W. R. Lethaby

“ We may suppose that Colchester first fell, then Verulam, and that London was entered only after its complete isolation, and as the culmination of the English Conquest of South Britain, just as was the case in the Norman Conquest exactly five hundred years later. All Celtic tradition looks back to London as the British capital. Dr. Rhys quotes a story from the Welsh Laws to the effect that “the nation of the Kymry, after losing the crown and sceptre of London and being driven out of England, assembled to decide who should be chief king.” ”

“ The British legend of the foundation of London has left one tangible legacy to us even to this day in the Guildhall giants, Gog and Magog, who represent the Gogmagog of Geoffrey, [Pg 20] a giant of the primitive people overcome by the Britons—the Magog of the Bible, who stands for the Scythian race. Thus the Guildhall Magog really represents the Ivernian race in Britain. ”

“ Churches.—So many churches can now be traced back to the twelfth century that there cannot be a doubt that FitzStephen was accurate in saying that at that time there were in London and the suburbs thirteen larger conventual churches, besides lesser parish churches one hundred and twenty-six. In other words, practically all the parish churches in London and its liberties had been founded by the end of the twelfth century; and there is every reason for supposing that many, if not most, of these churches were even then ancient. ”

“ A line from the bridge to the north gate must always have formed a great main street, and standing at the bottom of Bridge Street (Fish Street Hill) we may still gain some idea of what the entrance to the city by the Roman bridge was like. Mr. Price says of Gracechurch Street: “Recent investigations have shown ... that no structural remains of the Roman period can have occurred throughout its course; on either side of the street, debris of buildings with fragments of tessellated pavements have been seen, but nothing has existed along the actual line of road.” ”

“ Much in recent years has been written as to a still earlier London than that included within the circuit of Roman walls which held what is now known as the City. It is at once evident that the early city must have had a nucleus and a greater density in one part than in [Pg 199] others; and every evidence goes to show that this earliest centre was situated on the east side of the Walbrook at the head of London Bridge. We have the facts of the position of the Bridge itself, and the suitability of the site ”

“ The Kings Peace.—When Alfred took over London it must have been in the main a decayed Roman city. In giving the great burh into the hands of the Mercian Ealdorman, Ethered, he was but restoring its capital to Mercia, but he must also, and mainly, have had in view the need for providing means of defence to the frontier fortress of the March country. Even so, alongside of a supreme military rule a more domestic organisation of a customary nature must have been carried on or reintroduced. It is probable that this, following the shire model, was constituted with hundreds or wards ”

“ It even seems possible that the wards may at first have been formed by symmetrical numerical units such as, say, a hundred freemen; or the space within the walls may have been divided up into twenty or twenty-four parts in such a way as to allow for density of population. Excavations in the city have shown that the population clustered most thickly along the river and in the great streets, and the wards are much more congested and regular in the central part by the bridge than nearer the walls: the old churches also seem to gravitate towards the same nucleus. ”

“ It is likely enough that a great city like London would have had a citadel, and Tower Hill, situated at the angle of the wall by the [Pg 104] river, seems itself to proclaim that from Roman days it has been a site of military importance. It has been doubted whether Roman buildings actually occupied the site, but some excavations in 1898-99 laid bare some remnants about three yards away from the south-west angle of the keep, together with a portion of a hypocaust. ”

“ Geoffrey again tells us that Belinus constructed the great Roman roads in Britain, and we cannot be asked to suppose that the Roman roads were said to be the work of Belinus because the same Saxon Mr. Billings kept a posting-house. [17] The weight of evidence seems to allow [Pg 16] of the view that there really were some remarkable Roman structures at the Tower and Billingsgate which tradition pointed to as the work of the Celtic culture-god Belinus, or of a king who bore his name. Some remnants of a building seem to have had the myth attached to them in the Middle Ages. ”

“ INTRODUCTION A great burh, Lundunaborg, which is the greatest and most famous of all burhs in the northern lands.—Ragnar Lodbrok Saga.
Of the hundreds of books concerning London, there is not one which treats of its ancient topography as a whole. There are, it is true, a great number of studies dealing in an accurate way with details, and most of the general histories incidentally touch on questions of reconstruction. ”

“ The Legend of London.—Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history of the Britons, written about 1130, contains a legend of the founding of London, which tells how Brutus, migrating from Troy to this western island, formed the design [Pg 12] of building a city. On coming to the Thames he found on its bank a site most suitable for his purpose, and building the city there, he called it New Troy—Troiam Novam, “a name afterwards corrupted into Trinovantum.” Here King Belinus afterwards built a prodigious tower and a haven for ships under it, which the citizens call after his name—Billingsgate—to this day. ”

