ylAKING OF LONDON SIR LAURENCE GOMME ARENDON PRESS THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES MAKING OF LONDON BY SIR LAURENCE GOMME, F.S.A. AUTHOR OF 'PRINCIPLES OF LOCAL <:< ivi KN Ml.M ' 'THE GOVERNANCE OF LONDON,' ETC. OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1912 HENRY F1I0WDK. M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YOKK TORONTO AND MELBOURNE VD PREFACE This book does not attempt to present an argumenl for the particular view of the history of London which it conveys. It merely states the case for that view. A statement is necessary because until it is clear what can be said to arise from the complicated network of record, archaeology, tradition, and contemporary history, nothing can be done to test the conclusions and com- [tare them with what other historians have written. London possesses greater wealth not only in tra- ditions and records, but also in archaeological dis- coveries, than any other city in Great Britain. This fact alone pronounces for its greatness. Its greatness tells for a unique position among local institutions, and it is this position which demands investigation from every side. The value, of tradition and custom as elements of history is persistently ignored when the institutions or early conditions of our own country are concerned. They are admitted as valuable aids in the understanding of the history of ancient Home or ancient Athens, of any of the Italic or Greek cities or centres of civiliza- tion. I claim the same value for them in the history of London. They exist, and their existence means something. My interpretation of their meaning is guided by historical or archaeological facts, and I claim that this interpretation should have a hearing. I have not attempted a popular history, but have aimed at giving a fairly complete survey of the total WJu.IC 4 PREFACE facts which lead up to the full history. In a sense I attempted to give a full history in m}' larger work, The Governance of London, published in 1908. But the subject grows upon one, and I hope to extend the evidence collected in that work and bring out in a second edition the extensions and corrections which are needed. In the meantime it is well to supply the student with a succinct account of the general line of argument to which I am working forward, for it will help him to realize the new point of view, and perhaps to win him from the great influence which the distinguished name of E. A. Freeman has exercised in the opposite direction. There is a further purpose which I hope this book will serve, and that is the stimulus it may give to the study of local history, not only by those who are still at work in their schools, but by those who take an intelligent interest in the great city of which they are citizens. London loses much b} T its magnitude. It is all to the good when researches into its history bring- out the continuous historical association of greater London with the smaller London, and of all the Londons with the historic city which they surround. One is apt to lose sight of this. But there is no fact more clearly to be adduced from the history of London, there is no fact of greater significance ; and the extra- ordinary circumstance which thus brings together history and modern conditions should never be lost sight of. Every Londoner should know that the city was an independent institutional unit while the area outside its walls was being settled by the early English conquerors of the country, that it remained with much of its independence untouched during Anglo-Saxon N.'KI-W'K 5 times, that it fought constitutionally for that indepen- dence during the greal period of Plautagenct rule, and that at last, under Tudor rule and all t he after influences of Tudor rule, if took its place among English cities and did its full share of national duty during all the great crises which have befallen the country. All this it is necessary to know in order to be inspired by the greatness and the necessities of modern London. Statesman, citizen, and school-child all need to know the story of the making of London, and so far as this book conduces to this end it will have served its purpose. I have to a limited extent used passages in former writings of my own. but these are not numerous and they are only adopted where it has been necessary to travel over precisely the same ground as I have before attempted. I am greatly indebted to Mr. Emery Walker, who has spared no pains in procuring illus- trations for the book ; most of them are from his photographs. LAURENCE GOMME. The Mound, Long Crendon, Bucks. December, 1911. ■ CONTENTS CHAPTER I. The Evolution of the Site II. Earliest Relics of Man in London II T. Of the People who began the making of London- ...... IV. What London was to the Celtic Britons V. The Romans in London . VI. Roman London ..... VII. What Roman London left to later London ...... VIII. The Saxons in London IX. What London was to the Saxons. X. Tin: London to which the Normans came XI. What London was to the Normans XII. The Grip of the Normans XIII. Norman London .... XIV. The First Great Londoners . XV. The Grip of the Plantagenets XVI. Plantagenet London XVII. The Great Londoners of Plantagenet Times ...... XVIII. London as the National Chy XIX. Tudor and Sham London Changes XX. London as the Empire City . PAGE 9 24 42 46 51 66 77 96 114 126 130 134 141 148 155 165 182 193 210 L>:!7 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE The Houses of Parliament 6 Prehistoric Animal Remains ..... 11,13 Barrows ......... 15 The Fleet River 19 Flint Implements ....... 25,27 Bronze Age Weapons 29, 35, 37 Bronze Age Pottery 31 Bronze Shield 39 London Stone, Cannon Street 57 Julius Caesar ........ 61 Boudicca (Boadicea) 63 Roman Wall, Old Bailey . 67, 69 Roman Bath, Ivy Lane 71 Roman Pavement ....... 83 Roman Statuary 85 Roman Fibulae ........ 87 Horseshoes rendered to the King's Remembrancer . 101 The King's Stone, Kingston-on-Thames 111 Map of the Lordship of Eburie, 1675 123 Norman Architecture 135 The Tower of London 137 Westminster Abbey ....... 139 Nave of St. Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield 143 St. John's Chapel, Tower of London .... 145 St. Paul's Cathedral 166 Old St. Paul's 167 St. Ethel reda's Chapel 168 Eltham Palace ........ 170 Staple Inn, Ilolborn ....... 171 St. Luke's Church, Chelsea 172 Chinch of All Hallows, Barking 174 Crosby Hall ......... 175 Austin Friars 1 Church ... ... 176 Christ's Hospital ....... 178 Door of Old Mansion, Crawl bane 179 I'rincv Henry's Room, 17 Fleet Street . . . . 181 Yisscher's London ........ 204 Almshouses. Kingslaml Road ...... 249 CHAPTER I THE EVOLUTION OF THE SITE The river Thames lias made London. It was along its waters that the first people who settled on the spot which was to be known as London floated to their destiny ; or it was along its banks that they crept slowly and painfully. It was under the shelter of one of its tributaries, the Fleet, that new-comers, who were probably Celts, settled and built their earliest dwellings, and then finally their stockaded stronghold. It was the great river which made the Lundinium of the Romans. It was the protection afforded by the river which awakened the Anglo-Saxons to the importance of London, and made it onward from Alfred's time the political centre. It was the Thames which saved London from being conquered by the Norman, and which allowed the Norman coming to it friendliwise to develop its strength so greatly. All through the ages it is the river which is the central part of London's life, and when James the First threatened to remove the capital from London the unanswerable reply of the Lord Mayor, ' But your Majesty cannot remove the Thames,' strikes the key-note for all periods. This great river is part of continental geology. The depression of the Thames valle}' represents and is physically a continuation of that which extends from 10 THE EVOLUTION OF THE SITE Valenciennes, by Douai, Betlmne, Therouanne, and thence to Calais. Britain in the earliest days of its occupation by man was physically part of the conti- nent, and some six hundred feet above its present level, the present coastal seas being then a great tract of low, undulating land, while the rivers of our eastern coast, the Thames, Medway, Humber, and Tyne, joined the Rhine, the"Weser, and the Elbe to form a river flowing- through the valley of the German Ocean. 1 Perhaps what this great geological fact meant may best be indicated by the discoveries made in 1882 during the deep excavation at Charing Cross for the building of Messrs. Drummond's Bank. Thera were dug out from the clay foundations over a hun- dred fossils, and the catalogue of the principal items is thus given : ' Bones of the cave lion (Felis leo) ; tusks and bones of the mammoth ; tusks and bones of extinct elephants (Elephas •primigenius, Elephas antiquus) ; remains of extinct Irish deer (Cervus me- gaceros) : remains of red deer; remains of a species allied to the fallow deer (Cervus browni) ; remains of rhinoceros; remains of extinct oxen (Bos primigenius) — from the pleistocene gravels. Bones of the horse, the sheep, and the shorthorn (Celtic) (longifrons) — from recent deposits.' This is one of the most important finds of this nature, and the most recent find was in l'.)()9. when renin ins of the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros occurred at various points between the Chiiii;!''. I'd branch of the Great Eastern Railway and Roding Road, Homerton, at a depth of nearly twenty- five feet in the gravel deposits of the river Lea. ' Whitakei 12; Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in Britain, 151. S5 M - a - Y. - 2 Q d o o 7. 3 ., - = d, H >. S - 5 a CO o a. - : 12 THE EVOLUTION OF THE SITE What the site of the future London actually was in this earliest of times we cannot even conjecture. We know that the palaeolithic savage who fought his way against fellow savage and against animals— fought his way to a simple home under the trees of pathless forests or on the open banks of the river or lake which finally became our Thames — did nothing of a constructive character to assist nature in making the homes of man here. He did not even make a solid house. He used the forest trees for his home ; he found the flints which he fashioned for his weapons of defence and attack, or for his implements of toil, on the surface or imme- diately under the surface of the ground ; he hunted the animals and caught the fish for his principal food, and used the wild fruits to supplement these. The surface which was trodden and occupied in this way by the palaeolithic men of this part of continental Britain was not our surface. Six hundred feet higher than our surface, it is now twenty feet beneath our surface. The palaeolithic land of Britain has not 011I3' sunk, but has had imposed on it fresh strata. This is shown by the discoveries of geologists, who have come across the stone implements of the palaeolithic savage at a depth of twelve to twenty feet below the present surface. It happens that the 'palaeolithic floor ', as it has been called, is one of the conspicuous features of the strata of London. Mr. AVorthington Smith ' has traced its extent and depth from various excavations which have yielded implements. The discoveries show this floor to have been on the top of the river gravel, and 1 Man tin Primeval ^inni/i, cap. scv, j (M^H I '■^HdH 1 • ii^ % i J i • l ^^B^ 4* l^^B^B^^^^^^^^^^^^^^- *• 1 i 1l n^«> * • ■«&. o U != - K — 1 fi 5 *5 73 s s iq to © S5 _ -< " M - O 3 ^ 14 THE EVOLUTION OF THE SITE to include Stamford Hill and Tottenham on the north, and Higham Hill, Walthamstow, Woodford, Snaresbrook, Wanstead, and Barkingside on the east, coming into London at Hackney, Stoke Newington Common. Clapton, Kingsland, Dalston, London Fields, Clerkenwell, Drury Lane, Gray's Inn Lane, and the City, at all of which points implements have been found. 1 Between the palaeolithic age, which is now discover- able from remains beneath the site of modern London, and the neolithic age, which is the next discoverable occupation era, there is no certain connecting link. Britain was submerged by a great ice wave, and some authorities think that when this disappeared before the advancing warmer climate there could have been no living representatives of man in Britain. If this is so, neolithic man came to the site of London without getting into conflict or even into contact with his palaeolithic precursor. The land was gradually sinking, and the subsidence, which is proved by the submerged forests beneath the Bristol Channel and the sea at Land's End, was going on throughout the neolithic age. ceasing somewhere about three thousand years ago.'- The present natural surface of the site of London was formed then, and from this age we have practically continuous history. It is not probable that neolithic man did much to alter the site of later London. They buried their chiefs, at all events, in barrows or rude stone sepulchres of the dolmen type. They often lived in caves in the neigh- bourhood of quarries, from which they gathered the ' Anllii . \ iii . -75 '.». Holmes, Bi itain, 64. 71 Z O - 8 o « ss < 25 16 THE EVOLUTION OF THE SITE flint to make their weapons and implements, specimens of which have been found in London. They un- doubtedly constructed strongholds for defence, as many examples in Britain prove, and it may be that the stronghold which existed on the height where St. Paul's now stands was constructed and first occupied by neo- lithic man. But a stronghold with its surrounding barrows do not materially alter the face of nature, as one can see for oneself in "Wiltshire or Dorsetshire, where the evidence for neolithic man is so strongly persistent. The first people who were builders as well as settlers, homelanders as well as conquerors, were undoubtedly the Celts. Probably they were a bronze-using people when they first arrived on these shores. At the junc- ture of the Fleet river with the Thames they settled in a fashion in which no predecessor of theirs had settled. Their settlement had a name, London, and this alone constitutes a difference in its character which is of great significance. Their first business was to construct residences, protected from human enemies as from animals, adequately provided with the neces- sary water supply, and near enough to natural food grounds for their hunters and fishermen to procure what they needed, and to upland soil and downs upon which their women and slaves would cultivate their cereal foods. Their second act was to create a stronghold to which they might retreat with their cattle and their grain when attacked by enemies. Their enemies were numerous. Men of tho same blood but not of the same tribal unit were their enemies, and the men of London had to take care that the men of Verulam, the men of Croydon, and those who occupied tho Surrey THE EVOLUTION OF THE SITE 17 downs did not join perhaps with felie displaced neo- lithic folk and successfully drive them forth from their splendid settlement on the Thames. It is at this point of history that the hand of man begins its prominent part in fashioning the site of London. The two preceding epochs left the heights and the stretch of wide waters on their way to the sea almost as nature willed. The third epoch differs from these. The busy brains and hands of man having begun to operate, we have changes to reckon with which must direct our conception of the story to be unfolded into totally different channels. The making of London began by inroads upon the natural site. It has continued until we have lost views of the natural site altogether. The first work began on the river. Underneath the bed of the Fleet river, now covered over with pavements and bridges and houses, and along the low-lying morass now occupied by Finsbury, have been found the structural remnants of the Celtic habi- tations of London. First General Pitt-Rivers, and subsequently Mr. F. W. Reader, have conducted in- vestigations, which undoubtedly prove the existence of lake habitations on these sites. The value of this discovery is not limited to the material objects. If there were lake habitations on the banks of the Fleet river in London, there were lake-habitation culture and social organization, and these were of a definite and important character. The tribes who lived on the banks of the Fleet river in pile-dwellings were on a surface several feet below the modern level of Fleet Street. The banks of the Fleet were steep, as we may know from the position of 'Break-neck Steps', a narrow court and ascent leading 38G.1C H 18 THE EVOLUTION OF THE SITE from Fleet Street to the Old Bailey — it is no longer in existence — which was undoubtedly formed out of the steep banks of the river. Alongside these banks, about 70 to 80 yards from the site of the later wall, great timber piles were driven, with cross-logs joining them to the shore, and on the wooden platform thus con- structed were built extensive wooden buildings, the homes at ordinary times of the tribesmen. There, over the waters of the Fleet river, or over the shallow waters of the lagoon which then occupied the site of modern Finsbuiy, the earliest Londoners lived their primitive life. They were protected in their homes from the assaults of wild animals, and to an extent from the sudden assault of enemies belonging to other tribes. Gradually, how gradually it is impossible to say, they enlarged their sphere of action. Their success against enemies probably brought them fresh combinations of enemies, and it became necessary to add to their means of defence. This they accomplished by constructing on the height above what is now Ludgate Hill, where St. Paul's stands, a stronghold, with earthen ramparts towards the land side and washed on three sides by the waters of the Thames and its tributaries, or the lagoons which its tributaries were slowly draining. A strong- hold such as this was can well be depicted from others which have not been obliterated by the growth of a city. It was the place of defence. It stood out from the morass and forest which surrounded it ; it was defended by two or three valla with deep fosses between them, and it was definitely constructed for defence. ' The steep ascent of Ludgate Hill ', says Mr. Loftie, 'is formed of a clay-bank originally rising like a cliff forty feet above the river, and this was one 20 THE EVOLUTION OF THE SITE of the sides of the stronghold '. T No doubt it stood many an assault ; no doubt too it withstood those assaults successfully. It was an ideal site and an ideal position. It is just such a site and position that Julius Caesar describes in his commentary on the expedition into Britain. 'He learned from the envoys', he says, 'that the stronghold of Cassivellaunus, which was protected by woods and marshes, was not far off, and that a con- siderable number of men and of cattle had assembled in it. The Britons apply the name of stronghold [opjridiwi'l to an}' woodland spot difficult of access and fortified with a rampart and trench, to which the}'' are in the habit of resorting in order to escape a hostile raid.' All these facts fit the then conditions of London, and one great authority, General Pitt-Rivers, proclaims his belief that the stronghold of Cassivellaunus was indeed London. 2 We cannot decide this. It is beyond the ken of history. But there are important facts in its favour. First and most important of all, there is the con- figuration of ancient London. Few people probably grasp the fact that parts of modern London are below high-water mark and that the centre of Lon- don is overlooked by hills on the north and south. The valley of the Thames was in these early days represented by the river-bed in its present course and by lagoons of shallow waters spreading from its banks. Between the Ravensbourne and the Wandle there is a vast district, represented by modern Rotherhithe, Bermondsey, Newington, Southwark, North Lambeth, 1 Hist, of London, i. 20. 2 Anthropological Review (1867), vol. v. p. lxxviii. THE EVOLUTION OF THE SITE 21 and North Battcrsca, whi<-h was covered by the lagoon waters and is even now several feet below high- water mark. The north is higher ground, but Brompton, Pimlico, and Chelsea represent the ancient lagoon waters of the Thames. Rising from this wide-spread- ing lagoon the lands stretched up to the heights north and south of the Thames, 305 feet at the Crystal Palace and 440 at Highgate. Opposite the widest part of the lagoon on the south, and close up to the bed. oi the Thames as it is now, there rises on the north a height which comes close down to the water's edge. It is a commanding situation. It is the first defensive position of the Thames and it commands the route northwards. This height, if defended, would threaten the march of an invader northwards, and it is here that we find placed the stronghold of Lyndun, the stronghold of the waters. The march of Cassivellaunus from Kent was along the British trackway, later to be known as Watling Street, which led to London, and, with this fact in mind, Mr. Conybeare believes London was the objective of this great march. The British chieftain would have gained his first defensive point in opposing the Roman army. Secondly, the conquerors of the Britons built a camp here very soon after they had completed the first stages of their conquest, and this camp grew quickly into a great meeting-place for Roman commerce. This is what might have been expected by what we know of Roman practices elsewhere in Britain. They utilized the great defensive places of the native population whom they conquered. And, finally, London has only one competitor for the stronghold of the British chieftain, namely, Verulam, 22 THE EVOLUTION OF THE SITE which also may have been a British stronghold before it became a Roman camp. Not only, however, is there no direct evidence of a British oppidum at Verulam, 1 but there is a curious break in the history of British Verulam, as revealed by the numismatic remains, which does not tell in its favour. 2 On the other hand, right at the beginning of history there is a point which does not touch Verulam but which tells in favour of London. Caesar is describing the passage of the Thames just before he branches off into his general de- scription of the British strongholds, and one may read into the narrative that this difficult crossing, causing a pause in his great march into the interior of Britain, had caused also a corresponding pause in his narrative. Nothing is more certain about the splendid artistry of Caesar's famous book than that it is based upon his actual experiences. Action and thought go together. His narrative moves forward or halts just where his mili- tary operations move forward or halt. And his halt at the passage of the Thames is reflected in the pause in his narrative. At this pause he describes what he learns about the stronghold of Cassivellaunus. The passage of the Thames had brought the point to his mind, and thus, when we are trying to penetrate the obscurity of history, the Thames leads us to London. If, therefore, history does not exactly decide the question, there is enough evidence in its favour for 1 Mr. McClure makes a point in favour of Verulam being an ancienl British Bile in his derivation of the name from a misunderstood rout name, ' Werlam,' which became 'Waetling' in Knglish, the stronghold taking its name from the British trackway which had become known as 'Waetling .Street'. See his British Place Names in their historical setting, 89-41. 2 Evans, Anc. British Coins, 226. THE EVOLUTION OF THE SITE 23 us provisionally to adopt the idea that the stronghold of London was the tribal stronghold of Cassivellaunus, the British chief t;i i n who withstood the great Roman. One could wish for no better beginning for London. It is true that this beginning had a sudden and ahim>i complete ending, which will presently be described, but even so London thus becomes one of those greal strongholds of the world the conquest of which has led to the turning of history into new channels. Even Caesar could not afford to neglect it. He had to con- quer it or himself be conquered. He chose the bolder course, and thus ended the first chapter in the making of London. CHAPTER II EARLIEST RELICS OF MAN IN LONDON It will have been gathered from the previous chap- ter that palaeolithic man roaming over the unnamed site twenty feet beneath modern London, neolithic man using the site more definitely and perhaps be- ginning the fashioning of the later London, and the Celtic Britons settling in London, constructing there a stronghold for their defence and giving to it definite name and history, have not left many relics of their existence. Such relics as exist, however, are worth consideration, even if only for the confirmation they give to Avhat is discoverable from the other sources which we have examined. The palaeolithic implements of London are some of the most famous of their class, and ' the Thames valley ', says Sir John Evans, ' may lay claim to the first recorded discovery of any flint implement in the Quaternary gravels whether in this or any other country.' ! Earliest man, in fact, used the Thames as his highway, even if he did not, as we have already seen, have ;i hand in the fashioning of London. His stone implements of l lie palaeolithic type have been found in the City (Monkwell Street, Coleman Street, and J3ishopsgate), in Gray's Inn Lane, accompanied by the remains of the elephant, in the Clerkenwell Road, Drury Lane, Jeiinyn Street, 1 Evans, Stone Implements, 5S1. - - - D a < - H a 2 go - - ►J - — 26 EARLIEST RELICS OF MAN IN LONDON and Princes Street (Oxford Street). 1 Penetrating further from the waters of the Thames, there have been found, twenty-two feet below the surface in the gravel, imple- ments of the oval type at Hackney Downs, a remarkably well-formed implement at Highbury New Park, well adapted for being held in the hand as a sort of knife or chopper, and other remarkably fine implements in London Fields, Dalston, Kingsland, Homerton, Lower Clapton, Upper Clapton, Stamford Hill, Mildmay Park, South Hornsey, Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington, and Shacklewell. This great area has been called the palaeolithic floor by its discoverer, Mr. AYorthington Smith, and the implements have been found side by side with the remains of wild animals, such as the hyena, elephant, rhinoceros, and others, whose broken bones, teeth, antlers, and tusks abound. At Stoke Newington the implements are as a rule small. They consist of small and neat scrapers, knives or chopping tools, knives made from flakes, flakes unfashioned, but evidently used by man, and hammer stones. Among special types, one implement of quartzite was possibly made for ornament or amuse- ment, or as a test of skill and dexterity, because its manufacture was much more difficult than the ordi- nary tools of flint which were so abundantly made.'^ A chopping tool, a good and massive example, shows by the straight part or back of the tool that it was held in the hand for use while the semicircular edge was used for chopping or hacking. Some specimens of tools in an unfinished state are also among the 1 Evans, Stom Implements, 582 ; Catalogs of Ouildhall Museum, sect. 1. - W. <;. Smith, Man the Primeval Savayc, 220 62. -. p a / P ■< p H 01 =- W H -: 28 EARLIEST RELICS OF MAN IN LONDON Stoke Newington finds, speaking to us eloquently of the possible conditions of danger or despair which induced the workers to leave their task uncompleted, while an anvil stone, known by the distinct marks of hammering seen on some special parts of the stone, generally on a flat or flatfish surface, and the small fabricator used for finishing off the larger implement, take us into the presence of the tool-worker. This is the story from the palaeolithic floor at Stoke Newington. It is more or less repeated in those other parts of northern London which have been enumerated as containing the buried relics of earliest man on the site of London, and there is evidence of extensive workings of palaeolithic implements. At Acton, in the Criffield Road, Mr. J. Allen Brown discovered in an area not more than forty feet square more than 600 flakes and implements of the palaeolithic workers, showing emphaticall} 7 the existence of a large settle- ment. In the bed of the river at Chelsea, Battersea, Wandsworth, Putney, and Hammersmith many speci- mens have from time to time been found, perhaps the relics of misfortune during the crossing of the river, when ill-equipped man had to meet not only human foes, with whom he was always at enmity, but animal foes who pressed upon him as their rightful prey. On the south side we get only sporadic finds, such as an implement and flake on Battersea Rise at the junction of the Grayshott Road and the Wandsworth Road, near Clapham Common ; on East and West Hill, Wands- worth ; at Lavender Hill, and at Lewisham. 1 These are the ovate palaeolithic implements. 1 Evans, Stone Implements, 604. /' Bronze Age Weapons. (By permission of Sir Arthur Evans 30 EAELIEST RELICS OF MAX IN LONDON If all that these relics tell of the remotest past is formulated into a story which the slight glimpses of light permit us to make, it does not tell us of a future London. It is only the site of the future London that yields the story. The relics had been buried beneath a geologic cataclysm which effectually blotted out the human element when the arrival of new-comers from the continent began a new and more continuous life. The remains of these new folk are of stone, as of the old folk, but the} 7 are fashioned differently. Ages of work- manship had produced improvements. Improvements in culture mean improvements in social organization, and improvements in social organization lead to closer ties with different localities and the gradual adaptation of local features to the needs and desires of man in his stronger social conditions. This new age of culture and society was what is known as the neolithic. The most striking thing about the neolithic finds is that they occur nearer the surface, sometimes on the surface, and in association with burials and other indications of a settled life. The principal finds in London are from the Thames. The most general of the implements is a scraper, as it is Called, which is in some cases horseshoe -shaped or kite-shaped, in others nearly circular. They are only from 1^ inches to 2^ inches in diameter and have a cutting edge on one of the sides, the other side being for holding in the hand, some being fashioned for the right hand and others for the left hand. It is supposed that they were principally used for scraping hides and preparing leather, and they were probably also used for making pins and other small articles of bone and perhaps for fabricating arrow-heads. They have been found at s si g - 9 I | : a o 32 EARLIEST RELICS OF MAN IN LONDON Stoke Newington, but their discovery in London is naturally not extensive. 1 Their mere presence in small numbers, however, brings those who made them into touch with London. These people lived in communities having definite economic and social organization, and it is a question whether they witnessed the passing of the stone imple- ment into the bronze or whether they had to meet a conquering people armed with bronze implements. The possession of bronze implements implies a con- siderable advance in civilization. Bronze is an alloy, not a pure metal, and not only the instruments but the metal out of which they were formed had to be manufactured. The passing away of the stone- implement culture, and the formation of the bronze- implement culture, represent two distinct events with no connexion between the two. All the evidence seems to show that the earlier of the intruding Celtic peoples, who came to Britain in two great waves, were responsible for the introduction of the bronze imple- ment. Finds of these implements are more difficult to classify than those of stone implements. They perish more easily; they m&y be manufactured for ornamental or ceremonial use, after the age when they were uni- versally used, and their presence in any excavated site does not necessarily determine the age of the site. Still. there are some indications which cannot be mistaken. A helmet of hemispherical form tapering to a pro- jection pierced above to receive a crest or ornament was found in Moorgate Street; and another found in the Thames near Waterloo Bridge had projecting horns and was ornamented with scroll work and red 1 Evans, Stone Implements. 