claim made by St. Peter’s, Cornhill, to be the first church in the kingdom. This legend appears in Jocelyn of Furness. Bishop Foliot at the same time made the former dignity or London the basis of a claim against Canterbury.
Fig. 10.—Head of a Pin.
It is often assumed that British London fell violently, and that the old institutions were obliterated, but a comparison of evidence gathered from the British legends with the Saxon Chronicle suggests that it is just possible that the English may have entered the city on terms, as at Exeter, where Briton and Saxon long dwelt side by side.
Of the time after the English invasion Bishop Stubbs writes: “There were still Roman roads leading to the walls and towers of empty cities; camps, villas, churches were become, before the days of Bede, mere haunted ruins. It is not to be supposed that this desolation was uniform; in some of the cities there were probably elements of continuous life: London, the mart of the merchants; York, the capital of the North; and some others, have a continuous political existence, although they wisely do not claim an unbroken succession from the Roman municipality.” Freeman held a similar view: “London is one of the ties ... with Celtic and Roman Britain.” Mr. Coote believed that Roman institutions survived all changes, and Thomas Wright says: “We have no reason for believing that this city, which was a powerful commercial port, was taken and ravaged by the Saxon invaders; a rich trading town, it appears to have experienced no check to its prosperity.”
Fig. 11.—Enamelled Plate.
On the question of a Roman Church in Britain, however, Thomas Wright took up a position of extreme scepticism, stating that there were no remains, that historical references were forgeries, or flourishes of rhetoric, that Gildas was a pretence, and that it was impossible to say how Christianity reached Cornwall and Wales. The more recent position would be the opposite of all this, and considerable material evidence can be produced, which has been crowned within the last few years by the discovery of the foundations of a Roman church at Silchester, which may be the cathedral of the city, for there Geoffrey says Manganius was bishop in 519. The later Irish, Cornish, and Welsh Churches are only parts of the common British Christianity, which ultimately got shut up into the corners of the land by the English invasion, but originally formed part of the one Church which was an offshoot from the Church of Gaul, the original centre of which was at Lyons. As Lyons derived from Rome, and London from Lyons, so the Church in the western and northern provinces of England derived from London, and the western provinces in turn handed on the faith to Ireland. Even the Celtic rule as to Easter was the Roman use up to the middle of the fifth century.
Fig. 12.—Cross from Mosaic Pavement found in London.
The monumental evidences, certain or doubtful, for the British Church found in London are:—
(1) Eight small cakes of pewter found at Battersea, and stamped with the ΧΡ monogram. They are now in the British Museum. There are two varieties of stamps; one has the letters Α.Ω. added to the monogram; in the other the words SPES IN DEO surround it. These most interesting inscriptions are supposed to be of the fourth century (Fig. 8).
(2) A chain bracelet of bronze with a simple cross attached, now in the British Museum (Fig. 9).
(3) A disc forming the head of a pin, on it an imperial head and a cross; probably Constantine’s vision, as suggested by Roach Smith (Fig. 10).
(4) An enamelled plate on which two beasts appear drinking from a vase, as so often found in early Christian art; probably, as suggested by Roach Smith, of the fifth or sixth century (Fig. 11).
(5) An ornamental cross on a mosaic pavement (Fig. 12). The last three have been figured by Roach Smith, and are also in the British Museum.
(6) A lead funeral cist found in Warwick Square with the ✠X monogram, or possibly only a star form, now in the British Museum.
There is every probability that St. Germain of Auxerre, on his way to St. Albans, preached to the British citizens of London against the heresy of their countryman Pelagius about 429.
Fig. 13.—Saxon Spear.
The English come to London.—It is generally held that London was walled towards the end of the fourth century. Mr. Green suggests, indeed, that it and the fortresses of the Saxon shore mentioned in the Notitia were fortified as a provision against the attacks of Picts and Saxons. The need for such protection was soon made evident, for the only event chronicled in regard to London during the early period of the English Conquest is that in 457, after the battle of “Creganford,” the Britons fled from Kent to London. Then comes silence for a century and a half, until 604, when it is told how Mellitus, a companion of St. Augustine, was sent to preach to the East Saxons, whose king, Sebert, a nephew of Ethelbert, gave Mellitus a bishop’s stool in London. Although there is no definite statement as to when the English entered the wonderful walled city that was to become their capital, yet by following converging lines of evidence we may determine the point of time with almost certain accuracy. We have for this purpose (1) the chronicle of the conquests of the several branches of the Angle and Saxon peoples; (2) the British accounts and legends; (3) the traditional history, as given by such writers as Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury, of the succession of kings in the “Heptarchy.”
(1) Up to c. 500 we have the conquests of Kent, Sussex, and Wessex, the first two confined to the present county limits, and the last with its centre at Winchester, only reaching Sarum in 552, and striking north-east to Aylesbury and Bedford in 571. According to Dr. Guest and Mr. Green, the great fortress of London and its bridge up to this time barred the natural approach of the invaders up the Thames valley. Another horde, who became the East Saxons, had, in the meantime, effected a settlement in the county yet called after them. These reached Verulam about 560, for Gildas (c. 516 to 570) deplores the loss of that city, but says nothing of London. It was by the Wessex advance of 571 that the frontier between itself and Essex was defined; and as London, which is so near the boundary line, belonged (at a later time at least) to the latter, we may suppose that it had already before 571 been taken possession of by the East Saxons. Again, the men of Kent, in 568, attempted to press on over Surrey, but were beaten back by the men of Wessex. Mr. Green well suggests that this attempted advance was an immediate consequence of the reduction of London, which had hitherto held Kent back.
(2) The British legends given by Geoffrey of Monmouth refer to several incidents in London during the sixth century, culminating in the flight of Theon, its archbishop, in the second half of the century—Hovenden says in 586.
(3) Bede says that London was the metropolis of the East Saxons. Henry of Huntingdon tells us that Ella founded Sussex; Wessex was founded by Cerdic in the year 519; and the kingdom of Essex—that is, of the East Saxons—was founded by Erchinwin, whose son Slede married the sister of Ethelbert, king of Kent. This Slede’s son was Sebert, the first king of Essex converted to the Christian faith. Now we know that when Augustine’s
