact mortar. Several others, lower down the street, were also discovered. Within a few yards of the wall, one of the bricklayers, removing some earth, struck his trowel against something which he conjectured to be a brass tap; but, on clearing further, he found it was the right heel of the figure, which lay upon its face. The height of the figure, if standing erect, would be 15 inches; but in its stooping posture, the perpendicular height from the base to the crown of the head is only 11 inches. It is evidently intended to represent a person in the attitude of shooting an arrow from a bow. The bow and arrow were probably of richer metal than the figure itself; but no vestiges of them were discovered. The aperture for the bow is seen in the closed left hand, which held it, and the bent fingers of the right appear in the act of drawing the arrow to its full extent previous to its evolation. The eyes are of silver, with the pupils open; the hair disposed in graceful curls on the head, as well as on the chin and upper lip. The left hand, which grasped the bow and sustained the arrow, is so placed as to bring the latter to a level with the eye; and the steadfast look and determined expression of the whole face are much heightened by the silver eyes. It was found at about the depth of between twelve and thirteen feet.”

In 1825 a small silver figure of Harpocrates was found in the Thames. It is now in the British Museum.

“Early in December 1877 considerable excavations were made at Pie Corner,[20] over a space about a 100 feet long and 40 feet broad. At a depth of 11 feet, and at a spot 150 feet, measuring along the houses, from the middle of the great gateway of the hospital, the workmen came upon what they took for two great blocks of stone, which lay half inside the front line of the new building and half under the footway of the street. Continuing their excavation they found that the stones were two great coffins lying side by side, close together. A piece was broken off the lid of each, and in this state, before their contents had been disturbed at all, they were seen by Dr. Dyce Duckworth. In the southern sarcophagus was a leaden case containing a woman’s skeleton. This was disturbed hastily, the workmen being anxious to secure the lead. The other sarcophagus contained two skeletons, a man’s and a woman’s. As these had been somewhat displaced when I saw them half an hour later, I will quote a note which Dr. Duckworth has kindly written to me as to their exact position—‘The female faced west (the mediæval ecclesiastical position), the male faced east (layman’s position).’ The sarcophagi lay very nearly, but not precisely, east and west.”

A great many Roman remains were found in 1840 on digging for the foundations of the new Royal Exchange. On the east side of the area there were fragments showing that older buildings had been taken away. In the middle there were found thirty-two cesspools, in some of which were ancient objects. These were cleared out and filled up with concrete. The soil consisted of vegetable earth, accumulation and broken remains of various kinds with gravel at the depth of 16 feet 6 inches. At the western end, however, the workmen came upon the remains of a small building in situ resting on the gravel. The walls of the Old Exchange stood upon this building. When it ceased, oak piles had been driven down and sleepers laid upon the heads of these piles; a rubble wall was discovered below the piles, and under the wall was an ancient pit, sunk 13 feet through the gravel down to the clay.

“The pit was irregular in shape, but it measured about 50 feet from north to south, and 34 from east to west, and was filled with hardened mud, in which were contained considerable quantities of animal and vegetable remains, apparently the discarded refuse of the inhabitants of the vicinity. In the same depository were also found very numerous fragments of the red Roman pottery, usually called Samian ware, pieces of glass vessels, broken terra-cotta lamps, parts of amphoræ, mortaria, and other articles made of earth, and all the rubbish which might naturally become accumulated in a pond in the course of years. In this mass likewise occurred a number of Imperial Roman coins, several bronze and iron styles, parts of writing-tables, a bather’s strigil, a large quantity of caliga-soles, sandals, and remains of leather.” (Sir William Tite.)

The objects taken out of this pit are catalogued and described by Tite in his volume called Antiquities discovered in Excavating for the Foundations of the New Royal Exchange.

Roman pottery, found in Ivy Lane and in St. Paul’s Churchyard, was exhibited at the evening meeting of the L. and Midd. Arch. Soc., Sept. 18, 1860.

Roman keys have been found near St. Swithin’s Church, Cannon Street, at Charing Cross beside the statue of Charles I., beneath Gerard’s Hall Crypt, and in the Crypt of St. Paul’s while preparing for the interment of the Duke of Wellington.

ROMAN ANTIQUITIES FOUND IN LONDON, 1786
From Archæologia, vol. viii.

“An important discovery was made in the year 1835 on the Coleman Street side near the public-house called the Swan’s Nest; here was laid open a pit or well containing a store of earthen vessels of various patterns and capacities. This well had been carefully planked over with thick boards, and at first exhibited no signs of containing anything besides the native gravelly soil, but at a considerable depth other contents were revealed. The vases were placed on their sides longitudinally, and presented the appearance of having been regularly packed or embedded in the mud or sand, which had settled so closely round them that a great number were broken or damaged in being extricated. But those preserved entire, or nearly so, are of the same material as the handles, necks, and pieces of the light-brown coloured vessels met with in such profusion throughout the Roman level in London. Some are of a darker clay approaching to a bluish black, with borders of reticulated work running round the upper part, and one of a singularly elegant form is of a pale-bluish colour with a broad black border at the bottom. Some are without handles, others have either one or two. Their capacity for liquids may be stated as varying from one quart to two gallons, though some that were broken were of much larger dimensions. A small Samian patera, with the ivy-leaf border, and a few figured pieces of the same, were found near the bottom of this well, and also a small brass coin of Allectus, with reverse of the galley, Virtus Aug., and moreover two iron implements resembling a boat-hook and a bucket-handle. The latter of these carries such a homely and modern look, that, had I no further evidence of its history than the mere assurance of the excavators, I should have instantly rejected it, from suspicion of its having been brought to the spot to be palmed off on the unwary; but the fact of these articles being disinterred in the presence of a trustworthy person in my employ disarms all doubt of their authenticity. The dimensions of the pit or well were about 2 feet 9 inches or 3 feet square, and it was boarded on each side with narrow planks about 2 feet long, and 1½ to 2 inches thick, placed upright, but which framework was discontinued towards the bottom of the pit, which merged from a square into an oval form.” (C. Roach Smith in Archæologia, vol. xxix.)

ROMAN LONDON
x — Sites where Roman pavements and remains have been found.
The dotted lines represent streets added at a later date.

The following is a list of the more important tessellated pavements which have been discovered in the City:—

STATUETTES OF ROMAN DEITIES
British Museum.

The things that have been found are all pagan: pottery with the well-known Roman figures upon it, figures certainly not Christian; statues and statuettes of Harpocrates, Atys, Mercury, Apollo, the Deæ Matres; tessellated pavements of which the figures and designs contain no reference to Christianity.

As we have seen, tiles have been found inscribed with the letters PRB. Lon. or PRBR. Lon. (see p. [74]).

It is on symbolical monuments that we expect to find evidence of the religion of a people. It is therefore strange that in Roman London, where undoubtedly Christianity was planted very early, we find no trace of the Christian religion. Gildas, who is supposed to have lived in the latter part of the sixth century, refers to the first preaching of Christianity as having taken place soon after the defeat of Boadicea, but reliance cannot be placed on the few historical statements which we find in the midst of his ravings; and he says that the Church was spread all over the country, with churches and altars, the three orders of priesthood, and monasteries. The persecution of Diocletian was felt in Britannia, where there were many martyrs, with the destruction of the churches, and a great falling from the faith. When the persecutions ceased, Gildas goes on, the churches were rebuilt. Tertullian says in A.D. 208, “Britannica inaccessa Romanis loca, Christo vero subdita.” At the Council of Arles, A.D. 314, as we have seen, three British Bishops were present. At later councils British Bishops were always present. Yet no ruins remain in London of a Roman British Church. No monuments, no literature, no traditions remain; only here and there a word—here and there a monogram.

In the year 1813, in the excavations made for the new Custom-House, three lines of wooden embankments were laid bare at the distances of 53, 86, and 103 feet within the range of the existing wharf. At the same time, about 50 feet from the outer edge of the wharf, a wall was discovered running east and west, built with chalk rubble and faced with Purbeck stone, which was probably part of the old river-side wall. No trace of any important buildings was found in the whole of the area thus laid open, but between the embankments there were the remains of buildings interspersed with pits and layers of rushes in different stages of decomposition.

Sir William Tite (Catalogue of Antiquities) speaks of other discoveries along the river:—

“The excavations for sewers, constructed along this part of the boundary of London, appear satisfactorily to have ascertained that nearly the whole south side of the road forming the line from Lower Thames Street to Temple Street has been gained from the river by a series of strong embankments. At the making of the sewer at Wool Quay, the soil turned up was similar to that discovered at the Custom-House; and the mouth of an ancient channel of timber was found under the street. The ground also contained large quantities of bone skewers about 10 inches in length, perforated with holes in the thicker ends, recalling the bone skates employed by the youths of London about the end of the twelfth century, as described by FitzStephen. Between Billingsgate and Fish-street Hill the whole street was found to be filled with piling, and especially at the gateway leading to Botolph Wharf—which, it will be remembered, was the head of the oldest known London Bridge,—where the piles were placed as closely together as they could be driven, as well as for some distance on each side. In certain parts of the line the embankment was formed by substantial walling, as at the foot of Fish-street Hill, where a strong body of clear water gushed out from beneath it. At the end of Queen Street also, and stretching along the front of Vintners’ Hall, a considerable piece of thick walling was encountered; and another interesting specimen was taken up, extending from Broken Wharf to Lambeth Hill. At Old Fish-street Hill this embankment was found to be 18 feet in thickness; and it returned a considerable distance up Lambeth Hill, gradually becoming less substantial as it receded inland. Both of these walls were constructed of the remains of other works, comprising blocks of stone, rough, squared, and wrought and moulded, together with roofing-tiles, rubble, and a variety of different materials run together with grout.” (Pp. xxiv.-xxv.)

Again, on the construction of the new London Bridge it was found necessary to take down St. Michael’s, Crooked Lane, and to construct a large and deep sewer under the line of approach. Three distinct lines of embankment were discovered marking as many bulwarks by which ground was gained for the wharves. One of these lines, lying 20 feet under the south abutment of the Thames Street landmark, was made by the trunks of oak trees squared with the axe. Quantities of Roman things were found 100 feet north of the river.

During the demolition of houses for the construction of the new Coal Exchange opposite Billingsgate Market in 1847, the workmen came upon extensive remains of a Roman building. They lay about 60 feet behind the line of Thames Street, and about 14 feet below the level of the pavement. On its western side was a thick brick wall; the foundations were piles of black oak, showing that the building stood upon the Thames mud outside and below the Roman fort; next to the pavement, but without communication, was a chamber, which was believed by those who saw it to be a portion of the “laconicum” or sweating-room of a Roman bath, of which the hypocaust was also found. These interesting investigations could not be continued except by working under the warehouses beyond. They were therefore all covered over, and will probably never again be brought to light.

The sarcophagi which have been found are few in number (see App. IV.). The most important are—(1) that which was found at Clapton, (2) that found within the precincts of Westminster Abbey, and (3) that found in Haydon Square, Minories. The first was found in the natural gravel 2 feet 6 inches below the surface, lying due south-east and west; it is of white coarse-grained marble and is cut from a solid block. It is 6 feet 3 inches long, 1 foot 3 inches wide, and 1 foot 6 inches deep; the thickness is about 3½ inches. The inner surface is smooth, with a rise of half an inch as a rest for the head. No lid or covering was found. It is plain on all sides but the front, which is ornamented with a fluted pattern. In the centre is a medallion, about 12 inches in diameter, containing a bust of the person interred. There is a name, but it cannot be deciphered. The Westminster sarcophagus is preserved in the approach to the Chapter-House. That which was discovered at Clapton was of marble. Two, containing enriched leaden coffins, have been found at Bartholomew’s Hospital; and another on the banks of the Fleet River, near to Seacoal Lane. The position of some of these, distant from any cemetery, shows that the Roman custom of making tombs serve as landmarks or monuments of boundaries was followed in Roman London. In making the excavations for the railway station at Cannon Street, there was found across Thames Street a complete network of piles and transverse beams; this was traced for a considerable distance along the river bank and in an upward direction towards Cannon Street. These beams indicate, first, that the ground here—below the hillocks, beside the Walbrook—was marshy and yielding; and, next, that very considerable buildings were raised upon so solid and so costly a foundation.

ROMAN SEPULCHRAL STONE FOUND AT
LUDGATE BY SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN

The following are the most important of the Inscriptions and Sculptures:—

1. A tombstone found by Sir Christopher Wren in Ludgate Hill while digging the foundation of St. Martin’s Church. It is now among the Arundel Marbles at Oxford. The following is the inscription:—“D. M. VIVIO MARCIANO M LEG. II AUG. IANUARIA MARINA CONJUNX PIENTISSIMA POSUIT MEMORIAM.” Which is in full:—“Diis Manibus. Vivio Marciano militi legionis secundae Augustae. Januaria Marina conjunx pientissima posuit memoriam.”

2. Another was found in 1806 behind the London Coffee House, Ludgate Hill, with a woman’s head in stone and the trunk of a statue of Hercules. The following is the inscription:—D. M. CL. MARTINAE AN XIX ANENCLETUS PROVINC CONJUGI PIENTISSIMAE H. S. E.—“Diis Manibus. Claudiae Martinae annorum novendecim Anencletus Provincialis conjugi pientissimae hoc sepulchrum erexit.”

3. Found in Church Street, Whitechapel, about the year 1779:—D. M. JUL. VALIUS. MIL. LEG. XX. V. V. AN. XL. H. S. E. CA. FLAVIO. ATTIO. HER.—“Diis Manibus. Julius Valius miles legionis vicesimae Valerianae victricis annorum quadraginta hic situs est, Caio Flavio Attio herede.”

4. Found in the Tenter Ground, Goodman’s Fields, in 1787; 15 in. by 12 in., and 3 in. thick—of native green marble:—D. M. FL. AGRICOLA. MIL. LEG. VI. VICT. V. AN. XLII. DX ALBIA FAUSTINA CONJUGI INCOMPARABILI F. C.—“Diis Manibus. Flavius Agricola miles legionis sextae victricis vixit annos quadraginta duos dies decem Albia Faustina Conjugi incomparabili faciendum curavit.”

ROMAN STATUE DISCOVERED AT
BEVIS MARKS
Roach Smith’s Catalogue of London Antiquities.

5. Found within the Tower, 1778; 2 ft. 8 in., by 2 ft. 4 in.:—DIS MANIB. T. LICINI ASCANIUS. F.—“Diis Manibus. Tito Licinio, Ascanius fecit.”

6. Found outside London wall near Finsbury Circus—now in the Guildhall Library:—D. M. GRATA DAGOBITI FIL AN XL SOLINUS CONJUGI KAR F C.—“Diis Manibus. Grata Dagobiti Filia annorum quadraginta Solinus conjugi karissimae fieri curavit.”

7. Found in Playhouse Yard, Blackfriars—formerly outside the City wall, now in the British Museum:—“Diis Manibus ... R. L. F. C. Celsus ... Speculator Legionis Secundae Augustae annorum ... natione Dardanus Gu ... Valerius Pudens et ... Probus Speculatores Leg. II. fieri curaverunt.”

8. Found on Tower Hill, 1852; 6 ft. 4 in., by 2 ft. 6 in.:—A ALFID. POMPO. JUSSA EX TESTAMENT ... HER. POS. ANNOR. LXX. NA AELINI H. S. EST.—“A Alfidio Pompo (Pomponio?) jussa ex testamento heres posuit, annorum septuaginta (Na Aelini?), hic situs est.”

9. Found also on Tower Hill; 5 ft. 4 in., by 2 ft. 6 in.:—“DIS ANIBUS ABALPINICLASSICIANI.”

10. Found at Pentonville, serving as a paving-stone before the door of a cottage:— “... URNI ... LEGXX GAC ... M ...”

11. Found in Nicholas Lane, near Cannon Street, June 1850, at the depth of 11 or 12 feet, lying close to a wall 2 feet in width. It is only a fragment:—“NUMC ... PROV ... BRITA ...”

12. Found on an ingot of silver within the Tower of London in 1777: “EX OFFI. HONORIM”—i.e. Ex officinâ—from the workshop of Honorinus.

As we have already said, the things that have been found are nearly all pagan. Only on two Roman pavements have been found the Christian symbols, on one coin, and on one stone in the Roman wall. This silence proves, to my mind, that the Christian religion, down to the middle of the fourth century, held a very obscure place among the many religions followed and professed by the people. Except in times of persecution, everybody worshipped any god he pleased—Christ, or Apollo, or the Sun, or the Mother. But those who followed the Christian faith were not the soldiers, or their captains, or the Imperial officers, or the rich merchants: they were the lower class, the craftsmen of the cities, and the slaves among whom the Christian hope prevailed.

ROMAN ANTIQUITIES FOUND IN LONDON IN 1786
From Archæologia, vol. viii.

During an excavation at Hart Street, Crutched Friars, there was found at a considerable depth below the surface a fragment of a group representing the Deæ Matres—the Three Mothers. The fragment measures 2 ft. 8 in. in length, 1 ft. 5 in. in width, and 1 ft. 8 in. in depth. The sculpture represented three female figures fully clothed with flowing draperies, each bearing in her lap a basket of fruit. Perhaps their sacellum or temple was close by, but no search for it seems to have been made. This is not the place for enlarging upon the worship of these strange goddesses. Their figures have been found at Winchester, at York, and along the Roman wall; but they were essentially German deities. That they have been found in this country side by side with the classical gods shows that here, as in all other Roman provinces, the people received a great mixture of gods from all parts of the world among their original gods. The Three Mothers represented the productive power of Nature: the fruits signify the annual harvest. It is easy to understand how, starting with this idea, the whole of life—birth, growth, strength, decay, and death—may be connected with the Mothers of all. We may worship the Sun as the creator, or the Deæ Matres as the producers. We may have Baal, Apollo, the Sun—the Father; or we may have Venus, Osiris, or the Matres—the Mothers. A port which was a place of resort for merchants of all nations would, in those days of universal respect and toleration of all gods, offer a strange collection of gods. Long before Christianity was established there were Christians in the City side by side with those who worshipped Nature as creator or producer—those who adopted the gods of the Romans and those who preserved the memory and the teaching of the Druids. But, whatever be said or conjectured, nothing can be more remarkable than the absence of Christian symbols.

Returning to the Roman remains found in London, we come to the wall paintings, of which a considerable number have been recovered—“cart-loads,” according to Roach Smith. “In some localities I have seen them carried away by cart-loads. Enough has been preserved of them to decide that the rooms of the house were usually painted in square panels or compartments, the prevailing colours of which were bright red, dark grey, and black, with borders of various colours.”

A quantity of pottery has also been found. Here, in fact, was an extensive industry in the making of fictile vessels. In the year 1677, on the north-west of St. Paul’s Cathedral, were discovered remains of Roman kilns: they were found and sketched by John Conyers. He says that there were four of them lying in the sandy loam from which they were constructed. The one he sketched was 5 feet deep, and the same in breadth. The kiln was full of the coarser kind of pottery. The figures show the form of the vessels. The potters’ marks are very numerous. Some show that the vessels were brought from abroad, but these are comparatively few; the remainder testify to the fact that London was largely engaged in this industry. The red glazed pottery, of which such quantity is found wherever there has been a Roman settlement, is clearly proved to have been made in Gaul and Germany and to have been imported. It was probably superior to the home-made ware. The designs with which the pottery is ornamented are executed with great skill and beauty. Mythological stories are represented, as that of Actæon and Diana, the labours of Hercules, and Bacchanalian processions. There are representations of flowers, fruits, and foliage, field sports, and the contests in the amphitheatre.

Of tiles, whether for roofing, for bonding, for the hypocaust, or other purposes, numbers have been dug up.

Were the windows in the houses of London glazed? Lactantius shows clearly that in his time there were glass windows. “Verius et manifestius est mentem esse quae per oculos ea, quae sunt opposita, transpiciat quasi per fenestras lucente vitro aut speculari lapide obductas.” And Seneca, much earlier, speaks of chambers covered with glass. In Pompeii both glass and the lapis specularis of Lactantius have been found in their window-frames. This should be quite conclusive. The enormous convenience of a window which would admit light and keep out the cold, especially in such a climate as ours, and the fact that in Italy such windows were in common use, are enough to show that these windows were used, because all the luxuries and conveniences of Rome were introduced here, if not by the natives, at least by the Roman officials. Pieces of glass, flat and semi-transparent, of a greenish hue, have been found in excavations, and are considered to be window glass. Indeed it would seem absolutely impossible to live in anything but a hut with a fire in the middle and an open door at the side without some such contrivance. There are many days in the year when it is impossible to work in the open air or in rooms exposed to the outer air. As soon as a house was constructed the glazed window—glazed with horn, or glass, or talc—must have followed.

Of coins a very large number have been dug up in excavations. These have been classified and described by Mr. C. Roach Smith in his book on Roman London.

[CHAPTER V]
THE BUILDING OF THE WALL

The most important of all the Roman remains in London are the ruins of the wall.

Under the protection of the Citadel the merchants first conducted their business; under its shadow the ships lay moored in the river, the bales lay on the quays, and the houses of the people, planted at first along the banks of the Walbrook, stretched out northwards to the moor and westwards as far as the river Fleet.

Then came the City wall.

It is strange that nothing should be said anywhere about so strong and important a piece of work as the wall. When was it built, and by whom? When was it destroyed, and by whom? Was it standing when the Saxons began their occupation? It appears not.

