Part 2

A.D. 457.--This year Hengist and Æsc, his son, fought against the Britons at a place called Crecganford, and then slew 4000 men. And the Britons then forsook Kent, and in great terror fled to London.

A.D. 465.--This year Hengist and Æsc fought against the Welsh near Wippidsfleet (Ebbsfleet), and there slew twelve Welsh ealdormen, and one of their own Thanes was slain there whose name was Wippid.

A.D. 473.--This year Hengist and Æsc fought against the Welsh, and took spoils innumerable; and the Welsh fled from the Angles like fire.

A.D. 477.--This year Ælla and his three sons came to the land of Britain with their ships at a place called Cymensrova, and there slew many Welsh, and some they drove in flight into the wood that is named Andredes-lea. (Probably the landing was on the coast of Sussex.)

A.D. 485.--This year Ælla fought against the Welsh near the Bank of Mearcriediburn.

A.D. 491.--This year Ælla and Cissa besieged Andredacester (Pevensey), and slew all that dwelt therein, so that not a single Briton was left.

A.D. 495.--This year two ealdormen came to Britain, Cerdic, and Cynric his son, with five ships, at the place which is called Cerdicsore (probably Calshot Castle on Southampton water), and Stuf and Whitgen fought against the Britons and put them to flight.

A.D. 519.--This year Cerdic and Cynric obtained the kingdom of the West Saxons; and the same year they fought against the Britons where it is now named Cerdisford (Charford on the Avon near Fordingbridge).

A.D. 527.--This year Cerdic and Cynric fought against the Britons at the place called Ardicslea.

A.D. 530.--This year Cerdic and Cynric conquered the Island of Wight, and slew many men at Whit-garan-byrg (Carisbrooke, Isle of Wight).

A.D. 547.--This year Ida began to reign, from whom came the royal race of Northumberland.

The conquest of England was now virtually completed. There was fighting at Old Sarum in 552; at Banbury in 556; at Bedford, at Aylesbury, and at Benson, in the year 571. One would judge this to be a last sortie made by the Welsh who had been driven into the fens. In the year 577 three important places in the west are taken--Gloucester, Bath, and Cirencester. In 584 there was fighting at Fethan-lea (Frethern), when the victor took many towns and spoils innumerable; "and wrathful he thence returned to his own." As late as 596 we hear that the king of the West Saxons fought, and contended incessantly against either the Angles (his own cousins), or the Welsh, or the Picts, or the Scots; and in 607 was fought the great battle of Chester, in which "numberless" Welsh were slain, including two hundred priests who had come to pray for victory.

[Illustration: BRONZE FIBULÆ AND OTHER ORNAMENTS: FOUND IN LONDON]

It is therefore evident that the conquest of the country took a long time to effect--not less, indeed, than two hundred years. First, Kent, with Surrey, fell; next, Sussex; both before the end of the fifth century. Early in the sixth century the West Saxons conquered the country covered by Hampshire, a part of Surrey, and Dorsetshire; next, Essex fell, and there was stubborn fighting for many years in the country about and beyond the great Middlesex forest. The conquest of the North concerns us little, save that it drew off some of those who were fighting in what afterwards became the Kingdom of Mercia. I desire to note here only the surroundings of London, and to mark how, by successive steps of the invaders' march, it was gradually cut off, bit by bit, from the surrounding country. Thus, when Kent was overrun, the bridge gate was closed, the roads south, south-west, and south-east were blocked, and the whole of that country cut off from London; at the fall of Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk, the eastern gate was closed, and that great district was cut off. When Wessex was an established kingdom, the river highway was closed; there then remained only the western gate, and that, during the whole of the sixth century, led out into a country perpetually desolated and destroyed by war, so that, by the middle of the sixth century, no more communication whatever was possible between London and the rest of the country, unless the people made a sortie and cut their way through the enemy.

Observe, however, that no mention whatever is made of London in the _Chronicle_. Other and less important towns are mentioned. Anderida or Pevensey, Aquæ Solis or Bath, Gloucester, Chester, and many others; but of London there is no mention. Consider: London, though not much greater than other cities in the country--York, Verulam, Lincoln, Colchester, for instance--was undoubtedly the chief port of the country. We must not bring modern ideas to bear when we read of the vast trade, the immense concourse of merchants, and so forth. We need not picture miles of docks and countless masts. Roman London was not modern Liverpool. Its bulk of trade was perfectly insignificant compared with that of the present. When we begin to consider the mediæval trade of London this will become apparent. Still, it was, up to the coming of the Saxons, a vigorous and flourishing place, and the chief port of the country. Why, therefore, does the _Chronicle_ absolutely pass over so great an event as the taking of London?