“ For instance, the extra-mural roads were directed to the several gates, the gates governed the internal streets, while these streets ran through wards, and gave access to churches and other buildings.
The subject of London topography is such an enormous one, and the involutions of unfounded conjecture are so manifold, that an approximation to the facts can only be obtained by a critical resifting of the vast extant stores of evidence. ”

“ The Sea God, Lud, and the brazen horse give me more pleasure than the railway bridge at Ludgate. Cæsar’s sword at Bishopsgate and the head of Bran buried on Tower Hill are real city assets. London is rich in romantic lore. In her cathedral Arthur was crowned and drew the sword from the stone. Here Iseult attended the council called by King Mark. From the quay Ursula and her virgins embarked; Launcelot swam his horse over the river at Westminster, and from it Guinevere went a-maying. ”

“ It is often assumed that British London fell violently, and that the old institutions were obliterated, but a comparison of evidence gathered from the British legends with the Saxon Chronicle suggests that it is just possible that the English may have entered the city on terms, as at Exeter, where Briton and Saxon long dwelt side by side.
Of the time after the English invasion Bishop Stubbs writes: “There were still Roman roads leading to the walls and towers of empty cities; camps, villas, churches were become, before the days of Bede, mere haunted ruins. ”

“ We first hear of the Abbey, independently of its own documents, towards the end of the tenth century, when in 997 Elfwic signs a charter as abbot of Westminster. [119] It is probable that Cnut was the first to choose Westminster for a royal residence, and Harold I. was buried here. All these facts go to show that the Strand in Cnut’s day had become the Danish quarter. And London itself had become so Danish that Malmesbury says Harold I. was elected by the Danes and the citizens of London, who from long intercourse with these barbarians had almost entirely adopted their customs. ”

“ Strand was not a route before mediæval days; that there was a Roman citadel on the high ground from the Walbrook to Mincing Lane, and that the Langbourne was a ditch to this stronghold. In the last book on the subject, called Mediæval London, we are again told of the oblique Roman Watling Street; Cheap is described as “a great square”; and it is assumed that not only the Langbourne, but the equally mythical Oldbourne, supplied the city with water. ”

“ Bronze has always been too valuable a material for the head to have been wilfully cast away. Moreover, we have evidences of two bridges by the Roman Wall which were the work of Hadrian. That at Newcastle, called after him, Pons Ælii, had a history curiously parallel with London Bridge, for it gave way to a mediæval bridge in 1248, which was destroyed in the flood of 1771. During the rebuilding parts of the Roman structure were found. Near Hexham, where the line of the wall crosses the North Tyne, there are still vestiges of a bridge which seems to have lasted down to 1771 ”

“ The wards in London most probably represented the groups of citizens belonging to several gilds; they may indeed be identical with the Peace gilds of Athelstane’s enactment, according to which the population were to be enrolled by tens and hundreds in associations for the preservation of peace and the suppression of theft. [146] In accordance with this idea of accounting for every man, we find that even in the thirteenth century no one was to stay in the city for more than two nights “unless he finds two sureties and so puts himself in frankpledge.” ”

“ Why was the brazen horse put there? “For a terror to the Saxons” (so in Geoffrey) . Who put it there? “King Lud himself, or Cadwaladr, the last British king.” When did it disappear? “When the Saxons entered the city”—as in the Prophecy of Merlin, “The brazen man upon a brazen horse shall for long guard the [Pg 19] gates of London.... After that shall the German Worm (dragon) be crowned and the Brazen Prince be buried.” It was supposed to have been the palladium of Caer Lud, “and the sygte ther of the Saxons aferde.” [19]
For me the old British Solar God lights up the squalor of Billingsgate. ”

“ A story in the Heimskringla shows how London was early celebrated for its number of churches and London Bridge for its crowds. [191] A French cripple dreamt that an angel appeared to him and said, “Fare thou to Olaf’s church, the one that is in London.” Thereafter he awoke and fared to seek Olaf’s church, and at last he came to London Bridge and there asked the folk of the city to tell him where was Olaf’s church. ”

“ The best reasons that can be given for the position of the Watling Street are that it was first formed before London became of much importance, that it avoided the great Essex forest, and passed over the Thames at a point convenient for a ferry on its way to and from Dover. ”

“ Loftie’s last word, given in the Memorial volume of 1899, the London recovered by Alfred was a ruined wall enclosing nothing. The bridge stood much farther down stream than now. To protect it the king built a tower at the south-east corner of the walls. The Roman streets did not exist or were useless. He (why he?) made a road diagonally from the bridge to Westgate. The old Bishopsgate was to the east of the present one, and opened on the road to Essex, etc. ”