310. EARLIEST RELICS OF MAN IN LONDON 33 enamel. The latter, Sir John Evans pronounced to be of the late Celtic period. 1 These undoubtedly reveal to us the Celtic warrior. It is noticeable that the Thames has yielded several examples of bronze weapons of war. A portion of a sword blade with the scabbard end still in position, found in the river near Ish.-wnrth, ;i sheath end retaining a fragment of wood inside found near London, and another at Chelsea, are tho most important. Daggers, weapons of a rapier shape, swords, sword hilts, spear heads, and ferrules for spear shafts have also come from the Thames. A class of imple- ment known as palstaves, and designed to be fixed in some sort of haft, may have been used as a weapon of war, and these have been found in the Thames at London. Perhaps, however, the most interesting bronze war relic from the Thames at London is a fine shield 21 inches in diameter, with four rows of bosses about an inch in diameter and the same number of raised rings. There is at least one hole through the shield, which Sir John Evans thinks may have resulted from a spear thrust. Another shield 21 \ inches in diameter has a similar hole. Of objects which are not used for war we have only some brooches, socketed celts, chisels, sickles, and knives. These finds are not enough to determine a definite place for London in the bronze age. But if Dr. Montelius is correct in his classification of bronze age implements into chronological sequence, there is nearty certain evidence that the district of London has been occupied dining the whole of that period, that is to say, from 2500 b.c. to 800 b.c. The barrow excavated at Teddington, showing traces of combustion extending 1 Anc. Bronze Implements, 356. 986.16 C 34 EARLIEST RELICS OF MAN IN LONDON several feet round, with burnt sand and fragments of charcoal, and in the centre a heap of calcined bones, belongs to the earliest bronze age period, 1 and we are justified in assuming that it was not the solitary in- stance of barrow interment in the London area, where, as we have seen, examples of later bronze age objects have been frequently discovered. When we get beyond the bronze age we approach the domain of history. The earl3 r iron age is repre- sented by many objects discovered in London, most of them weapons of war, swords, javelins, spear heads, found near London Wall and in the Thames. Fibulae and objects of bronze and bone are also found in other parts of the city. Undoubtedly the great dun, or stronghold, on the heights above the Fleet river as tributary of the Thames, and partly sur- rounded by the lagoon waters of Finsbury, is the significant feature of this period. Its remains bring London into tcuch with similar remains which have been found elsewhere in Britain, and on the Con- tinent, and which help us therefore to estimate its relationshij) to lake-dwelling culture. The details conform to the general rule. It is unnecessary to describe these details at great length. At the junction of the Fleet river with the Thames, the first important discovery was made by General Pitt- Rivers. He found a number of piles, the decayed tops of which appeared above the unexcavated portions of the peat, dotted here and there over the whole of the cleared space. Commencing on t he soul li. a row of piles ran north and south mi the wesl side; to the right of these was ,-i curved row as if forming part of a ring; higher up 1 Archaeologia, xxxvi. 175; lxi. 111'. i I Bronze A<.e Weapons. Fiuiii the British Museum Guide to the Antiquitii of 'h B\ :■ Age; by permission of t he Trust* i c:> 36 EARLIEST EELICS OF MAN IN LONDON and running obliquely across the ground was a row of piles having a plank about an inch and half thick and a foot broad placed along the south face as if binding the piles together ; to the left of these, another row of piles ran east and west ; to the north-east again were several circular clusters of piles, not in rings but grouped in clusters, the piles being from eight to sixteen inches apart ; to the left of this another row of piles and a plank two inches thick running north and south. 1 Now the question is, what do these undoubtedly ancient pilings signify to the history of London ? The piles were roughly cut as if with an axe and pointed square, and there was no trace of iron shoeing nor of metal fastenings on any of them. No remains of tiles or bricks were found associated with them, but two human skulls were found without any other remains of the skeletons. The piles were evidently constructed for a super- structure, and this must have been made of wood. They are the foundations therefore of the river dwellings of the Celtic Britons, who built over the water as their brethren in Switzerland built, as other tribes in Britain and Ireland built, and this conclusion, arrived at by General Pitt-Rivers, has been confirmed by Mr. F. AV. Reader in subsequent excavations in Finsbury. where the lagoon of waters to the north of the city was situated. Not only so, but the skulls also add their contribution to the story. The British tribesmen followed the practice of their age, and after a successful fight would ride home to their Avives and children with I In' heads of their slain enemies at their saddle- In »w, a in I which they placed as trophies in their houses. 1 Anlluvpulugicul Review, v, p. lxxi. Bronze Aoe Weapons. (From the British Museum Guide to the Antiquities of the Bromi Agi : by permission of i)w Trustees 38 EARLIEST RELICS OF MAN IN LONDON Nor is this all, if we may trust the observation of a well-known geologist of the middle of last century, Mr. W. D. Saull. Writing in 1845 a small pamphlet 1 devoted to the remains of the British aborigines, Mr. Saull declares that London was occupied by a people ' who raised and inhabited such rude dwellings as I have before described as extant in Yorkshire and several other places ', and then goes on to state his observations 'made within the last few years '. Many deep cuttings were made for sewerage purposes in the principal streets of the city, and a subterranean passage was formed at the western end of Cheapsicle for that purpose. Whilst this was in progress, Mr. Saull ' constantly descended the shaft to examine the cuttings and the strata ', and he discovered above the undisturbed gravel thin seams of ashes with small pieces of burnt wood lying in a concave form such as we might suppose occupied the lower part of the huts of the earliest inhabitants. These were from 18 to 22 feet below the present surface. They were overlaid by the debris of the Roman period, consisting of the usual fragments of pottery, coins, and a quantity of concrete in variegated colours which had been used for the interior lining of their dwellings. Tins .vidence seems well attested and very definite, pointing unquestionably to the hut-circle remains of the Celtic Londoners who occupied the high ground of their defensive stronghold They tell us of the living Celtic iribesmen, and in the cinerary urns found in Lombard Street, Austin Friars, Cheapside, London Wall. Minories. .,,,. B ee pi'. 13-15. An illustration <>f tlio kind of dwelling here alluded t". Prom an sample in the island >>t' Lewis, may be seen in Mitchell's Past in the Present, p.C4. ■JTS \ vk '*♦*. A Bkokze Bbitisii Shield foi nd r niE Thames \ i Batti RSE \. 40 EARLIEST EELICS OF MAN IN LONDON Fenchurch Street, Thames Street, Mark Lane, St. Mar- tin's le Grand, Bishopsgate, 1 we have the concluding evidence of Celtic occupation. Relics of this kind make us realize the two principal characteristics of Celtic London, and geologists have sup- plied its constructional features. Mr. Whitaker states that London is the first spot where vessels going up the river would find a narrow low- water channel close against ground of the most favourable kind for permanent occupa- tion, ground, indeed, yielding every advantage that could be wished for ; and Mr. Reginald A. Smith has ably sum- marized these advantages. Above London there are only narrow strips of alluvium, the river flowing between gravel banks and necessarily keeping to a narrow channel. Below London, however, the scene was far different from what we see to-day. The river flowed through mud plains covered with water at high tide only, and at low tide showing broad spreads of treacherous mud, as at Southend at the present day. Firm land was only touched at some of the bends in its course, as at Greenwich and "Woolwich. The Lea valley may be taken as the limit of low ground on the north bank, and the river at the Custom House may well have been fordable at low tide, though dangerous to those not familiar with the crossing. Improbable ns it may seem to any one standing on London Bridge, the shallow depth of the river is nevertheless supported by facts that came to light during the demolition of old London Bridge. Sir G. B. Airy stated half a century ago that the depth of the foundations of the piers was good evidence of the depth of tie' river at old London Bridge. It appears from a published cross- 1 Qa f Guildhall Museum, 2Q-%, EAELIEST RELICS OF .MAN IN LONDON 11 section that the lowest part of the rabble, on which were laid the wooden sleepers supporting the masonry, was only from two to three feet below low water. It is certain, he says, that this could not be higher than the general bed of the river, and it probably would be lower. Some channels naturally would be deeper than the general bed; and these, when the tide had risen a little, would make the operation of fording very dangerous. The story is therefore fairly complete. At the foot of the steep rising represented by modern Ludgate Hill the homes of the Celtic Britons have been revealed to modern Londoners. At the summit of the rising, standing out of the surrounding waters, commanding the low lands around, was constructed the fortified stronghold to which the people and their cattle and belongings could retreat when necessity arose. Necessity often arose during the centuries of their occupation of the site which was first named London, Llyndun, the fort of the waters. But the greatest necessity of all came when the Roman soldiers, most probably the soldiers of Julius Caesar, the world-chieftain and leader, swarmed up the heights now represented by Ludgate Hill, to conquer the stronghold. CHAPTER III OF THE PEOPLE WHO BEGAN THE MAKING OF LONDON There was, then, no palaeolithic or neolithic London. The people who fashioned and used stone implements and weapons did not fashion a stronghold or a dwelling- place which was known to them as London. They roamed over its site, perhaps settled for a time on its heights perhaps defended themselves there or fled thither from elephant, rhinoceros, wolf, deer, and bear. But the}" did not settle there as a homeland. They did not possess a homeland. The incoming Celtic Britons were the first people who made a homeland of London. The}^ were a virile race. Their round head, broadish face, full chin and rather heavy nose, their brown hair and hazel-gre}^ eyes remain with us to this day. Their dash and bravery, their irresponsibility and generosity, their fierceness and friendliness made themselves known to Caesar and the later Roman generals who fought with them so often — so disastrously on a few great occasions and so successful^ in the end. They are still represented b}' the people in the neighbourhood of London, and, says Mr. Pipley, the explanation is simple The Thames was closed to all later intrusions by the presence of London. The fens nil the north, London on the south with dense forests in early times, left the population of this district PEOPLE WHO BEGAN MAKING LONDON 1 3 relatively ai peace, and 'the marked island ofbrunel in jusl north of London ', accompanied by a shorter stature, betoken a British Lineage surviving to t Ins day. 1 Wonderful things have been said and surmised about these Celtic beginners of London. But the facts do not demand these wonders. Celtic Londoners were tribesmen with tribal civilization, tribal economy, and tribal met hods of life. The tie was that of kinship, not hind or country, and kinship was largely the kinship by blood and more completely by religious rite and belief. There were no individuals in tribal society. What was affected by misfortune or by success was the kin, not the individual — a murdered kinsman had to be avenged by kinsmen, a successful undertaking was shared in by kinsmen. The tribal constitution allowed the tribal units to combine for a common purpose, to break up into its units again, to settle down upon a territory it had conquered, and to march out of a country of which it was no longer the master. It allowed of conquest and settlement, unsettlement and migration over and over again, and it always re-formed on the old lines with the old fact or theory of a blood kinship, and the old fact of a sacred tribal religion as the basis of its existence. If we would properly understand the tribalism which marked the occupation of Celtic London we should go to the tribalism of India, wdiere the political civilization of modern England has been face to face with the tribal organization from which she herself had her beginning. These people had no cities or states, no life based absolutely upon a settled occupa- tion of a definite country. They held the stronghold of London and were conquered there by the Romans, and 1 Races of Europe, 32 J, 522. 44 OF THE PEOPLE WHO BEGAN those who escaped marched from London to Verulam or to some other stronghold and fought in their new home as strongly as they had done in their old one. It is somewhat doubtful which of the Celtic tribes held London. The Trinobantes held modern Essex, and Dr. Guest, a great authority, argues that the Lea was their western boundary, and Colchester the site of their stronghold. The Catuvellauni were west of them, and they extended up to the Colne valley, and there seems little doubt that it was these people who centred round London as their stronghold. 1 Under the Celtic tribesmen were non-tribesmen, the conquered aborigines of the country, those neolithic folk who brought with them a knowledge of the cereals and of agriculture, who tilled the land, made the potter}^ and other objects of general use, and generally acted as the servants of the conquering tribesmen — servants with definite rules and rights within the tribal homestead but with no rights of marriage or of religion. The influence of the tribal life of the Celts, whether in organization or in belief, could not have led to the foundations of a city. For that we must reckon with a wholly different influence by a different people and civilization. The tribal stronghold of Celtic London was put on one side by the later influences, and Celtic London ceased to be. It is particularly important to understand that the social organization of the Celts, both at the time when they met the Roman armies in Britain and after the 1 ' " n i a 1 1 s had loft Britain, was tribal in firm, )|"! national, h disposes of the various theories which 1 tiuost, Oripinea Celticae, ii. 390, 40G. THE MAKING OF LONDON 45 have been built up of there beiug a greai London city before the Romans came there, a city of palaces, public buildings, residential magnificence, and or- ganized governance, all of which is the creation of twelfth-century chroniclers who translated Human remains into evidence of Celtic history. The truth of this condition of Celtic civilization is contained in the evidence of Caesar and Tacitus for pre-Roman times and in the remains of Celtic tribalism for post-Roman times. The Welsh laws are the laws of tribesmen, not of a nation, and they belong to post-Roman times. They must have lived through Roman times, there- fore, and been supported by a people whose social organization was tribal. It is not to the point to argue that coming from Wales they come from an outskirt and not from the centre of Roman Britain. Laws are not applicable to special localities, but to special peoples, and these laws of the Celtic Britons proclaim in clear and definite fashion that the people who lived under them were tribesmen, not citizens, held together by ties of kinship and religion and not of territory and state power. The London that was made and the people who made it in these earliest times were not, therefore, con- nected with those who were to come hereafter. London the Celtic stronghold is as completely separated from London the city as any of the isolated Celtic strong- holds in other parts of the country which stand out as monuments of the past are separated from the succeeding ages, and we must not, because of continuity of occupation, think of continuity of history. The break-up of Celtic London did not arouse the attention of history. CHAPTER IV WHAT LONDON WAS TO CELTIC BEITONS Although the evidence thus far shows London as a stronghold centre of the tribal life of the Celtic Britons, there is further evidence which brings it into a different relationship to the Celtic Britons. In the first place we can gather up some facts con- nected with the religious cult of Celtic London which show it to have been sufficiently powerful to impress itself upon the Roman conquerors. The Romans were always ready to be impressed by the local divinities of their conquered territory, and there are many evi- dences of this, including some British examples. 1 As Gibbon puts it, ' the various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true ; by the philosopher as equally false ; and by the magistrate as equally useful ' (cap. ii). It is owing to such doctrine as this that we can turn to the name of the Celtic god Lud, as well as to some strange rites which were incorporated in the ancient ritual of St. Paul's, and penetrate to the original Celtic worship. Professor Rhys has investigated the worship of Lud, and roncludes that it was a water worship.- Lud as i Mr. Warde Fowler has deal! with this subject in his Religious of the Roman Peoplt ; see particularly, Lecture X, what hv aya ..r i hi worship of Diana. • Heathendom, 1-5 33. WHAT L( )X I )( )X WAS TO CELTIC BRIT< INS 47 god of the waters would exactly suit all we know about the earliesl site oi London, and there is some indica- tion of whai this worship was from a parallel Celtic worship on tin- Severn. Thai the name of Ludgate in modern London contains the god name Lud. is a fact, therefore, which lakes us back to l he < '-'It ic Britons in London. Perhaps in the name of Mounl Nod in Wandsworth we may have another echo of the god of the waters. Almost certainly the name of Pelinus. another Celtic god, is enshrined in Billingsgate. There seems to be more than this. The worship of Lud, in whatever form it was accomplished, probably took place on the site now occupied by St. Paul s Cathedral. A temple of Diana stood there in Roman times, and her worship included one feature which con- nected her with a water divinity. Animals, too, were sacrificed to her, the principal one being the stag, and many remains of stag horns and skulls have been found on the site of St. Paul's. The church, moreover, had a special stag ceremony. A stag's head was fixed upon a spear and conveyed about within the church with great solemnity and sound of horns, and it was received at the steps of the church by the priests in their sacerdotal robes and with garlands of flowers upon their heads. These facts are recorded by Camden, the celebrated Tudor antiquary. They are not of Christian origin, even though they may have been adopted into the uses of the church, and they contain particulars which without doubl take us back to Celtic worship in London. We have next to proceed in another and very significant direction. It has been noted that the ethno- logical evidence points to the persistence of a Celtic 48 WHAT LONDON WAS TO CELTIC BRITONS population in the neighbourhood of London, and it is not a little curious that in the place-name of Walworth we have a definite record of the Wealas or British. We may ask at this point whether the persistence of a Celtic people near London has lent its aid to the production of a Celtic view of London when London itself had ceased to be Celtic. The answer comes from ancient traditions preserved in eleventh- century chronicles, and from modern folklore preserved by tradition, where there is a whole set of Welsh concep- tions of London which, though not true to history, are true as indications of the attitude of the Celtic Britons towards London. These conceptions proclaim that London was a wonderland to the Celtic Britons, who looked upon her buildings, her wealth, and her power as the work of giant -men. The group of legends found all over the country relating to London Bridge and the treasure that was to be found there, will help us to realize this. An examination and analysis of these legends make it clear that we are in the presence of a remarkable attitude, taken up by those who created the legends, towards London Bridge. It was a structure beyond their ken. It meant supernatural agency and perhaps the sacrifice of a human being to the god of the Thames. Clearly it could not have been the Roman builders, designers, engineers, and masons who would have believed such wonders. As clearly it must have been the Britons who looked on and saw the structure taking shape — trod its stone pathways after it had taken shape. It was a wonder to them, and we have in the form in which that wonder was expressed and has come down through the ages to modern times one of WHAT LoXDoX WAS TO CELT K' I'.IMTuXs 49 the most fascinating glimpses al the work of the Romans in London. Endeed, if Celtic myth is properly examined, there is much to show thai it contains nol the voice of the Celtic Britons concerning their own London, but of the greatness of Loin Ion and its position in a civilization ao\ theirs, and so much beyond theirs t hat it became a wonderland to them. Slight though these remnants are. they serve a very important purpose therefore. They show not only the limitations of Celtic London but the reality of early Roman London. Celtic worship was incorporated in Roman worship, and had in this fashion received a new life. Celtic tradition relat es to an external Roman London, and proves that the Celts of London, like the Celts in the rest of Britain, were not citizens, not builders of a city, not founders of a state. They did not help in the making of London therefore. These Celtic remains are thus of supreme importance to the understanding of the beginnings of London, and not only the beginning, but also the essential feature of continuity. The material remains take us to the primitive tribal hut and the cinerary urn, buried beneath the Roman city. The worship and the tradition take us to the living Roman city. The appeal in both cases therefore is entirely to Roman London. It is obvious that we are entitled to draw two conclusions from this double set of facts. The first is that London was not only a defensive strong hold of the Celts, but, as the centre of a religious cult, possessed the full life of the Celtic tribesmen. The second con- clusion is that the new London of the Romans entirely replaced Celtic London, for the Celtic tradition 980.10 D 50 WHAT LONDON WAS TO CELTIC BRITONS expresses the operation of the changed conditions in terms which belong to the period during which the changes were being effected. This makes it abundantly clear that Roman London with its continuous tra- dition must have had a continuous life, threading out no doubt at certain times into a narrow compass, but never entirely broken. It is to this significant fact of continuity that I shall appeal throughout the suc- ceeding pages of our study. I shall urge that if we never lose sight of Celtic worship and tradition pre- served from Roman London, we cannot safely include in the more silence of Anglo-Saxon history a decayed and desolate city, and I shall ask that the undoubted inheritance by modern London from Roman London which we now proceed to examine may be tested by this underlying stratum of continuity. CHAPTER V THE ROMANS IN LONDON If it is correct to conclude, from the scanty evidence at command, that London was the stronghold of the Celtic Britons which .Julius Caesar attacked and captured in his second invasion of Britain, it marks the beginning of the real history of London. It is true this episode did not lead directly to occupation, hut it began the Roman policy of adding Britain to i he empire. Julius Caesar began his conquest, such as it was, iu the year 55 B.C., and ninety-eight years later, in a.d. 43, the Roman general, Aulus Plant ins, landed in Britain. He also made his way first of all to the stronghold on the Thames, and this fact seems con- firmatory of the direction of the earlier expedition. It was a strategic point. Dr. Guest has described the scene that met the Romans. ' 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 Cassius 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 westwards down the valley of the Thames. The individual character of the rivers was lost ; the Romans saw only D 2 52 THE ROMANS IN LONDON one sheet of water before them and they gave it the name of the river which mainly contributed to form it.' Aulus Plautius vainly endeavoured to cross these marshes, and, withdrawing his troops, encamped them somewhere in the neighbourhood. Dr. Guest believes this somewhere to have been London. ' At London,' he says, ' the Roman general was able both to watch his enemy and to secure the conquests he had made, while his ships could supply him with all the necessaries he required. When in the autumn of the year 43 he drew the lines of communication round his camp, I believe he founded the present metropolis of Britain.' 1 In the main this seems to be the correct interpreta- tion of the scanty notices of these great events, though Dr. Guest evidently infers, and in another place argues, that a Celtic oppidum, named London, did not exist, and that therefore Plautius was in reality the founder of the site as an occupation place. Except for this, Dr. Guest's account meets the case. It takes us as far as A.i). 61, when London is first mentioned in history, namel3 r , by Tacitus, in describing the events of that year. It was a memorable year. Rome was busy in taking her first steps towards making Britain a province of the Empire. London was bus}?- with the first results of this, and was becoming a centre of commerce. It has been questioned whether this great uprise of London could have been accomplished in the short period of the Roman occupation. But there can be no doubt it was the Roman occupation which produced such a result. More than this, it was only the Roman occupation which at that period could have produced it. London was used as a Roman camp, and had 1 Origines Cclficac, ii. 405. THE ROMANS IX LONDON 53 grown from a camp to a commercial centre. It was on the Roman highway and was thus connected with the Roman world. Commerce would originate with the military occupation, and would extend inconsequence of it. There is no question about the fact. There can be no question about the cause. It is clear that the Romans had not fortified it as a town, only as a camp. The commercial parts had spread outside the camp, and these parts were open to the country. Now it happens that we can begin our knowledge of Roman London by a gleam of Lighl coming to us from the story of Boudicca's revolt. The abandonment of London by the Roman general Suetonius was a, necessity of the military situation, and, says Tacitus, 'he resolved to save the province as a whole by the sacrifice of that one city. Unmoved by the tears and entreaties of the inhabitants, he gave the signal to march, receiving within his lines all that could come with him ; those who remained behind, whether through weakness of sex or age or from attachment to the place, were massacred by the enemy.' 1 We need not linger over the massacre, for it was much the same as such events have always been. But I want to call attention to the fact that black as are the events which enclose the first mention of London in history, there is also the brightest gleam of sunshine. There were Londoners even in ad. (51 who were attached to the place — an attachment which is also recorded in the Welsh legend of King Lludd. And these Londoners were Roman Londoners, It is a great historic scene, pregnant with events, and Roman Lun- dinium was gutted with the blood of proud Londoners. 1 Tacitus, Annuls, xiv. cap. 38. 54 THE EOMANS IN LONDON London was recovered from this disaster, and her Roman masters rebuilt her with a wall to take in the larger area necessary for her commerce, and endowed her with a new name, Augusta. The significance of these facts is very great. It is difficult to give a date to the walls which enclosed the larger London, but everything points to an early date. They made London the largest Roman city in the British province of the Roman empire, and that it was given a special Roman name is enough to signify its importance in the Roman system of government. The Roman name did not last, and I think the replacing of the name, Augusta, by the former name, London, introduces us to an interesting bit of history. Tacitus is not the kind of writer to state anything for mere rhetorical purposes, and his sentence im- plying what the Londoners of the first century thought of their defended camp and its undefended externals, coupled with its new name of Augusta, leads one to believe that the newly extended Augusta might have jjreserved the older London in some sort of traditional reverence, just as Romans retained a religious reverence for the original Rome. There are indications of this. The older Roman London may be traced from (he boundaries of the wards and parishes, which reveal a rough parallelogram, one of whose sides would be by the river between Bil- 1 i ngsgate and Dowgate Hill, the other being represented practically by Cheapside. This parallelogram is the exact site which would fit in with Ihc known facts of the Ivonian camp before the rebuilding of the city. There is next to note the interesting fact, recently pointed oul by Mr. Reginald A. Smith, that remains THE ROMANS IX LoXDoX exist of an ancient road running oast ami wesl on the brow of the hill just above whal is now London Bridge. When that road was firsl engineered we can only sur- mise, bul it was certainly built or rebuilt by the Romans. An entire section of it was made and published in 1833 during alterations for the bridge-approach in what is now Cannon Street. A gravel road L6 feet wide, supported by two walls ~t\ feet high, was found about 3 feet below the modern roadway, pointing to London Stone on the west and apparently to Aldgate on the east, but it has not been traced east of Grace- church Street. Narrower by 8 feet than Wat ling St reet, as discovered in Edgware Road, it lacked the layer of flints that distinguished the Roman military roads ; but there is no doubt of its Roman construction, as the containing walls have bands of the familiar tiles between stages of Kentish ragstone. 1 If we fix the western boundary of this area as con- terminous with that of the parish of St. Swithin, we find that on this boundary originally stood London Stone, and immediately adjoining it is the parish of St. Martin Pomroy. Now London Stone has always been a remarkable centre of rites, ceremonies, and traditions, which show it to have been held in rever- ence through the centuries. It stood on the western extremity of the first Roman London, which may perhaps point to it as one of the stone sides of the gateway which led to the pomerium ; and if the l'oinan word for this sacred institution is still preserved in the second name of the City parish, Pomroy, we may allow the suggestion that in these two facts, so remarkable in combination, is contained evidence of the revere] 1 See Archaeologia, xxiv. 192 ; xxv. 602. 56 THE ROMANS IN LONDON for the oldest London having been preserved by the Eomans of Augusta. This point is greatly helped, by the persistence of the name of London and its final conquest over that of Augusta. Ammianus Mar- cellinus, who wrote about a. d. 380, calls London simply Augusta. The Ravenna geographer of the seventh century calls it Lundinium Augusta. If this indicates the growing restoration of the original name it is possible to suggest that it was preserved by the oldest part of the city, that part to which Tacitus refers as receiving the attachment of its inhabitants. It would revive still more strongly after the departure of the Romans and during the independence of the city in the period when the Celts were withstanding the incoming Saxons. In a word, I think the preservation of the name of London is part of the evidence for the preserva- tion of the Roman London of earliest times as an institutional part of the greater Roman London. I will now turn to the later and larger Roman city, and I note the significance of the tradition which has just been recorded as evidence of the, fact that the Romans of London behaved as they behaved in any of the daughter cities in Gaul, Spain, or Ital}-, and even Rome herself. Indeed, it is important to bear in mind that Roman London must always be considered from the point of view of its position as a city of the Roman empire, not as a city of Britain. It was dependent upon Rome for its military position, its institutions, and its commercial greatness. Its position has to be measured by these tacts, and not by its geographical position in Britain. The principal Roman roadways converged to it. Of the fifteen great road routes mentioned in the Antoniiie itinerary no less than ■MM Vil'ii'V'WMjWaP', London Stone, Cannon Stkeet. . 58 THE ROMANS IN LONDON eight converge upon London, and it is important to note that the iter Britannia rum is prefaced by a state- ment of the distance from Gessoricum (Boulogne) to Portus Ritupis (Richborough), thus showing that the road system of Britain was part of the road system of the empire. 1 Travellers from London who want to proceed along the best and most direct roads must to this day take one of the Roman roads which connected London with the rest of Roman Britain and with the continental empire of Rome. The roads from London to the south lead to Richborough, the Roman Ritupis, Dover (Dubris), and Lymne (Lemanis). We have in modern days to make our way to Blackheath to save being lost in the maze of streets which cover the area from the Thames far into South London. Yet in this maze there are streets which are fragments of the ancient Roman iter. Near London Bridge, on the south side, is a street called Stony Street, a sure indication of an ancient Roman road, and Mr. Lottie has acutely pointed out that the Watling Street of London would, if con- tinued in its original direction, have ended at the Thames just opposite where Stony Street on the south begins (Hist. London, i. 28). Stony Street would have joined the main Roman road whore the present Old Kent Road begins its course. This road is the Roman road and proceeds straight to New Cross, where it is lost amidst a maze of streets. The ancient road reappears, however, when Blackheath is gained. From Shooter's Hill to Sw;iuscombe there is a straight road for lo 1 , miles through Crayford (the 1 Gibbon, I . ''lit. limy, i. 50, states the general M ion with his usual brilliancy. THE ROMANS IN LONDON 59 important I'oman site wddoh, as we shall see, marked the southern limits of the territorium of Roman London), to I >art ford, Nortlifleet, and Rochester. Before reaching Northfleet there is a bend in the road, and here considerable remains < >i" a Roman town have been discovered. On theStrood side of the river Mr. this day in the parish name, was not only the place of execution of city criminals, bul the gathering ground of the city's army. Facts such ;is these can only be adequately accounted < * o t y tf 72 ROMAN LONDON for if we reckon them as relics of ancient rights in the territorium. The territorium contained the amphitheatre of London, a well- recognized feature of Roman city life. Some speculation has occurred as to the site of the London amphitheatre, and it has generally been looked for on the north of the Thames. But there is evidence that it was situated on the south. The Roman amphi- theatres of some towns were continued in use. as at Cirencester, for English and mediaeval sport ; and there is a famous site on the South wark side of London known as the Bear Garden, used in its last stage as a theatre, but formerly, as its name implies, as a place for the sport of baiting bears. Up to this point, by comparison only with other places, we might surmise that this was a possible site of the London amphitheatre, at all events in the latest Roman period, when Southwark was undoubtedly an occupied suburb. But we can go beyond the evidence from comparison to evidence from the site itself, for there have been found there the gladiators' trident, a sort of three-pointed lance which was used in the amphitheatre. The territorium contained, too, country residences of the London magnates. The bath still in situ in the Strand belonged originally to a Roman villa or house. Pavements have been found at "Westminster, and somewhat more extensive remains at Greenwich. The Greenwich remains are very interesting. Though there can be little doubt that there has been a building on the site, hardly any parts of it, beyond the small piece of coarse pavement, were discovered when they were excavated in 1902. T\\c indication of walls or foundations are of the slightest ; but the quantities of ROMAN LONDON 73 roofing tiles and rough building stones in a confused mass over the ground probably indicate that the walls were levelled. So far as the coin- already found give a date, it would be in the fourth century. The objects of interest discovered maybe enumerated. Floor of room, tessera partially intact, and remains of hypocaust ; twenty-three coins dating a.d. 79 to a.d. 403 ; two pieces of marble with partial inscription ; t wo pieces of bone beautifully carved ; a large quantity of broken pottery, including Samian, Upchurch, black New Forest, and red ; whetstone and pestle ; part of mortuary ; various specimens of glass ; bronze hinges, safety pin, and ornaments ; iron key, hair-pin (sup- posed), number of nails, staples, &c. ; bones not yet recognized ; antlers of red deer showing marks of sawing ; wall stucco in abundance ; charcoal and ballast ; tiles (roofing and others) ; oolite slabs. Kings- bury, just beyond Willesden, has considerable Roman remains, and the walls of the church there are probably of Roman workmanship. All this indicates not only prosperity but peace, and peace was obtained from the power possessed and wielded by the city. AVithin this large stretch of territory attached to the city there were no settlements — no towns or villages or local communities, and it is this fact which empha- sizes its character as the territorium of a great city. It consisted of the cultivated lands of the conquered country, and was worked by the enslaved, conquered people for the benefit of the city to which it belonged. The Romans dealt with it in an ordered and scientific way. Their surveyors divided it into square plots of 120 perches each way, intersected it by a system of roads all communicating with the city, tin- 74 ROMAN LONDON whole area being thus devoted to the purposes of the city. Mr. Montagu Sharpe has studied the lands of Middlesex and has discovered, even in modern boundaries, clear traces of the centuriation of the Romans, while Mr. Reginald A. Smith has turned to the road system all round London and, with a daring which is unusual in archaeological research, has pro- nounced the existence of Roman roads which exactly fit in with the requirements of the Roman surveyors. The time came when Roman London had to stand without the support of Imperial Rome. In a. d. 410 the Roman empire was sore pressed by the tribes who closed in upon her on all sides, and the Emperor Honorius wrote letters to the cities of Britain, urging them to provide for their own safety. The importance of this event is that it shows the centre of Roman government to have been the cities. There was then no British state, not even the beginnings of a British state. The tribal Celtic Britons could not, and the Romans did not, form Britain into a self-governed state, and when London received the imperial script she looked after her own interests independently of all other parts of the country, whether cities or tribal lands. I think she assumed the position of city-state for which her Roman organization and experience so pre-eminently fitted her. The external sovereignty of the empire having been thrown off, she would stand revealed as the city-state, ready with all the forms and traditions to take a place of independence in any new form of state-government which might be developed. lli»w independently she behaved is indicated in one or two ways. When the Roman general Artorius ROMAN LONDON 75 allied himself to the Celtic Britons to fighf againsl the incoming Saxons, and began that brilliant series ofvictories which was to make of him a British king, the giv.it hero of Celtic tradition and the King Arthur of romance, he was crowned king at ( 'aerleon and again at Silchester. lint London accepted no king from these sister cities, and so we find that Arthur was crowned .1 Lso at London. This is significant of the independence of Roman London during the period of the severe struggle against the Anglo-Saxons ; and it is followed by a correspondingly significant fact when Anglo- Saxon kings had assumed the position of Bret walda, that is, sovereign of both the Anglo-Saxon and the British people, namely, that there was a sub-king, sub-regulo, of London. This title had a long range. It is referred to in AVelsh tradition when Bran, son of Llyr, 'was crowned king of this island and he was exalted from the crown of London.' That this is not unreal tradi- tion is shown by the parallel reference by the great Welsh lawgiver, Howel Dha, in the early tenth century, and again in the Scandinavian saga, the Heimskringla of the twelfth century. We cannot miss all that this means in the story of London's independence or semi-independence after the Roman imperial sovereignty had left her to fight her own way. It is indicative of two things, the recognition of London independence and a British appeal to a power- ful city organized both for civil and military purposes. London, therefore, naturally assumed the position of city-state. Her organization from Rome would qualify her for that position if occasion arose. It arose, I think. when Rome left the cities of Britain to fight againsl the northern foe. London was, however, a city-state 76 EOMAN LONDON with a difference. In course of time different stages of an outside sovereignty to which London had to bow were created. The struggle from this state of things will be outlined in the following pages, but the point we have reached now is important, for it brings us to the city-state of London as an institution of the land, and it is only from this standpoint that we can under- stand her later history. niAiTKi; vii WHAT ROMAN' LONDON LEFT TO LATER LONDON London was not the capital city of a state after it had ceased to be a city of the Roman empire If it was anything it was a petty state itself. A British state was not formed out of the relics of the Roman provincial government of Britain. It was not. formed out of the tribal government of the British Celts or the tribal government of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain. And when out of the silence of both Celtic and Anglo-Saxon history London once more emerges, we find it still an organized city community, still powerful and strong, still able to defend itself ami to give help towards the defence of the growing, but unformed English nation. It could not have derived its organization, its power, and its strength either from British or from English sources, for neither British nor English polity lent itself to the foundation of cities. There is therefore only one source from which it could have secured its position as a city in a 1 1 unformed state, and this source was its heritage a< a Roman institution. And if it kept this intact or practically intact during the troublous times of Anglo- Saxon conquest, it must have used it during the times of Anglo-Saxon settlement, and must have handed much of it on to later times when it took its place as the capital city of England. 78 WHAT ROMAN LONDON LEFT There is a whole group of facts, archaeological, historical, legal, and constitutional, which go to prove this position. They must be taken together, and not singly. Their cumulative value, not their separate significance, must be considered. It is not an accident, but a point of scientific importance, that we can call upon a series of correlated facts for evidence, a series the elements of which are not only related to each other and consistent with each other, but which could have come from no other source than the Roman organization of London. We have already dealt to some extent with the archaeological evidence, and we have suggested that the evidence of Celtic tradition assists this by its evident traces of mythic wonder which were laid open to the Celtic Britons when London, detached from the Roman empire, was attached as ally to the Celtic chieftains who were defending their country from the Anglo-Saxon conquerors. If early London was not a capital city, it has always been an empire city- a city of two empires, two of the greatest empires the world has ever seen. She first of all grew to greatness as a city of that terrible, but magnificent empire — Rome. She has grown to a more magnificent greatness as the capital city of the British empire. If I attempt to sketch out the connecting links between Roman Lundinium and English London, ;iiid tin 'ii attempt to sketch the contrast between the two Londons, I shall, of course, give an incomplete picture, but I think I shall give an instructive one. I think I shall give what has not hitherto been under- stood of London history, and the mere statement of a misunderstood phase of historical evolution is a TO LATER LuNlx.N 7!) step towards the complete story which some day will assuredly be written. I cannot do better than begin wit b a emit rast. Roman London appears so quickly among the first results of the Roman conquest of Britain that historians have been induced to turn to other sources than Rome to account for her position. English London appears to emerge so slowly from the conflicts and settlement of Anglo-Saxon times that historians are wont to assume an entire break with her earlier existence. And yet this contrast is in absolute keeping with the events which belong to both periods. The rapid growth of Roman London is the growth of a city naturally en- dowed when the fullest opportunity is afforded for growth. She was the Chicago or the Winnipeg of ancient days. The slow development of English London is the development of an institution not in keeping with the institutions with which it was sin- rounded. The rapid growth of Roman London was due to London herself — to her place on the Thames, to her connexion by roads with the continental cities and with Rome, to the commerce which made her the emporium of Western Europe. The uprising of English London was due to the genius of that greatest of Eng- lish monarchs — iElfred the Great — who. recognizing her strategical importance in the great contest that was before him, recognizing too the nationality awaiting t lie touch of genius to make it burst forth, put on one side the tribal polity of his people, and stood out for an English military power and an English state government. This contrast between Roman Lundinium and English London ends with a parallel, and a parallel of some importance. Boudicca had sacked the first 80 WHAT ROMAN LONDON LEFT Roman London and had massacred its inhabitants. The Romans answered by building the defending walls of the second Roman London so as to include the whole area which her commerce demanded. The English king came to the London of his age, recog- nized in the half-destroyed walls the means of a great defence against Danes and Norsemen, and once more surrounded the city with its wall, built of the old Roman material, and on exactly the Roman site. yElfred only restored what some great Roman had constructed. Both depended upon the Roman defences of London for a defence of the country. I think these contrasts and this parallel are all- important. They supply the key-note of history — the key-note of London as an imperial city. Let us take our stand by King iElfred when in the year 886 he surveyed the city and decided to use it for defence — let us, if we can, try to see what he saw and as he saw it. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the facts — ' King iElfred occupied London, and all the English race submitted to him which was free from the thral- dom of the Danish men, and then he entrusted the town to the keeping of iEthelred aldorman.' Twelve years later, that is in 898, there was a formal conference at Chelsea between iElfred, iEthered, ^Ethelrlaed, and Archbishop Plegmund on the fortifications of London (Plummer's Alfred, 111, quoting Birch, No. 577), and Asser's Life of Alfred expands the record of his doings in London by stating that ' he honourably rebuilt (restauravit) the city of London and made it again habitable (et hdbitabilem fecit). He gave it into the custody of his son-in-law ./Ethered, earl of Mercia, to which king all the Angles and Saxons who before TO LATEB LONDON Hi had Ween dispersed everywhere or were in captivity with the pagans voluntarily burned and submitted themselves to his dominion'. These and a few other meagre references are all that remains to us of the historical record of this event. As Mr. Stevenson points out, Asser was probably describing what he actually saw. and it comes to th t liit the city was in such a condition that its restora- tion as a strategic defence of southern Britain was quickly accomplished. But wc may picture, if we will, much more than this by understanding what remained of a citizen-life of London after iElfred's time. That which remained in after years for us to discover must have existed for iElfred to see ; that which Alfred saw must have been more exten- sive, more perfect, than the fragments which have survived not only the necessary wear and tear of succeeding centuries, but also the senseless destruction by ignorant or indifferent Londoners. I think, there- fore, that if we take our stand by the great king, and endeavour to see in imagination what he must have seen in fact, we shall touch a momentous period in London history — a period when the coming Anglo- Saxon made his appeal to the departing Roman, when the London of the lloman empire yielded up her best to the London of the English. It is the period when London, having witnessed the passing away of the Roman empire within which she had her birth, took her place in the new English empire which was then just starting on its great career. To grasp rightly the main facts of this period is to understand the position of London as a city of two empires. When King JElfred stood in London in the year 886 886.115 [■' 82 WHAT EOMAN LONDON LEFT it is quite obvious that, decayed and neglected as the city had become, it was a city with life in it, and it is our present business to inquire what that life was. There were the plrysical and monumental remains of the Roman city. Let us note, then, the remains of Roman-built residences. There is first of all to note the recently discovered bath in Cannon Street, showing all the usual features, and other remains at Austin Friars. But the principal remains are pavements dis- covered in modern times twelve or fifteen feet below the existing level of no less than fifty- six streets. I will enumerate the sites where these pavements have baen found, and I think in the end it will be agreed that it is worth while to have considered such a list. 1 Bank of England. A red, black and grey pavement under the south-west angle of the building and several others covering the area between Princes Street, Lothbury, and Bartholomew Lane. Birchin Lane. Fragments of pavements of different colours. Bishopsgate. Three pavements, one of black and white tesserae in squares ami diamonds. Broad Street. Three pavements, one forming the floor of a room 28 feet square. Bucklersbury. A magnificent pavement in colours. Bash Lane. Two pavements of white tesserae. Camomile Street. An undescribed pavement. < lannon Street. Two pavements, one of red tesserae. ( 'heapside. An undescribed pavement. Clement's Lane. Fragments of pavements. ( 'loak Lane. A pavement of the herring-bone type. College Street, Dowgate Hill. Fragments of pave- ments. 1 Thi-- list is compiled from tlio Victoria History of London. Human Pavement discovekeu in Leadeniiall Stbeet. f2 84 WHAT ROMAN LONDON LEFT Crosby Square, Bishopsgate. Pavement of white and grey tesserae. Crutclied Friars. Undescribed pavement. Dowgate Hill. Fragments of pavements. Fenchurcli Street. Three pavements, one of red, grey, and white tesserae, one of red tesserae only, one of richly coloured design on white ground. Finch Lane. Part of a pavement of red, white, black, and green tesserae, and fragments of other pavements. Friday Street. Fragment of coarse tessellated pave- ment. < rracechurch Street. Fragments of several pavements, and one pavement of considerable extent. Gresham Street. Fragments of several pavements of white mosaic. Grocers' Hall, Princes Street. Pavement of concrete. Guildhall. Pavement of grey slate and white marble. Holborn (Viaduct end). Pavement of black, reel, and white tesserae. Honey Lane. Pavement of red and yellow tesserae. Huggin Lane, Wood Street. Fragments of pavement of white tesserae. King's Arms Yard, Moorgate Street. Fragments of pavement of red, white, and grey tesserae. Lambeth Hill. Fragment of pavement undescribed. Laurence Pountney Lane. A large space covered by pavement of coarse red tesserae. Leadenhall Market. A beautiful pavement. Leadenhall Street. A pavement, forming the floor of a room more than '10 feet square, of a Bacchus design ; a room paved with red tesserae; another pavement undescribed and two fragments. Lombard Street. Considerable remains of a pavement of coarse red tesserae; pavements all along the length of the street down to Birchin Lane, as if for a series of houses, and two other pavements. Lothbury. Remains of tessellated pavement. .Mansion House. Pavement now in Guildhall. Mark Lane. Pavement of common red tesserae. 86 WHAT EOMAN LONDON LEFT Monument Street. Fragment of pavement with a zigzag border and inscription. Northumberland Alley, Crutched Friars. Fragment of tessellated pavement. Pancras Lane. Small pieces of pavement. Paternoster Row. A pavement extending to 40 feet, with birds and beasts in compartments : part of another pavement of similar pattern. Paternoster Square. Fragment of plain pavement. Poultry. Part of a pavement. Queen Street. A pavement 14 feet square. Little St. Helens. Undescribed pavement of tesserae. St. Mary Axe. Tessellated pavement undescribed. St. Mary le Bow, Cheapside. Pavement undescribed. St. Michael, Crooked Lane. Plain red tessellated pavement. St. Olave, Jewry. Pavement of red tesserae measuring 20 feet by 3 feet. St. Paul's. Tessellated pavement of a variegated pattern of rosettes on white ground. St. Thomas Apostle. Pavement of red, white, yellow. and black tesserae. Seething Lane. Pavements throughout the street. Size Lane, Budge Row. Pavement undescribed. Suffolk Lane. Pavement undescribed. Thames Street, Lower. Pavement of red and yellow tesserae, a second pavement connected with extensive remains of buildings. Thames Street, Upper. Fragments of pavements. Threadneedle Street. Coarse red tessellated pavement. 6 feet by 5 feet of white and black tesserae ; frag- ments of similar pavements; another pavement 13^ feet long in variegated tesserae, and a third pavement. Tower Hill. Red tessellated pavement. Wood Street. Pavements of tesserae. Now this long catalogue of pavements is evidence of the existence of a considerable mass of Roman 7. p u I p J c M P 3 P - 2 o 88 WHAT ROMAN LONDON LEFT public and domestic remains in modern times, and therefore also in Anglo-Saxon times. Most of them are found connected with walls and other fragments of buildings, and one or two of them with extensive remains, sufficient to indicate their importance, notably that on the site of the Coal Exchange, and that in Bucklersbury. The latter gives us an interesting picture, with just the required touch to make it surrender to our imagination a glimpse of the actual life that was lived there. There was a small pavement entire, and beneath it the flues for heating the apartment, while portions of the house to which it belonged were also found stretching away to the bank of the Walbrook, with the remains of a verandah on the front overlooking the stream. One would not have missed this record of the verandah for a bucket-full of unemotional discoveries. If we can discover this telling remnant of Roman London, King iElfred must have seen it undestroyed. Indeed this is the point I am anxious to press. A verandah remaining for us to discover was a thing of reality when iElfred was king — perhaps a still - frequented part of a house then inhabited b}r the commercial successors of the Roman builder. These remains are too numerous, too impressive in their destroyed condition, for them to have been simply ruins of a former grandeur when King iElfred in a. d. 886, more than one thousand years ago, surveyed the great city, and took stock of its position for the purposes of state government. Such remains were not ruins always. They were Roman buildings, and in them I doubt not lived the men \vh<> l>rouirht London t hrouffh the stressand trouble TO LATEB LONDON 89 of conquest, unconquend and andestroyed. We may then turn from the buildings to the men, or rather to the work of tlm men, for of the men themselves we know nothing. The houses wei e the shell within which the domestic life was centred, ami this indicates a domestic life "I the Roman type No mere tribal-governed Celt <>r Saxon lived in the square rooms, heated by the elaborate hypocaust system, paved with tesserae of elaborate and cultured designs, and occupying all the best parts of the city. Living in Roman houses, Londoners lived in Roman fashion and were governed by Roman organiza- tion and institutions. The forum discovered beneath the site of modern Leadenhall Market, the mint on the same site as at the present day, indicated by a silver ingot inscribed as ' from the workshop of Honorius' dis- covered at the Tower in association with unworn coins of Honorius, 1 the temple to Diana discovered beneatli St. Paul's Cathedral, quays, walls, and foundations every- where, indicate a solid civilization coming from a great past. KingiElfred saw all these things and took stock of them. Standing at any one of the city gates, he would grasp the fact, perhaps too the significance, of the unbuilt belt of land all round the city, the sacred pomerium ; he would be informed of the rights of the citizens over a vast stretch of territory now forming modern Middlesex on the north, and stretching to Crayford and Wimbledon on the south, rights which were actually recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, when in a.d. 912, his son, King Eadward, took pos- session of London, 'and of all the lands which belonged 1 Victoria Hist. I. mdon, 10. 