Such is the evidence of history. Let us consider next the evidence of topography. We shall understand what happened in London when we understand the exceptional position of London and the dangers to which the city in time of civil war was necessarily exposed.

We will go back to the beginning of all things--to the lie of the land on which London was planted. The reader, if he will consult that very admirable book, Loftie's _History of London_, will find in it a most instructive map. It shows the _terrain_ before the city was built at all. The river Thames, between Mortlake on the west and Blackwall on the east, pursued a serpentine way, in the midst of marshes stretching north and south. There were marshes all the way. At spring tides, and at all tides a little above the common, these marshes were under water; they were always swampy and covered with ponds; half a dozen tributary brooks flowed into them and were lost in them. They varied greatly in breadth, being generally much broader on the south side than on the north. On this side the higher land rose up abruptly in a cliff or steep hill from twenty to five-and-thirty feet in height. The cliff, as we follow it from the east, approached the river, touched it at one point, and then receded again as it went westward. This point, where the cliff overhung the river, was the only possible place where the city could have been founded.

I call it a point, but it consisted of two hillocks, both about thirty-five feet high, standing on either side the little stream of Walbrook, where it flows into the Thames. On one of these hills, probably that on the west, was a small fortress of the Britons, constructed after the well-known fashion of hill forts, numberless examples of which remain scattered about the country. On the other hillock the Roman city, later on, was first commenced.

[Illustration: ROMAN PAVEMENT: LEADENHALL STREET]

Here, at the beginning of the city, was instituted very early a ferry over the river. On the eastern hill the Romans built their forum and basilica, with the offices and official houses and quarters. When foreign trade began to increase, the merchants were obliged to spread themselves along the bank. They built quays and river-walls to keep out the water, and the city extended laterally to east and west, just as far as was convenient for the purposes of trade--that is, not farther than Fleet River on the west, and the present site of the Tower on the east. It then began to spread northward, but very slowly, because a mile of river front can accommodate a great working population with a very narrow backing of houses. When the city wall was built, somewhere about the year 360, the town had already run out in villas and gardens as far north as that wall. Outside the wall there was nothing at all, unless one may count a few scattered villas on the south side of the river. There was as yet no Westminster, but in its place a broad and marshy heath spread over the whole area now covered by the City of Westminster, Millbank, St. James's Park, Chelsea, and as far west as Fulham. Beyond the wall on the north lay dreary, uncultivated plains, covered with fens and swamps, stretching from the walls to the lower slopes of the northern hills, and to the foot of an immense forest, as yet wholly untouched, afterwards called the Middlesex Forest. Fragments of this forest yet remain at Hampstead, Highgate, Epping, and Hainault. All through this period, therefore, and for long after, the City of London had a broad marsh lying on the south, another on the west, a third on the east, while on the north there stretched a barren, swampy moorland, followed by an immense impenetrable forest. Later on a portion of the land lying on the north-west, where is now Holborn, was cleared and cultivated. But this was later, when the Roman roads which led out of London ran high and broad over the marshes and the moors and through the forest primeval. The point to be remembered as connected with the marshes is this: Around most great towns there is found a broad belt of cultivated ground protected by the wall and the garrison. Here the people grow for their own use their grain and their fruit, and pasture their beasts and their swine. London, alone among great cities, never had any such home farm until the marsh was reclaimed. The cattle, which were driven daily along the roads into the city, grazed on pastures in Essex farms, beyond the forest and the River Lea. The corn which filled her markets came down the river in barges from the inland country. All the supplies necessary for the daily food of the city were brought in from the country round. Should these supplies be cut off, London would be starved.

[Illustration: BRONZE BUST OF THE EMPEROR HADRIAN: FOUND IN THE THAMES (_British Museum_)]