My theory is this:—According to the opinion of Sir William Tite, which now seems generally accepted (Archæologia, vol. xxxiii.), the wall of London—not the Citadel wall—was built somewhere about the year 360 A.D. There is no record of the building; yet it was a great and costly work. The date of the building is of some importance, because the wall itself was a sign of weakness. There was no need of such a wall in the second or third centuries: the Citadel and the power of the Roman name were enough. In the next century—a period of decay—this assistance failed, the inhabitants ceased to rely on the Roman name. Then they looked around. Augusta was a very large City; it had become rich; it was full of treasure; for want of a wall it might be taken at a rush. Moreover, not only was the Roman arm weakened, but the position of the City was far less secure than formerly. Of old the approaches were mere tracks through forest and over moor; now they were splendid roads. It was by means of these roads, constructed for the use of the legions, that the Picts and Scots were able to descend into the very heart of the country, even within a day or two of London; it was by these roads that the pirates from the east, landing in Essex, would some day swoop down upon the City. At the date suggested by Sir William Tite there was, one can see plainly, insecurity enough; though the people, from long habit, still relied on the legions and on the Roman peace. For nearly four hundred years, without any fighting of their own, the citizens had been safe, and had felt themselves safe. After the wholesale exportation of rebels from the Roman soldiery by Paulus Catena, when the invaders of the north came every day farther south and nearer London, it was borne in upon the citizens that the time of safety was over, that they must now defend themselves, and that the city of Augusta lay stretched out for a mile along the river and half a mile inland without a wall or any defence at all.

ROMAN REMAINS FOUND IN A BASTION OF LONDON WALL

After the reprisals taken by Paulus Catena in 355 and his withdrawal, the country, nearly denuded of troops, lay open to invasion. But in the year 369 we have seen that Theodosius found the enemy ravaging the country round London, but they did not get in. The wall must have existed already. It was therefore between 355 and 369 that the wall was built. As I read history, it was built in a panic, all the people giving their aid, just as, in 1643, when there was a scare in the City because King Charles was reported to be marching upon it, all the people went out to fortify the avenues and approaches. Another reason for thinking this, apart from the general insecurity of the time, is the very significant fact that the wall is built not only with cut and squared stones, but with all kinds of material in fragments caught up from every quarter.

These fragments proclaim aloud that the construction of the wall was not a work resolved upon after careful consideration; that it was not taken in hand with the leisure due to so important a business; that the citizens could not wait for stone to be quarried and brought to London for the purpose; but that the wall was resolved upon, begun, and carried through with all the haste that such a work would allow, though with the thoroughness and strength which the Roman traditions enjoined.

In order to get stone enough for this great wall, the people not only sent to the quarries of Kent, whence came the “rag” and the sandstone, and to those of Sussex, where they obtained their chalk, but they also laid hands upon every building of stone within and without the City; they tore down the massive walls of the Citadel, leaving only the foundations; they used the walls and the columns and the statues of the forum and of the temple, and of all the official buildings; they took down the amphitheatre and used its stones; they even took the monuments from the cemeteries and built them up into the wall.

Fragments of pillars, altars, statues, capitals, and carved work of all kinds may be found embedded in the wall.

They took everything; and this fact is the chief reason why nothing of the Roman occupation—save the wall itself—remained above ground in Saxon times.

It is remarkable that the Roman walls of Sens, Dijon, Bordeaux, Bourges, Périgueux, and Narbonne are in the same way partly constructed of old materials, and that they contained the remains of temples, columns, pilasters, friezes, entablatures, sepulchral monuments, altars, and sculptures, all speaking of threatened danger, and the hasty building of a wall for which every piece of stone in the city was seized and used.

Attempts have been made to show that the wall was built in later times. Cemeteries, it is stated, have been found here and there. We have already seen that there were burials in Bow Lane, in Queen Street, Cheapside, in Cornhill, north of Lombard Street, on St. Dunstan’s Hill, in Camomile Street, and at St. Helen’s Church, Bishopsgate. Now interment within the city was forbidden by law. Hence it is inferred that the wall could not have been Roman work. The answer to this inference is very simple. The City of London was the enclosed town or fort on the eastern hillock; all these places of burial lie without the wall of this Citadel—that is to say, without the town.

As for the wall, so many portions of it remained until this century, so many fragments still remain, it is laid down with so much precision on the older maps, and especially on those of Agas and Wyngaerde, that it is perfectly easy to follow it along its whole course. For instance, there were standing, a hundred years ago, in the street called London Wall, west of All Hallows on the Wall, large portions of the wall overlooking Finsbury Circus, with trees growing upon them—a picturesque old ruin which it was a shame to destroy. This part of the wall is shown, with a postern, in the 1754 edition of Stow and Strype. Indeed that edition shows the whole course of the wall very clearly, still standing in its entirety.

Starting from the Tower, it ran in a straight line a little west of north-west to Aldgate; then it bent more to the west and ran in a curve to Bishopsgate; thence nearly in a straight line west by north to St. Giles’s Churchyard, where it turned south; at Aldersgate it ran west again as far as a little north of Newgate, where it turned south once more, crossed Ludgate Hill, and in ancient times reached the river a little to the east of the Fleet, leaving a corner, formerly a swampy bank of the Fleet, which was afterwards occupied by the Dominicans. Fragments of the wall still exist at All Hallows Church, at St. Alphege Churchyard, in St. Giles’s Churchyard, and at the Post Office, St. Martin’s-le-Grand, while excavations have laid bare portions in many other places. For instance, in the year 1852 there was uncovered, in the corner of some building, a very large piece of the wall at Tower Hill. By the exertions of Mr. C. Roach Smith this fragment was saved from destruction, examined carefully and figured. A plate showing that part of it where the ancient facing had been preserved is given in his Illustrations of Roman London. “Upon the foundation was placed a set-off row of large square stones; upon these, four layers of smaller stones, regularly and neatly cut; then a bonding course of three rows of red tiles, above which are six layers of stones separated, by a bonding course of tiles as before, from a third division of five layers of stones; the bonding course of tiles above these is composed of two rows of tiles; and in like manner the facing was carried to the top. The tiles of the third row are red and yellow; and they extend through the entire width of the wall, which is about 10 feet, the height having been apparently 30 feet. The core of the wall is cemented together with concrete, in which lime predominates, as is usual in Roman mortar. Pounded tile is also used in the mortar which cements the facing. This gives it that peculiar red hue which led FitzStephen to imagine the cement of the foundations of the Tower to have been tempered with the blood of beasts.” In the year 1763 there was still standing in Houndsditch part of a Roman tower. It is figured in Roach Smith’sRoman London. The drawing shows that the towers are as square as those still to be traced at Richborough. They were built solid at the bottom, hollow in the middle, and solid again at the top. The middle part contained a room with loopholes for the discharge of missiles and arrows. In the Houndsditch tower a window has taken the place of the loophole. According to FitzStephen, the wall was strengthened by towers at intervals. At the angles, as appears from the bastion in St. Giles’s Churchyard, the towers were circular.

In 1857 excavations at the end of Aldermanbury laid open a remarkable portion of the wall; it was composed of a series of blind arches forming part of the solid masonry.

Nothing is left above ground of the Roman facing; what we see now is the old solid core with perhaps some of the mediæval facing. The uncovering of a large part of the wall at Aldersgate Street is thus described (Archæologia, vol. lii. 609):—

“The Government having determined to erect additional buildings to the General Post Office in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, certain steps were taken in order to ascertain the nature of the ground on which these buildings were to be placed. For this purpose, in the latter part of 1887, shafts were sunk along a line from Aldersgate Street to King Edward Street, some yards south of the old Money Order Office, and parallel to Bull and Mouth Street, a street now swept away. In sinking these pits the workmen came upon the Roman wall, and afterwards, as the process of preparing the site for the new buildings proceeded, a considerable fragment of it was unearthed running east and west, and extending from Aldersgate Street on the one side, to King Edward Street on the other. It was found that the line of buildings and walls forming the southern boundary of the churchyard of St. Botolph, Aldersgate Street, was based upon this wall, and it seems very probable that the churchyard and church above-named partly occupy the ground filling up the original ditch.

The portion of wall exposed, commencing near Aldersgate Street and running westwards, can be well seen for a length of upwards of 131 feet. A considerable length of this has been carefully underpinned, and, I am happy to say, will be preserved. The height remaining varies very considerably, but, measuring from the original ground level, at least eleven or twelve feet of masonry is still standing in places, not in any regular line at the top, but much broken into by the foundations of comparatively modern walls built upon it. Beyond the length named but little of the wall is to be seen, and as it approaches King Edward Street, just beneath the line of the houses in that street, on its eastern side, were discovered the foundations of a semicircular tower, or rather a tower semicircular in plan, with slightly prolonged straight sides. The foundations of this tower—and nothing but foundations remained—did not form any part of the structure of the Roman wall, but came with a butt-joint against it. They were 5 feet 3 inches wide, and composed of rubble-work of Kentish ragstone with some chalk, and a few fragments of old building materials bedded amongst the rubble. The internal measurements of this tower were 17 feet 3 inches by 16 feet, and the foundation of the Roman wall was seen to cross its base. The tower which stood on these foundations is probably an addition to the wall in the mediæval period. It was not Roman, and the foundations had no Roman character. Some pieces of worked stone discovered in them showed traces of Norman mouldings, and of foliage of the early English period. It is possible that the first tower west of Aldersgate, seen in Agas’s map of London 1560, may be the one the remains of which are here described.

Turning now to examine the construction of the Roman wall, it appears that it was built in the following manner:—A trench, from 10 feet 9 inches to 11 feet wide and 6 feet deep, was dug in the natural clay soil, the sides of the trench for a distance of 2 feet from the bottom sloping slightly outwards. The lower part of the trench for the depth of 2 feet was then filled in with puddled clay mixed with flints, and the whole well rammed down. Upon this came 4 feet of rubble foundation, lessening in some places to 2 feet, composed of masses of Kentish ragstone, laid in mortar, the larger pieces being placed with some care in the arrangement, so as to form a solid base for the superstructure of the wall itself.

This wall, between 8 and 9 feet thick, as far as could be ascertained, starts with a bonding course of three rows of tiles at the ancient ground level, which is 6 feet 9 inches below the level of Aldersgate Street. Above this course the body of the wall is composed throughout its height of masses of ragstone, with now and then a fragment of chalk bedded very roughly in mortar which has been pitched in, not run in, sometimes with so little care as to leave occasional empty spaces amongst the stones. The stones are often arranged in a rude herring-bone fashion, perhaps for greater convenience in packing them in, but the layers do not correspond in depth with the facing course.

The lowest band of tiles in the wall (at the ground level) is 8 inches high, and consists of three rows, the bed of mortar between them being often thicker than the tiles themselves. The vertical joints, however, are very close. The three bands of tiles above this lowest one are each 4½ inches high and of two rows. All these bands form bonding courses—layers, in fact, through the entire breadth of the wall, binding the rubble core together.

The tiles vary somewhat in size, but one perfect example which could be measured in every direction was 1 foot by 1 foot 4 inches, and from 1 inch to 1½ inches thick. They are set with their greatest length into the wall. Some yellowish tiles here and there form an exception to the great mass, which is red and well burnt.

The height of the spaces of stone facing between each band of bonding tiles is as follows:—The first space counting from the lowest band, 2 feet 4 inches; the second, 2 feet 4 inches; the third, 2 feet 5 inches; and the fourth, 2 feet 10 inches; though these last dimensions are somewhat doubtful, on account of the ruined condition of the upper part of the wall. Each of these spaces, with the exception of the ruined topmost one, of which little can be made out, is divided into five rows of facing stones, in regular rows, all apparently much the same height, though the individual stones vary considerably in length. These stones are very irregular in the amount of their penetration into the core of the wall, and there is nothing resembling the method adopted in working the facing stones of the wall of Hadrian, where each stone is cut to a long wedge shape and set with the pointer end into the wall. On the face the stones average from 4 to 5 inches in height, laid in a mortar bed of another inch or more in depth, and their average depth into the wall may be about 9 or 10 inches. They therefore form a mere skin between the tile bonding courses to the thick irregular rubble core. The stones have been brought to a clean face by splitting off their rough surface by the process known as pitching, and have been roughly squared in bed and joints with a hammer. The mortar employed seems to have nothing unusual in its composition. The mortar in which pounded tile forms so large an ingredient is not to be found here.”

In preparing for the new buildings erected, in the summer of 1857, on the north side of the gaol of Newgate, in the Old Bailey, and very near to the site of the City gate which gave its name to the prison, the ground was excavated to a considerable depth, and thus the foundation of the City wall was cut through, and many vestiges of old London were discovered. Among these, Mr. G. R. Corner, F.S.A., obtained a fragment of a mortarium, with the potter’s mark very clearly and distinctly impressed on the rim, but the words singularly disposed within a twisted border.

It is remarkable that a similar fragment, bearing the same mark, was also found in Newgate Street, on the 23rd October 1835, and is now preserved in Mr. Charles Roach Smith’s Museum of London Antiquities at the British Museum.

During the 1857 excavations, abundance of Roman bond-tiles and building materials appeared in and about the City wall; and Mr. Corner observed under a stratum of pounded brick, which was the foundation of a coarse pavement, a layer of burnt wood, the evident remains of a fire during, or previous, to the Roman period. Many feet higher was a similar layer of wood-ashes, produced by the Fire of 1666, or some similar occurrence in later times.

The following letter to Sir Christopher Wren from J. Woodward (June 23, 1707) gives a detailed account of certain excavations in Camomile Street:—

“In April last, upon the pulling down some old Houses, adjoining to Bishops-Gate, in Camomile Street, in order to the building there anew, and digging, to make Cellars, about four Foot under Ground, was discovered a Pavement, consisting of Diced bricks, the most red, but some few black, and others yellow; of nearly of a size, and very small, hardly any exceeding an inch in thickness. The extent of the Pavement in length was uncertain; it running from Bishopsgate for sixty feet, quite under the Foundation of some houses not yet pulled down. Its Breadth was about ten Feet; terminating on that side at the distance of three feet and a half from the City wall.

Sinking downwards, under the Pavement, only rubbish occurred for about two foot; and then the workmen came to a Stratum of Clay; in which, at the Depth of two feet more, they found several urns. Some of them were become so tender and rotten that they easily crumbled and fell to pieces. As to those that had the Fortune better to escape the injuries of Time, and the Strokes of the Workmen that rais’d the Earth, they were of different Forms; but all of very handsome make and contrivance; as indeed most of the Roman Vessels we find ever are. Which is but one of the many instances that are at this day extant of the art of that people; of the great exactness of their genius, and happiness of their fancy. These Urns were of various sizes; the largest capable of holding full three gallons, the least somewhat above a Quart. All of these had, in them, ashes, and Cinders of burned Bones.

Along with the urns were found various other earthen Vessels: as a Simpulum, a Patera of very fine red earth, and a blewish Glass Viol of that sort that is commonly call’d a Lachrimatory. These were all broke by the Carelessness of the Workmen. There were likewise found several Beads, one or two Copper Rings; a Fibula of the same Metall, but much impaired and decayed; as also a Coin of Antoninus Pius, exhibiting on one side, the Head of that Emperor, with a radiated Crown on, and this inscription, ANTONINUS AVG ... IMP. XVI. On the reverse was the Figure of a Woman, sitting, and holding in her right hand a Patera; in her left an hastapura. The inscription on this side was wholly obliterated and gone.

At about the same depth with the things before mentioned but nearer to the City Wall, and without the Verge of the Pavement, was digg’d up an Human Skull, with several Bones, that were whole, and had not passed the Fire, as those in the Urns had. Mr. Stow makes mention of Bones found in like manner not far off this place, and likewise of Urns with Ashes in them; as do also Mr. Weever after him, and Mr. Camden.

The City Wall being, upon this occasion, to make way for these new buildings, broke up and beat to pieces, from Bishopsgate onwards, S. so far as they extend, an opportunity was given of observing the Fabrick and Composition of it. From the foundation, which lay eight Foot below the present surface, quite up to the Top, which was, in all, near Ten Foot, ’twas compil’d alternately of Layers of broad flat bricks; and of Rag Stone. The bricks lay in double ranges; and, each brick being but one inch and three-tenths in thickness, the whole layer, with the Mortar interpos’d, exceeded not three inches. The Layers of Stone were not quite two feet thick, of our measure. ’Tis probable they were intended for two of the Roman, their rule being somewhat shorter than ours. To this height the workmanship was after the Roman manner; and these were the Remains of the antient wall, supposed to be built by Constantine the Great. In this ’twas very observable that the Mortar was, as usually in the Roman Works, so very firm and hard, that the stone itself is easily broke, and gave way, as that. ’Twas thus far, from the Foundation upwards, nine Foot in Thickness, and yet so vast a bulk and strength had not been able to secure it from being beat down in former Ages, and near levell’d with the Ground.

The Broad thin Bricks, above mention’d, were all of Roman make; and of the very sort which, we learn from Pliny, were of common use among the Romans; being in Length a Foot and half, of their Standard, and in breadth a Foot. Measuring some of these very carefully, I found them 17 inches 4/10 in Length, 11 inches 6/10 in breadth, and 1 inch 3/10 in thickness of our Measure. This may afford some light towards the settling and adjusting the Dimensions of the Roman Foot; and shewing the Proportion that it bears to the English; a Thing of so great use, that one of the most accomplished and judicious writers of the last Century endeavour’d to compass it with a great deal of Travel and Pains. Indeed ’tis very remarkable, that the Foot-Rule follow’d up by the Makers of these Bricks was nearly the same with that exhibited on the Monument of Cossutius in the Colotian Gardens at Rome, which that admirable mathematician has, with great reason, pitched upon as the true Roman foot. Hence likewise appears, what indeed was very probable without this confirmation, that the standard foot in Rome was followed in the Colonies, and Provinces, to the very remotest parts of the Empire; and that too, quite down even to the Time of Constantine; in case this was the wall that was built by his appointment.

The old wall having been demolished, as has been intimated above, was afterwards repaired again, and carry’d up, of the same thickness, to eight or nine feet in height. Or if higher, there was no more of that work now standing. All this was apparently additional, and of a make later than the other part underneath. That was levell’d at top and brought to a Plane, in order to the raising this new Work upon it. The outside, or that towards the suburbs, was faced with a coarse sort of stone; not compil’d with any great care or skill, or disposed into a regular method. But, on the inside, there appear’d more marks of workmanship and Art. At the Bottom were five Layers, compos’d of Squares of Flint, and of Free-stone, tho’ they were not so in all parts, yet in some the squares were near equal, about five inches in Diameter; and ranged in a Quincunx order. Over these was a layer of brick; then of hew’n free-stone; and so alternately, brick and stone, to the top. There were of the bricks in all, six layers, each consisting only of a double course; except that which lay above all, in which there were four Courses of Bricks, where the layer was intire. These bricks were of the shape of those now in use; but much larger; being near 11 inches in length, 5 in breadth, and somewhat above 2½ in thickness. Of the stone there were five layers and each of equal thickness in all parts, for its whole length. The highest, and the lowest of these, were somewhat above a foot in thickness, the three middle layers each five inches. So that the whole height of this additional work was near nine foot. As to the interior parts or the main bulk of the wall, ’twas made up of Pieces of rubble-stone; with a few bricks, of the same sort of those us’d in the inner facing of the wall, laid uncertainly, as they happen’d to come to hand, and not in any stated method. There was not one of the broad thin Roman bricks, mentioned above, in all this part; nor was the mortar here near so hard as in that below. But, from the description, it may easily be recollected that this part, when first made, and intire, with so various and orderly a disposition of the Materials, Flint, Stone, Bricks, could not but carry a very elegant and handsome aspect. Whether this was done at the expense of the Barons, in the reign of K. John; or of the Citizens in the reign of K. Henry III.; or of K. Richard II.; or at what other time, I cannot take upon me to ascertain from accounts so defective and obscure, as are those which at this day remain of this affair. Upon the additional work, now described, was raised a wall wholly of brick; only that it terminating in battlements, these are top’d with Copings of Stone. ’Tis two feet four inches in thickness and somewhat above eight feet in height. The bricks of this are of the same Moduls, and size, with those of the Part underneath. How long they had been in use is uncertain. But there can be no doubt but this is the wall that was built in the year 1477 in the reign of King Edward IV. Mr. Stow informs us that that was compil’d of bricks made of clay got in Moorfields; and mentions two Coats of Arms fixt in it near Moorgate; one of which is extant to this day, tho’ the stone, whereon it was ingrav’d, be somewhat worn and defaced. Bishopsgate itself was built two years after this wall, in the form it still retains. The workmen lately employed there sunk considerably lower than the Foundations of this Gate; and, by that means, learned they lay not so deep as those of the old Roman Wall by four or five feet.”

“A portion of the ancient wall of London was discovered in Cooper’s Row, Crutched Friars, while preparing for the erection of a warehouse there. The length of this piece of wall is 106 feet 6 inches. The lower part is Roman, and the upper part mediæval. The latter consists of rubble, chalk, and flints, and is 17 feet 4 inches high to the foot face, which is 2 feet wide, and has a parapet or breast wall 5 feet high and 2 feet thick. It is much defaced by holes cut for the insertion of timbers of modern buildings, and is cased in parts with brickwork. On the west side are two semicircular arched recesses. This mediæval wall is set back and battered at the lower part on both sides, until it reaches the thickness of the Roman wall on which it is built. The Roman wall remains in its primitive state to a depth of 5 feet 7 inches, and in this part is faced with Kentish rag in courses, and has two double rows of tiles. The first course is 2 feet 8 inches from the top, and 4 inches thick. The second is 2 feet 2½ inches lower down, and 4½ inches thick. The tiles are from 1¼ inches to 1¾ inches thick, and of the size called sesquipedales, viz., a Roman foot wide, and 1½ feet long. They are laid, some lengthwise and others crosswise, as headers and stretchers. At the level of the upper course of tiles is a set-off of half a Roman foot. Below the second course the wall is cased with brickwork forming a modern vault, but at the foot of the brick casing a double row of Roman tiles is again visible 3 feet 9½ inches below the last-mentioned course, and these two courses are 4½ inches thick. These tiles come out to the face of the modern brickwork, which is about 5 inches in advance of the wall above it, so that there would seem to be a second set-off in the wall. One course of ragstone facing is seen below these tile-courses, but the excavation has not yet reached the foundation of the wall. The total height of Roman wall discovered is 10 feet 3 inches. The upper part of the Roman wall is 8 or 9 feet thick.” (L. and M. Arch. vol. iii. p. 52.)

ROMAN ARCH, LONDON WALL
From Archæologia, vol. xxix.

In the autumn of 1874 were discovered the foundations of an old wall supposed to be those of the Roman wall. These remains were examined by Mr. J. E. Price, F.S.A., who thus described them:—

“The excavations were situate at the western end of Newgate Street, at the corner adjoining Giltspur Street, and at but a short distance from the site of the old ‘Compter,’ removed a few years since. The remains were first observed in clearing away the cellars of the houses which separated this building from Newgate Street and covered a considerable area. They were on the north side of the street, and appeared at a short distance from the surface. The City wall ran behind the houses, forming at this point an angle, whence it branched off beneath Christ’s Hospital in the direction of Aldersgate. Adjoining the wall was a long arched vault or passage, and upon the City side of this, a well, approached by a doorway leading to a flight of perhaps a dozen steps. This staircase was arched over, being covered by what is technically termed a bonnet arch. In addition, there were walls and cross walls several feet in thickness, all extremely massive, and with foundations of great strength and durability. These walls were chiefly composed of ragstone, oolite, chalk, and firestone, with an occasional brick or tile, and the vaulted passage of two rings of stonework formed by squared blocks of large dimensions. The width of the passage was from 7 to 8 feet, the stones composing the arch measuring from 2 to 3 feet wide, and nearly 2 feet high. The side walls of the passage were faced with carefully squared blocks laid in little, if any, mortar, and of immense size, some of them being from 4 to 5 feet long by 2 in height, and all such as would be selected in the construction of a building devoted to uses requiring more than ordinary strength. At the junction of the passage with the external wall, the outer facing of the arch was visible; it had been carefully worked, and upon it appeared a hollow chamfer of a decided mediæval type, a circumstance which alone strongly militates against the Roman theory. The mortar also was such as may be usually found in mediæval buildings, but presented none of the characteristics either of Roman mortar or Roman concrete. Nor were there any such unmistakable substances found attached to the tiles, the rubble, or the stonework which made up the section of the City wall. Roman mortar is not easily mistaken; so hard and so durable is it that it is frequently easier to break the stones themselves than the cement which holds them together. In the Roman walls found at the erection of the Cannon Street Railway Station, so solid was the masonry that it was with the greatest difficulty that sufficient could be removed for the introduction of the new brickwork, and much of that enormous building rests upon foundations such as no modern architect could improve.” (Arch. vol. v. pp. 404-405.)

Mr. Price concluded that the foundations thus disclosed were not Roman at all, but of much later date. He thought that they were the foundations of a gate and gaol erected after the Conquest. His view appears to be well founded. And yet the foundations may have been on the site of the Roman wall. He seems to have supposed that the Roman wall did not extend so far west and north, on account of the great area enclosed. But he does not state at what period this great area could have been more fitly enclosed. If we consider that a large part of the City consisted of gardens and villas, there is a reason for the enclosure; while the argument that the wall could not have been defended throughout its length is also met by the fact that it could not be easily attacked because of its length; that the scientific methods of sieges were not invented till much later; that in order to meet them the moat was constructed; and that the wall alone was sufficient for the assailants its builders had in view when it was first erected.

I must reserve the consideration of the mediæval gates for a later time. Meanwhile, it must be noted that neither the Bishopsgate nor Newgate of the later period stood upon the original Roman site.

The Roman foundations of Bishopsgate have been discovered in Camomile Street, south-east of the later Bishopsgate; and those of the old gate of Watling Street have been found north of the later Newgate.

There were fifteen bastions, according to Maitland. Of these there are shown on the maps three between the Tower and Aldgate, one at Cripplegate, two in Monkwell Street, one at Christ’s Hospital, and another near the corner of Giltspur Street, 100 feet from Newgate. On the occasion of a fire at Ludgate in 1792, portions of an ancient watch-tower were discovered.

Briefly, therefore, fragments of the wall can be seen on Tower Hill, where there is a splendid piece 250 feet long; at All Hallows on the Wall, where a part was taken down about 1800 in the street called London Wall; at St. Alphege Churchyard, at Cripplegate, and in the Old Bailey. Add to these the discoveries in Camomile Street in 1874, those in Bull and Mouth Street, in Giltspur Street, north of Christ’s Hospital, south of Ludgate, and the foundations in Thames Street.

Between Blackfriars and the Tower ran the old river-side wall. This had been pulled down before the reign of Henry II., but the foundations remain to this day, and have been uncovered in one place at least. The wall ran along the middle of Thames Street. The portion discovered was at the angle where the wall met the river at the foot of Lambeth Hill. It was when works connected with the sewage were being executed that the wall was found nine feet below the surface.

Mr. C. Roach Smith thus describes the finding of the river wall:—

“The workmen employed in excavating for sewerage in Upper Thames Street advanced without impediment from Blackfriars to the foot of Lambeth Hill, where they were obstructed by the remains of a wall of extraordinary strength, which formed an angle at Lambeth Hill and Thames Street. Upon this wall the contractor for the sewer was obliged to excavate to the depth of about 20 feet, and the consequent labour and delay afforded me an opportunity of examining the construction and course of the wall. The upper part was generally met with at the depth of about 9 feet from the level of the present street, and 6 from that which marks the period of the great fire of London, and, as the sewer was constructed to the depth of 20 feet, 8 feet of the wall in height had to be removed. In thickness it measured from 8 to 10 feet. It was built upon oaken piles, over which was laid a stratum of chalk and stone, and upon this a course of hewn sandstones, each measuring from 3 to 4 feet by 2 and 2½ feet, cemented with the well-known compound of quicklime, sand, and pounded tile. Upon this solid substructure was laid the body of the wall, formed of ragstone, flint, and lime, bonded at intervals with courses of plain and curved-edged tiles. This wall continued with occasional breaks, where at some remote time it had been broken down, from Lambeth Hill as far as Queenhithe. On a previous occasion I had noticed a wall precisely similar in character in Thames Street, opposite Queen Street.

One of the most remarkable features of this southern wall remains to be described. Many of the large stones which formed the lower part were sculptured and ornamented with mouldings denoting their use in the friezes or entablatures of edifices at some period antecedent to the construction of the wall. Fragments of sculptured marble, which had also decorated buildings, and part of the foliage and trellis-work of an altar or tomb, of good workmanship, had also been used as building materials. In this respect the wall resembles many of those of the ancient towns on the Continent, which were partly built out of the ruins of public edifices, of broken altars, sepulchral monuments, and such materials, proving their comparatively late origin, and showing that even the ancients did not at all times respect the memorials of their ancestors and predecessors, and that our modern vandalism sprang from an old stock.” (Illustrations of Roman London.)

On the reclaiming of the foreshore I have already (p. 105) given Sir William Tite’s evidence. I here return to the subject, which is closely connected with the river-side wall. Behind the river wall the gentle slope continued until the ground rose from 26 feet above the river to 50 feet. Now, if the theory which considers the dedicating of the churches here shows the extreme antiquity of the town is correct, this ought to have been the most densely populated part of the City in the fourth century. I do not know why it should have been so. The ports of Roman London were, as I have already advanced, two—Walbrook and Billingsgate: the first a natural port; the second an artificial port constructed for convenience close to Bridge Gate. There was no port along the south front of London between the Fleet and the Walbrook; there was no reason why this part should have been crowded. The wall was not built on the edge of the cliff (if there were a cliff) for very good reasons; the slope, more likely, was levelled for a space on both sides the wall. When, for instance, in King John’s reign, the town ditch was constructed, a ledge of 10 feet was left between the foot of the wall and the beginning of the slope of the moat. The same rule must have been observed in the construction of this wall.

This wall was constructed as far as Walbrook, where the stream and the banks were 230 feet wide. Here was the earliest port of London. What happened next is matter of conjecture, but it seems quite certain that the wall would end with a round bastion or tower protecting the entrance; that the mouth of the port was further protected by a stout chain capable of resisting the strongest ships; that within, on the banks of the stream, were many quays with vessels moored alongside; that on the opposite bank stood the west side of the Citadel, with its gate, whence, perhaps, we get the name of Dowgate.

The south wall of the Citadel, which extended as far as Mincing Lane, served as the river-side wall for that distance. It was continued from that point to the present site of the Tower—a distance of 450 yards—with a new wall. No remains, I believe, have yet been found of that last piece of work. Between the old river wall and the river is now a long and narrow strip of land of varying breadths, but generally 300 feet. It contains a series of parallel streets, narrow and short, running down to the water; these streets are now lined with tall warehouses, except in one or two places, where they still contain small houses for the residence of boatmen, lightermen, porters, and servants. The history of this strip of land is very curious. Remark that when the wall was built the whole foreshore lay below it without any quays or buildings on piles—a slope of grass above a stretch of mud at low water. The first port of London was Walbrook. Within the stream ships were moored and quays were built for the reception of the cargoes. During the Roman occupation there were no water-gates, no quays, and no ports west of Walbrook.

A SHIP
From Tib. MS., B. v.

The Roman name of the second port, which was later called Billingsgate, is not known. Observe, however, that there was no necessity for a break in the wall at this place, because the port was only a few yards east of the first London Bridge with its bridge gate in the wall of the Citadel. A quay, then, was constructed on the foreshore between the port and the bridge. Everything, therefore, unloaded upon this quay was carried up to the head of the bridge, and through the bridge gate into London.

Later on, when the third port was constructed at Queenhithe, the builders must have made an opening in the wall. Now, at Walbrook, at Billingsgate, and at Queenhithe the same process went on. The people redeemed the foreshore under the wall by constructing quays and wharves; they carried this process farther out into the bed of the river, and they extended it east and west. At last, before the river wall was taken down as useless and cumbersome, the whole of this narrow strip, a mile long and 300 feet broad, had been reclaimed, and was filled with warehouses and thickly populated by the people of the port, watermen, stevedores, lightermen, boat-builders, makers of ships’ gear, sails, cordage, etc., with the eating-houses and taverns necessary for their wants.

This process, first of building upon piles, then of forming an embankment, was illustrated by the excavations conducted for the construction of London Bridge in 1825-35. There were found, one behind the other, three such lines of piles forming embankments. The earliest of these was at the south end of Crooked Lane; the second was 60 feet south of the first; the third was 200 feet farther south.

The sixteenth-century maps of London may also be consulted for the manner in which the quays were built out upon piles. It is obvious that more and more space would be required, and that it would become more and more necessary to conduct the business of loading and unloading at any time, regardless of tide.

These considerations strengthen the evidence of Sir William Tite and his opinion that the whole of the streets south of Thames Street must have been reclaimed from the foreshore of the bank by this process of building quays and creating water-gates for the convenience of trade.

The destruction of the wall, which had vanished so early as the twelfth century, is thus easily accounted for. Its purpose was gone. The long lines of quays and warehouses were themselves a sufficient protection. The people pulled down bits of it for their own convenience, and without interference; they ran passages through it and built against it.

[CHAPTER VI]
LONDON BRIDGE

We come next to the consideration of the bridge. It is not a little remarkable that of the three great buildings belonging to Roman London—Citadel, Wall, and Bridge—not one should be so much as mentioned, save incidentally. One would think that the building of a bridge across a broad tidal river was an engineering feat worthy of admiration and of record. It was not so; we merely discover that a bridge existed; we are not told when it was erected, or what kind of bridge it was. Although it is certain that the people of southern Britannia possessed many arts and carried on commerce and lived with some show of civilisation—“people,” it has been remarked, “who possess mints and coin money do not live in huts of wattle and daub,”—yet there is nothing to show that they could build bridges. The Romans could and did. The names of stations in Britain show that they bridged many rivers—Pontes, Ad Pontium, Tripontium, Pons Ælii, for instance. The date of the construction of the first bridge across the Thames is nowhere recorded. We have seen that it has been hastily conjectured from a passage in Dion Cassius that a bridge existed over the Thames at the time of the invasion of Aulus Plautius.

We have already considered this passage. It may be permitted in addition to remark: (1) That the author had evidently an imperfect acquaintance with the topography, or he would not have spoken of the mouth of the Thames being so near London. (2) That he had heard the country described, very justly, as marshes. (3) That the marshes extended the whole way from Richmond to Tilbury. (4) That there could not have been a bridge across a tidal river of sufficient breadth for the whole of this distance. Whatever was existing in London at that time, whether the copia mercatorum mentioned by the Roman historian was really found there, or whether there was a ferry across, it is certain that the people frequenting London could not build bridges except of the elementary kind made of flat stones, such as are found over the narrow and shallow streams of Dartmoor. Guest considers that the marshes were those of the river Lea in the east of London; and certainly they are broad enough to bring an enemy into trouble; and higher up the stream is narrow enough for a bridge of rude construction. He says:—

“When the Romans came down the Watling Street to the neighbourhood of London, they saw before them a wide expanse of marsh and mudbank, which twice every day assumed the character of an estuary, sufficiently large to excuse, if not to justify, the statement in Dio, that the river there emptied itself into the ocean. No dykes then retained the water within certain limits. One arm of the great wash stretched northwards, up the valley of the Lea, and the other westward, down the valley of the Thames. The individual character of the rivers was lost; the Romans saw only one sheet of water before them, and they gave it the name of the river which mainly contributed to form it. When they stated that they crossed the Thames, they merely meant that they crossed the northern arm of the great lake which spread out its waters before them, and on either hand.”

There are, however, certain considerations which point in a different direction. We have already seen that the chief highway of traffic, the only communication between the north and the south, lay along what was afterwards Watling Street; that it passed down the Edgware Road, along Park Lane, stopping short of the marsh which covered the Green Park as far as Thorney Island; that a ford, perhaps left uncovered at low tide, led over the marsh to the island; that on the other side of the island (which is Westminster) there was another ford across the river to the renewal of the road—at Stangate—on the south side. Formerly this was part of the high road; the pack-mules and the slaves crossed every day at low tide. The water, which is now confined between two perpendicular walls, was then distributed at high tide over the immense marsh which begins below Richmond and extends to the coasts of Essex. The embankment of the river for business purposes in the City and the building of the bridge deepened and scoured the channel, so that the ford only became available afterwards in dry seasons, though up to the time of Queen Elizabeth it was still fordable after a drought. This ford seems to answer all the requirements of the narrative; it is just the place where troops, ignorant of the way, would step aside into deep water and so fall into difficulties. It is also the place where the army, following the road, would arrive at the river.

In considering the early history of the City, we must remember not only the connection of Westminster with this ford, but also the great and important fact of the trade which was carried on up and down the road over Thorney, making the place a busy centre of traffic before there was a Port of London at all. Whether the Port of London existed when the Romans began their occupation has been questioned. To me it is quite plain that it did. If there was no Port of London, then the merchandise intended for all the country inland was taken by river to Thorney. This much is certain, that the Romans established themselves in a fort on the east of the Walbrook. The building of this fort could not be undertaken until the position of the place and the navigation of the river were well known, because all the stone must have been brought by water. We will suppose, then, that an ordinary camp occupied this site before the fort was built. If we now consult the map we observe that the position, though it guarded the river, was isolated with respect to the way of trade and to the way of war.

It was therefore imperative to acquire the means of communication with that way. Had the Romans been unable to acquire that communication, the Roman settlement overhanging Walbrook would never have been built. In other words, the situation demanded a bridge, and a bridge was built. The date of the first London bridge is that of the first Roman occupation of London, i.e. the period immediately following the massacre under Boadicea.

What kind of bridge was built? First, we must remember that to build a bridge of stone over a broad and deep tidal estuary was a work which had never yet been attempted anywhere in the Empire. Certainly among the people of London there were none who would venture to attempt so great a work, while I do not believe that the military engineers themselves would attempt it. Next, it was a work which would certainly take a great deal of time; later on, for instance, the first stone bridge took thirty years to accomplish. Thirdly, it would be a costly work.

The answer must be sought in the bridges built by the Romans in other places about the same time. Two of these especially may be chosen. They are (1) the bridge over the Rhine constructed by Julius Cæsar in ten days, and (2) the Roman bridge over the same river at Mayence, of which a model exists in the museum of that town.

There can be no doubt that this bridge at London was, to begin with, a wooden bridge. The reasons for this conclusion are, briefly, as follows:—

1. It was built after the rebellion of Boadicea and the massacre of the people of London. It was intended as a military bridge connecting the Citadel of London, built immediately after that event, with the southern ports.

2. The construction of a stone bridge over a broad, deep, and tidal river would have been a work involving a long time and immense cost. Trajan’s Bridge over the Danube was built about the year 104 A.D., but the Danube is not a tidal river. There is no example of a stone bridge over a tidal river, that I know of, belonging to this age.

3. The engineers who formed part of the army would naturally be ordered to build the bridge, and would do so after the manner which they had learned and practised with other military bridges.

4. The accounts of and reference to the bridge during the next thousand years or so clearly suggest a wooden bridge. Snorro Sturleson, the Icelander, speaks of it as wooden and sustained by piles. The planks which formed the mainway must have been loosely laid together with gaps between, for a large number of Roman coins have been found in the bed of the river below; these had apparently rolled through. The bridge is reported to have been carried away or greatly damaged in 1091. It was burned in 1136.

5. The first stone bridge of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries took thirty years to complete. A military bridge, such as I conceive the first London Bridge to have been, could not be allowed to remain unfinished for years.

The course of events, as I have already suggested, was as follows:—

1. London was unprotected until after the massacre by the troops of Boadicea.

2. The importance of the place was then apprehended, and the Roman Citadel on the eastern hill over the Walbrook was constructed to protect the port and the town, and contained the garrison, the officers, and the officials.

3. The walls of the Citadel were built of stone from the Kentish quarries. The bridge, however, was built of wood, as being convenient, cheap, and easy of construction.

There were two models to choose from—perhaps more, but the two will suffice.

The first of them, as stated above, was Cæsar’s bridge over the Rhine, built in ten days.

This was a Pons Sublicius, supported by piles.

Two piles were driven into the bed of the river by a hammer or mallet called a fistuca. They were set side by side, and in a sloping direction, in order to withstand the force of the current. Opposite to them were two other piles similarly driven into the bed of the river. Each pair of piles were kept in place and strengthened by cross struts. Cross pieces, each two feet in diameter, were laid across each pair, and joists, for which purpose were used the trunks of trees either roughly squared or not squared at all, were placed upon them.

The piles were further strengthened by the construction in front and at the sides of a pier or sterling formed by smaller piles driven in side by side. The sterling was filled with stones or rubble, and beams were laid from one joist to another, over which were placed wattle and reeds; the whole, covered with earth and gravel, made a roadway and completed the bridge.

A more elaborate structure is that of which an actual portion exists in the museum at Mayence, with a model of one of the piers.

In this bridge the sterling was constructed with piles set side by side in lines or rows; but they were double, and between each row of piles were placed beams of wood; transverse rows of piles crossed the sterling, also double, and strengthened with timber laid between. The whole was filled up with stones and rubble.

Two of the piles are preserved in the museum; they appear to be about 25 feet in length, and are sharpened at the end. At a later date, if not at the outset, stones were laid upon the sterling. If this method was adopted for the first London Bridge, the supporting piles rose out of the opposite angles of the sterling, after which Cæsar’s method was followed.

The reason why no mention is made of the construction of the bridge is, first, that no history mentions any buildings in Roman London; and next, that the Citadel and the bridge were built by soldiers quietly, without the counsel or the consent of the citizens, if there were any—if, that is, the copia mercatorum really existed. In a few days, or a few weeks, the Thames was spanned by a bridge which would be repaired, burned, repaired again, and so continue for twelve hundred years to come. The first bridge was about the same length as the second, viz. 626 feet long. It was not nearly so high, however. Its breadth was 40 feet. We may be certain that this was the breadth, because it was the breadth of Cæsar’s bridge, i.e. the most convenient breadth for the passage of troops; and secondly, because that was the breadth of the second bridge, built by one of those Fratres Pontifices, who usually made their bridges narrow, like those of Avignon and Les Saintes. Peter of Colechurch, however, would not build his stone bridge of a less convenient breadth than that of the old wooden one. The drawbridge came later, when the wall was built and the river gate. At first the bridge was open at both ends, but was commanded by the fort overhanging the north end.

It has been supposed that the bridge was constructed for the purpose of traffic, and that the Watling Street was diverted just at the site of the Marble Arch in order that the traffic might cross the bridge. This supposition is quite unfounded; there were no wheeled vehicles along the tracks which served for roads; all the traffic was carried by slaves, or by pack horses and mules. To slaves, to mules, to drivers, to merchants, a ford was part of the journey, not to be regarded as an impediment. And besides, it was much shorter, when one had arrived before Thorney, to cut straight across the marsh than to go along the new road leading into London. The diversion of Watling Street and the construction of the bridge were for military, not commercial purposes. The Romans understood the natural advantages of their position; they hastened to improve it by direct communication with the north and with the south.

The building of the bridge therefore preceded the building of the wall by some 300 years.