90 WHAT ROMAN LONDON LEFT thereto'; he would learn that the city had its own commercial law derived from the Roman institutes ; its own criminal and personal law, which even pre- served the criminal jurisdiction of the consul one mile outside the city at our Mile End ; its own property law, derived directly from the Roman institutes ; its own school of trained lawyers faithfully carrying out the customs of ancient Rome herself as Horace describes them ; its own governing authority con- stituted of a recognized governing class of citizens — in a word, he saw a Roman city in the midst of his Anglo-Saxon tribalism. The great king, I say, must have seen all this and much more, for amidst the details of city life and custom which have survived in the later records and by tradition, all these points have been preserved. He saw, and what is more, he understood. It is from the legal and constitutional side that the most important evidence is derived, and it is fortunate that this is so. It is not only more permanent in its results, it is more definite in its application, and cannot be got rid of by mere argument. There was, first of all, a whole body of merchant law. Laws do not concern themselves with merchants and merchandise until civilization lias well advanced, and then it becomes necessary to define what merchants may do and may not do. We find none of these laws among the tribal codes of the Celts of Ireland and Wales, nor among those of the Anglo-Saxons. We find London governing herselfby such laws, and carrying on the principles of Roman commercial law late down in mediaeval days. Thus, under Roman law she made commercial agreements with other cities to carry on TO LATER LONDON 9] trade with safety and mutual benefit; under later custom, incorporated in royal charters, she followed exactly the same practice. ' Let one measure and one weight pass such as is observed at London and ;it Winchester' is the significant wording of a law of King Eadgar, showing the country at large to have been governed by a different law from that of these two cities. In this case the London law was to become the law of the country. In another important instance London law had to be altered to meet the social con- ditions of the country. Under Celtic and Anglo-Saxon laws the kindred to which the individual belonged was the body answerable for all legal actions instead of the individual. And, therefore, when we find London in Athelstan's days passing a new law for itself, ami obtaining the king's sanction thereto in order to make it current law throughout the kingdom, a new law which provided for the formation of artificial groups of men in commercial London to cope with the kinship groups in Anglo-Saxon and Celtic Britain, it is clear that the importance of this law is not indicated so much by its terms as by the fact that it was newly made in Anglo- Saxon times, and that up to that time at all events a different law altogether had obtained. This other law could only have been the Roman law of individual respon- sibility. Again, under Roman law property could only be devised upon one plan : one-third to the wife, one- third to the children, and one-third as the testator willed. and this was London law, and London law only, until it was abolished by statute in the reign of George I. And this is in direct contrast to the tribal law of the Anglo-Saxons which obtained all round London, by which the youngest son inherited the family home- 92 WHAT ROMAN LONFON LEFT stead, and from which special custom the well-known London place-name of ' Kentish Town' is derived. No one. can doubt the importance of these facts. They are governing factors in the life of the city, not merely surviving customs of comparatively little im- portance. They reveal the constitution of the city, and the origin of that constitution from its Roman organization. The addition to such legal customs of importance of customs of lesser importance to citizen life, but of equal weight as to origin, helps us to under- stand the general succession of Roman organization in London after Roman London had ceased to be. Fore- most among these customs is the group of rights and ceremonial observances showing London's control of the territory outside its own area — a weakened and weakening control, but a control which takes us back to the pomerium and the territorium for the only pos- sible sources of their origin. The belt of land outside the city walls included in the city area, and now known as wards 'without', must have been derived from an ancient condition of things long prior to the necessi- ties of a walled city. The covering in of the fosse and the use of the land thus acquired will not account for the extent of the wards of Bishopsgate Without, Cripple- gate Without, and Farringdon Without, and this extent of territory, unaccounted for in mediaeval records, can be explained by the position of the Roman pomerium, encroached upon from without as the Anglo-Saxons worked their way towards London. Beyond this narrow belt of land round the city there was the extended area within which the city had remarkable rights — the jurisdiction of n 93 up as far as the Chi Items and in Middlesex and Surrey, and carious ceremonies and rites which have always given the city a position in outer London which its municipal constitution as derived from mediaeval sources never gave it. I next come to a more inipnrtant fact. Christianity in becoming the formal religion of the Roman empire had adopted from the first the methods of Roman civilization. Let me note the fact of Christian churches being built upon the walls of Roman cities. There are several such in London. There are All Hallows on the Wall, the vestry <»i which is built out of the bastion, and St. James on the Wall ; and there was St. Augustine on the Wall, now destroyed. A further fact of importance to note is that Christian churches were built on Roman sites and were probably Roman buildings themselves. St. Martin's at Canterbury is a Roman building, and so is St. Michael's at Verulam. The foundations of the church of St. Andrew Hubbard, which stood on the south side of Little Eastcheap, had all the character of Roman workmanship (Gent. Mag. Lib. 103). and the same maybe said of the unique remains of St. Michael's, Crooked Lane, and St. Gabriel. Fenchurch Street (ibid. 211). Even St. Saviour's South wark, and Westminster Abbey are now known to have been built upon Roman sites. This is evidence of material continuity — the continuity of Roman buildings used for Christian worship, withstanding the destruction which swept over the land at the time of the Saxon invasion. It helps towards the conception of a continuity in other directions. When our kings of the eighth century set their hands to documents 94 WHAT ROMAN LONDON LEFT written in Latin and bristling with the technical terms of the Roman law, whence do they obtain the knowledge ? Certainly not from themselves. All the earliest charters are of ecclesiastical origin, all of them convey the absolute ownership of lands to the Church. The recorded motive which prompts a king to set his cross, for there is no signature, to a charter is a purely personal motive. He wishes to save his soul, he desires pardon for his crimes. Of the religion of his realm he says not a word ; it is his soul which must be saved, not his kingdom which must be bene- fited. He is acting therefore as a private landowner might act, and he uses terms and phrases which belong to the private law of Rome (Maitland, Domesday Book, ^30). He uses terms and phrases unknown to his native Saxon law, unknown, I think we may say, to himself, perhaps not understood by himself, and he uses these terms and phrases at the instance of his ecclesiastical advisers, who in planting the Christian Church in Roman Britain made it a great territorial institution by means of Roman law, whose technical terms conveyed more meaning, much more meaning, into the species of ownership transferred to th e Church than those who granted it ever understood. We have thus tried to find out the kind of London which King iElfred visited and restored to its place as an institution of the state, and I want now to point the principal interest of this for us. It marks the period of transfer from a Roman imperial city to an English imperial city. King Alfred was at the parting of the ways. It was his strong hand which moved the Anglo- Saxon conception of the state sufficiently forward to bring within its sphere of influence ami activity the TO LATER LONDON 95 institution of the city. The city which thus found itself at the beginning of a new empire was of Roman origin. It had 1>i -longed to one great imperial system, and it was now going to take its place in another great imperial system. We of this ago look back upon the events which make of London a doubly imperial city with the satisfaction of a happily completed task. We cannot, if we would, understand all the struggles. or the strength of the human effort, which made the thing possible— -those struggles which have left scars upon the great city even to this day. What we can do is to estimate rightly the facts of history and archaeology which belong to this period. This esti- mate reveals a city with a domestic life and culture, with a legal system, with a governing constitution entirely at variance with the Anglo-Saxon polity and entirely in keeping with the Roman polity. Anglo- Saxon kings had ignored London, and London had carried on her existence in a sort of constitutional independence — an independence not granted to her as a matter of state policy, but created by her as a means of existence. iElfred broke into that independence by bringing London into definite relationship with Eng- lish national life, and in the succeeding centuries we have evidence of the remoulding of London citizen- life more in accord with English ideas. CHAPTER VIII THE SAXONS IN LONDON If my reading of the evidence is correct, the Anglo-Saxons entered London, controlled it. mastered it, but they did not conquer it. They did not sail up the Thames, as they did the Severn and the Tyne and the lesser rivers. They entered England by the back door, as Dr. Ripley says, and spread inland from the southern coast, prevented from fol- lowing up the Thames by the presence of London.' We find them settling all round London in places which can be recognized by their terminals -ham, -ington, -ey, and -wich. That this settlement took place before they occupied London is proved by one very significant fact, namely, that the communal in- stitutions of the Saxons, represented in later history by the manor, while existing all round the city, right up to its very boundary lines, never got into the city. There is evidence here, also, that something opposed to the village system of the Anglo-Saxons must have stood up against that system, to have pre- vented its entry within the city bounds. The city constitution, withstanding the village institutions of the Anglo-Saxon intruders, was a living thing there- fore — a constitution under which men lived and. il 1 Races of Europe, 823. THE SAXONS IX LONDON !>7 need v^ere, fought, and in this ease fought success- fully. The entry, control, and mastering of London by the Anglo-Saxons therefore was not by conquest. History is silent on the point, and the silence is eloquent, not of fighting and conquest, but of a gradual encroachment upon the city territorium, the gradual filling in with villages and land-settlements of a territory which previously had none such. The silence of history as regards t he London of Anglo- Saxon times is only effectively broken when the coun- try was exposed to the deadliest danger from outside. The Danes and Northerners had included England in their sphere of activity, and at once the importance of London as a military defence post was discovered, as we have seen, by the greatest of Anglo-Saxon kings. He repaired the walls and took ample measures for its defence, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. And London held its own during the long struggle. ' Oft they fought against the city of London, but praise be to God that it stands sound, and they there ever met with ill fare,' is the evidently contemporary record of the year 1009. The same evidence comes from Danish sources, as we learn from Saxo Grammaticus. Frode is described as attacking London, ' the most populous city of the island, but the strength of its walls gave him no chance of capturing it,' and so he resorted to treachery. 1 London stood sound always. She ac- cepted the Danish monarchy only when all England had perforce accepted it. And the actual facts of the Danish conquest appear to me to represent what must have been a very close parallel to the facts of the 1 See translation by Mr. Oliver Elton, p. 60. 986. 10 Q 98 THE SAXONS IN LONDON earlier Anglo-Saxon conquest,which cannot be recovered from history. Let us look at the Danish events, as they con- cern London, a little closely. The Danes were kept outside London long enough for them to establish settlements there. Everywhere else they settled within the cities they overwhelmed. At Rochester they settled inside the city. At Dublin they did the same. "VVe discover evidences of the same kind of settlement at London as at Dublin and Rochester, strangely, remarkably alike, but it is outside the city boundaries, not inside. We have first the important settlement of St. Olave in South - wark, and secondly the settlement of Aldwych on the western side of London, in Middlesex. Of the former there does not appear to be any remains except the one important fact of its Scandinavian name and the dedication of its church. Of the latter there are very significant remains. I will indicate what these remains are. Colonel Prideaux, a well-known London antiquary, thus describes the territory : — South of Great Queen Street is a district which was coextensive with the area which was perhaps the oldest suburb of London, the village of Ealdwic or Aldwic, known later as Aldewych, and of which so late as the days of the Stuarts some vestiges remained in Oldwich Close, an open space which lay to the south of Lincoln's Inn Fields. This village in the tenth century was largely colonized by the Danes, after whom the neigh- bouring church of St. Clement was named. The high- road of the village, which connected it with the hospital of St. Giles, was known as tho Via de Aldewych, and is represented by the modern Drury Lane, with the THE SAXONS JN LONDON 99 exception of the south-eastern extremity which led to the holy well of St. Clement, and tho name of which still survives in Wych Street. — Notes and Queries, 9th ser., ii. 81. This is tho territory which I think was Danish territory in the tenth century, and which was suffi- ciently separate from the City and from Westminster to have been excluded from both these places up to the time of the reign of Edward the First. So much for the territorial portion of the history ; we can now turn to the constitutional history, for in this, I think, we have many important clues not hitherto properly brought into the history of London. If, in connexion with a territory which kept its dis- tinctiveness down to historical times, we can discover customs which can only be explained by reference to Danish customs in other places, the argument becomes all the stronger that this must have been the place of settlement of the Danish conquerors of the country round London. The most significant relic of this Danish settle- ment is the stone monolith at which the chief of the tribe was installed and the assembly of the tribe met to discuss and settle the affairs of the community. This is to be identified with a stone cross, as it was called in later days, which stood opposite the Bishop of Worcester's house, now Somerset House, in the Strand, and the means of identification are most interest inff. In the first place it was the spot where the manorial dues of later days were paid . This appears from a manor custom first recorded, according to Hazlitt's Tenures of Land. in the reign of Edward the First, whence it appears that the dues for a piece of land in the parish of St. Clement q2 100 THE SAXONS IN LONDON Danes wore six horseshoes paid annually ' at the Stone Cross ' (ad crucem lapidem). This land passed into the possession of the Corporation of London, who still render annually six horseshoes for it at the Court of Ex- chequer. The important point here is that the manor dues were rendered at the stone cross — the dues of the community, that is. rendered at the place of assembly of the community. That this is a correct interpretation of the manor custom is to be gathered from further customs connected with this stone cross, so called. Thus, in the reign of Edward the First, ' the justices itinerant set at the stone cross' in the open air. The custom is alluded to by several authorities, and there can be no doubt that it occurred. An open-air court of this kind just outside the walls of the city within which were halls and courts for the meeting of citizens is obviously of archaic significance. The justices came to it as to a place independent of the city or of Middle- sex, and they came in conformity to ancient custom, not to thirteenth-century requirements. That ancient custom again takes us back to the Danish settlement where the heads of the tribe met, in London, as they did at Dublin and at Rochester, at a monolith or other significant landmark, and as, according to all ancient authorities, was the practice in Danesland and through- out Scandinavia. Every tittle of evidence therefore points to this stone in the Strand as the ancient meeting- place of the assembly of the Danish com- munity, the place where the}^ administered their affairs and their laws, surviving in later days, before the district had lost its ancient idios3 7 ncrasy of inde- j .< • 1 1 - 1 - i :>■>■ of both London and Westminster, to be administered by tin' King's justices, but in the Horseshoes rendered to the King's Remembrancer in respect 01 land in St. ( ii mim Danes. i^By the courtesy of the King's Remembrancer) 102 THE SAXONS IN LONDON archaic Danish fashion and in the ancient Danish spot. 1 There is the additional significance of the Maypole of the Strand, so well known as connected with this spot. It was placed a door or two westward beyond ' where Catherine Street descends into the Strand '. 2 The Maypole and its accompanying ceremonial is a very ancient relic of the past, and it is essentially connected with a settled community. Nowhere in England is it otherwise than a public institution, a part of the corporate life of the people. On the continent of Europe it is something more than this— it is connected with the special feature of early life, namety, the tribal community, and above all the tribal com- munity of the Northmen. That it should have survived so strongly in this particular spot in London justifies the assumption that it conies down from the same tribal community of the Danes, who settled outside London walls, and gave the name of Aldwych to this district. Indeed, there is a curious passage in William of Malmesbury about the election of Harold, son of Canute, in 1036, which I think illustrates the point at which we have arrived. Harold, we are told, was elected by the Danes and the citizens of London, 'who from long intercourse with these barbarians had almost entirely adopted their customs '. There is no evidence of these customs having obtained within the city, and 1 Hazlitt, Tenures of Land, 203 ; Ititson, Court Leets, ix ; Chronicle 0/ the Mayors and Sheriffs of London, 237, 243 ; Penanfc, London, 159 ; Slew's Survey (edit. Kingsford , ii. 93. 2 Hone's Everyday Book, i. 280, gives a good account from a scarce tract of 1661 Of the re-erect ion of this Maypole after the Restoration, and Virtue's engraving of the procession of both Houses of Parliament to St. Paul's Cathedral after the Peace of Utrecht, July 7, 1713, contains a glimpse of it as it then stood. THE SAXONS IN LONDON 103 I suggest we have here a record ofwhal was happening just outside London. II- re, then, we have the chief features of the Danish settlement in London. The Danes settled in their own fashion, not in English fashion or in London fashion. Their settlement was outside London, not within it. They lived under their own institutions. The laws of the tenth century constantly refer to the Danes living under laws of their own, and though I do not necessarily connect this with a Danelagh territory — the laws were tribal, not territorial — they undoubtedly obtained in all Danish settlements. Now the interest of this survival from the past history of Danish influence in London is twofold. First, it shows a singularly powerful London capable of holding its own against the mightiest foes the English ever encountered. Secondly, it shows by analogy that what the Danes did in the eleventh century — were obliged to do because of the vigorous capacity of London to defend itself — is what the Anglo- Saxons might well have done in the seventh and succeeding centuries. They settled all round London — in their Kensingtons, Vaddingtons, Yidhams, luewishams, and the like, just as the Danes settled immediately out- side London in their fewer numbers. History repeated itself. The great city had an organization capable of being used for defensive purposes. That it was used against the Danes most effectively, we have historical and archaeological evidence. That it was similarly used against the Anglo-Saxons is what all the evidence permits, and the parallel seems to me to be conclusive. 1 1 Freeman, Hist. Norman Conquest, i. 43-5, draws attention to tho many parallels between the Anglo-Saxon and Danisb conquests. 104 THE SAXONS IN LONDON The organization which enabled the citizens of London so to act, must have been of a high order. "We get no evidence of such organization from the Saxon side. All that the Saxon evidence shows is neglect of London. Until the Danes entered into conflict with the Saxons, the position of London as an important military centre was entirely overlooked. No Saxon monarch had ever used it as a basis of military operations, and so far as the evidence goes London was left to itself. The organization, therefore, which allowed it to defend itself against the Danes, must have been other than Anglo-Saxon, and the only possible source for such an organization must have been the old Roman system kept up through these years of neglect. When, however, the London of the eleventh century was defending itself against the Danes, it was doing so under an Anglo-Saxon king, under an Anglo-Saxon domination therefore. We should expect, then, to find Anglo-Saxon influences and institutions in London, even if they do not appear as the only influences and institutions. This is in point of fact what is to be found. We see one group of customs taking its place clearly and distinctly as municipal law, and another group of customs delegated to the position of muni- cipal usage only, having no force as municipal law. Municipal law may be traced back to Roman origins. Municipal usage is Anglo-Saxon. It never dominates the city. It invigorates it. It asserts itself in an obstinate sort of fashion — the very assertion making its place as a secondary influence nil the more pronounced. I can illustrate this view by one interesting example i he posit i"ii of i In' sword in t he municipal ceremonial THE SAXoNS IN LONDON 105 of Loudon. A copy of a letter exists among the archives of London, dated about 1582, written by the Lord Mayor to the Lord Chancellor, and complaining ' that when he (the Lord Mayor) attended to bake his oath without the Tower Gate, he had Her Majesty's sword carried before him in the streets, as bad been the custom to carry it in Westminster Hall until they came to the bar of Her .Majesty's Court, when the sword was reversed by the sword-bearer as in the presence of Her Majesty ; and so it had intended to be done when arriving at the place where the Lieutenant sat as had been the custom. They were met at the corner of Tower Street by two of the warders, who commanded Her Majesty's sword to be holden down, and pressed violently to take it down, but through the good discretion of the Recorder they were peaceably holden oft". 1 And later on, in 1633, a similar dispute took place with reference to the right of the Lord Mayor to have the sword borne up before him within St. Paul's Cathedral, and 'especially within the choir". - Now this right, thus tenaciously defended in the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries, according to ancient custom, carries us farther back into antiquity than the date of the dispute. That this view of the case is the correct one is proved by the curious analogy which exists in a self-governing community whose origin and practice is admittedly archaic. One of the ceremonies incidental to the great folk-meeting on Tynwald Hill, in the Isle of Man, was according ' to the constit in ion of old time ', that the lord should ' sitt in a chaire . . . with the sword before him holden with the point upwards '." 1 Ecmcmbrani-itt, \>. !•'>_. - Ibid., 328. 3 Train, Hist, of Isle "/Man, ii. 18S. 106 THE SAXONS IN LONDON It should not be forgotten that here we have a typical ceremony of the election of the tribal chiefs of primi- tive communities, and the parallel to municipal custom is not too far apart to indulge in the conclusion that in this example of old municipal custom we have a survival from old tribal custom. The folkmoot of London illustrates this position in a still more remarkable manner. "We can not only see it at the time of its decay, but we can see it in all its primitive condition from the records of its later doings. In an institution of this kind late records are as good as early. They follow traditional practices and forms, they keep up rights and privileges, they follow ancient rites and ceremonies. The very name of the institution, the folkmoot of London, invites attention. No other city possesses such a title for its assembly. It is pure Saxon enshrining the Saxon ideal of self-government. There were three chief folkmoots during the year. ' At the Michaelmas folkmoot the meeting gathers to know who is the sheriff and to hear the new sheriff's charge. The Christmas meeting is for keeping the wards or arranging for their watch. The third, at Midsummer, is to keep the city from fire on account of the great drought.' The London interpolator of the laws of Edward the Confessor, says Miss Bateson, ordered that the wards should be arranged and careful provision made against fire in the folkmoot. Later on, these duties of watch and protection against fire devolve upon the wardmoots, but whilst there is but one sheriff the folkmoot appears as still an adminis- trative body of some importance. ' Any Londoner who neglects these folkmoots is in the king's forfeiture for 40*. But by the law of THE SAXONS IX LONDON 107 London the sheriff ought to cause inquiry to I"- made concerning any of whom he would know whether he is present. If there be any one who is asked for and not there he ought to be summoned to the busting and be brought thither by the Law of the city. If the good man says that he was not summoned that is to be known by the beadle of the ward. If the beadle says he was summoned at the busting he shall be attainted thereof, for the beadle has no other witness nor ought to have but the great bell which is rung for the folkmoot at St. Paul's.' J This ringing of the great bell of the cathedral church to summon the people to their folkmoot is singularly indicative of the democratic character of the assembly. No picking and choosing, not even a voting for repre- sentative members, but a gathering of every citizen — a mass meeting assembled in formal fashion to accom- plish constitutional business. It met in the open air upon a piece of ground at the east end of St. Paul's Church adjoining the cross, 2 and in the struggles it had with the selected body of citizens who claimed the right of governing the city it used the ancient formulae in giving its decisions, formulae which are represented wherever a primitive example of the Teutonic folkmoot has been preserved on the Continent, in Switzerland, Prussia, Denmark, and Scandinavia — it pronounced its 'Yea, Yea', or 'Nay, Nay', and the business was ended. We always find the London folkmoot struggling for its existence, struggling against a more limited organ i- 1 Liber Albus, 11S-19; Miss Batcson, Eng. Hist. EeV., xvii. iJ02. 2 Liber Custumarutn, .'>ys 9, and see my early work on Pi milive Folkmoots, 15S. 108 THE SAXONS IN LONDON zation which held the real power. This struggle is the key-note to its history. It never possessed full control of the city. It never was the governing assembly. It had got into the city with its English citizens, but it never reigned supreme. There was always up against it a superior limited authority, a high class of citizens, optimates, meliores, primates, potentates ; and the two governing authorities represent the dual element in London after the Anglo-Saxon authority had entered the city. The citizens in folkmoot called themselves 'the commons of the city', and they fought against ' the discreet men of the city ' on several memorable occasions. They had finally to fight against more re- doubtable enemies, namely the Chapter of St. Paul's Cathedral, among whose papers is preserved the record of the enclosure of the piece of land ' on which the mayor and commonalty used to hold their court which is called Folkmoot' and the protest of the citizens before the justices at the Tower. 1 This last act took place in the fourteenth year of King Edward II, and we do not hear of the folkmoot after that date. It had had a fitful and struggling history. It went down before the more powerful authority which the city, on every occasion when events are revealed by a con- stitutional struggle, always put into force and which always seemed to win the fight. I think the final history of the folkmoot of London may be traced, following out the process of evolution apparent in all English institutions. The husting is an integral part of the folkmoot, perhaps it is the folkmoot. Mr. Maitland will have it that tho 1 Historical MSS. Commission, ix. 40. THE SAXONS IX LONDON L09 hoisting is a bouse thing, as distinct from a thing or court held in the opeE air. 1 The open-air meeting of the London folkmoot continued down to the thirteenth century, and it is somewhal diffi- cult to truce out its connexion with the husting if Mr. Rfaitland's definition is correct. I venture to suggest, however, that it is not. I think it is the thing formed by the housemen of the community, the men who owned a homestead, the full members of tie- ancient tribal organization, and Icelandic law should tell us this much.'- That the folkmoot became divided into two as events marched on is the way I read the evidence. Administratively it passed into the common hall, juridically it passed into the husting. This kind of change seems to be apparent throughout the entire history of the primitive assembly as it passed into the local court. As Sir Henry Maine puts it of the Manorial Court, 'three courts are usually included which legal theory keeps apart, the Court Leet, the Court Baron, and the Customary Court of the Manor ; I think there cannot be reasonable doubt of tie- legitimate descent of all three from the assembly of the township,' 3 so I would put it of the folkmoot in re- lationship to the Court of Husting and Common Hall. there cannot be reasonable doubt of their descent from the folkmoot. I think it will be interesting to make a note of the 1 Domesday Book and Beyond, 211. This is the Bosworth and Poller definition in Awjhi s1-G. 3 Maine, Village Communities. 139, and cf. Mail land. Select Pleas of Manorial Courts, pp. xvi xix. 110 THE SAXONS IN LONDON last sitting of the Court of Husting. It is reported in the Times, March 13, 1901 : ' A sitting of the Court of Hustings, the first which has taken place for some years, was held at the Guildhall yesterday afternoon. The Lord Mayor, who was attended by the sword and mace bearers and the City Marshal, presided, and there were also present Mr. Alderman and Sheriff Vaughan Morgan, the Recorder, the Town Clerk, and other high officers of the Corporation. There is a Court of Hustings of Pleas of Land, and a Court of Hustings of Common Pleas, and they are now held only when business requires. The Lord Mayor, Alder- men, and Sheriffs are the Judges, and the Recorder sits with them to pronounce the judgements of the Court. The City Solicitor (Sir H. H. Crawford), addressing the Court, said that the sitting was held for the enrolment of two deeds. One of the deeds was dated January 15, 1897, the other July 4, 1899. The Court directed the deeds to be enrolled. There being no other business to be disposed of, the sitting of the Court was adjourned.' There is one additional fact of remarkable significance which helps to prove that London in Anglo-Saxon times was of little importance until its military position was recognized by iElfred, and it was used as a defence against the Danes. This fact is the character of the Anglo-Saxon objects which have been found from time to time during excavations. Only two of these objects can be identified as belonging to a period earlier than the Danish invasion — one is a buckle of beautiful workmanship of the fifth century, and the other a bronze brooch of cruciform type, found in Tower Street, in 1868, and belonging to the fifth or early sixth The King's Stone ai Kin.stox-on-Th.vmi-. 112 THE SAXONS IN LONDON century. All the rest of the Anglo-Saxon finds belong to the Danish period, and consist largely of swords, spear-heads, and other weapons — just that class of objects which fits in well with the other evidence, to show that London was not an Anglo-Saxon city until it became the battle-ground against Danish encroachment. The Victoria History of London has gathered together and illustrated this part of the subject in a remarkably able way, and it is impossible to resist the argument which it adds to what from historical sources appears so clear. There is, however, a still more notable fact, namely, the absence of Saxon burials in London, in direct con- trast to numerous grave finds of the AVest-Saxon type, which extend from Kent to as far north as the Humber, though avoiding London. The Celts of London, as we have seen, were buried there as they had lived there, and the avoidance of London as a burial-place for the dominant English is explainable only if it were not also a living place. This not only accords with London's position of quasi-independence of Anglo-Saxon occu- pation, but it nowhere finds a solution if we consider it by any of the conclusions of historians as to the Anglo-Saxon treatment of London. The avoidance of London as a burial-place means the avoidance of it as a homing-place, even the avoidance of it as a battle- ground. The English before JElfred cared not for the great city and left it to its languishing commerce and its restricted life. The great king brought it out again as a city capable of doing great things for the state. The Saxons in London, therefore, were not Saxons of Loin l^ii. They went there because of their supreme THE SAXONS IN LONDON L13 necessity when a strategic position was an essential feature of their defence againsl the northern foeman, in nl i hey found nol only a strategic position bui a well- organized government which could be reckoned nj »• »n to exert its wh<>lo force in its own defence. TheSaxon put his hand on this living institution, made it partly conform to liis own ideals, l>ut left intact all the principal features which bad brought it so powerfully under Saxon rule. ii CHAPTER IX WHAT LONDON WAS TO THE SAXONS London meant nothing constitutionally to the Anglo- Saxons. Their kings were not crowned within its walls, but on king-stones, as at Kingston, fifteen miles from London, and as the evidence seems to point, at Thorney, just outside London. The evidence for Westminster being a place for the crowning of Anglo-Saxon kings depends upon a series of details which I have described in my Governance of London and therefore need not repeat here. But an additional argument is, I think, derived from Mr. Lethaby's recent research into the architecture of Westminster Abbey, 1 which he thinks was designed for the ceremonial of the coronation. If this is so, the idea must have been derived from tradition and from custom existing at the time of Edward the Confessor, and this takes us to the institutions of the Saxons outside the city walls. Then, too, the meetings of their witenagemot were generally held at places in the country under the vault of heaven, and only two are recorded as taking place in London, one by Coenulf of Mercia in 811, who then called it ' that illustrious place and royal city' {loco previa ro oppidoque regali), and by Egbert of Wessex in 833. London did noi fit in with Anglo-Saxon institutions. It fitted in better with the Church's conception of 1 W. I.'