These supplies were very large indeed. As said above, we may set aside as extravagant the talk of a vast and multitudinous throng of people, as if the place was already a kind of Liverpool. Augusta never, certainly, approached the importance of Massilia, of Bordeaux, of Antioch, of Ephesus. Nor was Augusta greater than other English towns. The walls of York enclose as large an area as those of Roman London. The wall of Uriconium encloses an area nearly equal to that of Roman London. The area of Calleva (Silchester), a country town of no great importance, is nearly half as great as that of Roman London. But it was a large and populous city. How populous we cannot even approximately guess. Considering the extent of the wall, if that affords any help, we find, counting the river front, that the wall was two miles and three-quarters in length. This is a great length to defend. It is, however, certain that the town when walled must have contained a population strong enough to defend their wall. The Romans knew how to build in accordance with their wants and their resources. If the wall was built three miles long, there were certainly defenders in proportion. Now, could so great a length be intrusted to a force less than 20,000? The defenders of the walls of Jerusalem, which, after the taking of the third wall, were very much less than two miles in extent, demanded at least 25,000 men, as Titus very well knew. Now, if every able-bodied man in London under the age of five-and-fifty were called out to fight, the population, on the assumption of 20,000 suitable men, would be about 70,000. If, on the other hand, the London citizens after the departure of the Romans could man their walls with only 10,000 men, they would have a population of about 35,000. Now, the daily needs of a population of only 35,000 are very considerable. We have, it is true, to supply food for 5,000,000, but the brain is incapable of comprehending figures and estimates of such vastness. One can better understand those which have to do with a population of 30,000 or 40,000. So much bread, so much meat, so much wine, beer, and fruit. Where did all these things come from? Nothing, as I have said, from the immediate neighborhood; chiefly from Surrey and from Kent; a great deal from Essex; and the rest from the west country by means of the river.

London, therefore, with a population of not less than 35,000, and perhaps upwards of 70,000, stood in the midst of marshes--marshes everywhere--marshes all around except in the north; and there impenetrable forest. It depended wholly for its supplies, for its daily bread, for its existence, upon the country around.

In order to buy these supplies it depended upon its trade of import and export. It was the only port in the kingdom; it received the hides, the iron, and the slaves from inland and embarked them in the foreign keels; it received from abroad the silks, the spices, the wines, the ecclesiastical vestments, and all the articles of foreign luxury, and sent them about the country.

But this important place changed hands, somehow, without so much as a mention from the contemporary records; and while places like Bath, Gloucester, Cirencester, are recorded as being besieged and taken, no word is said of London, a place of far greater importance.

It has been suggested that the siege of London was not followed by a massacre as at Anderida, and that there was no great battle as at Chester; but that the place was quietly surrendered and the lives of the people spared. This is a thing absolutely impossible during these two centuries. The English invader did not make war in such a manner. If he attacked a town and took it by assault he killed everybody who did not run away. That was his method: that was how he understood war. If he pushed out his invading arms he killed the occupants of the land, unless, which sometimes happened, they killed him, or, as more often happened, they ran away. But of making terms, sparing lives, suffering people to remain in peaceful occupation of their houses we hear nothing, because such a thing never happened until the close of the war, when victory was certain to one side and resistance was impossible to the other. Mercy was not as yet in the nature of Angle, Jute, or Saxon.

Suppose, however, that it did happen. Suppose that after that great rout of Craysford the victorious army had pushed forward and taken the city, or had accepted surrender in this peaceful nineteenth-century fashion, so entirely opposite to their received and customary method, what would have happened next?

Well, there would have been continuity of occupation. Most certainly and without doubt this continuity of occupation would have been proved by many signs, tokens, and survivals. For instance, the streets. The old streets would have remained in their former positions. Had they been burned down they would have been rebuilt as before. Nothing is more conservative and more slow to change than an old street. Where it is first laid out there it remains. The old lanes which formerly ran between gardens and at the back of houses, are still the narrow streets of the City. In their names the history of their origin remains. In Garlickhithe, Fyfoot Lane, Suffolk Lane, Tower Royal, Size Lane, Old Jewry, the Minories, and in a hundred other names, we have the identical mediæval streets, with the identical names given to them from their position and their association. And this though fire after fire has burned them down, and since one fire at least destroyed most of them at a single effort. A Roman town was divided, like a modern American town, into square blocks--_insulæ_ (islands) they were called. Where are the _insulæ_ of London? There is not in the whole of London a single trace of the Roman street, if we except that little bit still called after the name given by the Saxons to a Roman road.

[Illustration: A BIT OF ROMAN WALL

(_From a photograph by W. H. Grove, 174 Brompton Road_)]

Again, continuity of occupation is illustrated by tradition. It is impossible for the traditions of the past to die out if the people continue. Nay, if the conqueror makes slaves of the former lords, and if they remain in their servitude for many generations, yet the traditions will not die. There are traditions of these ancient times among the Welsh, but among the Londoners there are none. The Romans--the Roman power--the ferocity of Boadicea, the victorious march of Theodosius, the conversion of the country, the now forgotten saints and martyrs of London--these would have been remembered had there been continuity of occupation. But not a single trace remains.