To sum up, the date of the bridge is also the date of the first military settlement on the site of London. It is also the date of the stone fort erected beside the Walbrook. After the bridge was built the road was constructed; its modern names are Oxford Street and Holborn; it connected London by land with the great highway of the island. Both the road and the bridge were at first needed for purely military purposes. When the Port of London increased in importance, when it became easier to carry goods for export and to receive imported goods by London than to go all the way to Dover, the caravans adopted the new road and poured into London what they had previously taken to Dover. But neither the new road nor the bridge was built for anything but military purposes.

The first allusion to the bridge occurs in the Chronicle under the year A.D. 457, when the Britons, defeated at Crayford or Creganford by the Saxons, fled for life, taking refuge in London. Of course, if there had been no bridge, the defeated army could not have entered London in this wild haste; in fact they would not have attempted it.

[CHAPTER VII]
LONDON STONE

Besides the wall, there are two other monuments, still surviving, of Roman London. One is “London Stone”; the other is the Roman bath in the Strand, which I have already mentioned (p. 98).

There does not appear to be any exact account of the stone as it was before the fire which so grievously diminished it. Strype says that it was much worn away, only a stump remaining. What is left is nothing but a fragment. There was formerly, however, a large foundation. It stood on the south side of Cannon Street, from which point all the mileage of the roads was measured. In the romance of Sir Bevis of Hampton there is a great battle in the streets of London:—

“So many men were now seen dead.

For the water of the Thames for blood ran red:

From St. Mary Bow to London Stone.”

The first Mayor of London, Henry FitzAylwin, lived in a house on the north side of St. Swithin’s, and was called Henry FitzAylwin of London Stone.

Stow describes the stone in the following words:—

“On the south side of this high Street [Candlewick Street] near unto the Channell is pitched upright a great stone called London Stone, fixed in the Ground very deep, fastened with Bars of Iron, and otherwise so strongly set, that, if cartes do runne against it through negligence, the wheeles be broken and the stone is left unshaken. The cause why the stone was there set, the very time when, or other memorial hereof, is there none; but that the same hath long continued there is manifest, namely, since, or rather before the time of the Conquest, for in the ende of a fair written Gospel Booke given to Christes Churche in Canterbury by Ethelstane, King of the West Saxons, I find noted of landes or rentes in London belonging to the said churche, whereof one parcel is described to lie neare unto London Stone. Of later time we read that in the yeare of Christe 1135, the first of King Stephen, a fire which began in the house of one Ailward, neare unto London Stone, consumed all east to Aldgate, in which fire the Priorie of the Holy Trinitie was burnt, and west to St. Erkenwald’s shrine in Paule’s Church: and these are the eldest notes that I read thereof. Some have said this stone was set as a marke in the middle of the City within the wall, but in truth it standeth farre nearer unto the river of Thames than to the Wall of the City.” (Strype’s Stow, vol. i. bk. ii. chap. xiii.)

James Howell (Londinopolis, p. 4, 1657) adopts Camden’s opinion: “London Stone I take to be a Mile mark or Milliary such as was in the market place at Rome from which were taken dimensions of all Journies every way considering it is near the midst as it lyeth in length.”

Wren thought that the stone originally belonged to some considerable monument in the Forum, for in the adjoining ground on the south side were discovered tessellated pavements and other extensive remains of Roman workmanship and buildings while men were digging for cellars after the fire. On this point Mr. Price pertinently reminds us that the Miliarium Aureum at Constantinople was not in the form of a pillar, as at Rome, but a fine building, under whose roof stood statues of Constantine, Helena, Trajan, Hadrian, and many other figures.

And Maitland says that some people held the stone to be significant of the City, devotion to Christ, and of His care and protection of the City, and quotes certain rhymes of Fabian (vol. ii. bk. ii. p. 1047):—

“It is so sure a Stone

That that is upon sette,

For though some have it thrette

With Manases grym and grete,

Yet Hurte had it none.

Cryst is the very Stone

That the Citie is set upon

Which from all hys Foone

Hath ever preservyd yt.”

[CHAPTER VIII]
THE DESOLATION OF THE CITY

We now come to the period about which, so far as London is concerned, there are no historians and there is no tradition. Yet what happened may be read with certainty. The Roman legions were at last withdrawn. Britain was left to defend herself. She had to defend herself against the Saxon pirates in the east; against the Picts and Scots in the north; and against the wild tribes of the mountains in the west. Happily we have not in these pages to attempt the history of the two centuries of continual battle and struggle which followed before the English conquest brought at last a time of rest and partial peace. But we must ascertain, if we can, how London fared during the long interval.

Let us take the evidence (I.) of History; (II.) of Excavation; (III.) of Site; (IV.) of Tradition.

I. Of History.

For more than 200 years London is mentioned once, and once only, by any history of the time. The reference is in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. “This year”—A.D. 457—“Hengist and Æsc his son fought against the Britons at the place called Cregan Ford, and there slew four thousand men; and the Britons then forsook Kent and in great terror fled to London.” They sought safety beyond the bridge and within the walls.

Otherwise there is a dead silence in the Chronicle about London. We hear about this place and that place being attacked and destroyed, but not London. Now, had there been any great battle followed by such a slaughter as that of Anderida, it must certainly have been mentioned. There never was any such battle. London decayed, melted away, was starved into solitude, but not into submission.

London was founded as a commercial port. We have seen that at first the trade of the country passed to the south over Thorney Island; but that, after the convenience of London had been discovered, it went to London. As a trading centre London was founded, and as a trading centre it continued. The people were always as they are now, traders. It was not the military capital; it was not, until late in the Roman occupation, the head-quarters of the civil administration. It flourished or it decayed, consequently, with the prosperity or the decline of trade.

The Saxons did not love walled cities; the defence of so long a wall—nearly three miles round—required a much larger army than the East Saxons could ever raise. And as yet the Saxons had not learned to trade. Besides, they loved open fields; walls they thought were put up for purposes of magic. “Fly! Fly! Avoid the place lest some wizard still lingering among the ruins should arise and exercise his spells. Back to the freedom and the open expanse of the fields!” Therefore, when the people of London went out and gradually disappeared, the Saxons were not moved to take their places.

If they came within sight of the grey walls of London they felt no inclination to enter; if out of curiosity they did enter, they speedily left the silent streets and ruined houses to the evil spirits and witches who lurked among them. The empty warehouses, the deserted quays, the wrecked villas, the fragments of the columns, seized for the building of the wall, the roofless rooms, spoke to them of a conquered people, but offered no inducement to settle down.

The Romano-British fleet was no more—it disappeared when the last Count of the Saxon Shore resigned his office; the narrow seas lay open to the pirates; the seas immediately began to swarm with pirates; the merchantmen, therefore, had to fight their way with doubtful success. This fact enormously increased the ordinary risks of trade.

The whole country was in continual disorder; there was no part of it where a man might live in peace save within the walls of a city. Rich farms were destroyed; the splendid villas were plundered and burned; orchards and vineyards were broken down and deserted; brigands and marauders were out on every road; wealthy families were reduced to poverty. What concerned London in all this was that there was no more demand for imports, and there were no more of the former exports sent up to be shipped. The way was closed for shipping, the highroads were closed, no more exports arrived, no more imports were wanted, trade therefore was dead.

II. The evidence of Excavation.

The whole of Roman London is lost, except for the foundations, some of which still lie underground. All the churches, temples, theatres, official buildings, palaces, and villas are all gone. They were lost when the Saxons took possession of the town. The names of the streets are gone—their very tradition has perished. The course of the streets is lost and forgotten. This fact alone proves beyond a doubt that the occupation of London was not continuous.[21] The Roman gate of Bishopsgate lay some distance to the east of the Saxon gate; the Roman gate in Watling Street lay some distance to the north of the later Newgate; the line of the Ermin Street did not anywhere coincide exactly with the Roman road; the new Watling Street of the Saxons actually crossed the old one. We may note, also, that an ancient causeway lies under the tower of St. Mary le Bow. How can these facts be reconciled with the theory of continuous occupation? The Saxons, again, did not come in as conquerors and settle down among the conquered. They cannot have done so; otherwise they would have acquired and preserved something of Roman London. And though we should not, at this day, after so many years and so many fires, expect to find Roman villas standing, we should have some of the old streets with Roman or at least British names. All that is left to us, by tradition, of Roman London is its British name.

AN ANGLO-SAXON WARRIOR
Tib. MS. C. VI.

The destruction of a deserted city advances slowly at first, but always with acceleration. The woodwork of Roman London was carried off to build rude huts for the fisher-folk and the few slaves who stayed behind. They had at least their liberty, and lived on beside the deserted shore. The gentle action of rain and frost and sunshine contributed a never-ceasing process of disintegration; clogged watercourses undermined the foundations; trees sprang up amid the chambers and dropped their leaves and decayed and died; ivy pulled down the tiles and pushed between the bricks; new vegetation raised the level of the ground; the walls of the houses either fell or slowly disappeared. When, after a hundred years of desolation, the Saxon ventured to make his home within the ruined walls of the City, even if it were only to use the site after his manner at Silchester and Uriconium, as a place for the plough to be driven over and for the corn to grow, there was little indeed left of the splendour of the former Augusta.

Another argument in favour of the total desertion of London is derived from a consideration of the houses of a Roman city. The remains of Roman villas formed within the second and longer wall sufficiently prove that in all respects the city of Augusta was built in the same manner as other Roman cities; as Bordeaux, for instance, or Treves, or Marseilles. If, then, the conquerors had occupied London in the fifth century, they would have found, ready to their hand, hundreds of well-built and beautiful houses. It is true that the Saxon would not have cared for the pictures, statues, and works of art; but he would have perceived the enormous superiority of the buildings in material comfort over his own rude houses. It is absurd to suppose that any people, however fierce and savage, would prefer cold to warmth in a winter of ice and snow.

Again, it is not probable, not even possible, that in a city where such a construction was easy, owing to the lie of the ground, the Romans should have neglected to make a main sewer for the purpose for which the Cloaca Maxima was made, viz. to carry off the surface rainfall from the streets. Perhaps the Roman sewer may still be discovered. The outfall was certainly in the foreshore, between Walbrook and Mincing Lane; but the foreshore has long since been built upon and the sewer closed. It is reasonable to suppose that if the Saxons had found it they would have understood its manifold uses and would have maintained it.

ANCIENT COPPER BOWL FOUND IN LOTHBURY
Roach Smith’sCatalogue of London Antiquities

It has pleased the antiquary to discover on the site of the Roman fort, or Citadel, the traces of the four broad streets at right angles which were commonly laid down in every Roman town. Indications of their arrangement, for instance, are still found at Dorchester, Chester, Lincoln, and other places. The antiquary may be right in his theory, but it must be acknowledged that the Roman streets in other parts of London have been built over and the old ways deflected. Surely if the Saxon occupation had taken place in the fifth century, the old arrangement of streets would have been retained on the simple principle that it entailed the least trouble.

Consider, next, the Roman villa. “Their general plan is that of two or three courts open to the air, with open windows running round them, out of which lead small rooms of various kinds—the sleeping rooms and the women’s rooms generally being at the back, and the latter sometimes quite separated from the rest” (Hayter Lewis, Cities, Ancient and Mediæval). There is not in the accounts or pictures of any Anglo-Saxon house that we possess any similarity whatever to the Roman villa. If, however, the Saxon had occupied London in the fifth century, he would certainly have adopted the Roman house with its arrangements of separate rooms in preference to his own rude hall, in which all the household together slept on rushes round the central fire.

Again, had the Saxon occupied London in the fifth century, he would have found the houses provided with an apparatus for warming the rooms with hot air, both easy and simple, not at all likely to get out of gear, and intelligible to a child. Is it reasonable to suppose that he would have given up this arrangement in order to continue his own barbarous plan of making a great wasteful fire in the middle of the hall?

And he would have found pavements in the streets. Would he have taken them up and gone back to the primitive earth? Would he not rather have kept them in repair for his own convenience? And he would have found aqueducts and pipes for supplying conduits and private houses with water. Would he have destroyed them for mere mischief? One might mention the amphitheatre, which certainly stood outside the wall, but according to my opinion, as I have explained, the amphitheatre was destroyed in order to build the great wall, which was put up hurriedly and in a time of panic.

It may be objected that in later centuries the great house became somewhat like the Roman villa in being built round a court. The answer is that the mediæval court was not the Roman garden with a fountain and corridors; it was the place of exercise and drill for the castle. Even the country house built round its little court had its windows opening into the court, not looking out upon the country, thus showing something of a survival of the fortress. The mediæval court, of which so many instances are extant, belonged at first to the castle, and not to the villa.

III. The evidence of Site.

We must return to the position of London. We have seen that at the outset the City had in the north a wild and quaggy moor with an impenetrable forest beyond. On the east it had a marsh and a considerable stream flowing through that marsh; on the south a broad tidal river, and beyond that a vast marsh stretching a long way on both sides. On the west the City had a small stream in a marshy bed, and rising ground, which was probably in Roman times cleared and planted. Unlike any other town in the world, except Venice of later times, London had not an inch of land cultivated for her own food supplies, not a field for corn, not a meadow for hay, not an orchard or a vineyard or anything. She was dependent from the beginning, as she is still dependent, upon supplies brought in from the outside, except for the fish in the river. She was supplied by means of the Roman roads; by Watling Street and the Vicinal Road from Essex and from Kent; from the west by the highway of the Thames, and by ships that came up the Thames.

Now if a city wholly dependent upon trade experiences a total loss of trade, what must happen? First those who work for the merchants—the stevedores, lightermen, boatmen, porters, carriers, warehousemen, clerks, and accountants—are thrown out of work. They cannot be kept in idleness for ever. They must go—whither? To join the armies.

Next, the better class, the wealthier kind, the lawyers, priests, artists, there is no work for them. They too must go—whither? To the camp. Finally, when gold is no longer of any use because there is nothing to buy, the rich people themselves, with the officers of state, look round the decaying city and see no help for it but that they too must go. As for the slaves, they have long since broken away and fled; there was no longer any provision in the place; they had to go.

With bleeding hearts the rich men prepared to leave the place where they had been as luxurious as they could be in Rome itself when Rome was still at its best and proudest. They took with them only what each could carry. The tender girls carried household utensils, the boys carried arms, the parents carried the household gods—it is true that Christianity was the religion of the state, but their household gods had been in the house for long and had always hitherto brought good luck! Their sofas and tables, their rich plate and statues, their libraries, and their pictures, they left behind them; for these things could not be carried away. And so they went out through what their conquerors would in after-time call the New Gate, and by Watling Street, until they reached the city of Gloucester, where the girls remained to become the mothers and grandmothers of soldiers doomed to perish on the fields of disaster, and the boys went out to join the army and to fight until they fell. Thus was London left desolate and deserted. I suppose that a remnant remained, a few of the baser sort, who, finding themselves in charge of the City, closed the gates and then began to plunder. With the instinct of destruction they burned the houses after they had sacked them. Then, loaded with soft beds, cushions and pillows, and silk dresses, they sat down in their hovels. And what they did then and how they lived, and how they dropped back into a barbarism far worse than that from which they had sprung, we may leave to be imagined. The point is that London was absolutely deserted—as deserted as Baalbec or Tadmor in the wilderness,—and that she so continued for something like a hundred and fifty years.

How was the City resettled? Some dim memory of the past doubtless survived the long wars in the island and fifteen generations—allowing only ten years for a short-lived generation—of pirates who swept the seas. Merchants across the Channel learned that there were signs of returning peace, although the former civilisation was destroyed and everything had to be built up again. It must not be supposed, however, that the island was ever wholly cut off from the outer world. Ships crossed over once more, laden with such things as might tempt these Angles and Saxons—glittering armour, swords of fine temper, helmets and corslets. They found deserted quays and a city in ruins; perhaps a handful of savages cowering in huts along the river-side; the wooden bridge dilapidated, the wooden gates hanging on their hinges, the streets overgrown; the villas destroyed, either from mischief or for the sake of the wood. Think, if you can, of a city built almost entirely of wood, left to itself for a hundred and fifty years, or left with a few settlers like the Arabs in Palmyra, who would take for fuel all the wood they could find. As for the once lovely villa, the grass was growing over the pavement in the court; the beams of the roof had fallen in and crushed the mosaics in the chambers; yellow stonecrop and mosses and wild-flowers covered the low foundation walls; the network of warming pipes stood up stark and broken round the débris of the chambers which once they warmed. The forum, the theatre, the amphitheatre, the residence of that vir spectabilis the Vicarius, were all in ruins, fallen down to the foundations. So with the churches. So with the warehouses by the river-side. As for the walls of the first Citadel, the Prætorium, they, as we have seen, had long since been removed to build the new wall of the City. This wall remained unbroken, save where here and there some of the facing stones had fallen out, leaving the hard core exposed. The river side of it, with its water gates and its bridge gate, remained as well as the land side.

IV. The evidence of Tradition is negative.

Of Augusta, of Roman London, not a fragment except the wall and the bridge remained above ground; the very streets were for the most part obliterated; not a tradition was left; not a memory survived of a single institution, of an Imperial office or a custom. I do not know whether any attempt has been made to trace Roman influences and customs in Wales, whither the new conquerors did not penetrate. Such an inquiry remains to be made, and it would be interesting if we could find such survivals. Perhaps, however, there are no such traces; and we must not forget that until the departure of the Romans the wild men of the mountains were the irreconcilable enemies of the people of the plains. Did the Britons when they slowly retreated fall back into the arms of their old enemies? Not always. In many cases it has been proved that they took refuge in the woods and wild places, as in Surrey, and Sussex, and in the Fens, until such time as they were able to live among their conquerors.

The passing of Roman into Saxon London is a point of so much importance that I may be excused for dwelling upon it.

I have given reasons for believing—to my own mind, for proving—that Roman London, for a hundred years, lay desolate and deserted, save for the humble fisher-folk. In addition to the reasons thus laid down, let me adduce the evidence of Mr. J. R. Green. He shows that, by the earlier conquests of the Saxon invaders, the connection of London with the Continent and with the inland country was entirely broken off. “The Conquest of Kent had broken its communications with the Continent; and whatever trade might struggle from the southern coast through the Weald had been cut off by the Conquest of Sussex. That of the Gwent about Winchester closed the road to the south-west; while the capture of Cunetio interrupted all communication with the valley of the Severn. And now the occupation of Hertfordshire cut off the city from northern and central Britain.” We must also remember that the swarms of pirates at the mouth of the Thames cut off communication by sea. How could a trading city survive the destruction of her trade?

THE ARK
From Claud MS., B. iv.

The Saxons, when they were able to settle down at or near London, did so outside the old Roman wall; they formed clearings and made settlements at certain points which are now the suburbs of London. The antiquity of Hampstead, for instance, is proved by the existence of two charters of the tenth century (see paper by Prof. Hales, London and Middlesex Archæological Transactions, vol. vi. p. 560).

I have desired in these pages not to be controversial. It is, however, necessary to recognise the existence of some who believe that London preserved certain Roman customs on which was founded the early municipal constitution of London, and that there was at the same time an undercurrent of Teutonic customs which did not become law. I beg, therefore, to present this view ably advocated by Mr. G. L. Gomme in the same volume (p. 528), for he is an authority whose opinion and arguments one would not willingly ignore.

His view is as follows:—

1. He does not recognise the desertion of London.

2. He does recognise the fact that the A.S. did not occupy the walled city.

3. That the new-comers had at first no knowledge of trade.

4. That they formed village settlements dotted all round London.

5. That the trade of London, when it revived, was not a trade in food, but in slaves, horses, metals, etc.

6. That the villages were self-supporting communities, which neither exported nor imported corn either to or from abroad, or to and from each other.

One would remark on this point that while London was deserted the villages around might very well support themselves; but with London a large and increasing city, the villages could not possibly support its people as well as their own. The city was provided from Essex, from Kent, from Surrey, and from the inland counties by means of the river.

7. That everywhere in England one finds the Teutonic system.

8. That in London the Teutonic customs encountered older customs which they could not destroy, and that these older customs were due for the most part to Roman influence.

Observe that this theory supposes the survival of Roman merchants and their descendants throughout the complete destruction of trade and the desertion of the City, according to my view; or the neglect of London and its trade for a century and more after the Saxon Conquest, according to the views of those who do not admit the desertion. Mr. Gomme quotes Joseph Story on the Conflict of Laws, where he argues that wherever the conquerors in the fall of Rome settled themselves, they allowed the people to preserve their municipal customs. Possibly; but every city must present an independent case for investigation. Now, according to my view there were no people left to preserve the memory of the Roman municipality. [22] 9. That the A.S. introduced the village system, viz. the village tenure, the communal lands around, the common pasture-land beyond these.

10. That the broad open spaces on the north of London could not be used for agricultural purposes, and “they became the means of starting in London the wide-reaching powers of economical laws which proclaim that private ownership, not collective ownership, is the means for national prosperity.”

11. That the proprietors who became the aldermen of wards “followed without a break the model of the Roman citizen.”

This statement assumes, it will be seen, the whole theory of continued occupation; that is to say, continued trade, for without their trade the Roman citizens could not live.

12. That the existence of public lands can be proved by many instances recorded in the Liber Custumarum and elsewhere.

13. That the management of the public lands was in the hands of the citizens.

14. That the Folkmote never wholly dominated the city; nor was it ever recognised as the supreme council, which was in the hands of the nobles.

15. That the ancient Teutonic custom of setting up a stone as a sign was observed in London.

16. That there are many other Teutonic customs which are not represented in any collections of city law and customs.

17. That there are customs which may be recognised as of Roman origin, e.g. the custom of the Roman lawyers meeting their clients in the Forum. In London the sergeants-at-law met their clients in the nave of St. Paul’s.

Surely, however, there is nothing Roman about this. There was then no Westminster Hall; there were no Inns of Court; the lawyers must have found some place wherein to meet their clients. What place more suitable than the only great hall of the city, the nave of the Cathedral?

18. That there was a time when London was supported by her agriculture and not by her commerce.

As I said above, the settlements round London could not, certainly, support much more than themselves; and if we consider the common lands of the city—moorland and marsh-land with uncleared forest,—these could certainly do little or nothing for a large population.

19. That FitzStephen speaks of arable lands and pastures as well as gardens.

Undoubtedly he does. At the same time, we must read him with understanding. We know perfectly well the only place where these arable lands could exist, viz. a comparatively narrow belt on the west: on the north was moorland till we come to the scattered hamlets in the forest—chiefly, I am convinced, the settlements of woodcutters, charcoal-burners, hunters, and trappers; on the south were swamps; Westminster and its neighbourhood were swamps; the east side was covered, save for the scattered settlements of Stepney, by a dense forest with swamps on the south and east.

20. That the common lands of the city were alienated freely, as is shown by the Liber Albus.

21. That Henry I. granted to the citizens the same right to hunt in Middlesex as their ancestors enjoyed.

22. That this privilege “may have been drawn from the rights of the Roman burghers.”

It may; but this seems no proof that it was.

23. That the “territorium of Roman London determined the limits of the wood and forest rights of Saxon and later London.”

Perhaps; but there seems no proof.

It appears to me, to sum up, that these arguments are most inconclusive. It needed no Roman occupation to give the hunting people the right to hunt; nor did it need a Roman occupation to make the better sort attempt to assume the government; nor did it need the example of Rome for the lawyers to assemble in a public place; nor, again, need we go to Rome for the cause of the breaking up of an archaic system which had outlived its usefulness. If there were Roman laws or Roman customs in the early history of London—a theory which I am not prepared to admit—we must seek for their origin, not in a supposed survival of the Roman merchant through a century of desertion and ruin, but in Roman books and in written Roman laws.

Neither does the theory against the desertion of London seem borne out by the histories of Matthew of Westminster, Roger of Wendover, Nennius, Ethelwerd, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Henry of Huntingdon. Let us examine into these statements, taking the latest first and working backwards.

I. Matthew of Westminster (circa 1320).

Matthew says that when the Romans finally left the island the Archbishop of London, named Guithelin (A.D. 435), went over to Lesser Britain, previously called Armorica, then peopled by Britons, and implored the help of Aldrœnus, fourth successor of King Conan, who gave them his brother Constantine and two thousand valiant men. Accordingly, Constantine crossed over, gathered an army, defeated the enemy, and became King of Britain. He married a lady of noble Roman descent, by whom he had three sons: Constans, whom he made a monk at Winchester; Aurelius and Uther Pendragon, who were educated by the Archbishop of London—presumably, therefore, in London.

In the year 445 Constantine was murdered. Vortigern, the “Consul of the Genvisei,” thereupon went to Winchester and took Constans from the cloister, and crowned him with his own hands, Guithelin being dead. The two brothers of Constans had been sent to Brittany.

Vortigern then began to compass the destruction of the King, for his own purposes; he took the treasury into his own custody; he raised a bodyguard for the King of 100 Picts, whom he lavishly paid and maintained; he filled them with suspicions that if he were gone they would lose their pay. One evening, therefore, they rose—this bodyguard of Picts,—seized the King and beheaded him. This was in London. Vortigern, pretending great grief, called together the citizens of London and told them what had been done. As no one of the royal House was at hand, he elected himself and crowned himself King.

In 447 the country was overrun by Picts and Scots; there was also a famine followed by a pestilence. In 448 Germanus, a holy priest, led the Britons out to fight, and gave them a splendid victory over the enemy. But when Germanus went away the Picts and Scots came back again.

Vortigern invited the Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes to come over and settle. They came; Hengist led them: they defeated the Picts and Scots: they invited more of their own people. Vortigern, who already had a wife and children, fell in love with Rowena, daughter of Hengist, and married her, to the disgust of the people.

KING AND COURTIERS
Cædman’sMetrical Paraphrase, Bodleian Library.

Vortigern was deserted by the nobles, who made his son Vortimer King; but he was poisoned in the year 460 and died in London, where he was buried.

In 461 occurred the great slaughter of Britons by Hengist at Amesbury.

In 462, the Saxons imprisoned Vortigern until he gave up all his cities in ransom. They seized on London, York, Winchester, and Lincoln, destroying churches and murdering priests.

Then the Britons sent ambassadors to Brittany, entreating Aurelius and Uther Pendragon to come over.

The Prophecy of Merlin, which is attached to the year 465, is clearly a late production: it foretells, for instance—being wise after the event,—that the dignity of London shall be transferred to Canterbury; it also speaks of the gates of London, which are to be kept by a brazen man mounted on a brazen horse.

Aurelius, with his brother Uther Pendragon, came over from Brittany; they began by setting fire to the Citadel, in a tower of which Vortigern was lying, and so destroyed him.

In 473, Aurelius gained a great victory over Hengist. This was followed by other successes. The victories of Aurelius were frequent and overwhelming. Yet the Saxons, somehow, in spite of their decisive defeats, were strengthening and extending their hold rapidly and surely.

In 498, Aurelius died.

Uther Pendragon succeeded him and was crowned at Winchester. After another glorious victory Uther brought his prisoners to London, where he kept Easter exactly like a Norman king, surrounded by the nobles of the land.

In 516, Uther Pendragon, grown old and infirm, was poisoned at Verulam. His son Arthur succeeded him, being elected by Dubritius, Archbishop of London, and all the bishops and nobles of the land.

In 517, Arthur went out to besiege York, but was compelled to fall back upon London.

In 542, Arthur, after an unparalleled career of glory, died of his wounds in Avalon, and was succeeded by his cousin Constantine, who pursued the sons of Modred, and finding one concealed in a monastery of London, “put him to a cruel death.”

Under the date 585, London is mentioned as then being the capital of the kingdom of Essex.

In 586, Theonus, Archbishop of London, fled into Wales, seeing all the churches destroyed. He took with him those of the priests who had survived the massacres, and the sacred relics.

London, therefore, according to the story, was deserted, but not until the year 586.

In 596, Augustine landed on the Isle of Thanet and converted many.

In 600, the Pope sent the pallium to Augustine of London.

In 604, Mellitus was consecrated Bishop of London.

The writer then proceeds with the history as we have it in other chronicles.

II. Roger of Wendover (d. 1256).

A.D. 460. He says that Vortimer was buried in London.

462. Roger mentions London as one of the cities taken.

473. Roger mentions the great victory of Aurelius in Kent.

498. Roger makes the statement that Uther kept his Easter in London.

517. Arthur falls back upon London.

542. Constantine kills Modred’s son in London.

586. Flight of Theonus, Bishop of London.

It seems thus that Matthew of Westminster followed Roger of Wendover, who died A.D. 1237, so that even he wrote of these events 650 years after the alleged flight of the Bishop.

III. Geoffrey of Monmouth.

Geoffrey of Monmouth, who died some time in the latter half of the twelfth century—he was made Bishop of St. Asaph in 1152—provides the materials especially for the romance of King Arthur, for the story of King Lear, and other delightful inventions and traditions.

By Geoffrey we find it stated (1) that Vortimer was buried in London; (2) that the Saxons took London—A.D. 462 (?); that Aurelius, after his great victory, restored London, “which had not escaped the fury of the enemy”; that Uther Pendragon kept his Easter in London; that Arthur retired upon London; that Modred’s son seized upon London and Winchester; that Theonus was Archbishop of London; that Constantine captured one of Modred’s sons in a monastery of London; that Theonus fled from London with the surviving clergy.

IV. Nennius.

Nennius contains none of these statements or stories, but he says that Vortimer was buried in Lincoln.

V. Ethelwerd.

Ethelwerd says that in 457 the Britons, being defeated in a battle in Kent, “fled to London.” He says no more about London.

VI. Henry of Huntingdon (circa 1154).

He mentions the Battle of Creganford or Crayford, which, as we have already seen (p. 135), is recorded in the A.S. Chronicle, with the retreat to London. He makes no mention at all of London after that event till after the conversion and the arrival of Mellitus. Not a word is said about the events alleged by the later Chroniclers, while the great achievements of Arthur are shown to have been battles fought and victories won in the west country. Since, however, he mentions the massacre at Anderida, is it conceivable that he would have passed over any such event had it happened in London? And is it conceivable that, had London continued to be a city of trade and wealth, the Saxon would not have attacked it?

To sum up this evidence, we find that writers most nearly contemporary make no mention of London at all for a hundred and fifty years. We find Chroniclers six hundred years later mentioning certain events of no importance, and agreeing in the desertion of London, which they place about the year 586. The date signifies little, but the reference shows that there was certainly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a tradition which pointed to a period of ruin and desertion. Geoffrey of Monmouth seems to have furnished most of the victories and great doings of the Britons, who were so victorious that they were continually driven back into the forests and into the mountains. When a traditional king succeeds, or holds his court, or dies, it is natural to provide him with a city, and there was London ready to hand. At the same time there was the tradition that at one time London was deserted. And so the whole matter is explained, and fits into the only working theory which accounts for the almost complete silence of the A.S. Chronicle as to the once great and glorious and wealthy city of Augusta.

[BOOK III]
SAXON LONDON

[CHAPTER I]
THE COMING OF THE SAXONS

The life of London began again somewhere about the end of the sixth century. As London was created for purposes of trade, and as it fell with the destruction of trade, so it was restored for purposes of trade. The merchants from beyond the seas heard that peace, some kind of peace, had returned to this land; the mouth of the Thames no longer swarmed with pirates, for there was nothing left on which they could prey. From Dover the adventurous merchantman crept timidly along the coast—there was no enemy in sight; the skipper ventured into the narrow channel between Thanet and the mainland—no ship was there, no sign of pirate craft; timidly he sailed up the broad estuary of the Thames—not a sail did he encounter. There were no ships; when the Saxon migration exhausted itself, the Saxon forgot straightway the art of shipbuilding and the mystery of navigation; his ships were to him like those wings on certain insects which provide for the one flight—that achieved, the wings drop off. During the hundred years and more, while the invasion was becoming a conquest, the ships had rotted or been burned. Yet the strange merchants knew not what reception they would meet. Along the low and marshy shores of the Thames, as the estuary narrowed, there was not a sign of human habitation—who would dwell in the marsh when he could dwell on the land? There were no fishermen even. There were no signs of life, other than the cry of the birds whirling overhead and the plunging of the porpoise round the bows.

Presently they arrived at London. They knew it as London—not Augusta, which had been its name for a few years only. There was the bridge of which they had heard; but its planks and piles were falling into decay. There was the sea wall, and, behind, the land wall—grey, overgrown with wall-flowers, with that yellow flower that grows to this day only on and beside Roman stations. The wall was strong yet, though half in ruins. And there stood the ancient gates with their rusty hinges and decayed woodwork. There were the ancient ports which we know as Billingsgate and Dowgate, at the mouth of the Walbrook. There were the quays, broken down and decaying and deserted. Where were the people of London? There was no smoking hearth; there was no smoking altar; there was no sound of blacksmith’s forge, or of any craft, or trade, or business.

They moved alongside a quay—it was at Billingsgate; a couple of men landed and the rest waited under arms.

These scouts walked about the quay, and boldly penetrated into the town. After half an hour they returned with the news that the place was really deserted. There was no one there, neither merchant, nor Saxon, nor Briton.

A GROUP OF ANGLO-SAXON SPEARMEN
Harleian MS., 603.

Then these traders landed their cargo and began cautiously to explore the country round, carrying their goods for sale. They found farmsteads dotted about, each containing one family, with its chief, its sons and daughters, and its slaves. They went north and east as far as Ongar and Abridge, and even beyond the great forest. The people received them without any attempt to kill or murder them: they were interested at least in the weapons offered for barter.

What more? Trade revived: the foreign merchants came back, the men of Rouen, the men of Bordeaux; and some of the East Saxons themselves, forgetting their prejudice against towns, came in to settle and took to trade. Some of the Britons came out of their retreats in the forests and found shelter and freedom, and perhaps wealth, in the city. London was founded a second time.

The desertion of London, the solitude of London, the return of the merchants, the repeopling of the place, are not described by historians, but have been related here as they must have happened. There seems to me to be no other way of explaining the facts of the case.

In the beginning of the seventh century London is again mentioned. The following is the testimony of Bede, who wrote one hundred and twenty years after the events recorded. The main facts were most certainly remembered, while the actual condition of London at the date would be probably less clearly known. His words are these:—

“In the year of our Lord, 604, Augustine, Archbishop of Britain, ordained two bishops, viz. Mellitus and Justus: Mellitus to preach to the province of the East Saxons, who are divided from Kent by the river Thames, and border on the Eastern Sea. Their metropolis is the city of London, which is situated on the bank of the aforesaid river, and is the mart of many nations resorting to it by sea and land. At that time, Sebert, nephew to Ethelbert by his sister Ricula, reigned over the nation, though he was under subjection to Ethelbert, who, as has been said above, had command over all the nations of the English as far as the river Humber. But when this province also received the word of truth, by the preaching of Mellitus, King Ethelbert built the church of St. Paul, in the city of London, where he and his successors should have their episcopal see. As for Justus, Augustine ordained him bishop in Kent, at the city which the English named Rhofescestir, from one that was formerly the chief man of it, called Rhof. It was almost twenty-four miles distant from the city of Canterbury to the westward, and contains a church dedicated to St. Andrew the apostle. King Ethelbert, who built it, bestowed many gifts on the bishops of both those churches, as well as on that of Canterbury, adding lands and possessions for the use of those who were with the bishops.”

And in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle we have the following brief entry:—“A.D. 604. This year the East Saxons received the faith and baptism under King Sebert and Bishop Mellitus.”

At this time, then, the King of Kent was the overlord of the Essex men, who had as well their own King. And their “metropolis” was London, where King Ethelbert built their first church—St. Paul’s. Also London was “the mart of many nations.” This was doubtless true in the eighth century when Bede wrote. How far was it true at the beginning of the seventh? Some advance had been made, that is certain. For the Bishop, London was the metropolis, the mother city. Whatever official and central life belonged to the diocese was placed, therefore, in London.

It would be interesting, if it were possible, to trace the gradual change in the manners and customs of the Saxons which enabled them to live in towns. That it was very gradual we may learn from the small number of towns in Saxon England, from the large number of Roman-British cities left “waste,” and from the fact that not until Alfred’s time did they begin to build or to restore the walls of their towns. It was, however, a Saxon population that occupied London as soon as the days of desolation were fulfilled. This is certain from the names of the streets, which, with one doubtful exception, are all Saxon—why the name of the river itself never became Saxon is a fact impossible to explain. First came the merchants with the sailors and the ships. They established themselves, as of old, along the river, beside the ports afterwards called Billingsgate and Dowgate or Walbrook. These ports with their quays were easily repaired by means of piles and planks. The ships and traders came with the spring, and in the summer the chapmen, with their caravans of pack-mules and pack-horses, rode from one clearing to another with their wares. Then it became convenient that some should stay all the year at the port. The streets within the river wall began to be reconstructed and houses rose, and the country folk, losing their dread of magic, began to drop in and to settle among the ruins of Augusta and near their new friends the foreign merchants.

GREGORY THE GREAT, ST. BENEDICT, AND ST. CUTHBERT
From St. Athelwold’s “Benedictional” (10th cent.).

The site of the Citadel was still marked by a broad and open area; its walls were gone—we have seen that they were used to build the City wall; it was partly occupied by buildings then in ruins; its four gates were all open—through them ran the road for wheeled vehicles to London Stone, and so down to London Bridge. North of these streets, i.e. north of Cannon Street, lay a great expanse of land, enclosed by the wall, with the remains of Roman villas and the débris of streets and houses lying scattered over it. This large area was the ancient Augusta. A great part of it was cultivable land overgrown by trees and bushes, wanting nothing more than the removal of foundations here and there and the clearance of the underwood. Where there is cultivable land there will be land-owners. Before long every acre within the wall had its proprietor. From private property thus acquired by settlement grew up most of the City wards; they were manors belonging to certain families. On this subject I have spoken elsewhere. (See Mediæval London, vol. ii. chapter v.) The Saxon settlement of London, according to this view, followed the return of the foreign merchants. They repaired the quays and restored the ports; it is probable that they repaired the wooden bridge. They occupied that part of Thames Street which lies round the mouth of the Walbrook and Billingsgate. The country people, perceiving that no harm followed, despite the magic of the walls, began to settle in the waste parts of the north within the old walls. There they carved out estates and made farms and orchards, and gradually filled up the whole area, and, also gradually, learned the meaning of trade. As they filled up the area enclosed by the walls, they absorbed the mixed population of foreign residents, craftsmen, and the “service” of the port. This view of a gradual settlement, in the north first, afterwards spreading south, seems partly borne out by the broad waste places—the Room-lands and ground in the Saxon city. Thus West Cheap, now a narrow street, was then a broad waste-land; there was another Room-land at East Cheap on the site of the old Roman citadel; and there were Room-lands near Billingsgate and Dowgate. That there was also a Room-land at Newgate may be accounted for by the simple fact that here were the shambles, and that no one cared to settle down, build a house, and cultivate a piece of ground in a place so foul and noisome.

LADY IN A CHARIOT
Prudentius MS., 24199.

And if Bede is right in saying that London in 604 was a “mart of all the nations,” then this Saxon occupation must have commenced fifty years before—we can hardly suppose a period of less than fifty years for the re-establishment of London trade; but the silence of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as to the restoration of London, and the vagueness of Bede’s statement made two hundred years afterwards, forbid us to consider the assertion that London was “the mart of all the nations” to be accepted literally.

As for the people by whom the settlement of London was effected, they could be no other than the East Saxons, the people of Essex. If we look at the map, it is clear that the situation of the town invited them, and that in a very remarkable manner it lay open to them. The river, peculiarly their own river, for they were settled along the coast where it rose above the marshes, conveyed them easily to the place. An impenetrable forest covered the whole of the north, but left a way over a high moorland, between the forest and the marsh, from the settlements along the shore to the walls of London. There was no such way open for the men of Mercia, of Anglia, of Kent, or of Wessex; to them there was only the river.

To the argument from the nature of the site we must add the very important fact that, when first we hear of London restored, the City is under the rule of the King of Essex. It is true that the overlord of Essex was the King of Kent. But if London had been settled by the men of Kent, how would the King of Essex, never so strong as other kinglets, have acquired his right of superiority?

I must, however, refer to a paper read by Mr. T. W. Shore before the London and Middlesex Archæological Society in March 1900, in which he contends that London was resettled from Kent. His argument is, briefly, as follows:—

1. The natural way of outlet or extension for Kent would be up the Thames. That Kentish men did emigrate and settle beyond their marsh is proved by the laws of King Wihtred (A.D. 685), in which it is laid down that Kentish men carry their laws and customs “beyond the march.”

2. Names connected with Kent are common round London E. of Kennington, Kensington, Kenton, Kentish Town, Kenley, Kent’s Town.

3. The Kentish custom of gavelkind, by which the estate was divided among all the sons equally, the youngest son taking the homestead, prevailed, and in some places lingered long in many villages and manors round London, viz. Kentish Town, Stepney, Mile End, Hackney, Canonbury, Newington Barrow (Highbury), Hornsey, Islington, Streatham, Croydon, Peckham Rye, Kensington, Walworth, Vauxhall, Wandsworth, Battersea, Lambeth, Barnes, Sheen (Richmond), Petersham, Edmonton, Fulham, Tottenham, Ealing, Acton, and Isleworth.

FAMILY LIFE
Claud MS., B. iv.

This list (the authority for which is Thomas Robinson on Gavelkind) is long and unimportant. It becomes more important when Glanville is quoted as saying that partible inheritance was only recognised by the law courts when it could be proved to have been always in use. Now if in the twelfth century the use of gavelkind could be proved customary beyond the memory of man, the antiquity of the use on the manors is certainly established.

London, then, was surrounded by manors under gavelkind. Further out, the Archbishop of Canterbury had demesnes at Harrow and Hayes. In the reign of King John he converted gavelkind fees into knights’ fees.

4. Mr. Shore also calls attention to the two claims in William’s Charter, that all burgesses are law-worthy, and that thus every child is to be his (not his or her) father’s heir.

These words prove, he suggests, that there were no bondmen in London, as there were none in Kent, and that gavelkind, the peculiar Kentish custom, obtained in London at that time.

This view is submitted for the readers consideration. Against it we have to set the undoubted fact, as stated above, that the King of Essex was the Lord of London, although his overlord was the King of Kent. Had London been settled by Kentish men, how would the King of Essex get a footing there? Is it not much more reasonable to suppose that the City was first settled by the men of Essex; that the King of Kent became by battle and victory the overlord; that Kentish men naturally flocked to the place and acquired lands, and that they brought with them their own customs? We may thus explain the facts of the names and the Kentish customs. As regards the clauses in the Charter, I fail to see their importance. If there were slaves in London, they would not be accounted burgesses, and would not be named, for slaves had no rights; and the framers of the Charter would naturally use the word “his” rather than “his or her.”

As to the custom of gavelkind, it is thus laid down in the Thirteenth-Century Custumal (see Elton, Origins of English History):—

“‘If any tenant in gavelkind die, having inherited gavelkind lands and tenements, let all his sons divide that heritage equally. And if there be no male heir, let the partition be made among the females in the same way as among brothers. And let the messuage (or homestead) also be divided among them, but the hearth-place shall belong to the youngest son or daughter (the others receiving an equivalent in money), and as far as 40 feet round the hearth-place, if the size of the heritage will allow it. And then let the eldest have the first choice of the portions, and the others afterwards in their order.’”