. Li tlinby, W\ WHAT l.ON WAS TO THE SAXONS lir, what the new nation should be. As Mr. hale so well ox- plains, 'the lauding of Augustine appeared to ^thelbert of Kent to be an event of as great political as religious importance.' It meant a connexion with the great empire; and Mr. Dale thinks that under the influence thus fostered, ' London became a busy mart and flourish- ing port, keeping up continual intercourse with the merchants of Roman ( raul '.' Everything we know of Loudon in Anglo-Saxon times fits in with this conclusion, and it confirms its aloofness from the Anglo-Saxon constitution. At one time it was nominally included in the kingdom of the East Saxons, at another in that of the Kentishmen, at another in that of Mercia ; but there are several facts of Anglo-Saxon history which go directly to show the real independence of the city. East Saxoniam cum Lundonia is the significant expression of Florence of the year 1016. The evidence of the coinage is perhaps the most significant of all. Coinage means commerce, and the sceattas struck in London during the Anglo-Saxon period have one great peculiarity. Quoting Mr. C. F. Keary, ' they alone among the coins of this series are of very base silver, sometimes indeed of a metal so debased that it becomes questionable whether they should not be described as copper coins. Thus the metals of all the earliest English coins bearing the name of London are approximately very base silver or copper and gold, the metals of the two classes of Roman coins current in this country; a fact not without its signifi- cance, especially when we reflect that the preference for silver coins was in some sort a badge of the Teutonic nations. Quantum valeat, the circumstance tends to 1 National Life and Character in Early English Literature, 64. h2 116 WHAT LONDON WAS TO THE SAXONS show that the city of London retained something of the habits and preferences which it had acquired under the Eomans. At the same time the appearance itself of the legend "Londonia" or "Londunium" may suggest that during this period London preserved some sort of autonomy.' l This evidence seems to equate with all that has been previously adduced. Its parallel is only to be found north of the Humber, where the remains of Roman civilization are most abundant. In Kent, Surrey, and Essex there is nothing like it, and once more we find London forming a centre of its own in the midst of English surroundings. .Air. Freeman puts it thus: 'Among the shiftings of the smaller English kingdoms London seems to have held her own as a distinct power . . . always keeping somewhat of an independent being.' 2 It seems clear that this very well summarizes the position. No English monarch ever granted it rights and privileges. There is no constitutional document which shows the city to owe any part of its constitu- tion or its position to the favour or the prescience of an English king. The earliest mention of London in Anglo-Saxon literature is a law of the seventh century (Hlothhaere and Eadric) providing the method by which a Kentishman might purchase chattels in London— 'let him have two or three true men to witness or the king's \\ ic-reeve' — which not only shows the early commercial con« lit ion of London under Anglo- Saxon rule, bul the power to have a recognized proce- dure in regard to outsiders who were not citizens. The great Alfred's use of it as a strategical centre against i K,. ( i \ . ■ ■ / ngh \h i British Must um, i. xx. a 7 istricts, 898. WHAT LONDON WAS TO THE SAXONS 117 tlio Danish invader evidently points to an already exist- ing organization, and ili" remarkable ordinance which ' the bishops and reeves belonging to London ' ordained when Athelstan was king, shows, as we bave already seen, thai the law of the Londoners, from which this ordinance was a departure, did not belong to the Anglo- Saxon system of law. ftven the grant by Athelstan of eight moneyers to London, more than to any other town, signifies the existence of a settled organization. We cannot be sure of the exact position London held under t ho Anglo-Saxons, but we can be sure that it was not a position of their making. It was a position carv< » 1 out by London herself from her past position as a city of the Roman empire, and which helped her forward in later 3 r ears ; just such a position in point of fact as existed almost everywhere when Roman and barbarian met, as Ammian us Marcellinus describes the position of Straslmrg, Brumat, Saverne, Spiers, Worms, and Mayence, which 'were all in the hands of the bar- barians who were established in their suburbs, for the barbarians shunned fixing themselves in the towns themselves, looking upon them Like graves surrounded with nets' (lib. xvi, cap ii). This conclusion points to the possession of a city organization of some power and centralization. It cannot be that Bishop Stubbs is correct in his con- clusion that when the city of London 'springs into historical light it is a collection of communities based on the lordship, the township, the parish, and the gild'. 1 There was only one community which passed the Athelstan ordinance, and there was only one community which sent forth its contribution to the 1 Const. Hist., i. 95. 118 WHAT LONDON WAS TO THE SAXONS Saxon army at Hastings with its sheriff, Ansgar, at their head. It was one community which received back the wounded Ansgar and parleyed with the great conqueror. London was everything to the Anglo- Saxons of the later period, but it was so much to them because it possessed a settled organization and a system of government. ' Few pictures from the past ', saj^s Mr. Kemble, 'may the eye rest upon with greater pleasure than that of a Saxon portreeve looking down from his strong gyld-hall upon the well-watched walls and gates that guard the populous market of his city — Ealdredsgate et Cripplesgate, i. e. portas Mas obser- vabant custodes. In the centre of the square stands the symbolic statue which marks the freedom of juris- diction and of commerce, balance in hand to show the right of unimpeded traffic, sword in hand to intimate the hts gladii, to show the right to judge and punish ' ] — a symbolism which came from the cities of the Roman empire. Where, then, we may well ask. were the Saxons while London kept its more ancient Roman organiza- tion ? Fortunately, the answer comes to us with great clearness from the Anglo-Saxon settlements all round the city. These settlements are unmistakable. They belong to a class existing practically all over the country, and finally in historical times developing into the manor. There are manors everywhere, as Mr. Seebohm puts it. But the significant fact is that the manorial system does not penetrate into the city of London. It is at the very boundaries, but not beyond, ami I will endeavour to show where this evidence is to be found. 1 Kemble, Saxons in England, ii. 818. WHAT LoXDo.X WAS To THE SAXONS L19 Anglo-Saxon London began, )iot within the walls of Lundinium, but without; not even af Lta gates, spreading outwards, but from outside, gradually approaching nearer and nearer. The new-comers settled all round, and wo may trace out on the maps the records of the settlement. I have marked the sites of all the villages mentioned in Domesday within the present county of London, and one cannot but be struck with the signifi- cant position they occupy on the map. There are two kinds of settlements : those up the river beyond the city influence, and those close to the city boundaiy. Those of the first class are the ancient settlements afterwards to grow into modern parishes — long, narrow territories stretching from the river to the hills. These settlements were arranged in English fashion, not Roman fashion. "We see this by the maps. If we compare the manorial settlement round London with that of the more rural parts of the country- Wiltshire, for instance, would be an excellent example to refer to — we find them of exactly the same type. There is the homestead in the lowlands, near by are the meadow land and arable land, and stretching up towards the high lands are the open pastures and the forest. Examining some of these settlements a little more closely, let us consider the topography of modern Kensington, Fulham(with Hammersmith), Paddington, St. Pancras, Islington, and the great manor of Stepney north of the Thames, and Lambeth andCamberwell south of the Thames. Each of these shows the same character- istic mode of settlement : north of the Thames they begin by the river, and stretch away from it northwards towards the heights ; and again south of the Thames they begin at the river, and stretch southwards towards 120 WHAT LONDON WAS TO THE SAXONS the Surrey hills. Those of the second class are different. On the north there is the great territory south of the Roman road (now Oxford Street), known to us as West- minster, and stretching east and west along the river ; and the Roman roadway represented by Edgware Road is the boundary between ancient manors and parishes represented by modern Paddington and Marylebone. On the south the ancient influences of South wark interpose between the river and the normal manorial settlement. There is, however, something more than the mere outline and fragments of such settlements. There are the traces of the internal system of economy. The village community system has been well examined in this country by Mr. Seebohm. Mr. Slater, Sir Henry Maine, and some others, and one definite fact about it is the peculiar arrangement of the arable lands. No one owner possessed wide stretches of land, but each owner — each villager, I should say — held his acre strip side by side in definite rotation with other villagers, so that one holding of sixteen acre strips — the normal holding — was situated in sixteen different parts of the arable lands. Now let me turn to the London evidence. First of all, I will introduce a word-picture from a chronicle narrative, the true explanation of which we owe to the scholarship and acumen of Mr. Seebohm. Edward the Confessor lay dying at Westminster, and looking out on the scenery he loved so well — his contemporary biographer describes the palace as 'amongst fruitful fields lying round aboul it ' he saw in his delirium two holy monks, who foretold to him the coming disasters of the realnij which should only be ended when 'the WHAT LONDON WAS To THE SAXONS L2] green tree, after severance from its trunk and removal for the space of three acres, should return to its parent stem and a^-ain bear leaf and fruit and flower*. Only one picture could have conjured up this otherwise unaccountable vision. The green tree was no doubt suggested by an actual tree, growing out of one of the balks separal Lng the acre si rips beyond Thorney island, and t he uneven glass of i be king's window-panes would be likely, as ho rose in his bed, to sever the stem from its roots and transplant it higher up in the open field, in an acre strip throe acres off, restoring it again to its root as he sank back upon liis pillow. 'The very delirium of the dying king,' says Mr. Seebohm, 'thus becomes the most natural thing in the world when Ave know that all round were the open fields and balks and acres.' 1 This word-picture, so cleverly extracted from the eleventh-century chronicle, appears in graphic form on the eighteenth-century maps of London, and its last relic survives in the name of 'Long Acre'. Because the acre strips have never been destroyed or altered, because year by year they have appeared in faithful surveys of London, the modern map becomes evidence of Anglo-Saxon London. Scattered over the modern maps of London are examples of these acre strips. In the 'new' map of London, published in 1797, we have the acre strips shown particularly well in ' Battersea common- field ', and at Lambeth. Fulham, Camberwell, and Peckham. In Horwood's map of 1794 the acre strips of Bermond- sey are will marked, and in a map of Wandsworth manor of 1787, the distribution of the acre strips is 1 English Fillag* Community, '.>'.>. 122 WHAT LONDON WAS TO THE SAXONS almost undisturbed. The common fields of Bayswater are noted in Notes and Queries, vol. i, p. 162. The alignments of some of our oldest roads help us to understand this, as for instance the singular con- formation of the frontage of houses at Putney — one or two houses built up to a frontage line, and the next one or two built a little in advance, and a third a little further in advance, a fourth perhaps being a little behind ; the only possible interpretation of such peculiar topographical features being that these were the ter- minals of the old acre strips upon which their owners had built the modern villa, and thus formed an irre- gular street front. Perhaps, however, the most interesting example is afforded by Park Lane. The glorious irregularity ot this most picturesque of thoroughfares was not due to street architecture. All that street architects could do is to be seen in the squares and streets at the back of Park Lane. AVhat they could not do was to destroy the frontage line of the western boundary of these estates. Park Lane commences at the Oxford Street end in almost a straight line, due. I suggest, to a late cutting of the road to form H}^de Park, which took in a piece of the ancient continuation of Edgware Road at this point. After this straight- line commencement, terminating at about Wood's Mews, it is wholly irregular, and irregular in a very curious and interesting manner. The houses from Wood's Mews to Upper Brook Street are set back some feet ; after Upper Brook Street there is a further set back up as far as the Mews, then a further setting back of the houses to Upper Grosvenor Street ; alter Mount Street the same features appear, until the triangular H «k. .. ^ MapDvr Plot cf Uu Lirtltfup of Eburiz. htuia aUuaiidi i/i (Ji* fttrish at by Utnr\ M<-'yaj\ fC7S l jyjfft* JJi d • fori *»JlAK£9Efl HAfUCE it-pud frrni Original* in the Cnxce CJUextum 124 WHAT LONDON WAS TO THE SAXONS site of Dorchester House is readied, and beyond this to Piccadilly the frontage line is never straight, always one length at the back of another length. I always believed that this irregularity was of the same nature as that at Putney already described, namely, the terminal points of the various acre strips, and proof of this is forthcoming if we turn to the ' mapp or plot of the Lordship of Eburie being situated in the parish of Saint Martins in the Fields, Mary Dammison being proprietress ; by Henry Morgan, 1675,' in the Crace collection. At the top of the map is ' the road from Knight Bridge to London ', showing incidentally the bridge over the dip in modern Piccadilly, the site of the old stream of which the Serpentine is still a relic. The modern Park Lane is drawn on the eastern side of Hyde Park, but the eastern side of the road is not yet built upon. Running parallel to Piccadilly, and therefore at right angles to Park Lane, are the acre strij^s with the names of the owners recorded — (1) Sir William Poultney, proprietor. (2) Brickhill Fields. Thoby Beele. (3) Lee, Esq. (4) [Unnamed.] (5) Sir William Poultney, proprietor. Sir William Poultney is thus owner of two acre strips separated by three other acre strips differently owned. Hut I his is not all. In a map of the Grosvenor estate, dated 1723, Park Lane is shown built upon on its eastern side from Oxford Street up to just beyoud Chapel Street, and 'Berkely Fields' remain unbuilt upon, and show a triangular strip, adjoining Park Lane, as belonging to Mr. Poulteney. This is exactly one of WHAT LONDON WAS TO THE SAXONS L25 those 'gores' of land so frequently found in unenclosed villageSj and it is preserved to this day in the triangu lar site upon which Dorchester House now stands. We have the name preserved to us in Kensington Gore. Thus, although we have not the whole distribu- tion of the acre strips revealed by the maps, there is no question thai these indications are sufficient to show the nature of the holdings of the entire area. They were acre strips belonging to the village community system. The terminals of the acre strips in modern Park Lane remained unaltered, and they account to us of to-day for the splendid irregularity of the building- line of this mosl fashionable of London streets, thus showing how the settlement system of the Anglo- Saxons has influenced, the geography of modern London. It is, however, the geography of the area outside the city, not inside. Summing up at this point, I hope I have succeeded in showing Anglo-Saxon London with its homesteads in the fields in contradistinction to Roman London with its home life within city walls, with its inst i tut ions still in primitive form at Kingston, and only brought by the last Anglo-Saxon king into more civilized form at Westminster, with its commerce again forcing it into prominence and bringing Anglo- Saxon men into London citizenship — two separate Londons standing out in relief against each other in pre-Norman times, London within the walls being occupied no doubt by many English citizens, but not on that account departing from her more ancient life, communities of Englishmen outside the walls not caring for the great city . CHAPTER X THE LONDON TO WHICH THE NORMANS CAME With the advent of the Normans London was no longer to be neglected — no longer to be used chiefly for its military strength. It was to be welded with the state, a part and parcel of the national government. It is not quite impossible to picture the London which the Normans came to occupy. A walled town, with its gates and its defences, its cathedral church, and no doubt many of its ancient Roman buildings still standing, with its great market-place, or Cheapside, are what we may surmise with some certainty ; and Mr. Kemble has drawn a picture which, coming from his hand, may be accepted in the main as true o± London when the Normans came. 1 Where we can add some extra details is the great bridge and the direction of the streets. The bridge meant much to London, not only to London's defence, bat to her commerce. The twists in her streets are another matter. Underneath the streetway are found the remains of Roman pavements and other evidences of buildings on a different alignment from that of the present streets, and conclusions have been drawn from this that Anglo-Saxon London was built upon the 1 Saxons in England, ii. 3-10. THE LONDON TO WHICH NORMANS CAM E I 17 destroyed Roman city. It is not a conclusive argu- ment. Tlie rebuilding of the city ait er the successive fires which have occurred there, and particularly after the devastation of 16GG, would account for many of these cases ; and if the Saxons here and there showed their disregard of old landmarks, it cannot have been very extensive. London was a living city, not a dead collection of unused buildings, and during its four centuries of life under Anglo-Saxon overlordship it witnessed changes from fire, sieges, and other catastrophes. Apart from such conclusions as may be drawn from the imperfect collection of pre-Norman facts, there is something to be gained as a reflection from that wonderful post-Norman description of the cit}- drawn up in the reign of King Henry II, great-grandson of the Conqueror. The Normans had made changes, of course, but changes only on the basis of what was already exist- ing. The cheery optimism of the Norman historian leads him to show us a great London, not a new city ; to describe a steady life, not a newly imported system taking the place of an older one destroyed ; to reveal citizens successful and happy in old ways and habits inherited from long lines of ancestors and predecessor:- ; and if in some respects the city has been added to and embellished by the Normans, it still retains the main foundations of the older life. Fitzstephen tells us of St. Paul's Church, thirteen large conventual churches, besides one hundred and thirty-six lesser parochial ones. Besides the Tower, a Norman addition, he describes two castles strongly fortified on the west side, and walls high and thick, with seven double gates, having on the north side towers placed at proper 128 THE LONDON TO WHICH intervals. The artisans of the several crafts, the vendors of the various commodities, and the labourers of every kind have each their separate station. The city is divided into wards, and there are sewers and aqueducts in its streets. It is governed by annual sheriffs, an order of senators and inferior magistrates, and on stated days it has its assemblies. The citizens used the land outside the walls for garden ground and pasturage, and schools, sports, and pleasures formed an essential part of the life of London. The Normans came to a city of renowned delight in the matter of climate, commercial greatness, strength, and capacity for development. The system of government in London when the Normans took it over, is an obscure but an important point. So great an historian as Dr. Stubbs can see there nothing more than ' a bundle of communities, townships, parishes, and lordships, of which each has its own constitution', 1 and Dr. Round, who has ex- amined so carefully the early administration of London as it is revealed from the charters, endorses this view.- Dr. Stubbs, to my mind, transferred to the earliest Norman period some of the conditions of a later period, the period before which London had regained its communa. Dr. Round has in this instance followed Dr. Stubbs instead of his own facts and critical faculty. After his conclusive proof from the history of the sheriff that London and Middlesex 'as far back as we can trace them ' are ' one and indivisible ', he discusses the character of the grant to the citizens of London of the corpus comitatus, and concludes that 'the only distinction between this lease and one to a private 1 ' 'i,i '. Hi:;'., i. 101. 356, THE \"<>l,'M.\\"s CAME L29 individual lies in the corporate character of i be lessee '. Exactly, but this'only' difference is very important. It cannot he that the loaso would grant to an indeter- minate body of citizens that, which could only be granted to a corpus. It cannot In- that a corpus was created incidentally in order to provide the machinery for granting the lease. The corpus was in truth already there. It may not have been in perfect form. The rema ins of the Roman constitution had been eaten into by the incoming Anglo-Saxon or Danish organization. of which the folkmoot and the hustings are the repre- sentatives. The result may not have produced an entirely unified constitution. But a constitution of some sort was there. English London, then, to which the Normans came, was a veritable city unit. It had material remains of its Roman origin and also constitutional remains. It had fragments from the newly awakened nationality of the English, forced a little to the front by the pressure of Danes and Northmen. It was such an asset of national greatness as the Normans would turn to full account. If it was a somewhat unformed city, it possessed all the materials for future moulding at the hands of t he greatest statesmen of a great race. ?(nN WAS TO THE NORMANS 133 importance bo civilization than anything which had preceded it. It was going to be the force which would lead democratic communities to learn solt-govi-nuncnt. And if the Normans did not grasp all that was meant by these great forces in their incipient stage, they grasped quite easily the fad that London was to them the key-note to the development of England into a European state. CHAPTER XII THE GEIP OF THE NORMANS "Whatever Ansgar the sheriff and the governing authority of London thought they were gaining for London's independence on the old lines by the treaty with William, they soon found themselves in an entirely new position. After the crowning at West- minster in old Anglo-Saxon fashion, William did two things of great significance — one military, the other constitutional, and both having the same object, and as it turned out, the same result, namely, the sub- jection of London to the state. These two things were the building of a fortress on the very borders of the city but outside its civic jurisdiction, and the issue of a charter granting rights to the citizens. By these two actions the grip of the Normans was effectively closed upon London. The first information we get about the great fortress is that William sent forward a portion of his conquer- ing army with orders to prepare a fortress in or near London. The site, no doubt, of this earliest attempt was practically that of the present Tower of London. The earliest attempt gave way to a more definite scheme later on. Displacing a section of the Roman wall including two towers next to the Thames. William commenced his work by constructing at tirsi a deep ditch and strong palisade. Aboul twelve or fourteen - NORMAN POORS NORMAN WINDOWS a Q BRo»v N Prom Barnard's Companion to English Hi-- 136 THE GRIP OF THE NOEMANS years later, that is about 1080, there was begun the magnificent keep which has remained ever since the central part of the whole group and has caused the whole to pass under the name of the Tower. Later sovereigns, William Bufus, Henry II, Henry III, and Edward III, added the walls and the other towers. But from the first Londoners were taught to under- stand that this great fortress, situated between their city and the river-way to the open sea, was not so much a defence of London as an overawing power against London. These facts make it quite clear that the grip of the Normans upon London was first expressed by their building of the Tower. London was never, as other castle towns were, a unity of castle and town, the castle's lord and the lord's citizens. From the very first there was a division between the two. The city of London was the citizen's city ; the Tower was the king's, outside the city area. The city of London was governed by its own institutions ; the Tower represented the sovereign-government of the state. And these two institutions were always in contrast, always at feud, always claiming and defending rights and privileges, the city against the Tower. From these significant facts we obtain one branch of the evidence of the original independence of London and of the grip the Normans fastened on it. We get the second branch of evidence in another direction, namely, the grant of a charter. There was no charter in Anglo-Saxon times. There was no need for it. William's charter comes into history suddenly, called for by no demand from the citizens, expressing no changes in citizen-life or government, but doing as - _ z. o c K o - u 138 THE GRIP OF THE NORMANS one great and significant thing, namely, setting forth the will of the king. The charter is as follows : — William, King, greets William, bishop, and Gosfrith portreeve, and all the burghers within London, French and English, friendly ; and I do you to wit that I will that ye be all law worthy that were in King Edwards day. And I will that every child be his fathers heir after his fathers day. And I will not endure that any man offer any wrong to you. God keep you. A noble document this has always been considered. And it is noble. But its significance has been wholly misunderstood. It is a grant of what the city already possessed, its laws and customs, and in particular its laws of inheritance to property which we have already seen differed so fundamentally from the English laws on the subject and which were inherited from Roman law. What, then, is the value of this new fangled instrument promulgated by the king? The value is to the king, not to the city. Hitherto the city had governed itself untouched by a king's hand except when it wanted its law to have legal force in parts beyond its own jurisdiction, as in the case of the Athelstan law. Now it had to be governed by the will of the sovereign. The essential significance of the charter is not what it grants, but the fact of the grant itself. ' I will ' is the governing force of this charter, and when we come to trace out the details of all successive charters, it becomes abundantly clear t hat their object was to bring under the power of sovereign law what was previously held by municipal law. Military force and sovereign power are. therefore, the two elements constituting the grip of the Normans Wi>i MiN-Tii: Abbey. 140 THE GRIP OF THE NORMANS upon Loudon. It was a hard grip. Londoners did not probably understand it altogether at first. Under- standing was brought home to them in succeeding generations, as we shall presently see. The Tower at their very doors was visible and understandable. The charter at their vitals was intangible and only a for- mality. But the charter changed the position of the city in the national constitution. CHAPTER XIII NORMAN LONDON Toe London which the Normans created was an altogether different London from that which they filtered in 10(50. They came to it friendliwise ; they remained in it as conquerors. But they were magni- ficent conquerors. They found in the great cit} r build- ings of Roman origin doing duty for English purposes, and they found many decayed and destroyed parts. The city had been sadly buffeted and torn during the centuries which witnessed the Anglo-Saxon en- compassing and occupation, the Danish assault and conquest, and the varied events recorded and un- recorded which brought it finally under Norman rule. When London was under Norman rule, however, it sprang into a place of beauty and renown. The Normans tolerated no ugliness or squalor if they could help it. They would use the ruins of the Roman wall and the foundations of Roman temples and buildings to erect a fortress wall of their own type, and churches and castellated buildings for their own purposes. And this they did right quickly and magnificently, for we have the well-known account of Fitzstephen. writnn in the twelfth century, only a hundred years after their .entry into the city, and we have some of the remains of their buildings. "We will take Fitzstephen's account first. It is a 142 NOEMAN LONDON well-known document, but cannot be too well known, and I shall quote some of his narrative as translated by Sir Walter Besant. • It hath on the east part a tower Palatine, very large and very strong, whose court and walls rise up from a deep foundation. On the west are two castles well fenced. The wall of the city is high and great, con- tinued with seven gates which are made double, and on the north distinguished with turrets by spaces. Likewise on the south London hath been enclosed with walls and towers, but the great river of Thames, well stored with fish, and in which the tide ebbs and flows by continuance of time, hath washed, worn away, and cast down those walls. Farther above in the west part the King's Palace is eminently seated upon the river, an incomparable building having a wall before it and some bulwarks. It is two miles from the city, continued with a suburb full of people.' Here is the typical walled city of mediaeval times, the walled city which contained a community having a civic mind and action, and which used its walls for defence against the marauder who was sometimes the king, sometimes a faction of the nobility, sometimes the dissatisfied mob, and sometimes the rebel. All these enemies of peaceful citizenship were actively engaged during Norman and Plantagenet times. They made citizen life something more than mere industrialism or commercialism. They made it a burghal life, whereby military defence of the city constituted a full part of the daily routine of city work, and military defence meant mutual action and thought, the sacrifice of the good of the individual for the communal good. 144 NORMAN LONDON But London was specially constituted by its Norman owners, and there is nowhere else in Britain, and, I believe, nowhere else on the Continent, the special characteristics which belong to London. The Tower described by Fitzstephen was wholly the king's. It is worth while emphasizing this point here. The Tower is not in the city of London geographically, and it is entirely outside its jurisdiction. From the first the Tower of London was the king's. The city of London, pre-eminently the citizens' city, was within citizens' walls, was adjoining to, but not other- wise connected with, the Tower, and when we come to Plantagenet times we shall see these significant build- ing facts leading up to equally significant constitutional facts. This clear demarcation between castle and town is very important. If it indicates the king's will to command the city, it indicates, too, the citizens' resolvo that he shall not do so from within the city. If it is Norman fashion to blend castle and town together, it is London fashion to keep them apart. And so they have ever been apart. The Tower of London is state property and is entirely under state control. The city of London is citizens' property and is entirely under municipal control, with privileges, customs, rights, and duties, such as no other city in the kingdom possesses. But all of Norman London is a unity in one great respect — its architecture. There are not many remains of it left now. Fire and the centuries have had their influence upon even the solid magnificence of tin 1 Normans. But we can still stand in the beautiful • •liapel of the Tower, and in the round church of the Temple; we can still go from these to the choir of St. Bartholomew, Smithfield, and still walk under tin- Tower op London, St. John's Chapel, in xhe Keep, UbO.lo K 146 NOEMAN LONDON beautiful arcli in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. We may, too, still discover fragments of Norman work in church crypts as at Westminster, in church columns as in St. Saviour's ; we may still pause before a single arch or other building fragment which proclaims the beauty of the structure of which it is but the last relic. And we may place in our museums fragments of dis- covered capitals and other parts of Norman masonry from the ruined architecture of the period. But we cannot restore Norman London, either in descriptive narrative or in descriptive art. That is gone from us, and we have to leave Tewkesbury, Durham, Sherborne, Eomsey, and other places to tell us by analogy some- thing of what London must have been in Norman times. Yet we know it was a beautiful, a very beautiful cit}'. Fitzstephen tells us that ' concerning the worship of God in the Christian faith there are in London and in the suburbs thirteen greater conventual churches, besides 126 lesser parish churches '. There were 'three famous schools at three principal churches, St. Paul's, the Holy Trinity, and St. Martin's ' ; and then ho goes on to describe the system of teaching adopted at these schools, the quips and cranks, the discussions and disputations by which ' the hearers, prepared for laughter, make themselves merry in the meantime '. Then we are told that ' almost all Bishops, Abbots, and Noblemen of England are, as it were, citizens and freemen of London. There they have fair dwellings, and thither they do often resort and lay out a great deal of money, and are called into the city to consulta- tions and solemn meetings either by the King or their metropolitan, or drawn by their own business.' NORMAN LONDON 147 One other extract will complete the constructive picture of the city. 