Or, again, continuity of tenure is proved by the survival of customs. What Roman customs were ever observed in London? There is not a trace of any. Consider, however, the customs which still linger among the Tuscan, the Calabrian, and the Sicilian peasants. They are of ancient origin; they belong to the Roman time and earlier. But in London there has never been a custom or an observance in the least degree traceable to the Roman period.

Lastly, continuity of tenure is illustrated by the names of the people. Now, a careful analysis of the names found in the records of the fourteenth century has been made by Riley in his _Memorials of London_. We need not consider the surnames, which are all derived from occupation, or place of birth, or some physical peculiarity. The Christian names are for the most part of Norman origin; some are Saxon; none are Roman or British.

It has been advanced by some that the municipal government of the town is of Roman origin. If that were so, it would be through the interference of the Church. But it is not so. I believe that all who have considered the subject have now acknowledged that the municipal institutions of London have grown out of the customs of the English conquerors.

To sum up, because this is very important. When in the seventh century we find the Saxons in the possession of the city there is no mention made of any siege, attack, capture, or surrender. When, a little later, we are able to read contemporary history, we find not a single custom or law due to the survival of British customs. We find the courses of the old streets entirely changed, the very memory of the streets swept away; not a single site left of any ancient building. Everything is clean gone. Not a voice, not a legend, not a story, not a superstition remains of the stately Augusta. It is entirely vanished, leaving nothing behind but a wall.

Loftie's opinion is thus summed up (_London_, vol. i., p. 54):

Roman evidences, rather negative, it is true, than positive to show that the East Saxons found London desolate, with broken walls, and a scanty population if any; that they entered on possession with no great feeling of exultation, after no great military feat deserving mention in these Chronicles; and that they retained it only just so long as the more powerful neighboring kings allowed them. This view is the only one which occurs to me to account for the few facts we have.

And that great antiquary Guest thinks that good reasons may be given for the belief that London for a while lay desolate and uninhabited.

The evidence seems to me positive rather than negative, and, in fact, conclusive. London, I am convinced, _must_--not _may_, but _must_--have remained for a time desolate and empty.

[Illustration: LAMPS AND LAMP-STAND]

The evidence is before us, to me clear and unanswerable; it is furnished by the Chronicle of Conquest, coupled with the question of supplies. The city could receive supplies from six approaches. One of these, called afterwards Watling Street, connected the city with the north and the west. It entered the walls at what became, later, Newgate. The second and third entered near the present Bishopsgate. One of these, Ermyn Street, led to the north-east, to Norfolk and Suffolk, the great peninsula, with fens on one side and the ocean on two other sides; the other, the Vicinal way, brought provisions and merchandise from Essex, then and long afterwards thought to be the garden of England. The bridge connected the city with the south, while the river itself was the highway between London and the fertile counties on either side the broad valley of the Thames. By these six ways there were brought into the city every day a continual supply of all the necessaries of life and all its luxuries. Along the roads plodded the pack-horses and the heavy, grinding carts; the oxen and the sheep and the pigs were driven to the market; barges floated down the stream laden with flour, and with butter, cheese, poultry, honey, bacon, beans, and lentils; and up the river there sailed with every flood the ships coming to exchange their butts of wine, their bales of silk, their boxes of spice, for iron, skins, and slaves.

In this way London was fed and its people kept alive. In this way London has always been fed. The moorland and swamps all around continued far down in her history. Almost in the memory of man there were standing pools at Bankside, Lambeth, and Rotherhithe. It is not two hundred years since Moorfields were drained. Wild-fowl were shot on the low-lying lands of Westminster within the present century. The supplies came from without. They were continuous. It is impossible to keep in store more provisions--and those only of the most elementary kind--than will last for a short period. There may have been a city granary, but if the supplies were cut off, how long would its contents continue to feed a population, say, of thirty-five thousand?

Four points, in short, must be clearly understood:

(1) London was a port with a great trade, export and import. To carry on this trade she employed a very large number of men--slaves or free men.

(2) If she lost her trade her merchants were ruined, and her people lost their work and their livelihood.

(3) The lands immediately round London--beneath her walls--produced nothing. She was therefore wholly dependent on supplies from without.

(4) If these supplies failed, she was starved.

Now you have seen the testimony of history. The port of London closed by the ships of the Kentish and the Essex shores; communications with the country gradually cut off; first, with the south; next, with the east; then, by the river; lastly, by the one gate which still stood open, but led only into a country ravaged by continual war, and overrun by an enemy who still pushed the Britons farther west. There was no longer any trade; that, indeed, began to languish in the middle of the fifth century; there were no longer either exports or imports. When there were no longer any supplies, what happened? What must have happened?