“‘In like manner as to other houses which shall be found in such a homestead, let them be equally divided among the heirs, foot by foot, if need be, except the cover of the hearth, which remains to the youngest, as was said before; nevertheless, let the youngest make reasonable amends to his co-parceners for their share by the award of good men’” (pp. 189-190).

[CHAPTER II]
EARLY HISTORY

Let us return to the establishment of Christianity in London. It was in 604, as we have seen, that the East Saxons were baptized, their king, Sebert, being the nephew of Ethelbert, King of Kent, who was his overlord. It was Ethelbert, and not Sebert, who built St. Paul’s for Mellitus, the first Bishop of London. Christianity, however, is not implanted in the mind of man altogether by baptism. Mellitus was able to leave his diocese a few years after its creation in order to attend a synod at Rome, and to confer with the Pope on the affairs of the Church. This looks as if his infant Church was already in a healthy condition of stability. So long as Ethelbert lived, at least, there was the outward appearance of conformity; but when he died, in 616, his son Eadbald “refused to embrace the faith of Christ,” as Bede has it. Does this mean that he had not yet been baptized? In that case the “conversion” of the people can only mean the conversion of some among them. Perhaps, however, the words mean that he relapsed. In the next sentence we are told that his example was followed by many who, “under his father, had, either for favour, or through fear of the King, submitted to the laws of faith and chastity.” This king, Eadbald, took to wife his father’s widow—a crime for which, as the historian tells us, “he was troubled with frequent fits of madness, and was possessed by an evil spirit.”

AELFWINE
From Cædmon’s Metrical Paraphrase
(10th cent.).

However, his example was the signal for revolt. King Sebert died and was succeeded by his three sons, “still pagans.” Therefore the conversion of the East Saxons, at least, had not been complete. These princes “immediately began to profess idolatry, which during their father’s reign they had seemed a little to abandon”; they also granted liberty to the people to serve idols. Therefore the conversion had been by order of the King. The people, then, nothing loth, returned to their ancient gods and their old practices.

Some, however, remained faithful, and the services of the Church were still carried on at St. Paul’s, with sorrowful hearts.

We now chance upon a glimpse of the East Saxon mind, for the three princes, though they were no longer Christians, desired to get what they could for their own advantage out of the new religion. They observed that the most important part of the Christian ritual was the celebration of the Eucharist, in which the communicants received each a morsel of white bread. Clearly this was magic: the white bread was a charm: it protected those who received it from dangers of all kinds. They therefore called upon Mellitus to give them this charm, but without the profession of the Christian faith. In the words of Bede, they said, “Why do you not give us also that white bread, which you used to give to our father Saba (for so they used to call him), and which you still continue to give to the people in the church?” To whom he answered, “If you will be washed in that laver of salvation, in which your father was washed, you may also partake of the holy bread, of which he partook; but if you despise the laver of life, you may not receive the bread of life.” They replied, “We will not enter into that laver, because we do not know that we stand in need of it, and yet we will eat of that bread.” And being often earnestly admonished by him, that the same could not be done, nor any one admitted to partake of the sacred oblation without the holy cleansing, at last they said in anger, “If you will not comply with us in so small a matter as this, you shall not stay in our province”; and accordingly they obliged him and his followers to depart from their kingdom.

THE CORONATION OF A KING
Royal MS. 2, B. vii.

Mellitus, thus forced to abandon his work, retired to Canterbury, where he met Justus, Bishop of Rochester, also turned out of his diocese, and Laurentius, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was also meditating flight.

The two former resolved on passing over to France, there to await the event.

ALDHELM PRESENTING ‘DE VIRGINITATE’ TO HILDELIDA, ABBESS OF BARKING, AND HER NUNS
From Dean Spence’sThe Church of England (Cassell).

The three princes of the East Saxons, we are told, did not long survive their apostasy. For, marching out to battle with the West Saxons, they were all three slain and their army cut to pieces. Nevertheless, the people of London and Essex refused to acknowledge this correction and remained in their paganism.

The story of Eadbald’s conversion and the restoration of Christianity to the kingdom of Kent is suspicious. It is as follows:—Laurentius, the Archbishop, appeared before the King one day, and taking off his shirt, showed his shoulders red and bleeding, as if with a grievous flagellation. He told the King that he had received this “Apostolical” scourging from St. Peter himself, as a punishment for thinking of deserting his flock. “Why,” asked the Apostle, “wouldest thou forsake the flock which I committed to you? To what shepherds wouldest thou commit Christ’s sheep which are in the midst of wolves? Hast thou forgotten my example, who, for the sake of those little ones, whom Christ recommended to me in token of His affection, underwent, at the hands of infidels and enemies of Christ, bonds, stripes, imprisonment, afflictions, and, lastly, the death of the cross, that I might at last be crowned with Him?”

King Eadbald accepted this miracle as a warning: he abjured the worship of idols, renounced his unlawful marriage, and embraced the faith of Christ. Laurentius, on this happy turn of events, sent for Mellitus and Justus to return. The latter was restored to his see of Rochester; the former, however, found his Londoners obstinate in their relapse. Unfortunately, Eadbald, the penitent, had not the same power that his father had enjoyed. It took nearly half a century to get Christianity firmly established in London.

About the year 635, thirty years after their defeat by the men of Wessex, the East Saxons returned to the faith. Their conversion was due in the first instance to the persuasion and arguments of Oswy, King of Northumbria, with his “friend”—as Bede calls him—his subject King, Sigebert of the East Saxons. When these arguments had prevailed, Sigebert, having been baptized, asked for priests to preach to his people. Cedda, afterwards Bishop of London, undertook the task, with such success that the whole people embraced Christianity. Again, however, they fell away, led by Sighere, one of the two Kings of the East Saxons. Their defection was caused by a pestilence, which was interpreted to mean the wrath of their former gods. It was in the year 665. The two Kings of the East Saxons were no longer “friends” of Northumbria, but of Mercia; and the King of the Mercians sent Jarumnan, Bishop of Lichfield, to bring the people back again. The Bishop was aided in his efforts by Osyth, queen of the apostate Sighere, afterwards known as St. Osyth. There was as little difficulty in securing a return as a relapse: Essex once more became Christian, and this time remained so. The missionary Bishop, Erkenwald, the Great Bishop, who remained in the memory of London until the Reformation, was the chief cause of the complete conversion of the people. He did not rest satisfied with the baptism of kings and thanes: he went himself among the rude and ignorant folk; he preached to the charcoal-burners of the forest and to the rustics of the clearing; he founded Religious Houses in the midst of the country people; he became, in life and after death, the protector of the people. He made it impossible for the old faith to be any longer regarded with regret. To the time of Erkenwald belong not only St. Osyth (her name survives in Size Lane) and St. Ethelburga, whose church is still standing beside Bishopsgate, but also St. Botolph, to whom five churches were dedicated.

St. Osyth was the mother of Offa, whose memory is preserved by Bede. He succeeded his father Sighere as one of the Kings of Essex, then subject to Mercia. He accompanied Coinred, King of the Mercians, ingoing to Rome, and in surrendering everything in order to become a monk.

Bede:—

“With him went the son of Sighere, King of the East Saxons above-mentioned, whose name was Offa, a youth of most lovely age and beauty, and most earnestly desired by all his nation to be their King. He, with like devotion, quitted his wife, lands, kindred, and country, for Christ and for the Gospel, that he might receive an hundredfold in this life, and in the world to come life everlasting. He also, when they came to the holy places at Rome, receiving the tonsure, and adopting a monastic life, attained the long-wished-for sight of the blessed apostles in heaven.” (Giles’s Trans. vol. iii. p. 237.)

KING ETHELBALD
Harl. MS., Roll Y. 6.

His memory was preserved in London long after his death—even, indeed, until recent times—on account of this wonderful example of piety at first, and afterwards by the tradition which ascribed the site of St. Alban’s Church, Wood Street, in the City, to that of the chapel of King Offa’s palace. That tradition is gravely considered by Maitland, who decides against it. This Offa must not be confounded with the much greater Offa, King of the Mercians.

Documents relating to London are few in these centuries. The earliest notice of London among those collected and published in J. M. Kemble’sCodex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici, and in Benjamin Thorpe’sDiplomatarium, dates as far back as the year 695, if it is genuine; but it is said to be an early forgery. The document professes to be Bishop Erkenwald’s Charter of Barking Abbey. Reciting the lands given to the Abbey, it says, “Sexta juxta Lundoniam unius manentis data a Uulfhario rege. Septima supra vicum Lundoniae data Quoenguyda uxore.” What street is here intended? There is a deed by which Ethelbald, King of the Mercians, gives to Aldwulf, Bishop of Rochester, the right of sending one ship to the port of London without paying taxes or dues. It is dated 734.

In 734, King Ethelbald grants to the Bishop of Rochester leave to pass one ship without toll into the Port of London. In another charter the same King speaks of “Lundon tune’s hythe.” King Canulf of Mercia speaks of a Witenagemot in London—“loco praeclaro oppidoque regale.” In 833 there was another Council held in London by Egbert, presumably after his defeat at Charmouth.

The same King (743 or 745) allows to the venerable Bishop Mildred of Worcester all the rights and dues of two ships which may be demanded of them in the hythe of London town.

In the year 857, King Burgred of Mercia assigns to Bishop Alhune “aliquam parvam portionem libertatis, cum consensu consiliatorum meorum, gaziferi agelluli in vico Lundonioe: hoc est, ubi nominatur. Ceol-munding-chaga, qui est non longe from Westgetum positus.” Where was Ceol-munding-chaga? Where was Westgetum? And is the English preposition a mistake of Kemble’s?

In the year 889, “Alfred rex Anglorum et Saxonum et Aethelred sub regulus et patricius Merciorum ... Uuaerfrido, eximio Huicciorum antistiti, ad aecclesiam Weo-gernensem in Lundonia unam curtem quae verbotenus ad antiquum petrosum aedificium, id est, aet Hwaetmundes stane a civibus apellatur, a strata publica usque in murum ejusdem civitatis, cujus longitudo est perticarum xxvi et latitudo in superiori parte perticarum xiii et pedum vii et in inferiori loco perticarum xi et vi pedum, ad plenam libertatem infra totius rei sempiternaliter possidendum, in aecclesiasticum jus conscribimus et concedentes donamus.”

We have now arrived at the coming of the Danes. It seems a just retribution that the Saxons should in their turn suffer exactly the same miseries by robbery and murder as they had themselves inflicted upon the Britons. One knows not when the Northmen first tasted the fierce joy of piracy and marauding on the English coast; probably they began as soon as the farms and settlements of the English were worth plundering. It must be remembered that as yet there was little cohesion or joint action among the “kingdoms,” and that war was incessant between them. Read, for instance, the following passage from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It relates the wars of one year only, the year 823. Think of the condition of the country when all these battles and all this slaughter were crammed into one year only:—

“This year there was a battle between the Welsh and the men of Devon and Camelford; and the same year Egbert, King of the West Saxons, and Bernulf, King of the Mercians, fought at Wilton, and Egbert got the victory, and there was great slaughter made. He then sent from the army his son Ethelwulf, and Ealston his bishop, and Wulfherd his ealdorman, into Kent with a large force, and they drove Baldred the King northwards over the Thames. And the men of Kent, and the men of Surrey, and the South Saxons, and the East Saxons submitted to him; for formerly they had been unjustly forced from his kin. And the same year the King of the East Angles and the people sought the alliance and protection of King Egbert for dread of the Mercians; and the same year the East Angles slew Barnulf, King of Mercia.”

Attempts were made at combined action. In the year 833, for instance, as we have seen, King Egbert called a Witenagemot at London. This was attended by the King of Mercia and the bishops. The deliberations, however, of this Parliament did nothing to prevent the disasters that followed.

KING IN BED
Harl. MS., 4751.

The share which fell to London of all the pillage and massacre was less than might have been expected. Thus, in 832 the Danes ravaged Sheppey; in 833 Dorsetshire. In 835 they were defeated in Cornwall; in 837 at Southampton and Portland; in 838 in Lindsey, in East Anglia, and in Kent. In 839 “there was great slaughter at London, at Canterbury, and at Rochester.” In 840 the Danes landed at Charmouth; in 845 at the mouth of the Parrett in Somersetshire; in 851 at Plymouth; in the same year the Saxons got some ships and met the enemy on the sea, taking nine ships and putting the rest to flight, but, which is significant, the Danes wintered that year on Thanet. “And the same year there came 350 ships to the mouth of the Thames, and the crews landed and took Canterbury and London by storm, and put to flight Berthwulf, King of the Mercians, with his army, and then went south over the Thames into Surrey.” King Ethelwulf with the men of Wessex met them at Ockley, and defeated them with great slaughter. In the same year the Saxons met them on the sea in ships and beat them off. They seem to have been driven out of the country by these reverses, for in 854 we read of battles fought in Thanet, which looks like an attempt to settle there again; and in 855 they succeeded in wintering on that island. In 860 they stormed and burned Winchester, and were then driven off by the men of Hampshire. In 865 they sat down in Thanet and made peace with the men of Kent for a price; but they broke their word. In 866 the Danes took up their winter quarters with the East Angles and made peace with them. In 867 there was fighting in Northumbria, the kings were slain, and the people made peace with the Danes; in 868 the Mercians made peace with them. In 870 the “army” marched into East Anglia from York and there defeated King Edmund (St. Edmund) and destroyed all the churches and the great and rich monastery of Medehamstede (Peterborough)—“at that time,” says the Chronicle, “the land was much distressed by frequent battles ... there was warfare and sorrow over England.” Both in 870 and in 871 there was fighting all the summer at and near Reading. In 872 “the army went from Reading to London and there took up their winter quarters”; in 874 they wintered at Repton; in 875 some marched north, and some south, wintering at Cambridge. In that year Alfred, now King, obtained a fleet and fought seven Danish ships successfully. In 876 the Danes were at Wareham; in 877 their fleet was cast away and the army fled to the “fortress” of Exeter. In 878 there was fighting in the west country; in 879 the Danes were at Fulham on the Thames. Some of the Danes then crossed the Channel and visited France, leaving a part of the army in England. In 882 King Alfred fought them on the sea. The chronicle of 883 is brief, but extremely important: “That same year Sighelm and Athelstan carried to Rome the arms which the King had vowed to send thither, and also to India, to St. Thomas, and to St. Bartholomew, when they sat down against the army at London; and there, thanks be to God, they largely obtained the object of their prayer.”

THE PERILS OF THE DEEP
Harl. MS., 4751.

If this brief chronicle be followed on the map, it will be perceived that, although fighting went on year after year in various parts of the country, London was in the grasp of the Danes for no more than twelve years. The area of the battlefield into which the Danes had converted England extended year by year, but always included London.

[CHAPTER III]
THE DANES IN LONDON

The Danes, then, held London for twelve years. In after years, when the country was governed by Danish kings, large numbers of Danes settled in London, and, with the national readiness to adapt themselves to new conditions and new manners (compare the quick conversion of Normans to French language and manners), they speedily became merged in the general population. Very soon we hear no more of Danes and English as separate peoples, either in London or in the country. London, indeed, has always received all, absorbed all, and turned all into Londoners. During this first Danish occupation, of which we know nothing, one of two things happened: either the occupiers settled down among the citizens, leaving them to follow their trades and crafts in their own way; or they murdered and pillaged, drove away all who could fly, and then sat down quietly and remained, an army in occupation in a strong place. Everything points to the latter course, because the ferocity of the Danes at this time was a thing almost incredible. London was, for the moment, ruined. It was not deserted by the lowest class, for the simple reason that an army requires people for the service of providing its daily wants. Food—grain and cattle—was brought in from West and East Anglia; the river supplied fish and fowl—wildfowl—in abundance. But fishermen and fowlers were wanted; therefore these useful people would not be slain, except in the first rush and excitement of victory. In the same way armourers, smiths, makers of weapons, bakers, brewers, butchers, drovers, cooks, craftsmen, and servants of all kinds are wanted, even by the rudest soldiery. In the fifth century, when the trade of London deserted her, the people had to go because the food supplies also were cut off. Since the Danish army could winter in London for twelve years, it is certain that they had command of supplies. Therefore, after the first massacres and flight, the lower classes remained in the service of their new lords. Moreover, by this time, the enemy, having resolved to stay in the country, had doubtless made the discovery that it is the worst policy possible to kill the people who were wanted to bring them supplies, or to murder the farmers who were growing crops and keeping cattle for them to devour.

The Danes occupied London for twelve years. At the best it was a bad time for the people who remained with them. Rough as was the London craftsman of the ninth century, he was mild and gentle compared with his Danish conqueror and master.

If we inquire whether the trade of London vanished during these years, it may be argued, first, that the desire for gain is always stronger than the fear of danger; secondly, that merchant-ships were accustomed to fight their way; thirdly, that when a strong tide or current of trade has set steadily in one direction for many years, it is not easily stopped or diverted; fourthly, that when the first massacre was over, the Danes would perhaps see the advantage of encouraging merchants to bring things, if only for their own use; for they were ready to buy weapons and wine, if nothing else, and there were a great many things which they wanted and could not make for themselves. As for the interior, there could be no trade there during the disturbed condition of the country.

A note made a hundred and fifty years later shows that the Danes did at least consume the importations of foreign merchants. When they murdered Alphage, Archbishop of Canterbury, they were drunk with wine. We cannot suppose that an army whose soldiers regarded strong drink as the greatest joy of life did not perceive the advantages of procuring wine in abundance by means of the merchants who brought it from France and Spain.

I allow the weight of these reasons. I admit that there may have been still some trade carried on at the Port of London. I shall presently give reasons for supposing, on the other hand, that London was again ruined and deserted.

Let us see what manner of men were these soldiers who became owners of London for twelve years and afterwards furnished kings to England and law-abiding burghers to the City.

We may learn their manners from the pages of the historian Saxo Grammaticus.

To begin with, the Danes were a nation of warriors, as yet not Christians. And Christianity, when it came, brought at first little softening of manners. It presented much the same Devil to the popular imagination, but with a face and figure more clearly outlined; it localised Hell, which remained much the same for the Christian as for the pagan, only it furnished more exact details and left no doubt as to the treatment and sufferings of the lost. The only honour paid to any man was that due to valour; the only thing worthy of a man’s attention was the maintenance of his strength and the increase of his courage. The king must lead in battle; he must sometimes fight battles of wager; he had his following or court of lords, who were bound to fight beside him, and to die, if necessary, with him or for him. If he should by any lucky accident escape the accidents of battle, murder, and sudden death, and so enter upon old age, he must abdicate, for a king who could no longer fight was absurd.

The Danes had troops of slaves: some born in slavery; some captives of war; the craftsmen of London were no doubt slaves because they were captives—they had survived the storm of the City. A slave had no rights at all; his master could do what he pleased with him; he was flogged, tortured, scorned, reviled, and brutally treated; it was a time when the joy of fighting was followed by the joy of revenge, when to make a captive noble eat the bread of servitude and drink the water of humiliation filled the victor with a savage joy. As for the women, they were reserved for the service and the lusts of the captors. It pleased the chivalry of the Dane to cast the daughters of kings into the brothel of the common soldier.

SLAVES WAITING ON A HOUSEHOLD
Tib., B. v.

Of course they had the virtue of courage—it is, however, suspicious that, among the Danes, as in all savage nations, their courage had to be kept up by constant exhortations, charms, and songs. There were unexpected panics and routs and shameful flights of these invincible Danes as well as of the Saxons: this would seem to show that their vaunted courage was liable to occasions of failure. They were, however, marvellously free from fear of pain; they seem to have disregarded it altogether. Of one man it is related that rather than marry a certain princess who was offered him he chose to be burned to death; and in a poem it is told of another that, when he was wounded so grievously that his entrails were exposed, he refused the help of a slave because he was a slave, and the help of a woman because her birth was not noble, and so he remained till one of free and honourable birth came along, who tied him round with withies and carried him off to a house. Honour and loyalty were not so much admired as demanded. Treachery and rebellion were ruthlessly punished. In some cases the wretched criminal was tied by thongs passed under the sinews of his heels to the tails of wild bulls and then hunted to death by hounds. Other punishments there were. As for the women, those of free birth were modest and chaste: to be detected in an amour involved such a barbarous punishment as the cutting off of the nose.

GUTHLAC CARRIED AWAY BY DEVILS
Harl. MS., Roll Y. 6.

Their weapons were swords, clubs, axes, bows, slings, and stones. Those who could afford to buy them wore mail coats and helmets; they carried banners; they blew horns; they fought on foot; and the battle was decided by single combat, hand to hand, with great slaughter and prodigies of valour. Like the Red Indians, they were able to work themselves up into a kind of frenzy before fighting. Sometimes there were Amazons among them. They all messed together, king and nobles and soldiers. When at home they gathered in the great hall at night with fires blazing, with torches, and with hangings to keep out the draughts. Their food was for the most part simple—beef, mutton, pork, with huge quantities of bread. Their drink was chiefly ale, served in horns. After supper they played games. We must remember how long were the winter evenings which had to be got through. Games of some kind were necessary, and there were a great number of games. The minstrel played the harp and sang warlike songs of the deeds of great warriors. They “flyted” each other, i.e. endeavoured to reduce each other to silence by abuse and insult, a game which gave great opportunities to a man of imagination. Such specimens of “flyting” as remain show that it might be, and most likely was, coarse and obscene to the last degree. They told stories of their leaders and wove impossible fictions of their bravery, their endurance, and their generosity. They bragged over impossible deeds, a thing which we find the knights of the fourteenth century also doing in their game of gabe; they called in jugglers, tumblers, mimes, and singers of love-songs and drinking-songs. It is to be noted that, although they loved the acting and the singing, they held the calling of actors and minstrels in great contempt. Sometimes they tugged at a rope, as in our old game of French and English. Sometimes, when they were well drunken, they began a very favourite pastime, that of bone-throwing. It was in this way that St. Alphage was murdered. For the Danes sent for him and began to throw beef bones at him, perhaps in play, and expecting to see the Archbishop dodge the bones dexterously. He did not—one struck him on the head and he fell dead.