'To this city merchants bring us wares by ships from every nation under heaven. The Arabian sends his gold, the Sabean his frankincense and spices, the Scythian arms, oil of palms from the plentiful wood, Babylon her fat soil, and Nilus his precious stones, the Seres send purple garments, they of Norway and Russia trouts, furs, and sables, and the French their wines.' This description of London commerce in the twellt h century is the description of London at the present time. The figures and the places would be different, but the description might remain. It was not, how- ever, all of Norman creation. The predecessors of the Norman had been at work on this great city. The Norman had embellished it and brought it to the requirements of its time. Norman London was Roman London with additions necessary for its future development. K CHAPTER XIV THE FIRST GREAT LONDONERS There have always been traditions of great Lon- doners. King Lud, Belinus, and a number of other names occur in the earliest period without, however, much chance of ever becoming anything further than mere names. Nevertheless it is not improbable that in the place-names of London there lurks the last fragment of a biography which, if we possessed it in full, would be of untold interest and value. Inscriptions and potters' marks of Roman times contain more likely memorials of resident Londoners, though of course they principally tell us of the manufacturers who sent their products to London. Of the Roman names associated with London it is impossible to pick out even one who might be called a Londoner in any strict sense of the term, and Kemble has put this fact into strongly- worded sentences which on the whole seem to be quite true. ' We seek in vain for any evidence of the Roman- ized Britons having been employed in any offices of trust or dignity or permitted to share in the really valuable results of civilization ; there is no one Briton recorded of whom we can confidently assert that he held a im- position of dignity and power under the Roman rule ; the historians, the geographers, nay even the novelists, are here consulted in vain ; nor in the many inscrip- tions which wo possess relating to Britain can we point THE FIRST GREAT LONDONERS L49 out a single British name.' 1 Certainly therefore we cannot point to a London name. The "Welsh traditions point somewhat strongly to London men having played a great part in national affairs after the Romans had ceased to govern their province of Britain, but even so the actual names escape us, and the roll of Anglo-Saxon bishops only enables us to identify one Londoner, Nothelm, archbishop of Canterbury and the friend of Bede, who is said to have been London born. Through- out the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle the Londoners, the citizens of London, the chief men of London, play an important part ; but they are nearly all nameless. Deorman of London held lands at Islington according to Domesday. William, in a charter, calls him 'Deorman 1113- man', and Mr. Round draws attention to the fact that ' Thierri son of Deorman' was a witness to a charter by Geoffre}^ de Mandeville — evidence of riches and influence perhaps, but of nothing further. Two place-names may contain personal names — ' Coel- mundinge haga ' and ' Hwaetmundes stone', 2 but we are still only in the presence of names, not persons. The Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum sets before us a bewildering list of names, most of which are nothing more than nomina virorum,a.nd it is onhy when we come to the moneyers that the hope of identifying a Londoner is strong. Thus the fine list of Edward the Confessor's moneyers contains names which are found on London coins only, and such special names as ' iElffet ', ' Glif- wine', 'Goldan', ' Wirema ', and some others, perhaps bring us into touch with real Londoners. Before we can arrive at anything like a living 1 Saxons in Enghttnl. ii. 2S0. 2 Those arc from Jl>. turnings' Chronicle, J-, 14. 150 THE FIRST GREAT LONDONERS personality of London, however, we have to travel far down the centuries, and the first great Londoner to emerge is Ansgar, sheriff in the fateful year 1066. There is very little known of Ansgar, but all that is known is so great — great Londoner, great English- man, great statesman, great patriot, and one's mind goes out to him, one is almost glad that he is the first Londoner whom we can identify by name. He is Londoner by right of office, for he was Sheriff of London and Middlesex, and he led forth the men of London to the great fight at Hastings, led them to their proud place as guard to the king himself and his standard. How he fought there we know, not by the reports of personal prowess, but by the records of the whole battle fought from morning until sundown, and from the fact that he returned to the city sore wounded, ' disabled by honourable wounds,' as Mr. Freeman translates the contemporary record. 1 He could neither walk nor ride, but was carried about the city in a litter. Then comes another and important event, the action of London after the defeat at Hastings. It declared for resistance ; a gemot was held within its walls, and it elected Earl gar to be king. And when the Londoners found that Eadgar was not worthy, they consented to negotiate with William. Through- out all these transactions — constitutional resistance to the invader, independence of action, we can trace the hands of strong men ; and Ansgar, there is no doubt, was the leader of these strong men, for "William at last agreed to terms which made Ansgar of London the chief man in Hie kingdom under King William. Indeed, Ansgar is spoken of as being the soul of all 1 Hist. Norman Conquest, iii. 501. THE FIRST CURAT LONDONERS 151 bhe counsels taken by the defenders of London. There is not a single episode of these most fateful events which does not bear witness, albeit silent witness, to the greatness of Ansgar. He fought for the Anglo- Saxon king. He support* -. I an Anglo- Sax on successor. 1 1 o stood up to the mightiest soldier and statesman of the time to claim for London her pride of place in the kingdom as soon as he knew that the kingdom was destined to pass into the hands of this great man. No faltering and no paltering. All strength, that is Ansgar's record — a record that belongs to the first known Londoner. ( rreat names do not crowd upon us even after this. Normans had succumbed to the fascination of London, and were more of Londoners than the Londoners themselves. There is ample evidence of this — evidence how they intermarried with Londoners, evidence how they made London their chosen home, how they entered into the government of London, how they lived its life, fought for its rights, defended its privileges, created new rights and privileges inci- dental to their freshly created positions, and generally conducted themselves as great pioneers of a new movement always conduct themselves when deter- mined to carve out for themselves new lives in new homes. It is difficult to give a collective account of these men or to dwell upon the events with which they were associated. We have not all the names. Accident preserves some of them in obscure docu- ments which demand the investigation of specialist scholars before the significance of such records can be properly gauged, but the chroniclers of the day are not favourable to names. The}' relate the doings of 152 THE FIRST GREAT LONDONERS their own party and perhaps the heroes of the events affecting their own party. They leave in significant silence much that happened and the names of those who took part in opposition to themselves. "We thus get an incomplete story so far as personages are concerned, and we cannot adequately relate even parts of that story. Ansgar was succeeded in his office of staller by Geoffrey de Mandeville, the first of that name, whose grandson as lord of the Tower of London played so conspicuous and so sorry a figure under Stephen and under Maud, and who betra} T ed his hatred, as Mr. Round puts it, for those upstarts, as they were deemed, the royal justices ; and who, on Mr. Round's evidence, over- awed the Londoners by his command of the Tower when he was, against the wishes of the Londoners, assisting the Empress Maud. Another prominent personage standing out as a Londoner in a more special sense was Gervase of Cornhill, who carried on a mercantile and money-lending business, which was fortunately the subject of some scornful remarks against the trader and all his works by a contem- porary writer of Stephen's reign. These men are worth mentioning because of the prominent part played by London in the settlement of that ' election ' to the crown which has made the reign of Stephen so valuable to constitutional historians. Gervase of Cornhill was great in two ways, personally because of the man, locally because of the association with a London name still in being. Mr. Round has brought his great skill in historical research to bear upon Gervase, and he identifies him with Gervasius filius Ttogori nepotis Huberti, who figures prominently THE FIRST GREAT LONDONERS L53 on the Pipe Roll of 1130 (31 Hen. I); with Gervase, Justiciary of London, who meets us twice under Stephen ; with Gervase, who was one of the sheriffs of London in 1155 and 115G. This prominent Lon- doner married Agnes, daughter of Godelevo and Edward de Cornhill, thus giving us one great example of Norman settlers in London intermarrying with the English stock. Gervase appears, from the charters which Mr. Round has examined so carefully, to have lent money on mortgage and to have acquired landed property by foreclosing, and Mr. Round thinks that he may have been that Gervase who at the head of the citizens of London met Henry II in 1174. He lived on till 1183, and was probably at his death seventy or seventy-five years old. 1 Passing by mere names we come to a greater and a more real Londoner from a charter by Geoffrey of Mandeville, granted, Mr. Round thinks, as an act of restitution while he was lying on his death-bed in 1144. This is Gilbert Becket, ' Gileberto Beket,' the earliest mention of this name on record, which takes us to the magnate of London hailing from Rouen and living in Cheapside, where his great son, Thomas a Becket, ' archbishop, saint and martyr,' was born. Henry IPs struggle with the great London-born priest is chicily known from priest-written chronicles, but even so there appears the beginning of that long con- tention between the English State and the Roman Church which only ended with the Reformation. The great archbishop fought for his church, the great king for his kingdom; and no one who reads Bishop Stubbs's masterly and discriminating summary of these 1 Round, G < / "■ Wnmt'h rillr, 304-12 ; Commune of London. 100. 154 THE FIRST GREAT LONDONERS transactions can doubt that the Church, as represented by Archbishop Thomas a Becket of London, was in the wrong. We can say this now from the distance that time gives to historical judgements, and because we look back to it from the years of later ages instead of forward to it from the years of earlier times ; but we can also render tribute to this great Londoner of Norman domination. CHAPTER XV THE GRIP OF THE PLANTAGENETS The grip of the Normans was a conqueror's grip. The grip of the Plantagenets was that of the states- man — far more deadly to ancient conditions, far more sure of intending changes. London under the Con- queror was occupied in absorbing the Normans, while the Normans were becoming fascinated by the great city. The Plantagenets brought the city inside the nation, teaching the nation to recognize the city and the city to become welded with the nation. The Plantagenet work was a great work, albeit done roughly and perhaps brutally at moments when monarchs and statesmen set about what they had to do in a fashion to serve their own ends, not seeing that their own ends were the vital political ends of the period — that the individual mind had become attuned to the common thought. We cannot in a small compass gather together all the evidence of this, but there are sufficient illustrative examples. There is, first of all, the evidence of the charters. What are charters granted by the sovereign monarch to cities? They do not create the city; they do not in the earlier cases settle the constitution of the city. These negations of purpose are extremely important because they raise the question as to what their positive character was intended to be. And it appears 156 THE GRIP OF THE PLANTAGENETS to me that all the great historical authorities who have examined and expounded these precious documents have misunderstood their significance. Charters to London are in a somewhat different category from charters to other cities. They gradate from the general recognition of rights in William's charter to the detailed recognition of further rights in successive charters, and I have endeavoured in my book on The Governance of London to point out how this gradation occurs and what it exactly means. What I think was happening was that the crown authority was dis- covering the value of these rights, and only gradually discovering their value, and it would not do to allow rights of value to rest on any other basis than that of the sovereign will. There thus arose the practice of charters being granted to the cities, and when these are examined carefully it is found that over and over again they are not granting new rights, rights that did not previously exist, but under the guise of a grant of rights the}'' were bringing within the fold of charter legislation rights which were already being exercised ;is municipal law. In this way municipal law, which was so much in advance of state law, was gradually being caught up by state law. The state was gradually building up its control and powers over the cities by a species of legislation by charters. And that this was accomplished gradually is shown in a remarkable manner by one special case. This is the slow compre- hension by the state of the fact that within the state were various communities of persons who held lands in their collective capacity, and that this holding of lands was not iu accord with the individualistic policy of the state. How could a group of people hold lands? To whom THE GRIP OF THE PLANTAGENETS 157 did the lands belong -who would perform the military and feudal duties, who would be responsible therefor to the state ? These questions were settled bj specific legislation. In 1279 a statute was passed by which no religious bodies were to acquire land, but it took more than a century beyond this for the state to discover that there were civil as well as religious communities who held lands, and so in 1391 there was passed a disabling ad by which municipal bodies were made to understand that they could not acquire property unless they were incorporated by the crown as a legal person, and thus acquired the right. All this is highly technical perhaps, but the story of the charters is an essential feature of the grip which the Plantagenets obtained upon London. London under the Plan- tagenets passed out of the position of a more or less independently organized city to a city which had become part and parcel of the new state of England. There is next the evidence of the sokes, those inde- pendent jurisdictions which appear in Norman times, but which had definite life in Plantagenet times. Henry I had granted in his charter that ' the churches and barons and citizens may have and hold quietly and in peace their sokes with all their customs', and I translate this to mean that the Normans carved out for themselves little islands of jurisdiction which they governed unrestricted by any external control except that of the king. Under Norman rule these sokes were encroachments upon municipal unity. But they helped to make the Norman sokemen Londoners, and when the Plantagenet had his grip upon London these sokemen had become Londoners. The sokes tried to assume the position of manors within the city, but 158 THE GRIP OF THE PLANTAGENETS with it all there was the ' comrnunio quain vocant Loncloniarum ', which, with the jurisdictional unity in folkmoot and husting, as Miss Bateson has so well said, proclaimed the municipal unity of London. An important economical feature of Plantagenet London is the aggregation of industrial centres in the city. Fitzstephen says that ' men of all trades, sellers of all sorts of wares, labourers in every work, every morning are in their distinct and several places ', and we get the following results : )ka^i Eastcheap = mercers and haberdashers. Old Exchange = goldsmiths. Sopers Lane = pepperers and grocers. Lombard Street = drapers. St. Mary Axe = skinners. Thames Street = fishmongers. Ironmongers Lane = ironmongers. Vinetree = vintners. Stockesmarket = butchers. Hosiers Lane = hosiers. Cordwayner Street = shoemakers and curriers. Poultry = poulterers. Paternoster Row = stationers. Cornhill = corn market. This is the place to deal with the constitutional posi- tion of the Tower of London, whose special geographical position in relation to the city of London has already been described. In the thirteenth century consider- able additions were made and a remarkable story is told by Matthew Paris, the chronicler, of the year 1241, which illustrates in a forceful manner the feelings of Londoners — not the feelings of the moment, but the sritled convictions of generations — towards the Tower. THE GRIP OF THE PLANTAGENET3 L59 St Thomas the Martyr,'a Londoner by birth,' is said to have appeared to a priest, carrying a cross in his hands, and, regarding the walls, which the king had at 1 hat t hue built, with a scowling look, made it known that he considered these walls ' were built as an insult and to the prejudice of the Londoners '. The citizens are said to have regarded these walls ' as a thorn in their eyes, and they had heard the taunts of the people, who said that these walls had been built as an insult to them, and that if any one of them should dare to con- tend for the liberty of the city he would be shut up in them and consigned to imprisonment '. These build- ing traditions would be valuable if they stood alone. They stand, as a matter of fact, in front of the consti- tutional aspect, to which reference may now be made. We have it on record that the citizens made definite rules to govern their conduct in the case of the Tower. It was the seat of the king's justice. Upon the day on which the pleas of the crown were held, the citizens met at Barking Church and proceeded to the Tower in solemn array, ' six or more of the more serious honour- able and discreet barons of the city are to enter the Tower for the purpose of saluting and welcoming his lordship the king his council and justiciars on behalf of the city ; begging of them that if it so please his lordship the king, they may safely appear before them in the said Tower saving all their liberties and customs unto the Mayor and all other citizens.' 1 Another rule is still more illustrative of the attitude of the citizen towards the Tower. ' Injunctions should be given to the two Aldermen whose wards are nearest to the Tower to the effect that upon the third day before the 1 Compare Liber Albus (Riley Trans.), 47-53. 160 THE GBIP OF THE PLANTAGENETS pleas of the crown are holden they must enter the Tower for the purpose of examining the benches in the great hall to see if they are sound ; and if they should happen to be broken they must cause the same to be w T ell and strongly repaired.' And then there is the injunction to ' have a strong bench made in the middle of the hall opposite the great seat of his lord- ship the king ', upon which the mayor and barons of the city were to be seated, when making answer to the king as to matters pertaining to the crown. The citizens were also to have their own porter without the gate of the Tower, their own usher without the door of the Hall, their own Serjeants with their wands — not all ceremonial in these days, but significant of rights and privileges. Such rights and privileges were being fought for all along the line. 'The Mayor of London ', it is recorded in the Liber Albus, 'did not act under the king's commission at the delivery of the Gaol of Neugate or at the determining of any pleas touching the crown in reference to any cases whatsoever that might arise within the said city unless perchance it had become a custom with the mayors to sue for such royal commissions without prejudice and not as an acknowledgement of any superior right.' Here is the assertion of a definite claim, and the city's rights were being regained under the Plantagenets from the Nor- mans who had overawed them, regained in constitu- tional fashion as constitutional acts by a city constitu- tionally representing a portion of the state. There is curious evidence of this in a legal case of 38 Edward III wherein AVm. Ffinishingfeild was found guilty of an -ault upon Nicholas Turgors 'without the forraine gate of the Towre and within the liberties of the same ' THE GRIP OF THE I'LAXT.V ; KXKTS 101 in the court of ' Hoistinge ', London, 'as though the place where the transgression' was made 'had been within the lybertyes of tlio Citty'. At this pre- sumption 'the King took displeasure' and granted a commission to 'reforme the liecordes'. 1 It may be well to compare these details of city governance and care of rights with another example. In 1465 • was the sergeaunts fest and the maire of London should have dyned there; and bicause the chief place was not kepte for him while the kyng was not there nor of his Mode, he came away with alle his compeigny of this cite and d3 T ned at home in his owne place '. Of the citizens' walls — the property of the citizens — there is special care, and a specimen record of how they w city broke out into rebellion 1 Archaeologia, xxxii. 33. THE GRIP OF THE PLANTAGENETS 163 over the Despencer troubles. One unfortunate man, John le Marchal, a citizen who was regarded as a spy of the Despencers, was caught in his inn in Walbrook, dragged into Cheap, stripped and beheaded. .lust at this time the unfortunate Bishop Stapleton, who had been visiting his new house outside Temple Bar, came riding into the city with two of his squires, William Wall, who was his nephew, and John of Paddington, the latter being steward of t li< • new mansion. Ho entered the city by Newgate, and on his way to the Tower was to stay in Old Dean's Lane to take his noon- day meal. He had reached the church of St. Michael le Quern, which stood at the west end of Cheapside near the cross. Hearing the cries of 'Traitor! t raitor ! ' he turned his horse and attempted to reach St. Paul's, but at the north door he was seized, dis- mounted, and dragged into the Cheap through the middle of St. Paul's Churchyard and there stripped and beheaded, with a panade or butcher's knife which one of the bystanders offered, by a certain R. de Hatfield. The bishop's two squires perished with him. There are indeed some gruesome notes of the City's struggle with the Court. Thus in 1440 it is recorded that k the last day of August in fletestrete ther was a grete debate by the nyght tyme bitwene men of Courte and men of London. Where thurgh shotte of bowes, as in loncle of Werre, of both parties there were many men hurt fowle and slayne ; and one called William herbotell a man of Courte. He vug prin- cipall cause of all that mysgouernaunce '— a mis- governaunco which according to the Chronicle was repeated next year — 'and M". Roger was drawyn vnto l 2 164 THE GRIP OF THE PLANTAGENETS Tiborn aud tlier was hanged, lied id, and quartred. Howbeit he there toke it vpon his cleth he died giltles of that he died for'. In 1458 also 'was a greate affray in fletestrete bitwene men of Court e and Inhabytauntes of the same strete. In which affray the Quenys attourney was slayn '. Thus it will be gathered that the grip of the Plantagenet was not a tender grip. Strong and con- stitutional it was in a special manner, rude and barbarous it also was in a general way. Men were killed with little regard to the sentiment of human life, executed for crimes they were hastily assumed to have committed, killed in the streets without warning, butchered without mercy or consideration. And 3'et, reading through the evidence as a whole, one must recognize that Plantagenet times were good times for London — were necessary times for its evolution from a city with claims to independence to a city with claims to recognition as a constitutional unit of a well- founded and well-organized state. CHAPTEK XVI PLANTA( J ENET LONDON [t is difficult to recall Plantagenet London. Churches, monasteries, and other ecclesiastical foundations occu- pied about one quarter of its area. All the great nobles had residences there. The king possessed a resilience within its walls. Merchants were rich and powerful and their homes were elaborate and exten- sive. The streets were narrow and the walls were kept, in good repair. It must have been a crowded place but not altogether a wholesome place, for in the Chronicle of London, edited by Sir Harris Nicolas, it is recorded of the year 1115 that 'was mad newe g'tes at London Wall and a new gate, and the prevy that stod withinne the more was drawe cloun and set on this syde of the wall over the coinouiin dych that comyth out of the more '. But after all, the principal examples of Plantagenel structure which remain to us refer to a London developing outside the city walls. These are of course the magnificent Westminster Hall, one of the most beautiful specimens of mediaeval architecture, with the beautiful 1292 crypt of St. Stephen's Chapel still intact, and the Abbey Church of Westminster, one of the glories of our country. It is impossible to consider their position outside London and all that this means without recognizing it as a feature of the St. Paul's Cathedral at the Present Day. « a w s H <* m 72 Q o HW?