Mellitus brought the Gospel there in 604. If, then, we put the “foundation” of the kingdom of Essex by Sebert’s grandfather some thirty or forty years before this time, we again reach the date of the probable occupation of London, which we may put provisionally about 570.
It was probably early in the sixth century that the Saxons began to get a footing in what became Essex, as in 527, according to Huntingdon, large bodies of men came from Germany and took possession of East Anglia, various chiefs of whom “contended for the occupation of different districts.” We may suppose that Colchester first fell, then Verulam, and that London was entered only after its complete isolation, and as the culmination of the English Conquest of South Britain, just as was the case in the Norman Conquest exactly five hundred years later. All Celtic tradition looks back to London as the British capital. Dr. Rhys quotes a story from the Welsh Laws to the effect that “the nation of the Kymry, after losing the crown and sceptre of London and being driven out of England, assembled to decide who should be chief king.”[23] In the story of Bran in the Mabinogion, which Celtic scholars say is untouched by any influence so late as Geoffrey’s, it is told that the seven men journeying with the head of the Blessed Bran were told that Caswallawn the son of Beli “has conquered the Island of the Mighty and is crowned king in London.”
Alfred’s London.—In endeavouring to trace the topographical vestiges of London, as far as any sufficiently clear indications will allow, it will be found that we can easily carry back a great number of wards, streets, and churches to the century which followed the Conquest. More patient research allows of pushing still further a large number of “origins” to a time anterior to the Conquest, but subsequent to the Roman evacuation of the city. As the greatest of all London events in this space of time was the resettlement of the city by Alfred, less than two centuries before Duke William entered within its walls, and as London may readily be supposed to have altered very little in that time, we may well take the reign of the great king, who died exactly a thousand years ago, as the centre of gravity of the whole period, and the pages which follow might very well be called an account of London in the time of Alfred.
The strife with the Danes in the Thames valley raged from before the time of Alfred’s birth. Stow and others have supposed that London was wrecked in 839, and lay waste until Alfred restored it; but it has been shown that the first attack on the city must have been in 842.[24] In 851 a great host of the pagans came with 350 ships to the mouth of the river Thames, and sacked Canterbury “and also the city of London, which lies on the confines of Essex and Middlesex, but the city belongs of right to Essex.”[25] Before this time London had become subject to the overlordship of Mercia, and Behrtwulf the Mercian was killed in its defence.
There is a charter of Burgred, king of Mercia, relating to London, 857; in 872-74 the city was taken by Halfdan the Dane, and Burgred, king of Mercia, was ejected from his kingdom. In the coin room of the British Museum there is a remarkable coin which bears the legend ALFDENE RX✠, and on the reverse the monogram of London which was later used by Alfred on his coins (Fig. 14). The obverse bears the same type as that used on the coins of Ceolwulf, whom Halfdan set up as his creature in Mercia: it cannot be doubted that Halfdan’s coin was struck as a memorial of his wintering in London in 872-73, as described in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. All now was confusion, “down and up, and up and down, and dreadful,” till at the peace of Wedmore, in 878, Alfred made a division of the country with the Danish leader Guthrum, by a boundary defined in the agreement as “upon the Thames along the Lea to its source, then right to Bedford and upon the Ouse to Watling Street.” London thus fell to Alfred, who repaired it in 886 and made it again habitable, and gave it into the hands of his son-in-law Ethered.[26] Ethered was Ealdorman of Mercia, so London was still practically the Mercian capital, and remained so till the death of Ethered. London all the time was the chief city in the kingdom, but it then had to enter into competition with Winchester, the local capital of the dominating kingdom.
Fig. 14.—Coin of Halfdan with Monogram of London.
In 893 there was a fresh attack by the Danes, but they were defeated outside the city by the men of London, led by Ethered. In the account of this raid from the south coast through Farnham and northwards across the Thames, as given in Ethelweard’s Chronicle, the Danes are said to have been besieged on Thorney Isle (Thornige Insula), the site of the abbey of Westminster. The Danes then passed eastward and took up positions at Mersea, Shoebury, and probably Welbury, near the Lea, in all of which places there are traces of earthworks.[27]
Fig. 15.—Saxon Swordhilt.
Since the resettlement of London in 886 there has been no interruption of the continuity of city life and customs, and it is very probable that some of the institutions shaped by the great organiser, whom William Morris called the one man of genius who has ever ruled in England, remain to this day.
CHAPTER II
RIVERS AND FORDS
| And dream of London, small and white and clean, The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green. The Earthly Paradise. |
The city of London, when the Roman garrison was withdrawn from its walls, occupied two hills on the north river-bank, between which ran the Walbrook. The river, which still retains its British or pre-British name of Thames,[28] spread, as may be seen from a geological map, over wide tracts of morass, which at an early time began to be protected by embankments, which are “no less than 50 feet above low water, and, counting side creeks, 300 miles long.”
The Chronicle of Bermondsey records of a flood in 1294-95:—“Then was made the great breach at Retherhith; and it overflowed the plain of Bermundeseye and the precinct of Tothill.” The French Chronicle, written some two generations afterwards, shows that this was still remembered as “Le Breche.” Edward I. at once issued a mandate that the banks from Lambeth to Greenwich should be viewed and repaired. Stow, under Westminster, says that in 1236 the river “overflowing the banks made the Woolwich marshes all on a sea” and flowed into Westminster Hall; and again in 1242 “drowned houses and fields by the space of six miles” on the Lambeth side. In 1448 “the water brake in out of Thames beside Lymeost and in another place.”[29] Howel (1657) writes: “The Thames often inounds the bankes about London, which makes the grounds afterwards more fertile.”
Fig. 16.—Earliest Printed View of
London from the Chronycle of
Englonde, Pynson 1510.
The embankments seem to have been called walls. The names of Bermondsey Wall and Wapping Wall still survive opposite one another; and “wall” enters into the names of several places bordering on the river, as Millwall and Blackwall, and St. Peter’s on the Wall, at Bradwell, Essex, where the north bank ends. At Lambeth Pennant noted that the name Narrow Walls occurred. The general opinion is that these banks are either Roman or pre-Roman work. Wren thought Roman.[30]
Before the locks were made on the river the tide ran up past Richmond to near the inlet of the Mole.[31] London held the jurisdiction over the river from Yanlet to Staines from the twelfth century at least. The limit at either end is marked by a “London Stone.”
FitzStephen