As for the religion of these people before and after their conversion, they believed boundlessly. They believed in giants and in dwarfs, in ghosts and in devils, in fate, in a whole array of gods and goddesses, in the Land of Undeath, in the Underground Land, in magic and sorcery, in charms and philtres, in ordeals. All these things, with modifications, they continued to believe long after they were received into the bosom of the Christian Church. And they were full of stories, legends, and traditions—a wild, imaginative people, with a limited horizon of knowledge, beyond and outside which all was blackness, with the terror of the unknown.

Such were the people who came every year with their army, harrying and plundering, murdering and destroying, till they found it more convenient to winter in the country, which they did, occupying the islands of Thanet. Such were the people who obtained possession of London; such were the people who afterwards flocked to the City in the days of King Cnut and settled down among the rest of the heterogeneous London folk.

There are no traces of this first Danish occupation. The churches dedicated to Danish saints, Magnus and Olaf, were erected afterwards. Probably the Danes at this time left not one church standing.

In 883 Alfred obtained possession of the City—“after a short siege”—the historians write. The only authority for this short siege is the paragraph in the A.S. Chronicle already quoted. “They sat down against the army of London; and there they largely obtained the object of their prayer.” After the battle of Ethandun, the Danes retired from Cirencester to Chippenham, and there wintered. In the same year another body of them collected and wintered at Fulham on the Thames. This fact makes me ask why, when London was theirs, the Danes should winter at Fulham instead of at the City itself. Surely London offered winter quarters superior to those of Fulham, that little village in a marsh. There seems to me no explanation except one, namely, that the City was once more deserted. The same thing which happened to Augusta may have happened also to Saxon London. The whole of its trade was destroyed; the river and the channel were in the hands of the Northmen; the City had been taken with the customary massacres and plunder; it was no longer possible to live in the place; no supplies could be taken there because there were no longer any means of buying for them or paying for them. Therefore, save for the wretched remnant of fishermen and slaves, the streets were desolate and the port was deserted. We may draw a picture of burned houses and roofless churches; of broken doors and narrow lanes, cumbered with useless plunder dragged from the houses and left in the streets because it could not be carried away; of dead bodies left unburied where they fell in defence or in flight along the streets and in the houses; of City gates lying open to any who chose to enter; of the City wall broken away, having never been repaired since the Britons fled before the Saxons came. This ruined and deserted city Alfred recovered. How? By a siege? What kind of siege would it be when there were no walls to defend; not enough men to man the walls, and not enough of the besiegers to attack them?

SAXON MINSTRELS

Does not the Chronicle answer these questions?

In A.D. 880. The “Army”—i.e. the Danes—“which had sat down at Fulham, went over sea to Ghent, and sat there one year.”

In A.D. 881. The “army went farther into France.”

In A.D. 882. “The army went far into France and there sat one year.”

In that year Alfred fought a sea-battle against “four Danish ships”—only four—took two, and received the surrender of the other two. But it was not with “four” ships that Cnut and Sweyn proposed to attack London.

In A.D. 883. “The army went up the Scheldt and sat there one year.”

This was the same year that Alfred “sat down against the army of London.”

The main body of the Danes was lying up the Scheldt; the Danish fleets were represented by four vessels; what kind of army was that before which Alfred sat down?

My own reading of the story is that the small force of Danes in, or near, London, retired without fighting, and that Alfred, meeting with no opposition, marched into the City and began at once, understanding the enormous advantage of possessing the place, to consider steps in order to secure that possession. He seems to have had a whole year during which he was left in peace, or comparative peace, in order to consider the position. Meantime, there was more fighting to be done before these measures could be fairly taken in hand. The Danes, retiring from London, divided into two parts: one division went into Essex; the other crossed the river and fell upon Rochester. Here Alfred met them and put them to flight; they escaped across the seas to their own country. Alfred’s fleet defeated the Danish fleet at the mouth of the Stour, but were themselves defeated in their turn.

PLAYING DRAUGHTS
Roy. MS. 2, B. vii.

The following year, 886, was again a year of peace, according to the Chronicle. The “Army” wintered in France near Paris. Alfred received the “submission of all the English except those who were under the bondage of the Danishmen.” This passage, if we were considering the history of the country, should set us thinking. In this place it is enough to note that Alfred took advantage of the respite to repair London. And he placed the City under the charge of Ethelred his son-in-law. So, whether by siege or by battle, or, as I rather believe, by the retirement of the enemy, Alfred recovered London, and, as soon as the condition of his affairs allowed, he repaired it and rebuilt it, and made it once more habitable and secure for the resort of merchants and the safeguarding of fugitives, of women, and of treasure.

[CHAPTER IV]
THE SECOND SAXON OCCUPATION

It is sometimes said that one of the earliest acts of King Alfred in gaining possession of London was to build a fortress or tower within the City. The authority for this statement seems to be nothing more than a passage in the Chronicle, under the year 896. “Then on a certain day the king rode up along the river and observed where the river might be obstructed, so that the Danes would be unable to bring up their ships. And they then did thus. They constructed two fortresses on the two sides of the river.” This seems but a slender foundation for the assumption of Freeman that Alfred built a citadel for the defence of London. “The germ of that tower which was to be first the dwelling-place of kings and then the scene of the martyrdom of their victims.” I see no reason at all for the construction of any fortress within the City except the reason which impelled William to build the White Tower, viz. in order to keep a hold over the powerful City. And this reason certainly did not influence Alfred. It is quite possible that Alfred did strengthen the City by the construction of a fortress, though such a building was by no means in accordance with the Saxon practice. It is further quite possible that he built such a tower on the site where William’s tower stood later; but it seems to me almost inconceivable that Alfred, if he wanted to build a tower, should not have reconstructed and repaired the old Roman citadel, of which the foundations were still visible. I confess that I am doubtful about the fortress. What Alfred really did, as I read the Chronicle, was to construct two temporary forts near the mouth of the Thames, so as to prevent the Danish ships from getting out. He caught them in a trap.

Let us renew the course of the Danish invasions so far as they concern London. In 893 one army of Danes landed on the eastern shores of Kent and another at the mouth of the Thames. In 894 King Alfred fought them and defeated them, getting back the booty. Some of the Danes took to their ships and sailed round to the west, whither the King pursued them. Others fled to a place near Canvey Island called Bamfleet, where they fortified themselves. Then, for the first time after the Conquest, we find that London is once more powerful, and once more filled with valiant citizens. For the Londoners marched out under Ethelred, Earl of Mercia, their governor, attacked the Danes in their stronghold, took it, put the enemy to flight, and returned to London with all that was within the fort, including the women and the children. In 895 the Danes brought their ships up the Thames and towed them up the Lea to the town of Ware, but the year afterwards the Londoners made their ships useless: whereupon the Danes abandoned them, and the men of London took or destroyed them. Maitland says that “a few years ago”—he writes in 1786—“at the erection of Stanstead Bridge, remains of these ships were found.”

T. Reveley, Wantage.
THE ALFRED JEWEL (REVERSE) THE ALFRED JEWEL (OBVERSE)

King Alfred was able to equip and to send out an efficient fleet. In the year 901, to accept the generally received date, which now appears, however, more than doubtful, the great King Alfred passed away. No king or captain, in the whole history of London, ever did so much for the City as Alfred. Circumstances, chance, geographical position, created London for the Romans, and restored it for the Saxons. Circumstances, not the wisdom of kings, gave London, in after ages, its charters and its liberties. It is the especial glory of Alfred that he discerned the importance of the City, not only for purposes of trade, but as a bulwark of national defence. He repaired the strong walls which, in a time when ladders and mines were not yet part of the equipment of war, made the City impregnable; he gave security to merchants; he offered a place of safety to princesses and great ladies; a treasure-house which could not be broken into and a rallying-place for fugitives. He gave the newly-born City a strong governor and a strong government; he made it possible, as was shown two hundred years later, to maintain the independence of the people even though the whole country except this one stronghold should be overrun. London continued under the rule of Ethelred, Earl of the Mercians, till his death in 912, when King Edward “took possession of London.” In 917 there was fighting with the Danes in Mercia, and in 918 about Hereford and Gloucester; from 919 till his death in 924, King Edward was continually occupied in fighting and in fortifying towns. By King Athelstan was fought and won the great battle of Brunanburgh, when there was slain five kings and seven earls. This victory, Maitland says, was “chiefly obtained by the bravery of the Londoners, who were the best troops in the army.” The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle does not say anything about the London troops.

Augustin Rischgitz.
PAGE FROM GOSPEL BOOK GIVEN BY OTHO I. TO ATHELSTAN, GRANDSON OF ALFRED THE GREAT; ON IT THE ANGLO-SAXON KINGS TOOK THE CORONATION OATH
Cotton MS., Tiberius, A. 2.

[ To larger image.]

Maitland points out, as an indication that London was now in flourishing condition, the fact that Athelstan, in apportioning the number of coiners for each town, allotted to London and Canterbury the same number, and that the highest number. To consider this an indication of prosperity is indeed to be thankful for small mercies. To me it is a clear proof, on the other hand, of the comparative decline of London, since she was considered of no greater importance than Canterbury.

Augustin Rischgitz.
FROM KING ALFRED’S “OROSIUS.”
Cotton MS.

At this period, however, the cities of England, all of which without exception had been taken and devastated by the “army,” had sunk to a point of poverty as low as any touched even in the fifth and sixth century—those centuries of battle and disaster,—and perhaps lower, for the Saxons were slow in becoming residents in a walled city, and would be ready to return if possible to the old life in the open.

Let us go back to the Chronicle. In the year 945, King Edmund held a Witenagemot in London, chiefly occupied with ecclesiastical affairs.

During the reigns of Edmund and Edred (940-955) there was fighting in Northumberland, but no new incursions of the Danes. Under the powerful rule of Edgar there was an almost unbroken peace of seventeen years. In 979 began the disastrous reign of Ethelred, when the Danish incursions were renewed on a larger scale, and when the glory of England departed.

Let me here quote the opinion of Freeman as to the position of London at this time.

“The importance of that great city was daily growing throughout these times. We cannot as yet call it the capital of the kingdom, but its geographical position made it one of the chief bulwarks of the land, and there was no part of the realm whose people could outdo the patriotism and courage of its valiant citizens. London at this time fills much the same place in England which Paris filled in Northern Gaul a century earlier. The two cities, in their several lands, were two great fortresses, placed on the two great rivers of the country, the special objects of attack on the part of the invaders, and the special defence of the country against them. Each was, as it were, marked out by great public services to become the capital of the whole kingdom. But Paris became a national capital only because its local count grew into a national king. London, amidst all changes within and without, has always kept more or less of her ancient character as a free city. Paris was a military bulwark, the dwelling-place of a ducal or a royal sovereign; London, no less important as a military post, had also a greatness which rested on a surer foundation. London, like a few other of our great cities, is one of the ties which connect our Teutonic England with the Celtic and Roman Britain of earlier times. Her British name still lives on, unchanged by the Teutonic conquerors. Before we first hear of London as an English city she had cast away her Roman and Imperial title: she was no longer Augusta: she had taken again her ancient name, and through all changes she clave to her ancient character. The commercial fame of London dates from the early days of Roman dominion. The English Conquest may have caused an interruption for a while, but it was only for a while. As early as the days of Æthelberht the commerce of London was again renowned. Ælfred had rescued the city from the Dane; he had built a citadel for her defence, the germ of that Tower which was to be first the dwelling-place of kings, and then the scene of the martyrdom of their victims. Among the laws of Æthelstan none are more remarkable than those which deal with the internal affairs of London and with the regulation of her earliest commercial corporations. During the reign of Æthelred the merchant city again became the object of special and favourable legislation. His institutes speak of a commerce spread all over the lands that bordered on the western ocean. Flemings and Frenchmen, men of Ponthieu, of Brabant, and of Luttich, filled her markets with their wares and enriched the civic coffers with their toils. Thither, too, came the men of Rouen, whose descendants were, at no distant day, to form no small element among her own citizens. And worthy and favoured above all, came the seafaring men of the Old-Saxon brotherland, and pioneers of the mighty Hansa of the North, which was in days to come to knit together London and Novogorod in one bond of commerce, and to dictate laws and distribute crowns among the nations by whom London was now threatened. The demand for toll and tribute fell lightly on those whom English legislation distinguished as the men of the Emperor.”

KING CNUT AND HIS QUEEN, EMMA, PRESENTING A CROSS UPON THE ALTAR OF NEWMINSTER (WINCHESTER)
Stowe MS., 944 (11th cent.).

The part played by London in the country during the momentous hundred years following Ethelred’s accession shows the importance of the City. That Londoners fought at Maldon is not to be doubted. That year witnessed the shameful buying of peace from the pirates whom the English had been defeating and defying since the days of Alfred. It was hoped by the Danes to renew the bribe of 991 in the year following. They came up the Thames, but they were met by the Londoners with their fleet and defeated with great slaughter. In the following year Bamborough was taken by the Danes and the north country ravaged. In the year 994, after the news of the taking of Bamborough and the flight of the Thanes at Lindesey, encouraged by their successes, the Danes attempted an invasion on a far more serious scale. This time the leaders were Olaf, King of the Norwegians, and Swegen, King of the Danes. They sailed up the Thames with a fleet of ninety-four ships. The invaders arrived at London and delivered an assault upon the wall. It must be remembered that the river side of the wall was then standing. We are not informed whether the town was attacked from the land side or the river side. The attack was, however, repelled with so much determination, and with such loss to the besiegers, that the two kings abandoned the attempt that same day and sailed away. The victory and the safety of the City were attributed to the “mild-heartedness of the holy Mother of God.”

As for the Northmen, since they could not pillage London they would ravage the coast; and, taking horses, they rode through the eastern and southern shores, pillaging and ravaging and murdering man, woman, and child. These large words must not be taken to imply too much. When a band of marauders rode through the country, especially a country with only a few roads or tracks, they were limited in their field of robberies by the limited number of roads, by the distances between the settled places, by their own desire to return as quickly as possible, and by their inability to carry more than a certain amount of booty. Two or three small loops drawn inland from the anchorage of their ships would mark the extent of their forays from that part. However, they were bought off. In this case Olaf kept his word. He was a Christian already, but he received confirmation from Bishop Ælfreah, and on his return to his own country he spent the rest of his life in promoting Christianity. In St. Olave, Silver Street; St. Olave, Hart Street; St. Olave, Jewry; and St. Olave, Tooley Street, we have four churches erected to the memory of the saintly Northman who kept his word, and, having promised to return no more, stayed in his own country.

Swegen came back, though after some delay, to revenge the foulest treachery. It was that of England’s Bartholomew Day, when, by order of King Ethelred, certainly the very worst king who ever ruined his generation, all the Danes in the land were treacherously murdered at one time. Among those victims was Gunhilda, Swegen’s own sister, with her husband and her son. Swegen came over and landed at Sandwich. It was nine years since the payment of Olaf and himself. During these nine miserable years there had been an unbroken series of defeats and humiliations, with the treacheries and jealousies and quarrels which in rude times follow in the train of a weak king. Swegen made himself master of the whole kingdom except London. He attempted the siege of the City with a mighty host; he assaulted the walls; and he was beaten back. As ten years before, he wasted no time in trying to take a place too strongly fortified and defended. Ethelred, however, deserted the town, retiring to the Isle of Wight with his ships. Queen Emma went over to Normandy, taking her sons Edward and Alfred; and London, having no longer a king to fight for, opened her doors to the Danish conqueror.

Swegen died immediately afterwards. He left two sons: Harold, who succeeded to the Danish kingdom, and Cnut, a youth of nineteen, who was proclaimed King by the Danish fleet. What follows was certainly done at London. “Then counselled all the Witan who were in England, clergy and laity, that they should send after King Ethelred: and they declared that no lord was dearer to them than their natural lord, if he would rule them better than he had before done. Then sent the King his son Edward hither with his messengers and ordered them to greet all his people: and to say that he would be to them a loving lord and amend all those things which they abhorred, and each of those things would be forgiven which had been done or said to him on condition that they all with one consent would be obedient to him without deceit. And they there established full friendship, by word and by pledge, on either hand.... Then during Lent King Ethelred came home to his own people: and he was gladly received by them all.” He also promised to govern by the advice of his Witan.

THE KING RECEIVING A DEPUTATION
Royal MS. 2, B. vii.

There followed the defeat of Cnut, who sailed away to Denmark; the marriage of Edmund Atheling with the widow of the murdered Segefrith; the return of Cnut; the treachery of Eadric; and the loss of southern England. Edmund, however, held out in the north for a time: finally, Cnut overran the north as well as the south, and all England, except London, was in his power. He proposed an expedition against London. While on his way thither he heard that King Ethelred was dead. He called a gemot of the Witan. All who were without the walls of London assembled at Southampton and chose Cnut as the lawful King of England. At the same time the smaller body which was within London chose Edmund king. He was crowned, not at Kingston in Surrey, the usual place for coronations, where still may be seen the sacred stone of record, but at St. Paul’s in London.

The history of the wonderful year that followed belongs to the country rather than to London. It was the year when one great and strong man restored their spirit to a disgraced and degraded people; won back a good half of the land; and, if he had lived, would have reconquered the rest—the year of Edmund Ironside. On St. Andrew’s Day, some months after his father, this great soldier died in London. They buried him in the Minster of Glastonbury, which held the bones of Edgar.

It was at the beginning of this short reign that Cnut commenced the famous siege of London. “The ships came to Greenwich at Rogation days. And within a little space they went to London and dug a great ditch on the south side and dragged their ships to the west side of the bridge; and then afterwards they ditched the city round, so that no one could go either in or out: and they repeatedly fought against the city; but the citizens strenuously withstood them. Then had King Edmund, before that, gone out: and then he overran Wessex and all the people submitted to him.” Thus the Chronicle. The siege was raised by the arrival of Edmund.

This is a very brief and bald account of a most memorable event. We learn two or three things from it—first, that in some way or other the citizens made the passage of the bridge impossible, yet twenty years later Earl Godwin’s ships passed through the southern arches. He, it is true, had previously secured the goodwill of the Londoners. It is possible that, in the case of Cnut, they may have barred the way by chains. It is, next, certain that the river wall was standing, otherwise an attack upon the south of the City would have been attempted. London was secure within its wall, which ran all round it. The Danes had no knowledge of sieges: they had neither battering rams, nor ladders, nor any means of attacking a wall: they never even thought of mining. It is, next, certain either that the population of London was so large as to man the whole wall, a thing difficult to believe, or that the Danish army was so small that it could only attack at certain points. And it is also certain that the Danes could not keep out supplies; the way was open either into Kent or into Essex or to the north. The account also makes it clear that the bridge had been repaired; that it was maintained in good order; and that it was strongly fortified. Cnut, it is evident, did not propose to attempt the City by means of the bridge.

Let us now go back a little in order to consider the condition of the bridge and the story of King Cnut’s trench. It is not certain whether the Saxons at the time of their first settlement kept the bridge in repair; the intercourse between the King of Kent and the King of the East Saxons may possibly have been carried on by a ferry. At the same time it was so easy to keep the bridge open that one feels confident that it was maintained. When the Danes got possession of London their movements are pretty closely followed, but no mention is made of the bridge. I am inclined to think that during their occupation the piles stood up across the river, partly stripped of their upper beams, and that it was Alfred who repaired the bridge when he repaired the wall. That the bridge was standing and in good repair in the time of King Edgar is proved by the curious story of the witch and her punishment which belongs to that time (see p. [222]).

ANGLO-SAXON WARRIORS APPROACHING A FORT
Harl. MS., 603.

“In the year 993,” says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, “came Olaf with 90 ships to Staines and ravaged thereabouts; and went thence to Sandwich, and so thence to Ipswich, and that all overran, and so to Maldon.” How, it is asked, would Olaf sail past the bridge? There can be two answers to this question. It looks, to begin with, considering that Sandwich, Ipswich, and Maldon all lie close together, near or on the coast, as if Olaf had no business at Staines at all. Why, Staines is 120 miles from the North Foreland, round which the fleet must sail. And the answer to the question is, therefore, that some other place is intended. If, however, Olaf did really sail up the river to Staines, then the bridge must have been in a ruinous condition. But the stout piles remained, or at least as many of them as were wanted to show how the work could be restored or rebuilt. Snorri Sturlason, the Icelander, who wrote in the thirteenth century, has preserved a curious account of the bridge (Chronicles of London Bridge, p. 16).

A FIGHT
Harl. MS., 603.

“They—that is, the Danish forces—first came to shore at London, where their ships were to remain, and the City was taken by the Danes. Upon the other side of the River is situate a great market called Southwark—Sudurvirke in the original—which the Danes fortified with many defences; framing, for instance, a high and broad ditch, having a pile or rampart within it, formed of wood, stone, and turf, with a large garrison placed there to strengthen it. This the King Ethelred—his name, you know, is Adalradr in the original—attacked and forcibly fought against; but by the resistance of the Danes it proved but a vain endeavour. There was, at that time, a Bridge erected over the River between the city and Southwark, so wide, that if two carriages met they could pass each other. At the sides of the Bridge, at those parts which looked upon the River, were erected Ramparts and Castles that were defended on the top by pent-house bulwarks and sheltered turrets, covering to the breasts those who were fighting in them; the Bridge itself was also sustained by piles which were fixed in the bed of the River. An attack, therefore, being made, the forces occupying the Bridge fully defended it. King Ethelred being thereby enraged, yet anxiously desirous of finding out some means by which he might gain the Bridge, at once assembled the Chiefs of the army to a conference on the best method of destroying it. Upon this, King Olaf engaged—for you will remember he was an ally of Ethelred—that if the Chiefs of the army would support him with their forces, he would make an attack upon it with his ships. It being ordained then in council that the army should be marched against the Bridge, each one made himself ready for a simultaneous movement both of the ships and of the land forces.”