*= 1-ASl Wl.MMjW OJ ST. LlllLLliU*AS CHAF.BL, LLX 1'J.A'i:, lloLUOlfM, PLANTAGENET LONDON L69 mediaeval city which (always a remarkable character- istic of Anglo-Saxon London) was again tending to develop under the Plantagenets. The city was not inde- pendent of its surroundings, as it was in the earlier period ; but under a new form of municipal develop- ment its surroundings became an essential part of ils life. Of other buildings of the Plantagenet period out- side the city the most interesting is perhaps Lambeth Palace, the residence of tho Archbishops of Canter- bury. The chapel is the oldest part, dating from the thirteenth century. The so-called Lollards' Tower at tho west end of the chapel is of the early fifteenth century, and the rest of the building is the product of many hands at varying dates. The hall of Lincoln's Inn is another example of remains of Plantagenel London beyond the city. And then we have the beautiful hall of Eltham Palace, dating from the fourteenth century, and of course much further afield, to tell us of the surrounding beauties of London. Tho Savoy Chapel, last relic of a prince's palace on the river-side in the Strand (remains of thirteenth century), the Chapel of St. Ethelreda, last relic of a bishop's palace at Ely Place, Holborn (fourteenth century), and the houses fronting the north side of Staple Inn (fifteenth century), an Inn of Chancery, so called because of its proximity to the staples which formed 1 lolbom Bars, the limit of the city lands outside the gate, are the remaining examples of domestic archi- tecture left to us from this period. The Church of St. Thomas Apostle, Southwark, was the church of the dissolved monastery of St. Thomas in Southwark, dating from tho fourteenth century. St. John's Gate, Cleiken- to O ca j o W X! PLANTAGENET LONDON 173 well, is the southern gateway «>f tin- Priory, : 1 1 1 « 1 was built in 1504, bul the beautiful crypl is of the twelfth century. St. Luke's Church, Chelsea, dates in its oldest portions from the fourteenth century. St. Margaret's, Westminster, is of the fifteenth century; St. Dunstan, Stepney, dates from the fourteenth century. These are the only early churches, and it is singular that so few examples of earl}' churches remain in the counties round London. It is the least-equipped area in this respect of any in England, and Ave have to take into account the craze for rebuilding and destruction which was indulged in by architects at the expense of the beautiful. The story is a de- plorable one. Over and over again do we read not only of destruction but of senseless destruction. A church is rebuilt, a hall is pulled down, as it would appear, for the mere sake of architectural experiment, never satisfactory when it has been accomplished. And in our own recent clays we have had to deplore the destruction of Crosby Hall, not only a beautiful place of itself but a place which might have been considered sacred to the memory of Shakespeare, for Shakespeare undoub tedly stood within its walls and under its noble roof. Turning to the city itself, some of the churches escaped the great fire, and there are also fragments of the city Halls discoverable behind the modern structures. Of these latter the beautiful Early English remains in Merchant Taylors' Hall and the remains in Mercers' Hall are the most noted. Clifford's Inn dates from the fourteenth century. The Church of St. Ethelburga in Bishopsgate Street: St. Giles', Cripplegate; St. Helen's, Bishopsgate Street PLANTAGENET LONDON 177 Within (formerly the Church of the Priory of the Nuns of St. Helen's) ; St. Catherine Cree (remains of ancient masonry along the south and west fronts) ; St. Olave, Hart Street ; All Hallows, Barking, ' the most complete mediaeval church in London'; the nave of Austin Friars' Church in Old Broad Street, have all come to us through the dangers of the Great Fire from Plantagenet times. The Guildhall, though destroyed in the Great Fire, has preserved some of its early fifteenth-century work, dating, no doubt, from the building recorded in the Chronicle of London, edited by Sir Harris Nicolas, of the year 1411, that ' this yere the Yeldhalle of London was begonne to make newe '. Only quite recently Mr. Sydney Perks, the city surveyor, has uncovered some delightful architectural features of the early building, and the crypt is a very fine piece of work worthy of Plantagenet London. The Guildhall is the symbol of Plantagenet municipal rule — that rule which fought the sovereign, kept up municipal traditions, bowed to the inevitable development of state govern- ment, and handed down to Tudor times a city which had not bowed its head to royal caprice. To know our Plantagenet London we have to fill up the gaps not occupied by buildings of the period, by restoring in imagination similar buildings to the sites now represented by later creations. Old St. Paul's, as beautiful as Westminster Abbey Church, to replace the present cathedral, fifteenth-century and earlier churches to replace the creations of Wren and his followers, rows of houses on the plan of Staple Inn, palaces of the nobility and the princes of the Church, as Lambeth or Eltham Palace is to-day — and imagina- 986.16 M IB s o • ^ S to o •-• — 1 > — I CS v. 3b 'h s i a a cs ° a o Doon of an Old Mansion in Gravel Lane, Houndsmk ji. From an etching by J. W. Archer in 1851) M t 180 PLANTAGENET LONDON tion can go but a short way towards what the reality must have been. We must add the gardens. In Bishopsgate. in Austin Friars, in Broad Street, in many odd places in the city, there were glorious gardens when Gerard the Herbalist wrote his great book in Elizabeth's reign, gardens which must have been formed in earlier times for them to have been so good in later days. Indeed there is direct evidence of this, as the reference to the ' houses and gardynes . . . down aboughte Poules' in 1372 in Sir Harris Nicolas' s Chronicle of London (p. 68) will show, and they must have added to the beauty of the buildings to which they were adjuncts. H CO F-i W « o o (3) P O o CHAPTER XVII THE GREAT LONDONERS OP PLANTAGENET TIMES It is impossible to contemplate the doings of Plan- tagenet London without comprehending the great- ness of the men who engaged in these doings. They were great in commerce, great in national politics, great in municipal politics, making many mistakes, performing many harsh and brutal actions, rushing after their own ends — but withal great men in the net result of building up their city to take its place in the new nation. They showed this in many ways, and perhaps the most picturesque example is the appeal made by Calais in 1436, when she was invested by the Duke of Burgundy. On the 27th of June i lie ma3^or and aldermen of Calais, being anxious to get help from the Government at home, and finding that according to precedent they could only do so through the mediation of the city of London, addressed a letter to the mayor and aldermen of London imploring them as the head of 'the principal of all the cities of the realm of England to move the King to send the requisite aid'. The mayor was Henry Frowyk, who got up a contingent to the relief of the town. 1 This is tho kind of thing the mayors of London did in those days. A certain royalty of movement and of motivo 1 See Sbarpe, London and tl<< Kingdom, i. 279. LONDONERS OF PLANTAGENET TIMES 183 made them, as the head of a greal city, representative y chart er. 2 1 Henry VIII, and was then renamed Whitehall. With its front towards London as tiik national city 203 the Thames, and another towards St. James's Park, its gateways, Holbein Gate as the north entrance and King's Gate as the southern, it must have been an architectural glory. The palace was destroyed by fire in January, 16U7. and the Holbein Gateway was pulled down in 175!) to make way for the present Parliament, Street, one of those instances of senseless destruction, instead of useful adaptation, which make those of us who care for the beautiful feel so hopeless. There is not much of Whitehall left now. The Banqueting House designed by Inigo Jones is the only complete building, but parts of the offices of the Board of Trade and <>f the Treasury, mostly underground, are structural remains of the old palace and reveal many beautiful features. In the meantime the Tudor addition to Westminster Abbey, Henry VII's chapel, will illus- trate how grandly the architecture of the period was ushering in the greatness of extended London. A very recent destruction has taken away a characteristic bit of Stuart London, Spring Gardens. This place is now an entrance into St. James's Park, and it was formerly a garden attached to the King's Palace at Westminster, with a bowling-green, butts, bathing pond, and pheasant yard. It derived its name from a jet or spring of water. It was appar- ently included within the Royal Park of St. James. Thus, in a letter in the Verney Collection, dab, | 10th December, 1677, it is stated that an arrest was made within the privilege of St. James's Park in Old Spring Garden. This is confirmed by a news letter, dated loth December, 1693, where it is reported that the Spanish Ambassador was lodged at Spring Garden and commenced to build a Roman Catholic Chapel a « H CO w 3 o a S5 O w s a. o « O H fc> N CO LONDON AS THE NATIONAL CITY 205 there, but was stopped by the principal oflieers of Whitehall because 'c'esi un lieu privilegie dans l'enclos de Witehall.' Until quite recently <' well for one 1 Shah . 198-7. LONDON CHANGES 219 moment to dwell upon this. We can see the citizens pouring forth from the gates into the fields beyond. In a poem written circa L 576, entitled A warning to London by the fall of Antwerp, 1 by Efcafe NTorris, we see by one of the allusions that the walls of London were looked upon as important elements in the city's safety — Keep sure thy trench, prepare thy shot. And again — Erect your walles, give out your charge. Londoners made the fields beyond their constanl place of resort. In a ballad, temp. Elizabeth, published by the Percy Society (vol. i.), and entitled A "proper new halade expressyng the fames concerning a warning to all London dames, by Stephen Peell, it says: And oft when you goo, fayre dames, on a rowe In to the feeldes so greene, You sit and vewe the beaut il'ull hewe Of flowres that then bo scene. A little later they journeyed out further, and a tract in the British Museum gives us, both by its title and its contents, a curious picture of the times in 1699. 2 It is entitled A Walk to Islington, with a description of New I'n abridge Wells and Sadler's Music house (Lon- don, 16')'.)). That Islington was very famous as a resort for Londoners is to be gathered from the fact that the Pied Bull Inn there was supposed to have been Sir Walter Raleigh's country house, and the first place 1 Tl»is is printed by the Percy Society, vol. i. - ivpys records, in 1GC1, walking in ' Grayes-Inn- Walks, and thence to Islington, and there eate and drank at the house my father and we were wont of old to go to'. 220 TUDOK AND STUART in England where tobacco was smoked. A few verses of this cnrious tract may be quoted : In holiday time, when ladies of London Walk out with their spouses or think themselves undone ; Then I, like my neighbours, to sweeten m} r life, Took a walk in the fields. "We sauntered about near the New River head, We rambled about till we came to a gate Where abundance of rabble peep'd in at a gate To gaze at the ladies amidst of their revels, As fine all as angels, but wicked as devils. We entred the walks to the rest of the sinners, Where lime-trees were placed at a regular distance. Some citizens, too, one might easily know By his formally handing his ' Whither d'ye go ? ' For in the old order you're certain to find 'em Advance, with their tallow fac'd daughters behind 'em. Other persons are then described, and the writer proceeds : The sparks that attended to make up the show Were various, but first we'll begin with the beau, Whose wig was so bushy, so long, and so fair, The best part of man was quite covered with hair ; That he looked (as a body might modestly speak it) Like a calf, with bald face, peeping out of a thicket ; His locks drudg his coat, which such lilthincss harbour, Tho' made of black cloth, 'tis as while us a barber; His sword, I may say, t" my best of belief Was as long as a spit tor ;i sir-h>iu of beef, Being graced with a ribbon of scarlet or blue, LONDON CHANGES 221 Thai hung from tho hilt to the heel of his shoe ; His gate is a strut which he Learns from the stage. 1 The author of this curious tract then goes ou to describe the company to be met, and he does not give a very flattering account of them. Finally : When pretty well tired of seeing each novice Bow down to his idol as if sh' was a goddess, We walk'd by an outhouse we found had been made For raffling and lott'ries and such sort of trade, And, casting an eye into one of the sheds, Saw a parcel of grave paralitical heads Sit sipping of coffee and poring on paper, And some smoaking silently round a wax taper ; Whilst others at gammon, grown peevish with age, Were wrangling for pen'worths of tea made of sage In a hovel adjoyning, a cunning sly fox Stood shov'ling of money down into a box ; Who by an old project was picking the pockets Of fools in huge wigs and of jilts in gold lockets ; Who're strangely bewitch'd to this national evil, Tho' th' odds that's against 'em would cozen the devil. The Board ev'ry time, I observed, was a winner. The tract then describes the dancing-place, and at last leads us away to Sadler's Wells, where — We entered the house, were conducted upstairs, Where lovers o'er cheesecakes were seated by pairs ; 1 So late as 17;>i> Islington waters were recommended. A letter, dated April 21, of that year, printed in the fifth report of the Historical MSS. Commission, says: 'Dr. Crowe thinks that if you could abide cold bathing it would -., a threat way in your cure. He has also a great opinion of Islington waters for your case.' In 17.V> was printed a curious book, entitled Islington; or, the Liu. ■ the New Tunbridge WeUs. They were apparently firs! opened about 1684, for two curious tracts are thus entitled, A Morning's Ramble ; or, Islington Wells' Burlesqt, 1684, and An Bxi 'wm itionfrom Tunbtidgt art n uyainst the new-found Wells at Islington, lGSi. 222 TUDOR AND STUART The organ and fiddles were scraping and humming. The guests for more ale on the tables were drumming. And poor Tom. amaz'cl, crying, ' coming, sir. coming.' The remainder of the description given in this curious tract is full of interest, though too long to quote now. From such sources as these can be gained a true picture of London life in the past. A curious legend about Moorfields and its origin as citizen ground is contained in a ballad printed by the Percy Society (vol. i). It is called The Life and death of the tico ladies of Finsbury, that gave Moorfields to the city for the maidens of London to dry cloaths. A verse or two describes the events as follows : And likewise when those maidens died They gave those pleasant fields Unto our London citizens Which they most bravely build. And now are made most pleasant walks That great contentment yield To maidens of London so fair. "Where lovingly both man and wife May take the evening air, And London (hums, to dry their cloathes, May hither still repair. In Richard Johnson's '/'he lieasant Walks of Moor- Fields, 1607, we have an interesting addition to this legend. Stow, in 1599, gives some information as to I ho improvements going on in his time in Mooiiiclds. 1 and, sa\ > Air. Collier, "in the very words which John- "ii eight or nine years afterwards repeated; but Stow did not live to witness, or at all events to record, the 1 edit. King sford, ii. 7<; 7. LONDON CHANGES 223 means resorted to by the citizens to complete what had been so well begun. Stow died on April 5, L605, just anterior to the Laying-oul of the walks ami making the plantations, which are the chief eulogies of John- son's tracts.' 1 Johnson calls Moorfields 'those sweet and delightful 1 walks of More fields, as it seemes a garden to this citty, and a pleasurable place of sweet ayres for cittizens to walke in'. After relating the legend that the fields were given to the City in the time of Edward the Confessor by the daughters of Sir William Fines, he says, 'these walkes beares the fashion of a crosse. equelly divided foure wayes, and likewise squared about with pleasant wals : the trees thereof makes a gallant show.' There were 291 of these trees, and ' many of them doe carry proper names . . . the first of them at the corner of the middle walke westward was first of all placed by Sir Leonard Holly- day, then Lord Maior . . . there stancleth neere a tree called the '-two brothers", planted by too little bo} T s, and sonnes to a citizen here in London '. I will next give two quotations showing us the house life of the period on special occasions, although I doubt not greatly exaggerated in detail. It is within the memory of man that all the appren- tices of Merchants, Lawyers and Mechanicks as well in London as in other places submitted to the most servile Employments of the Families that entertain' d them such as the young gentry, their successors in the same station scorn so much as the name of now. They cleaned their own and their masters shoes, brought water into the houses from the conduits in the streets which they carried on their shoulders, in Long vessels called tankards; they waited at table on their masters . 1 Collier's Illui Irations oj Early English Popular Literatim . vol. ii. 224 TUDOR AND STUART wore bands, and had the fore part of their heads cropped or shorn, according to the method observed at this time in the Blue Coat hospital. It was the custom of those days for the master to be followed to Church on a Sunday by all his household, the Apprentice arm'd with their bibles and Prayer books closing the procession, a sight well becoming a Protestant city (A Trip through London). The following description of citizen life from the same authority is very curious : — I am led by the regard which I bear to good com- pany to divert my reader with the history of an enter- tainment I met with at the house of a citizen in the ward of Farringdon without, during the late Christmas holydays. When I went in, I found the dining room full of women, to every one of whom I made a profound bow, and was repaid in a whole circle of courtesies ; having after some ceremony taken a seat among them, we had profound silence for near half a minute, not- withstanding the number of females present : For my part I had fix'd my eyes upon the fire, meditating what I had best to say : While I was in this study I could hear one of them whisper to another, / believe he thinks ice smodk Tobacco ; for my readers must know I had omitted the city custom, and not kiss'd one of tho ladies. A Hackney Coach stopping at the door, there issued out of it a smart young fellow in a well powdered campaign, a suit of superfine cloth, with a pair of laced r utiles at his wrists : He entered the room box in hand, offering his snuff to every one of the company and display d a fine diamond ring by keeping his left hand always in motion towards his forehead ; and began to be inquisitive about the Hour ol the Day to give himself an opporl unity of shewing us his Gold Watch, all of which he perforni'd with awkward dexterity hut admirable success, the women having one and all ch-darM themselves in his favour, by every one offering him their seat, so that 1 sat for LONDON CHANGES 225 a cypher or meer mum-chance amongst them. ... He was instantly followed by a substantial citizen on foot who had trudged it from Tower Hill fenced only with a drab cloak against the inclemency of the weather ; neighbour Jobson was now the only guest we waited for and he soon made his appearance ... in a thick set frock, covered over with silver buttons, a short natural perriwig, the knee bands of his breeches laid with silver, with a silver watch in his pocket almost as large as a pewter porringer, and on his fingers as many gold rings as he had been espoused years to his Help-mate. ... As soon as we were risen from table . . . the females presently resolved themselves into committees of two or three's all over the dining room, and I per- ceived every party was on a different subject. ... A cluster of wives I observed were calling for a bible to decide a dispute they had enter'd into, whether minced-Pyes or Plumb Porridge, were the properest Food on Christmas day. A devout old lady argued against Plumb porridge. She was answered with warmth by a couple of ladies thirty years younger than herself ... A call to the Tea table put a stop to this delightful controversy. They went into one room to their tea and we men into another room to our bottle, over which I was entertained to a tedious repe- tition of the elections of common council-men and who I thought would carry it for chamberlain &c. &c. After the commonwealth London extended herself slowly but surely. If we are to believe contemporary writers it was not altogether a beautiful extension. The scenes which Ned Ward depicts in his famous London Spy of 1699 are perhaps the black and grey spots of London, but they bear the stamp of truth, ami I will quote some specimens taken from an excellent summary in the Gentleman's Magazine of 1857, as they will explain better than anything else this aspect of seventeenth- century London. 08o ;g 1> 226 TUDOB AND STUART At the outset of the work we have a description of a common coffee-house of the day, one of the many hundreds with which London then teemed. Although coffee had been known in England only some fifty years, coffee-houses were already among the most favourite institutions of the land : — ' Come/ says my friend, ' let us step into this coffee- house here ; as you are a stranger in the town, it will afford you some diversion.' Accordingly in we went, where a parcel of muddling muckworms were as busy as so many rats in an old cheese-loft ; some going, some coming, some scribbling, some talking, some drinking, some smoking, others jangling; and the whole room stinking of tobacco, like a Dutch scoot, [schuyt,J or a boatswain's cabin. The walls were hung round with gilt frames, as a farrier's shop with horse-shoes ; which contained abundance of rarities, viz. Nectar and Am- brosia, May-dew, Golden Elixirs, Popular Pills, Liquid Snuff, Beautifying Waters, Dentifrices, Drops, and Lozenges ; all as infallible as the Pope, ' Where every one (as the famous Saffold has it) above the rest, Deservedly has gain'd the name of best ' : every medi- cine being so catholic, it pretends to nothing less than universality. So that, had not my friend told me 'twas a coffee-house, I should have taken it for Quacks' Hall, or the parlour of some eminent mountebank. We each of us stuck in our mouths a pipe of sotweed. and now began to look about us. In the course of a few pages we have another de- scription of London: — The modest hour of nine was now proclaimed by time's oracle froni every steeple ; mid the joyful alarm of Bow-bell called the weary apprentices from their work to their paring-shovels, to unhitch their folded shutters, and button up their shops till the nexl morn- The streets were ;ill adorned with dazzling lights, LONDON CHANGES 227 whose bright reflect so glittered in my eyes, that I could see nothing but themselves. Thus I walked amazed, like a wandering soul in its pilgrimage to heaven, when he passes through the spangled regions. My ears were serenaded on every side, with the grave nmsie of sundry passing-bells, the rattling of coaches, and the melancholy ditties of hot bak'd wardens and pippins. Two hours later the scene is vastly changed : — Each parochial Jack of Lanthorn was now croaking about streets the hour of eleven. The brawny topers of the cit} r began now to forsake the tavern, and stagger, baulking after a poop-lanthorn, to their own homes. Augusta appeared in her mourning weeds ; and the glittering lamps which a few hours before sparkled like diamonds, lix'd as ornaments to her sable dress, were now dwindled to a glimmering snuff, and burnt as dim as torches at a prince's funeral. The night's adventures are concluded by a lodging in sorry plight at the Dark House, in Billingsgate, the company, furniture, and discomforts oi which are humorously but coarsely described. Quitting their pigstye in the morning (for little better does the 1 Dark House ' seem to have been), they visit the ^Monument and Gresham College, the museum of which last affords Ned a rare opportunity of exercising his wit. After taking a peep at Bedlam — one of the grand peep-shows, by the way, of the day — our friends arrive at the Ivoyal Exchange, the predecessor of the present structure. It was built by Edward Jerman, the city surveyor, to supply the place of Gresham's building, which had been destroyed in the Fire of London. The scene presented by the exterior is first described : — The pillars at the entrance of tin- front porticum 228 TUDOR AND STUART were adorned with sundry memorandums of old age and infirmity, under which stood here and there a Jack in a Box, selling cures for your corns, glass eyes for the blind, ivory teeth for broken mouths, and spec- tacles for the weak-sighted ; the passage to the gate being lined with hawkers, gardeners, mandrake-sellers, and porters. After we crowded a little way amongst this miscellaneous multitude, we came to a pippin- monger's stall, surmounted with a chemist's shop ; where Drops, Elixirs, Cordials, and Balsams had justly the pre- eminence of apples, chestnuts.pears,and oranges; the former being ranked in as much order upon shelves as the works of the holy fathers in a bishop's library ; and the latter being marshall'd with as much exactness as an army ready to engage. Here is drawn up several regiments of Kentish pippins, next some squadrons of pearmains, join'd to a brigade of small-nuts, with a few troops of booncritons, all form'd into a battalion, the wings composed of oranges lemons, pomegranates, dried plums, and medlars. They then venture a step further, and ' go on to the 'Change '. In the interior — Advertisements hung as thick round the pillars of each walk as bells about the legs of a morris-dancer, and an incessant buz, like the murmurs of the distant ocean, stood as a diapason to our talk, like a drone to a bagpipe. The wainscot was adorned with quacks' bills, instead of pictures ; never an empiric in the town but had his name in a lacquered frame, containing an invitation for a fool and his money to be soon parted ; and ho that wants a dry rogue for himself, or a wet- nurse for a child, may be furnished here at a minute's warning. Leaving the walk below, they ascend to what was then known as the 'Pawn' ; galleries fitted up lor the sale of fancy goods, gloves, ribbons, ruffles, bands, &c, LONDON CHANCES 229 not, unlike the stalls in the bazaars of the pn-cnt day :— Accordingly we went up, where women sat in their pinfolds, begging of custom, with such amorous Looks and affable tones, that I could not but fancy they had as much mind to dispose of themselves as the com- modities they deal in. My ears on both sides were so baited with ' Fine linen, Sir,' and ' Gloves and ribbons, Sir,' that I had a milliner's and a sempstress's shop in my head for a week after. St. Paul's was at this period within some ten years of its completion. The author's somewhat disjointed and fragmentary description extends over several pages of the book, from which the following may be gathered : — From thence we turned through the west gate of St. Paul's Churchyard ; where we saw a parcel of stone-cutters and sawyers, so very hard at work that I protest, notwithstanding the vehemency of their labour, and the temperateness of the season, instead of using their handkerchiefs to wipe the sweat off their faces, they were most of them blowing their nails. We thence moved up a long wooden bridge, that led to the west porticum of the church, where we intermixed with such a promiscuous rabble that I fancied we looked like the beasts driving into the ark, to replenish a succeeding world. From thence we entered the body of the church, the spaciousness of which we could not discern for the largeness of the pillars. We now went a little further, where we observed ten men in a corner, very busy about two men's work. The wonderful piece of difficulty the whole number had to perform was to drag along a stone of about three hundredweight, in a carriage, in order to be hoisted upon the mouldings of the cupola ; but they were so long in hauling on't half the length of the church, that 230 TUDOE AND STUAET a couple of lusty porters in the same time would have carried it to Paddington without resting of their burthen. From thence we approached the quire on the north side ; the entrance of which had been very much defaced by the late fire, occasioned by the care- lessness of a plumber, who had been mending some defective pipes of the organ ; which unhappy accident has given the dissenters so far an opportunity to reflect upon the use of music in our churches, that they scruple not to vent their spleen by saying, ' 'Twas a judgment from heaven upon their carvings and their fopperies, for displeasing the ears of the Almighty with the profane tootings of such abominable cat-calls.' When prayers were over, we returned into the body of the church, happily intermixed with a crowd of good Christians, who had concluded with us their afternoon's devotion. We now took notice of the vast distance of the pillars, from whence they turn the cupola ; on which, they say, is a spire to be erected three hundred feet in height, whose towering pinnacle will stand with such stupenduous loftiness above Bow-steeple dragon, or the Monument's flaming urn, that it will appear to the rest of the holy temples like a cedar of Lebanon among so many shrubs, or a Goliath looking over the shoulders of so many Davids. After passing through Smithfield Rounds, ' which entertained his nostrils with such a savoury scent of roast meat, and surprised his ears with the jingling noise of so many jacks, that he stared about him like a country bumpkin in Spittlefields, among so many throwster's mills,' Ned and his friend make their way to the rails : — Where country carters stood armed with their long whips, to keep their teams upon sale in a due decorum, who were drawn up into the most sightly order with their forefeet mounted on a dunghill, and their heads dressed up to as much advantage as an Inns-of-court LONDON CHANGES 231 sempstress, or (ho mistress of ;i hoarding-school ; somo with their manes frizzled up, to make 'cm appear high-withered; others with their manes plaited, as if they had been ridden by the night-mare; and the fellows that attended them making as uncouth figures as the monsters in the Tempest. We then went a little fnrf ber, and there we saw a parcel of ragged rapscallions, mounted upon scrubbed [scrub] tits, scouring about the Rounds, some trotting, some galloping, some pacing, and others stumbling ; blundering about in that con- fusion, that I thought them like so many beggars on horseback, riding to the devil. Returning through the Lame Hospital, now better known as Bartholomew's, and passing through Christ's Hospital, 'alias the Blew-Coat School, where abundance of little children, in bine jackets and kite-lanthorn'd caps, were very bus3 T at their several recreations,' Ned and his friend move on till they arrive at Fleet Bridge : — Where nuts, gingerbread, oranges, and oysters lay pil'd up in moveable shops, that run upon wheels, attended by ill-looking fellows, some with but one eye and others without noses. Over against these stood a parcel of trngmoldies, in straw-hats and flat-caps, selling socks and furmity, night-caps and plum- pudding. This bridge connected Ludgate Hill with Fleet Street, and was finally removed in 1765, the period at which Fleet Ditch was arched over and hidden from view. An interesting relic of this period is the room of No. 17, Fleet Street (see p. 181), with its beautiful ceiling and panelling. It was probably the Council Room of Prince Henry of Wales, built about 1610-11 for the official quarters of the Duchy of Lancaster ami purchased by the County Council in 1900. 232 TUDOE AND STUAET Whatever results we may draw from these notes, one thing is certain— that London has lost its control over its own destinies. Citizenship with these surround- ings was a different kind of citizenship from the old burghal citizenship of previous days. Interests were divergent and distracting, control did not extend beyond very narrow limits. The London which gambled with its life in the fashion of the Tudors and Stuarts was not the ordered municipal city of the Plantagenets. One aspect of London life must be considered before passing to our final story. The influence of the river in the evolution of London having been noted, it will be well to indicate its position in late historical times. Whenever any one desired to proceed from one end of the city to the other, the means which he would adopt as being both the most convenient and the most pleasant would be by boat on the river. Even more would this be the case when proceeding beyond the city to such places on the river-side as Greenwich, Fulham, &c. Communication between London and the outlying dis- tricts by road was tedious, disagreeable, and accom- panied by risk. The roads were such as would hardl}' deserve the name at the present day, in bad weather almost impassable, and haunted bythe footpad and high- wayman. Coaches did not come into use much before 1 he seventeenth century, and even then were expensive and badly hung, which circumstance, with the bad con- dition of the roads, made a journey in them not an agreeable experience. So it was again that the most speedy, the safest,, and by far the mosl pleasant means of conveyance was by river. Indeed, the recognized route from London to the west was by river as far LoXDdN CHANGES 233 as Putney, ami i hence by road over Putney Ib-atli. This was the course naturally adopted by "Wolsey, when, having been deprived of the Great Seal, lie was retiring in disgrace to his seal at Esher. lie had come by water from York House (Whitehall) to Putney, and was proceeding up Putney Hill when he was overtaken by the messenger who had 1 n dis- patched to assure him of the continuance of the Royal favour. From no source do we get a more graphic picture ot the river as a highway than from the pages of IVpys' Diary. ' By water to White Hall,' ' So by water home,' ' By water to the Temple,' 'Down by water to Dept- forcl,' are phrases continually recurring in his accounts of his everyday official life. But the river also occu- pied an important place in his pleasure excursions. He goes to the bear gardens on the opposite bank, or takes his wife to Vauxhall. On several occasions he ascends the river as far as Barn Elms. ' After dinner b} 1, water, the day being mighty pleasant, and the tide serving finely, reading in Boyle's book of colours, as hio-h as Barne Elmes, and there took one turn alone, and then back to Putney church, where I saw the girls of the schools, few of which pretty' (28th April. 1667). Sometimes he took Mrs. Pepys with him on these excursions. 