“ The East Saxon kingdom, Malmesbury says, comprised the modern [Pg 123] Essex, Middlesex, and half Hertfordshire. The Saxon Chronicle under 912 says: “This year died Æthered, and King Edward [Alfred’s son] took possession of London and Oxford and of all the lands which owed obedience thereto.” [135] A charter professedly dated as early as 704 names Twickenham in the province of Middlesex, but nothing is known to history of a Middle Saxon kingdom or people. Bede says London was a city of the East Saxons, and the London bishopric is coextensive with the East Saxon kingdom, including Middlesex. ”

“ York, the capital of the North; and some others, have a continuous political existence, although they wisely do not claim an unbroken succession from the Roman municipality.” Freeman held a similar view: “London is one of the ties ... with Celtic and Roman Britain.” Mr. Coote believed that Roman institutions survived all changes, and Thomas Wright says: “We have [Pg 26] no reason for believing that this city, which was a powerful commercial port, was taken and ravaged by the Saxon invaders; a rich trading town, it appears to have experienced no check to its prosperity.” ”

“ Mr. Round seems not to have known that his suppositions were all taken for granted by Stow, who calls the Portreeve of the Conqueror’s charter Godfrey, and then writes, “In the reign of the said Conqueror, Godfrey de Magnaville was Portgrave (or Sheriff) ; ... these Portgraves (after the Conquest) are also called Vicecounties or Sheriffs.” Mr. Round shows that the Sheriff, and by inference the Portreeve, represented London and Middlesex taken together. “The city of London was never severed from the rest of the shire. As far back as we can trace them [Pg 192] they are one and indivisible.” ”

“ Peter’s-upon-Cornhill claims to be the oldest church in London, and to have been the stool or a Romano-British archbishop. The pretension seems to have been recognised by St. Paul’s in the Middle Ages, and Bishop Stubbs was inclined to accept the archbishopric as having existed in London. As the interval in Church continuity cannot have been long, it is most likely that Mellitus reconsecrated some Roman temples or some of the old churches, as Augustine is known to have done at Canterbury. ”

“ Ebbegate, which is mentioned in twelfth-century documents, is, Riley says, the same as Swan Wharf. [101]
There must, even in Alfred’s time, have been some sort of customs house, for there were quay dues, and a charter of 857 speaks of the place in London where the weighing and measuring of the port was done. [102]
We thus have a picture of a busy river front, the shore, backed by the city walls and gates, indented with a series of docks crowded with shipping. Says FitzStephen, “To this city from every nation under heaven merchants delight to bring their trade by sea. ”

“ Alfred’s London.—In endeavouring to trace the topographical vestiges of London, as far as any sufficiently clear indications will allow, it will be found that we can easily carry back a great number of wards, streets, and churches to the century which followed the Conquest. More patient research allows of pushing still further a large number of “origins” to a time anterior to the Conquest, but subsequent to the Roman evacuation of the city. ”

“ On its course are villas, like one just discovered in Greenwich Park. The road dips towards the river, and passes over the drained and banked marshes to the Surrey suburb. There is a gate-tower at the end of the Bridge, then comes the long and narrow passage over the strong, swift river to the grey walls of Londinium. Along the river-front are several wharves formed of timbering, to the left is the creek of the little river which ran under the west walls, and, still further west, some water-side villas. [215] Entering the city the street ascends steeply towards the north gate ”

“ Maitland and by Mr. Gomme that “the tilled lands of the city” is no mere rhetorical phrase, [131] but it referred to “the arable fields of the town of London.” In the Saxon Chronicle we gain a sight of the citizens reaping their lands: “Then that same year [895] the Danish men who sat down in Mersey [island] towed their ships up the Thames, and thence up the Lea. This year [896] the aforesaid host wrought themselves a stronghold on the Lea, twenty miles above London. And in summer a great body of the townsmen, and other folk beside, went forth even unto this stronghold. ”

“ The first Mayor.—The institution of the mayoralty is put in the year 1188 by the Chronicle of the Mayors and Sheriffs. In Hearne’s list, under 1208, is entered Henry son of Alwin son of Leofstan, first of the mayors of London, who were chosen St. Edward’s day (13th October) .
Stow agrees with the chronicle, and puts the institution of the mayoralty in the first year of Richard I.; but under 1208 we find an echo of the version as printed by Hearne, for Stow makes King John, in this year, grant the citizens a patent [Pg 195] “to chuse to themselves a mayor.” ”