King Olaf then constructed a kind of raft or scaffold which he placed round his ships so that his men could stand upon them and work. As soon as they reached the bridge they were assailed by a hail-storm of missiles, which broke their shields, and forced many of the ships to retire. Those that remained, however, made fast the ships with ropes and cables. Then the rowers tugged their hardest; the tide turned in their favour; and crash! down fell that part of the bridge and all the people who were on it into the river. Thus Ethelred was restored. In memory of this exploit the Norse Bard sang:—

“And thou hast overthrown their Bridges, Oh thou Storm of the Sons of Odin; skilful and foremost in the Battle! For thee was it happily reserved to possess the land of London’s winding City. Many were the shields which were grasped sword in hand, to the mighty increase of the conflict; but by thee were the iron-banded coats of mail broken and destroyed....

Thou, thou hast come, Defender of the Earth, and hast restored into his kingdom the exiled Ethelred. By thine aid is he advantaged, and made strong by thy valour and prowess; Bitterest was that Battle in which thou didst engage. Now in the presence of thy kindred the adjacent lands are at rest, where Edmund, the relation of the country and the people, formerly governed.”

There is nothing about all this in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It may have happened; but it could not have been invented with a stone bridge in view, the piers of which all King Olaf’s ships together could not move. Of a wooden bridge constructed in the way described above the thing seems quite possible.

The next event in the history of the bridge is the unsuccessful siege by Cnut. In the course of this siege the besiegers dug the trench round the south end of the bridge and dragged their ships through it, so as to attack London all along the river face. Maitland, the historian, pleased himself by thinking that he had discovered vestiges of the trench all the way round. In his time (circa 1740) there were meadows and pastures and orchards over the whole of south London.

“By a diligent search of several days,” Maitland says, “I discovered the vestigia and length of this artificial water-course: its outflux from the river Thames was where the Great Wet Dock below Rotherhithe is situate: whence, running due west by the seven houses in Rotherhithe Fields, it continues its course by a gentle winding to the Drain Windmill: and, with a west-north-west course passing St. Thomas of Watering’s, by an easy turning it crosses the Deptford Road, a little to the south-east of the Lock-Hospital, at the lower end of Kent Street; and, proceeding to Newington Butts, intersects the road a little south of the turnpike; whence, continuing its course by the Black Prince in Lambeth Road, on the north of Kennington, it runs west-and-by-south, through the Spring garden at Vauxhall, to its influx into the Thames at the lower end of Chelsea Reach.”

The position of this trench has been the subject of much discussion. I submit the following as a reasonable solution of the question:—

Why should it have been a long canal? The conditions of the work were exactly the same whatever place should be selected, viz. the Danes would have to dig through the river embankment on both sides of the bridge. They would also have to dig through the causeway. In the latter part of the work certainly, and in the former part probably, they would have to remove buildings of some kind. The continual wars (800-1000) with the Danes make it quite certain that Southwark must then have been in a very deserted and ruinous condition.

Why should Cnut make his canal a single foot longer than was necessary? We may assume that he was not so foolish. Now the shortest canal possible would be that in which he could just drag his vessels round. In other words, if a circular canal began at CB, and if we draw an imaginary circle GEG round the middle of the canal, it is evident that the chord DF, forming a tangent to the middle circle, should be at least as long as the longest vessel. I take the middle of the canal as the deepest part: there would be no time to construct a canal with vertical sides.

Now (see diagram)

AD² = AE² + DE².

If r is the radius AB or AD and 2a the breadth of the canal and 2b the length of the chord DF,

r² = (r - a)² + b²;
[therefore] 2ar = a² + b²;
[therefore] r = (a² + b²)/2a.

This represents the length of the radius in terms of the length of the largest vessel and the breadth of the canal, and is therefore the smallest radius possible for getting the ships through. Now the great ship found in Norway in the year 1880 is undoubtedly one of the finest of the vessels used by Danes and Norsemen. The poets speak of larger ships, but as a marvel. Nothing is said about Cnut having ships of very great size. This vessel was 68 feet in length, 16 feet in breadth, and 4 feet in depth. She drew very little water; therefore a breadth of canal equal to the breadth of the vessel would be more than enough. Let us make the chord 70 feet in length, and the breadth of the canal 16 feet. Then

2b = 70, or b = 35,

and

2a = 16; [therefore] a = 8; [therefore] r = (35² + 8²)/16 = 80 (very nearly).

So that AE in this radius of the inner circle is 64 feet in length.

But it was by no means necessary to form a semicircle. Any canal formed in two parallel circles whose radii are 64 to 80 feet would be sufficient for the purpose. Nor would it matter how short the canal was made: a hundred feet probably represented the whole of this mighty work of Cnut, and this cutting, after breaking down the embankment and the causeway, was excavated in the soft mould of the reclaimed marsh. Where, then, are Maitland’s four miles or so?

As soon as the siege was raised and the Danes departed, the embankment was repaired; the broken causeway was filled up again; the soft earth and mud left by the short canal and the encroachments of the tide through the broken bank were speedily levelled, and all traces of the work disappeared.

This bridge was carried away by the tide in 1091. In 1097, according to the A.S. Chronicler, either the bridge had not yet been repaired, or it had again suffered. He says, “in repairing the Bridge that was nearly washed away.” The maintenance of the bridge at this time was provided for by an assessment levied on the counties of Surrey and Middlesex. It was burned down in the destructive fire of 1136. Again it was rebuilt in wood. But in the year 1176 began the building of the long-lived and illustrious bridge of stone, constructed by that great Pontifex, Peter of Colechurch. The new stone bridge was built a little to the west of the wooden bridge.

[CHAPTER V]
THE SECOND DANISH OCCUPATION

By the death of Edmund, Cnut was left without a rival. Edmund died on the 30th of November. At Christmas, Cnut summoned to London the Witan of all England to name and crown their king. He questioned witnesses as to the portions of the kingdom, if any, assigned by Edmund to his brothers. As for his infant children, they were not considered. It was found that no portions had been assigned to Edmund’s brothers. Whereupon the meeting unanimously chose Cnut as king of all England. And he was crowned in Paul’s Minster by Archbishop Living. Then the country, in the hands of the strongest king who had ever ruled it, settled down to peace for nineteen years. Never before, not even during the occupation of the Romans, was England at peace for so long. There were no tumults at home; there were no pirates on the seas. As for London, she has no history during this reign. The Chronicle only says as follows:—“A.D. 1018. In this year the tribute was delivered throughout the whole English nation: that was, altogether, two and seventy thousand pounds besides that which the townsmen of London paid, which was ten and a half thousand pounds.”

If the sum paid was at all in proportion to population, London then contained an eighth part of the whole people. Curiously, the population of London is in the same proportion to-day.

“A.D. 1023. This year King Cnut, within London, in St. Paul’s Minster, gave full leave to Archbishop Æthelnothe and Bishop Brithwine and to all the servants of God who were with them that they might take up from the tomb the Archbishop St. Elphege.” This they did, and transported the remains to Canterbury, where they still lie. This archbishop, who had been murdered by the Danes, was sainted. There is a church in the City of London dedicated to him.

The manner of the exhumation and translation, as described in the Translatio S. Elphegi by Osborne, is quoted by Wright (The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon) to illustrate the sturdy independence and the turbulence of the Londoners.

“When Archbishop Elfey had been slain by the Danes in 1012, the Londoners purchased his body of the murderers, and deposited it in St. Paul’s Cathedral. After Cnut had obtained the crown by conquest, and peace was restored, Archbishop Agelnoth (Elfey’s successor) applied to the king to give up the body of the martyr to the monks of Canterbury. Cnut, who was then holding his court in London, consented, but he would only undertake to get the body away by deceiving the citizens. He gave orders to his huscarles, or household soldiers, to disperse themselves in parties, some on the bridge and along the banks of the river, whilst others went to the gates of the city, and there raised tumults and riots. By dint of promises and persuasions, the men who had the care of the body of Elfey were prevailed upon to assist in the plot, and, whilst the attention of the citizens was called to the disturbances at the gates, the sacred deposit was carried by stealth to the river and there placed in a boat, which was rowed in all haste beyond the limits of the capital, and then landed in Kent. The king stood on the bank of the Thames, and watched its progress with anxious eye, for he was afraid of the citizens. When the latter discovered the trick which had been played upon them, they sent out a party in pursuit of the fugitives, who, however, had reached a place of safety before they were overtaken.”

“A.D. 1035. This year,” says the Chronicle, “died King Cnut.” If, as Freeman maintains, King Alfred was the most perfect character in all history, then is Cnut the wisest and the strongest character in English history. He founded a standing army with his regiment of Huscarles, or Guards; he respected old laws and customs; he recognised the right of the people to accept or refuse new laws; he defined the right of hunting, leaving every man free to hunt over his own land; he denounced the slave trade; he ordered that there was to be no trading on Sunday—surely the weekly day of rest is the greatest boon ever bestowed upon men who have to work for their living. He enjoined the discharge of church duties and the payment of church dues. All these things, however, belong to the history of England.

On the death of Cnut a Witenagemot was held at Oxford for the election of his successor. How the kingdom was partitioned between Harold and Hardacnut; how the partition was found impossible; how Harold ruled over all England; how evil was his rule and how disastrous—these things belong to English history. London, which suffered from Harold’s misrule with the rest of the kingdom, had been mainly instrumental in the election of that king. She was represented at Oxford by her “lithsmen,” i.e. her sea-going men. Were they the merchants? or were they the Danes—men of the sea—who formed a considerable part of her population? Freeman thinks they were the latter; there seems, however, no reason for adopting that view, or for supposing that in a general parliament of the kingdom the Danes of London should be called upon to send special representatives. Why were not the Danes of Leicestershire, or of Norfolk, where there were so many, also called? There is, however, a passage in the laws of Athelstan which seems to clear up this point. Athelstan conferred the rank of Thane on every merchant who made three voyages over the sea with a vessel and cargo of his own. Therefore, in calling the Witenagemot these navigators—men of the sea—who had in this manner obtained the rank of Thane were summoned by right. The “lithsmen” were not the merchants; they were not the Danes; they were simply the merchant adventurers who had traded outre mer, beyond the seas and back for three voyages, and claimed for that service the rank of Thane.

The reign of Harold is only important to us for these reasons—First, the part played by London in the election of the king. Next, the illustration of the savagery which still remained among the Danes, and was shown in their horrible treatment of the Etheling Alfred and his men. Alfred, the son of Ethelred, thought that the death of Cnut would give him a chance of succession. He therefore came over, accompanied by a small following. But “Godwin, the earl, would not allow him.” His fate is recorded in the A.S. Chronicle:—

“But Godwin him then let,

and him in bonds set;

and his companions he dispersed;

and some divers ways slew;

some they for money sold,

some cruelly slaughtered,

some they did bind,

some they did blind,

some they did mutilate,

some did they scalp;

nor was a bloodier deed

done in this land

since the Danes came,

and here accepted peace.

Now is our trust in

the beloved God,

that they are in bliss,

blithely with Christ.

The etheling still lived,

who were without guilt

so miserably slain.

Every ill they him vowed,

until it was decreed

that he should be led

to Ely-bury,

thus bound.

Soon as he came to land,

in the ship he was blinded;

and him thus blind

they brought to the monks;

and he there abode

the while that he lived.

After that him they buried,

as well was his due

full worthily,

as he worthy was,

at the west end,

the steeple well-nigh,

in the south aisle.

His soul is with Christ.”

And lastly, the fact that Harold was buried at Westminster, the first of our kings buried there. His half-brother, Hardacnut, had the body exhumed and thrown into the mud of the marsh round Thorney—“into a fen,” says the Chronicle. Thorney stood in a fen, and it is not likely that the new king would desire his savage deed—yet, was it more savage than the acts of Charles II. at the Restoration?—to be concealed. One knows not how many tides ebbed and flowed over the body of the dead king as it lay among the reeds; but presently some—perhaps the monks—taking pity on the poor remains put them into a boat, carried them down the river, and buried them in the little church of St. Clement’s, which, like Thorney, stood on the rising ground of the Strand. And there his dust lies still.

Hardacnut fell down in a fit—“as he stood at his drink”—at Kennington Palace, having crossed over from Westminster to attend a wedding feast. He was buried at Winchester with his father. But before he was well buried the people had chosen, at London, his half-brother, Edward, as king.

The Plan of BORSTAL.

KING EDWARD THE CONFESSOR’S PALACE AT BORSTAL (BRILL)
From Archæologia, vol. iii.

The reign of Edward the Confessor brought little change to London. The Danish pirates renewed their attacks, but there was now a fleet well equipped to meet them. The head-quarters of the fleet were at London, or at Westminster. It is said that when Earl Godwin made his demonstration, which threatened rebellion, he passed through the south arches of London Bridge, designing to meet and attack the royal fleet of fifty sail lying at Westminster. It is noticeable that he first assured himself of the goodwill of the City.

A statute of Edward the Confessor (forty-sixth chapter of his laws), in which he appoints the time for holding the hustings, thus speaks of London, and is quoted in the Liber Albus:—

“Therefore in London, which is the head of the realm and of the laws, and always the Court of his lordship the king, the Hustings ought to sit and be holden on the Monday in each week. For it was formerly founded after the pattern and manner, and in remembrance, of Great Troy, and to the present day contains within itself the laws and ordinances, dignities, liberties, and royal customs, of an ancient Greek Troy. In this place therefore are kept the intricate accounts, and the difficult pleas of the Crown, and the Courts of his lordship the King for all the realm aforesaid. And she alone ever doth invariably preserve her own usages and customs, wherever such King may be, whether upon an expedition or elsewhere, by reason of the tumults of the nations and peoples of the realm: in accordance with the ancient customs of our good forefathers and predecessors, and of all the princes, nobles, and wise seniors of all the realm aforesaid.”

In the year 1065 King Edward the Confessor sets forth the history of Westminster as he understood it:—

“Wherefore”—after a general introduction—“I, by the Grace of God King of the English, make it known to all generations to come of time after me, that, by instruction of Pope Leo for penitence and the remission of my sins I have renewed and improved the Basilica of Saint Peter which is situated near the walls of London, the chief city of the English, and on the west side of it, is called Westminster. It was built anciently by Mellitus, first bishop of London, companion and friend of Saint Augustus, first bishop of Canterbury, and by Saint Peter, himself performing an angelic task, and was dedicated by the impression of the Holy Cross and the smearing of the Holy Chrism: but by frequent invasions of barbarians and especially of the Danes (who in the lifetime of my father Ethelred had made an irruption into the kingdom, and after his death divided the kingdom with my brother Eadmund and captured and killed my brother Alfred miserably) was neglected and nearly destroyed.”

I do not know how long a time was necessary for the complete absorption of the Danes among the general population: but there are memories of Danish settlements around St. Clement Danes and outside Bishopsgate Street—perhaps the existence of such a settlement may account for the burial of King Harold in the church of St. Clement.

The Danes, therefore, occupied London first for a period of twelve years. We do not expect to find any remains of that brief occupation: and indeed there are none. When Cnut and his sons were kings they ruled, but did not occupy, the City for some five-and-twenty years. We might expect some remains of that period. If Cnut built the King’s House at Westminster, then the vaults and crypts which were filled with cement when the Houses of Parliament were built were probably his work, and the Painted Chamber destroyed by fire in 1835 was also his work. Otherwise there is nothing, not a stone or a fragment, which we can recognise as Danish work. One little relic alone remains. During excavations for a warehouse in the south side of St. Paul’s Churchyard there was found a Danish gravestone inscribed with Runic characters, probably of the tenth or eleventh century. It is now in the Guildhall Museum.

[CHAPTER VI]
TOWN AND PEOPLE

A SOLAR
From Turner’s Domestic Architecture.

Such is the history of London from the beginning of the seventh century to the third quarter of the eleventh century. We have next to consider—

1. The appearance of the town and the nature of the buildings.

2. The trade of the town.

3. The religious foundations.

4. The temporal government.

5. The manners and customs of the people.

I. The Appearance of the Town

BUILDING A HOUSE
Cædmon’sMetrical Paraphrase (10th cent.), Bodleian.

If there had been any persons living to remember Augusta when the army of King Alfred took possession of the place, then, indeed, they would have shed tears, while standing on the rickety wooden bridge, to behold the shrunken and mean town which had taken the place of that stately City: to consider the ruins of noble houses; to see how trees grew upon the crumbling wall; to mark how great gaps showed the site of City gates; how broad stretches of ground lay waste, where once had stood the Roman villas. After a year or two, when the wall was repaired, and people flocked again to the “mart of all nations,” the aspect of the City improved. The stones of old erections—those above ground—had been used to repair the City wall; new gates had been built and the old gates had been restored; the quay was once more covered with merchandise, and the river was again filled with shipping—among the vessels was the king’s fleet maintained to keep off the Danes. The town behind the quays was rebuilt of wood—within two hundred years it was five times either wholly, or in great part, destroyed by fire. There were no palaces or great houses; some few had the great hall for the living-room and for the sleeping-room of servants and children, with the “Solar” or the chamber of the lord and lady, the Lady’s Bower, and the kitchens (see also p. [224]).

After the time of Alfred, London rapidly advanced in prosperity and wealth. The restoration of the wall was recognised as an outward and visible sign of the security enjoyed by those who slept within it: trade increased; the wealth of the people increased; their numbers increased, because they were safe. Stone buildings began to be erected, and the outward signs of prosperity appeared. London threw out long arms within her walls. The vacant grounds, the orchards and fields and gardens began to be built over. Artificers of the meaner kind and trades of an offensive kind were banished to the north part of the town. The lower parts, especially the narrow lanes north of Thames Street, became more and more crowded. Quays under the river wall extended east and west; the foreshore was built upon; the river wall was gradually taken down, but I know not when its destruction began or was permitted. The shipping in the river was doubled and trebled in amount; some of the ships lying off the quays were too large to pass the bridge; the warehouses became more ample; Thames Street, or the street behind the wall, then the only place of meeting for the merchants, was thronged every day with the busy crowd of those who loaded and unloaded, who came to buy and to sell. The ports of the Walbrook and Billingsgate being found insufficient, that of Queen Hithe, then called Edred’s Hithe, was constructed: quays were built round it, and perhaps a new gate was formed in the river wall.

OCTOBER. HAWKING
From The Old English Calendars (11th cent.), Cotton MS.

In the year 981, Fabyan says (p. 128) that a fire destroyed a great part of the City of London.

“But ye shall understand that at this day, the City of London had most housing and buylding from Ludgate toward Westmynster, and little or none where the Chiefe or hart of the Citie is at this day, except in divers places where housing be they stood without order, so that many towns and cities, as Canterbury, Yorke, and other, divers in England passed London in building at those days, as I have seen and known by an old book in the Guildhall named Domesday.”

I quote this passage but cannot give credence to the statement, for the simple reason that London was always a place of trade, and that where her shipping and her quays and ports lay, there were her people gathered together. Probably at this time the northern parts of the City were not yet built over and occupied. But how could the City successfully hold her own against the Danes if her people lived along Fleet Street and the Strand?

A very important question arises as to the rights of the citizens over the lands lying around the City.

A BANQUET
Prudentius MS., 24199 (11th cent.).

If we consider, for instance, the county of Middlesex, we observe that it is bounded by the river Colne on the west and by the Lea on the east. The Thames is its southern march: that of the north was partly defined by the manors belonging to St. Albans Abbey in after times. The whole of the northern part, however, was covered with a vast forest which extended far on either side of Middlesex, and especially into Essex. Another forest occupied the greater part of Surrey, beginning with wastes and heaths as soon as the land rose out of the marsh.

Some kind of right over these forests, and especially over that in the north, which was especially easy of access, was necessary for the City, as much as its rights over the river. For as the river was full of fish and the marshy river-side was full of innumerable birds, so the forest was full of game—deer, boar, hares, rabbits, and every kind of creature to be hunted and trapped and to serve as food. Also the forest furnished timber for building purposes, a feeding-ground for hogs, and wood and charcoal for fuel. The City would not exist without rights over the forest.

If we ask what these rights were, we find that London certainly claimed possession of some lands. Thus in the A.S. Chronicle it is stated that in the year 912 “King Edward took possession of London and of Oxford, and all the lands which owed obedience thereto.” What were these lands? Surely they lay outside the wall.

In the laws of Athelstan, injunctions are laid down for the pursuit of thieves “beyond the March.” What was the March?

In the laws of Cnut the right of every man to hunt over his own land is recognised.

And in Henry the First’s Charter we find the clause, “And the citizens of London shall have their chaces to hunt, as well and fully as their ancestors have had: that is to say, in Chiltre, and in Middlesex, and in Surrey” (see p. [279]).

In the same Charter, which was avowedly a recognition of old rights, he gives them the county of Middlesex, with which was included the City of London, “to farm” for the annual payment of £300 a year.

From all of which it appears that the county of Middlesex had been regarded as including London, and, in a sense, a part of London, and that a large part of its lands “owed obedience” to London. In that part the citizens could hunt, just as they could fish in the river and trap birds in the river-side marshes.

II. The Trade of the Town