'land my wife and Mercer up by water to Barne Elmes, where we walked by moonshine, and called at Lambeth and drank and had cold meat in the boat, and did eat and sing, and down home by almost twelve at night, very fine and pleasant, only could not sing ordinary songs with the freedom that otherwise I would' (21st July, 1667). Every facility existed for persons desiring to take 234 TUDOR AND STUART boat. The landing-places along the river-bank, ' stairs ' they were called, were very numerous; in 1707 there were over a hundred. To meet the demands of the public, many hundreds of watermen found constant employment on the river. From Taylor, the water poet, we learn that in the reign of Elizabeth 'the number of watermen, and those that live and are maintained by them, and by the onely labour of the oare and the scull, betwixt the bridge of Windsor and Gravesend, cannot be fewer than forty thousand'. 1 The number seems to have been the same in the reign of Anne, for Strype says : ' There be 40,000 watermen upon the rolls of the Company [Watermen's Company] as I have been told by one of the Company ; and that upon occasion they can furnish 20,000 men for the fleet ; and that there were 8,000 then in the service.' '-' These numbers have now much decreased owing to the comparative disuse of the river. This has been brought about partly by the construction of bridges and tunnels, affording other means of crossing the river, and partly by the facilities offered by cab, omnibus, tramcar, and railway, which have to a great extent drawn passenger traffic away from the river ; and by steamboats, which, while retaining the use of the river, have nevertheless completelychangod the whole character of the passenger 1 raffic thereon. It will thus be seen that in these times the river must have presented a constant scene of life and activity. Touches of brilliancy, moreover, were never wanting. Here and there; on the river-bank were the palaces of royalty and the mansions of nobility, each 1 The True ('•nts, of the Watermen's Suit com; ruing Players, Ac, p. 172. 2 Strype's Stow, book v. p, '2:)2. LONDON' oil. WOKS provided with its access to the river. In Tudor times, for instance, there were roya] residences at Greenwich, The Tower, Bridewell, Whitehall, Westminster, Chel- sea, and further up the river i as far as Windsor, and it was a common sight to see the magnificent royal 1 urges, or the splendid barges of the nobility, manned by their bargemen in gorgeous liveries and badges, sweeping up and down the river. In addition, the corporation of the city of London and the great city companies had their barges and liveried attendants. At a time when the river was the great highway of London it was natural that great pageants and cere- monies should often be held on the water. For cen- turies the Lord Mayor's show r proceeded to Westmin- ster by water, and it was not until 1857 that, the rights of the City of London corporation as conservators of the Thames then lapsing, the journey was performed by land. On a new ambassador coming to the country it was the custom for him to travel by land as far as ( J-ravesend, where he was met by the Lord Mayor and aldermen, and conducted in state by river to the Tower Stairs, whence he proceeded by state coach to White- hall. The public entry into London of Catherine of Bra- ganza, consort of Charles II, must have been one of the most gorgeous pageants ever witnessed from the Thames banks. She came from Hampton Court to Whitehall, and Evelyn mentions 'the innumerable boats and vessels, dressed and adorned with all imagin- able pomp, but, above all. the thrones, arches, pageants, and other representations, stately barges of the Lord Mayor and Companies, with various inventions, music, and peals of ordnance '. 236 TUDOR AND STUART CHANGES The Thames has changed again since those claj^s and pleasure and picturesque pageantry have deserted it, though a pageantry of another kind has arisen. It was the centre of Tudor and Stuart life in London as it was of earlier times right through the centuries. If Tudor and Stuart life was less homogeneous, less oi a city life and more of a town life, it is the link which connects the city of London in the fullness of its communal existence with the county of London struggling to obtain a recognized place for London among the capital cities of the world. CHAPTER XX LONDON AS THE EMPIRE CITY The nineteenth century witnessed the growth of a very great London, great in extent, in population, in wealth, but not a city with its own special ide;ils apart from the ideals it has inherited. I believe these will come as soon as Englishmen have learned the lesson, known to the citizens of antiquity, that city life is the true method of civilization. "We have seen in the past how difficult it has been for the Englishman to learn this truth. It has not come completely home to him yet, and the ideals of London have not come yet. All we have to do then is to try to comprehend the London which has evolved from all those positions in the past which we have been considering. The growth began, as we have seen, in Tudor times. It spread along the Strand, on the river side of which were built mansions of the nobility, with gardens extending to the water's edge. Essex House, Arundel House, Somerset House, the Palace of the Savoy, Worcester House. Salisbury House, Durham House, York House, and Northumberland House are amongst the most familiar examples leaving to us streei names to tell of former conditions. It extended from Soutli- wark, also along the banks of the river. The next extension, just after the Eire, is north of the city area 238 LONDON AS THE EMPIRE CITY towards Old Street. Three-quarters of a century later (1745) we get a great extension all round up to Hyde Park on the west, just north of Oxford Street, Theo- bald's Road, and Old Street on the north, to AVhite- chapel and Lirnehouse on the east. Another fifty years (179D) we have a further fringe of narrow dimensions penetrating to Knightsbridge on the west, creeping up to Edgware Road, taking in the southern part of Marylebone. extending to Camden Town, adding to the 1745 extension in the east a narrow belt all round, and finally showing the first great extension in north Lambeth along the banks of the river. In 183.2 the Regent's Park district on the north, a large district of Lambeth on the south, and a further extension of Bermondsey and Southwark are the principal features. Islington, St. Pancras, Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, and Mile End also filled up at this date, together with a little bit of Greenwich. In 1862 the great era of building set in, and all round the boundary of the 1832 limits we have great extensions. The next stage is 1887, which again shows an extension of the building area all round the map; and now, twenty-four years later, we have scarcely any boundary of London left, for building has gone on spreading into Kent, Surrey, Middlesex, and Essex al a pace which almost defies exact description. The eity proper is the centre of the business world of London. It contains the Bank of England, the head offices of the great banking and insuranco com- panies, and the offices and warehouses of the principal merchants. The city churches, nearly one hundred in number, are conspicuous features, while the great cathedral of St. Paul's, Wren's masterpiece, dominates LoXDoX AS T1IK EMPIEE CITY 239 bhe city as the principal feature from whatever point the city is seen. The county completely surrounds the city, extending from Bow on the east to Hammersmith on the west, from Hampstead on the north to Tooting on the south, and taking in Hackney on the north-east, Woolwich on the south-east, and extend in- to Putney on the south-west. It contains more of London life than the city proper. That it is the seat of Imperial Govern- ment has already been noted, and the significance historically has been worked out. The Houses of Parliament and the whole of the Government offices and the Law Courts are the material representatives of this unique position. The Mint, Trinity House, the Inns of Court, the Tower of London, the cathedral church of Southwark, the Abbey Church of West- minster, the Roman Catholic cathedral church, the arsenal of AVoolwich, the King's Palace, the town resi- dence of the Prince of Wales, the town houses of the nobility and aristocracy, and the palaces of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London are all in the county. It is the seat of two bishoprics, namely, London and Southwark. It contains Eltham Palace, one of the favourite residences of the kings of England, particularly of Henry VIII and including Charles I ; Greenwich Palace, which Henry VIII, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth occupied : Kensing- ton Palace, where William III, Mary II, Anne, and George II died, and Queen Victoria was born: and many beautiful buildings of historic importance. Most of the principal railway terminus stations arc in the county. It has also very large manufacturing and industrial centres, which make London the largest 240 LONDON AS THE EMPIRE CITY manufacturing city in the world. It is the centre of all institutions for amusements, the Albert Hall, and all the theatres,, music halls, hotels, &c. The Univer- sity of London and its schools and colleges are also situated in the county, as are the British Museum, the Natural History Museum, South Kensington Museum, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the Tate Gallery, the Wallace Collection, and other gal- leries and museums. It is the seat also of all the principal learned societies, located chiefly at Burling- ton House, and Greenwich Observatory, upon which practically the time of the world is based, is within the county area of London. The story of the expansion is mainly topographical. Its meaning and effect is one of the problems of political institutions. The strangest thing is that with a city such as London, capital of an empire such as the British, there should be so little real recogni- tion of its position. Londoners do not recognize it ; Parliament does not recognize it ; statesmen do not recognize it — do not recognize it, I mean, in a definite, comprehensive way, as Paris or Berlin is recognized, do not take it to themselves as one of the institutions of the country with definite relationship to other institutions. It is not so recognized in politics, in sentiment, or in literature. There is only a sort of hushed acknowledgement of it. Visitors come up to London, but Londoners receive them in Kensington, Paddington, Dulwich, Poplar, St. Pancras, or other local centre. London is not London to the vast majority of Londoners, but a place. The empire city is there, however, in the full strength of its position. It is the centre of govern- LONDON AS THE EMPIRE CITY 241 ment, of commerce and industry, of shipping, of learning, of enterprise, of progress. If it is governed with no sense of unity, the unity is springing up in spite of obstacles. If its history is what I have en- deavoured to sketch out, the effect of that history is going to work its way into the minds of future generations. It is impossible for such a history to be absolutely sterilized. Fragments of it are talked about and extolled. People are beginning to care about tho houses in which great men and women have lived or died, and note with interest the placques which an enlightened governing authority affix to record the facts. Scholars and artists are still interested in what London has to tell them. The atmosphere of London is all-embracing. And when once it is understood how great the story of it is, how London alone of all British cities is the capital city without a rival for its place — is capital city not because of formal appoint- ment thereto, but because of the great position it has occupied in the country for nearly nineteen centuries, as Roman city, as city-state, as municipal city, as national city, as empire city ; then its sons and daughters will see to it that they, in their pride of it, will give all the tribute that is due. The name of London is now properly and legally applied to two well-defined areas : the ancient city with which we have had so much to do in these pages, and the county constituted by Act of Parliament in 1888. And I will point out hero tho interesting analogy which this has to the much earlier condition of things when there were two Londons, Boudicca's London, as we may term it, and Lundinium Augusta. I have noted the indications of the preservation of the 08ti.l6 <-i 242 LONDON AS THE EMPIRE CITY smaller London surrounded by the greater Augusta, and I have noted that the name of London, preserved to us by the inner area, finally triumphed over that of Augusta, and was applied eventually to the whole city with its walls, its pomerium, and its territorium. The two Londons of to-day are precisely in the same position. Ancient London, protected by the sentiment and affection of its citizens, remains intact. Modern London, surrounding it and enclosing it, absorbing it in certain directions, takes the name of London for its whole area. We thus have repeated in the nine- teenth century of London's history what was enacted in the first century, and it is not a little remarkable that so true an analog}^ can be drawn. The government of this dual area, of these two Lon- dons, is not even dual. It is multiple. It is the direct product of the singular neglect of the London growing up around the city which, as we have seen, aroused the jealousy and alarm of the Stuart monarchs and states- men. No government of any comprehensive kind was given to this area until 1855. Prior to that date there were the Justices of the Peace for Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent exercising jurisdiction in the parts belonging to those counties, and there were commissioners ap- pointed by the Crown to deal with main drainage, highway boards to deal with roads, and officers to deal with buildings. For the rest there was nothing but the ancient parish constitution and even the manorial institution to rely upon, upon which were intruded ;ill sorts of paving and other hoards by a series of Acts of Parliamenl ;is curious as they are disgraceful. The chaos w;is ridiculous. Thus, as an example, let me note the dili'-nnt paving boards which existed to govern the LONDON AS THE EMPIRE CITY 243 Strand from No. 1 to Temple Bar. They came in I be fol- lowing order: (1) St. Martin's alone; (2) St. Martin's ;ind St. Clement's; (3) St. Martin's and the Savoy; (4) Savoy and St. Clement's ; (5) Savoy and St. Mary's ; (6) St. Mary's alone; (7) St. Mary's and Somerset Place; (8) St. Mary's alone; (9) St. Clement's alone — the distance being 1,336 yards or three-quarters of a mile, and there being nine divisions. Cecil Street, a street running from the Strand towards the river, with a carriage-way about ten yards wide, was under two separate managements, namely, St. Martin's and St. Clement's. Along Wellington Street North, from the north end of Exeter Street, to the south side of the Strand, a distance of 100 yards, there were four separate jurisdictions, namely, St. Paul's, Coven t Garden, St. Martin's, St. Clement's, and Savoy. Alto- gether the number of different local Acts in force in London prior to 1855 was about 250. independent of public general acts, administered by not less than 300 different bodies; 137 of these returned members numbering no less than 4,738 persons. For the other boards there were 5,710 more members, so thai the whole area was governed by no less than 10,448 persons. But this is not all. There is a remarkable series of Acts of Parliament for building on the great estates comprised in the London area. We owe great and lasting benefits to these Acts in the beautiful system of laving go further than LONDON AS THE EMPIRE CITY 245 this. Not only administrative duties of the widest kind but police duties with armed police were entrusted to these self- constituted commissioners. K\< rv reader will understand the magnitude of the interests which had been established in London by this remarkable} legislation. There is nothing like it in the United Kingdom. It is scarcely believable of London except that London lias been for so long the sporting ground of legislative experiments — not experi- ments on a large scale to try what institutions could do if properly endowed with, powers and duties, but experiments on a singularly petty scale, bred as it seems to me of a universal mistrust of what London might become if she were allowed to develop naturally as she developed in the early days and proved herself capable of taking a great part in great events. The Act of 1855 constituting a special form of government for what was called the Metropolis was a signal failure. It conformed to no possible ideal of Knglish local self-government, and it fell by its own weakness. The Act of 1888, restoring popular govern- ment to the counties of England after a lapse of some seven hundred years, also gave to London its first real chance of self-government. Chaos still reigns, unfor- tunately. One could not expect simplicity to follow the astounding chaos of past ages. But simplicity is growing more and more to be the ideal of statesman- ship, municipal and Parliamentary, and some day it will reveal itself in London. It is not my purpose now t<» proceed further in this direction. The making of London has been traced out from earliest beginnings in the Roman empire to present position in the British empire. The greatness 246 LONDON AS THE EMPIRE CITY of her activities in all brandies of human affairs does not enter into our subject, and details are easily avail- able to students who want to understand London from other aspects. I have been concerned with the making of London as an example of the evolution of a great city. It has not been possible to tell the whole story, but I have told the essentials. It is a story of great beginnings, great mishaps, great struggles, but withal a glorious story. It is the living histoiy of an insti- tution—a history that is not only generally unknown but is often denied by writers of eminence and know- ledge. The neglect of such a history is shameful. London has as much right to pay due respect to its ancient traditions, to its continuous customs, to its archaeological remains, to its constitutional and legal rights and powers, as ever Paris or Rome or Athens had or has. Scholars are ready to attribute value of an important degree to the chance preservation of minute relics relating to these and other places of antiquity. The making of London is not recorded in minute relics. They are great and manifest. But they have not only to be dug up out of records or from beneath the ground ; they have to be insisted upon. A Roman remain in London tells the same story as in any other city. If there are no Anglo-Saxon monuments inside the city it is because they were placed outside the city — at Thorney Island, at Kingston, in tin' fields, in t he planning of our parishes and manors, even in the alignment of our streets. If Norman tnonuiiK'uls still exist to tell us of tho strength of this new element of London they are onty typical of wh;ii Norman London actually became. If Plantagenet remains are scattered and few and very beautiful, they LONDON AS THE EMPIRE CITY 247 depict the gradually forming city of the nation. If Tudor and Stuart relics bring us straight on to modern London, t riling us of an uncontrollable development, as careless as the times and the thought which belonged to the times, we are prepared for that chaos in govern- ment which the early nineteenth century witnessed. There is continuity in this story, unbroken continuity, and gazing back across the centuries Londoners must learn that in the history of their own city there is con- tained so much that is worth knowing not only on its own account but also on account of its importance in the history of the nation. A nation cannot have such a city as London, possessed of such a history, without being profoundly influenced by it. Every one who has followed the situation as it has been unfolded in these pages must appreciate the enormous and continuous influence of London in the shaping of the nation. That influence has been uniformly good. There have been few, very few, mad moments, and there have been innumerable great moments. The nation owes much to London, and the story of the evolution of the city is the record of that debt. There is scarcely a foot of ground in London that is not consecrated to her history. Milton's house was in Aldersgate, Dryden's in Fetter Lane, Crosby Hal] enclosed a spot on which "William Shakespeare un- doubtedly stood, Christ's Hospital was a London foundation of great importance, Sir Paul Pinders house in Bishopsgate was a typical citizen's house, Drury Lane was originally the home of the opulent citizen who preferred to live outside the city in Smart days— and all have disappeared. In the midst of this destruction, often senseless destruction, it is interesting 248 LONDON AS THE EMPIRE CITY to find the element of preservation getting stronger. The Government in 1909 stopped the destruction of Chelsea Hospital; the County Council in 1911 has preserved by purchase the beautiful almshouses in the Kingsland Road, erected by the Ironmongers' company in 1715 and representing a good example of Mid- Georgian architecture. And now my task is done. ' The Thames has made London ' are the words with which I began, and if any one wishes to test that proposition let him take his stand at the end of the pier at Southend — vulgar, cockney, beautiful Southend — on a bright spring morning, in the haze of the early summer, with the coming winter thick upon him, in the midst of winter snows, sleets, and winds — let him take his stand there and watch the pageant of ships steaming along from all ends of the world to their destiny in London. The same scene on a limited scale was seen by ancestors of his in the first century, and in the eleventh century where the first definite record has been noted. The world was not so extensive in those far-off periods, but it was the whole world of commerce then, as it is the whole world of commerce now. During the long intervening years, of which these are but the signal posts, the same thing has gone on. The river has deepened its course, the shallows have largely disappeared, the shores have changed, but the river Thames stands to London for what it has always stood, and London stands to the nation and the empire as the greatest city the world has ever seen. INDEX Abney Park cemetery, palaeo- lithic implements in, 26. acre strips, agricultural, round London, 121-5. Adventurers, company of, 201. Aldwych, Danish settlement at, 98-103. Alfred, King, development of London by, 9, 79, 80-2. All Hallows, Barking, 177. Allectus in London, 60, 64. Ammianus Marcellinus, quoted, 117. amphitheatre of Roman London, 72. Anglo-Saxon London, 80, 90- 113, 118-25. animal fossil remains, 10, 26. Ansgar, sheriff, at Battle of Hastings, 118, 131, 150-1. Artorius (Arthur), crowned in London, 75. Athelstan, London law, temp. 91, 117. Augusta, Roman name of Lon- don, 54. Austin Friars, 177, 180. Bath, Roman, in Cannon Street, 82; in the Strand, 72. Battersea Rise, palaeolithic re- mains at, 28. Bear Garden, Southwark, 72. Becket, Gilbert, 153. Becket, Thomas, 153-4, 159. Belinus, Celtic origin of Billingsgate, 48, 148. bell of St. Raul's to summon the folkmoot, 107. Billingsgate, Celtic origin of name, 48. bishoprics in London, 239. Blackheath, Roman road at, 58. boat, Roman, found in Lam- beth, 62-4. Boudicca (Boadicea). 53, 79. Break-neck Steps, 17. Bridewell Dock, 207. Bridge, London, 48, 126. Bronze Age remains, 32-3. Bucklersbury, Roman remains, 88. building extensions, 211 18. burials in London, no evidence of Anglo-Saxon, 112. Caesar, Julius, 20, 22, 23, 51. Calais, appeal to London by, 182. Carausius, in London, 60. Carpenter, John, 186. Cassivellaunus, stronghold of, at London, 20, 21-2, 51. cathedrals in London, 239. Catuvellauni, the tribal owners of London, 44. Celts, incoming of, 9. ethnological evidence, 42-3, 47. — settlement of, in London, 16- 23, 36-40. tradition of, concerning Lon- don, 47 9. t rilial formation of, 42-5. Charing Cross, animal fossil remains at, 10. charters, land, ecclesiastical origin of, 94. ?• O & INDEX charters, municipal, 136-8, 140, 155-7. Chaucer, Geoffrey, 190-1. Chilterns, right of hunting in, by Londoners, 70. churches, built on Roman foun- dations, 93. — Norman, 146. citizen life in Tudor times. 224-5. City, bronze implements in, 32. — cinerary urns in, 38. — hut circle habitations in, 38. — palaeolithic remains in, 14, 24. — Roman roadway in, 55. city-state, London after depar- ture of the Romans, 74-6. Clapton, palaeolithic remains at, 14, 26. Clerkenwell, jDalaeolitliic re- mains at, 14, 24. coffee-houses, 226. coins, Anglo-Saxon, 115, 117. 149. ■ — Roman, from London mint, 64, 89. commerce, 116, 147, 197, 201, 206. commercial law, Roman, sur- vival of, 90. common-field system, 121-5, 198. Common Hall of the City, 109. Common we, 1 1th, London, 206. continuity of London from Roman times, 50. coronation ceremony, 114. county of London, 239- 12. Cray foid, 59. custom and law, municipal, 10-1. Dalston, palaeolithic remains at, 14,26. Danes, influence of, 97. - settlement of, 98-103. Di "i 'in, in. df London, 149. Diana, temple of, on site of St. Paul's, 47. Drury Lane, palaeolithic re- mains in, 14, 24. Dublin, Danish settlement in, 98. East Indies, early trade with, 201-2. Edgware Road, a Roman road, 59. Elizabeth, Queen, address on the Armada, 201. Eltham palace, 169, 239. empire city, London as, 78, 81, 237-48. English London, 79, 81, 94, i 126-9. Essex, London in relation to, 115. ethnological evidence of Celtic London, 42-3, 47. Exeter, treatment of William I by, 196. extensions of London at dif- ferent dates, 238-40. fields around London, 219. Finsbury, 17, 34. FitzEylwin (Henry), Mayor, 183 FitzStephen's account of Lon- don, 127-8, 141-2. Fleet bridge, 231. Fleet river, 17, 34, 207. Fleet Street, Prince Henry's room, 181, 231. folkmoot of London, 10C> 9. forum, Roman, at Leadenhall market. 89. Frowyk (Henry), Mayor, 182. gardens, 180. Gervase of Corn hill. 152. government of London, 242-5. (inner (John), 191. INDEX 253 Gray's Inn Lane, palaeolithic remains in, 14, 24. Greenwich, Roman remains at, 72-3. Guildhall, 177. Hackney, palaeolithic remains at, 14, 2G. head trophies in lake dwellings, 36. Highbury New Park, palaeo- lithic remains in, 26. Homerton, animal fossil re- mains at, 10, 2G. Hornsey (South), palaeolithic remains in, 26. house life of London in Tudor times, 223. hunting, rights of, by London- ers 70. Hustings', Court of, 109-10. Iron Age, early, remains in London, 34. Islington, 199,219,221. James I threatens to remove the capital from London. 9. James II, 208. Jermyn Street, palaeolithic re- mains in, 24. Kensington palace, 239. Kent, London in relation to, 115, 116. Kentish Town, origin of name. 92. King of London, 75. Kingsbury, Roman remains at. 73. Kingsland almshouses, 248. Kingslaml, palaeolithic remains at, 14, 26. Kingston, crowning place of Anglo-Saxon kings, 114. lake habitations in the Fleet river, 17, 34, 36. Lambeth palace, 169, 239. lands belonging to London, 89, 157. law, municipal and state, 156. 189. Leadenhall Market, site of Roman forum, 89. Lewisham, palaeolithic remains at, 28. Lincoln's Inn Hall. 169. London, name of, 16, 54, 56. — position on the Thames, 42-3. London Bridge, traditions, 48, 126. London Fields, palaeolithic re- mains in, 26. London Stone, 55. Long Acre, 121. Lud, Celtic god, 46, 47, 148. Ludgate Hill, 18, 41, 209. Mandeville, Geoffrey de, 152. manorial system, absence of, in London,*96, 118. manufacturing centres, 239. Meiers' Hall, 173. merchant law, of Roman origin, 90. Merchant Taylors' Hall, 173. Mercia, London in relation to, 115. Merlawe (Richard), Mayor, 184. Middlesex, Bronze Age remains in, 33. — palaeolithic remains in, 14,28. — Roman, 70, 74, 89. Mildmay Park, palaeolithic re- mains in, 26. Mile End, Roman origin of, 70, 90. military organization of London, 162, 206. mint, Roman, continuity of site, 89. monuments, catalogue of, 192. Moortields, 222. murders by mob law, 163. 254 INDEX national city, London as the, 193-209. neolithic site, 14-16. Nod, Mount, Wandsworth, a probable Celtic name, 47. Norman London, 130-47. Normans, incoming of, 9. Northelm, Archbishop of Can- terbury, 149. Old Kent Eoad, a Roman road, 58. palaces in London, 169, 239. palaeolithic implements, 24. — site, 12-14. parishes round London show the Anglo-Saxon settlement, 119. Park Lane, origin of street alignment. 122-5. pavements, Roman, in London, 82-6 ; outside London, 72. ] uiving boards in Strand district, 243. pile dwellings, see 'lake habita- tions '. Plantagenet London, 155-92, 194. Plautius (Aulus), 51. political insight of Plantagenet London, 194. pomeriuni of Roman London, earliest, 55; later, 68-70, 89, 92. Pomroy, St. Martin, significance of name, 55. Prince's street (Oxford St.). palaeolithic implements in. 26. property law, Roman, survival of, 90, 91-2. Putney, origin of frontage line at, 122. rt'sidcnri's, lioman, outside Lon- don, 72. roads, Roman, in and from London, 55, 56 60. Rochester, Danish settlement in, 98. Roman London, 9, 51-76, 79. 81-93. Royal Exchange, 228-9. Sadler's Wells, 221. St. Bartholomew the Great, 144 St. Catharine Cree, 177. St. Dunstan, Stepney, 173. St. Ethelburga, 173. St. Ethelreda, 169. St. Giles, Cripplegate, 173. St. Helen, Bishopsgate, 173. St. John, Clerkenwell, 173. St. John's Chapel, Tower, 144. St. Luke, Chelsea, 173. St. Margaret, Westminster, 173. St. Martin, Pomroy, 55. St. Olave, Hart Street, 177. St. Olave, Southwark, a Danish settlement, 98. St. Paul's, bell of, to summon the folkmoot, 107. — rites, ancient, at, 46, 47, 49. - site of, 16, 18, 47. — Stuart period, 229. temple of Diana on site of, 47, 89. Wren's rebuilding of, 229. St. Saviour, Southwark, 146. St. Thomas Apostle, 169. Savoy Chapel, 169. schools of London, Norman, 146. Shacklewell, palaeolithic re- mains in, 26. Shakespeare in London, 218. site of London. 9-23. squares of London, 243-4. sokes, 157-8. Sovereign, London's relation- ship to the, 195. Spilallields, 230. Spring Gardens, 203-6. Btag cult at St. Paul's, 47. INDEX 255 Staines, limit of London juris- diction at; 70. Stamford Hill, palaeolithic re- mains in, 26. Staple Inn, 169, 177. state, London in relation to the, 49, 74, 77, 79. Stoke Newington, neolithic re- mains at, 32. — palaeolithic remains at, 14, 26-8. stone monolith, Danish as- sembly place, 99-100. Stony Street, a Roman road, 58. Strand, houses in, 237. maypole in, 102. — stone cross in, 99. streets, alterations of, 126-7. stronghold, Celtic, 16, 18. Stuart London, 200-6. sword in municipal ceremony, 104-6. Thames, bronze implements from, 32, 33. — fording of, at London Bridge, 40-1. — importance of, to London, 9-10,24, 232-3.5,247-48. — Iron Age, early, remains from, 34. — jurisdiction of London over, 70. — London's position on, 42. — neolithic finds in, 30. original condition of, 20-1. - palaeolithic finds in, 28. Roman passage of, 51. Temple Bar, ceremony at, 196. Temple Church, 144. territorium of Roman London, 70-4, 89, 93. tobacco first smoked at Isling- ton, 220, 224. Tower of London, 134 6, 140, 144, 158, 198. trade cent res. 158. tribalism of Celtic Londoners, 43-5; of Anglo-Saxons, 91. trident, gladiator's, found at Bear < rarden, 72. Tiinobantes in Essex, 44. Tudor London, 197-200, 202. Tyler (Wat), 186-8. Tynwald Hill, Isle of Man, 105. unity of London government, 117, 128 9. verandah (house), on the Wal- brook, Roman, 88. Verulam, 22. Walls, mediaeval, 161. - Roman, 54, 66, 80. Walworth, Celtic name, 47. Walworth (Sir William), Mayor, 186. Wandsworth, palaeolithic re- mains at, 28. watchmen, 227. Westminster, Norman remains at, 146. — Roman remains at, 72. — Saxon settlement of, 120, 121. Westminster Abbey, coronation ceremony at, 114. Westminster Hall. 165. Whitehall, 203. Whityngton (Richard), Mayor, 185-6. William the Conqueror and London, 130-1. Witenagemot, meetings in Lon- don, 114. Wottone (Nicholas), Mayor, 183. OXFORD : HORACE HART. M.A. PRINTER TO THi: UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. RECEIVED fawuArc mx.m mwct ReC'O MUJ LD USl JAN il' f ^ JAN 11K6S Form L9-32m-8,'58(5876s4)444 DA 678 G^8m 58 00544 5647 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 404 346 9