London. Walter Besant

      In similar gentle strains he approaches, and delicately touches upon, the sins of other kings.

      This kind of language is difficult to sustain, and sometimes leads to contradictions. Thus, in one sentence, the Sapient speaks of his countrymen as wholly ignorant of the art of war, and in another he tells how the flower of the British youth went off to fight for Maximus.

      As regards the alleged luxury of the time, this poor monk wrote from a dismal cell, very likely of wattle and daub, certainly draughty and cold; his food was poor and scanty; his bed was hard; life to him was a long endurance. The roasted meats, the soft pillows and cushions, the heated rooms of the better sort, seemed to him detestable and wicked luxury, especially when he thought of the Saxons and Jutes overrunning the ruined country. Of course, in every age the wealthy will surround themselves with whatever comforts can be procured. We are in these days, for instance, advanced to what our ancestors would have called an inconceivable height of luxury. One would like to invite the luxurious Cuneglass to spend a day or two with a young man of the present day. Those who were neither rich nor free lived hardly, as they do to this day, but more hardly; those who were young and strong, even though they were not perhaps trained to the use of arms, easily learned how to use them, and when it came to victory or death, they soon recovered the old British spirit. This is not the place, otherwise it would be interesting to show what a long and gallant stand was made by these people whom it is customary to call cowardly and luxurious – these ancestors of the gallant Welsh.1 It is manifest that a period of two hundred years and more of peace, almost profound, their frontiers and their coasts guarded for them by the legions of Rome, must have lowered the British spirit. But the people quickly recovered it. The Arthurian epic, it is certain, has plenty of foundation in fact, and perhaps poor King Cuneglass himself, the Bear and Butcher, wielded a valiant sword in spite of his family troubles. The Britons were, it is quite certain, prone to internal dissensions, which greatly assisted their defeat and conquest. But they had one bond of union. Their enemies were pagan; they were Christian. Gildas addresses a nation of Christians, not a church planted among idolaters. Christian symbols and emblems have been found everywhere on the site of Roman towns, not, it is true, in large quantities, but they are found; while, though altars have also been found, and pagan emblems and statuettes of gods, there are no ruins anywhere in Britain, except at Bath, of Roman temples. Their faith, like the Catholicism of the Irish, was their national symbol. It separated them broadly from their enemies; it gave them contempt for barbarians. The faith therefore flourished with great strength and vigor. But the popular Christianity seems to have been in Britannia, as everywhere, a very mixed kind of creed. As in Southern Italy among the peasants there linger to this day traditions, customs, and superstitions of paganism which the people call the Old Faith, so in Britain there lingered among the people ceremonies and beliefs which the Church vainly tried to suppress, or craftily changed into Christian observances. Such things linger still in Wales, though the traveller regards them not. In the same way the folk-lore of our own time in our own villages is still largely composed of the beliefs and superstitions inherited from our old English – not British – ancestors. What happens is always the same, and must be the same. In times of religious revolution the common folk change the name of their God, but not his nature or his attributes. Apollo becomes the Christ, but in the minds of the Italian peasants he remains the old Apollo. The great Sun-God, worshipped under so many names and with so many attributes, remains in the hearts of rustics long, long centuries after mass has been said and the Host has been elevated. Nay, it has even been said that the mass itself is an adaptation of pagan ritual to Christian worship. But the people, whatever their old beliefs, called themselves Christian, and that one fact enabled them to forget their jealousies and quarrels in times of emergency, and sometimes to act together. They were Christian; their enemies were pagan. It is significant that in one passage Gildas – who is quoted by Bede – reproaches them for not converting their conquerors, among whom they lived. This proves, if the fact wanted proof, (1) that the Britons were not exterminated by their conquerors; (2) that they were allowed to continue unmolested in their own religion; and (3) that they kept it to themselves as a possession of their own, a consolation in disaster, and a mark of superiority and dignity.

      One thing is quite clear, that when the Roman legions finally withdrew, the Britons were left thoroughly awakened to the fact that if they could not fight they must perish. They understood once more the great law of humanity in all ages, that those who would enjoy in peace must be prepared to fight in war. They fought, therefore, valiantly; yet not so valiantly as the stronger race which came to drive them out.

      In particular, however, we have to deal with the fate of London, which was then Augusta. Let us first endeavor to lay down the facts. They are to be drawn from two sources: the first from the meagre notes of the historians, the second from certain topographical and geographical considerations. The latter have never yet been fully presented, and I believe that the conclusion to be drawn by comparing the double set of facts will be accepted as irresistible.

      The following are the facts related by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: