Fig. 8.—Christian Monogram from Cakesof Pewter found at Battersea.
The subject of British Christianity has lately been re-examined by Mr. Haverfield[21]and by Dr. Zimmer, the great Celtic scholar. The legend given by Bede as to the introduction of Christianity by a King Lucius is thought to have arisen in Rome about the beginning of the seventh century. It is, however, held that there must have been a gradual infiltration of the Gospel during the third century at latest, and that in the next century there was in Britain a fully organised Church in contact with, and a lively member of, the Church in Gaul. At the beginning of the fifth century there was an overwhelming majority of Christians, and Dr. Zimmer shows good reasons for thinking that Ireland had already been evangelised by the first great wave of monasticism before St. Patrick wentthere as its first bishop in 432. Patrick himself was born in 386, some 70 or 80 miles from London along the Watling Street, at Bannaventa. His family had been Christians for generations; his great-grandfather was a presbyter.
The story of St. Alban, the existence of whom there is little reason for doubting, carries us back to the end of the third century. Dr. Zimmer considers that the edict of Leo the Great (454) as to celebrating Easter reached the Church in Britain and Ireland before it was cut off from dependence on the Roman see. Latin must have continued in use in the Church in such places as Exeter and Bodmin, and in Wales, Strathclyde, and Ireland, from the time when it was current as a Romano-British speech.
According to Geoffrey there were three archbishoprics in Britain: London, York, and the city of Legions (Caerleon), representing South and North Britain and Cambria respectively. In the year 314 the names of three British bishops are given as being present at the Council of Arles: Eborius of York, Restitutus of London, and Adelfius, “de civitate colonia Londinensium.” Haddan and Stubbs accept the record; so also do Haverfield and Zimmer, who substitute Lincolnfor the last. Many British bishops were also at the Council of 359. Guitelin, a bishop of London in the fifth century, is mentioned by Nennius.
Fig. 9.—Bronze Bracelet.
According to Geoffrey, again, the Archbishops Theon of London and Thadiock of York fled from their charges about 586. Now a small scrap of evidence has been recently brought to light as to the existence of these bishops by Mr. Round, who shows that a church dedicated to a St. Thadiock remained at Monmouth in the twelfth century. Again, Jocelyn of Furness (cited by Stow), a writer of the twelfth century, gives a list of the British Bishops of London, which Bishop Stubbs is inclined to accept.[22]From Bede, moreover, we gather that Pope Gregory at first intended to establish the southern archbishopric, not at Canterbury, but at London. Then finally wehave the curious 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 tobe 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 haveno 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, andLondon 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 wordsSPES IN DEOsurround it. These mostinteresting 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 theNotitiawere 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 accountsand 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 toc.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 wellsuggests 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 EllafoundedSussex; Wessex wasfoundedby Cerdic in the year 519; and the kingdom of Essex—that is, of the East Saxons—wasfoundedby 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 mission came in 597 Ethelbert was still reigning in Kent, and his nephew ruled in London when 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 in842.[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 legendALFDENE 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 accountof 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 citylife 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.
RIVERS AND FORDS
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 wasstill 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 ofLondon from the Chronycle ofEnglonde, 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 calls the river “the great fish-bearing Thames.” Howel in hisLondinopolissays: “The Thames water useth to be as clear and pellucid as any such great river in the world, except after a land flood, when ’tis usual to take up haddocks with one’s hand beneath the Bridge.” Harrison (1586) writes: “What should I speak of the fat and sweet salmons daily taken in this stream, and that in such plenty after the time of smelt be past, as no river in Europe is able to exceed it.” Even in the last century stray whales and porpoises used to find their way up on the tide. The Saxon foredwellers must have had their fill of fish. Even the Thames swans can be traced back to the fourteenth century in a document relating to the Tower.[32]William Dunbar in 1501 wrote:—
Above all ryvers thy Ryver hath renowneWhose beryall stremys, pleasant and preclareUnder thy lusty wallys runneth downWhere many a Swanne doth swymme with winges fare.
Stow’s account of the smaller streams “serving the city” is the most unfortunate in the classic survey, and entirely untrustworthy.
In the hollow some distance west of Ludgate was a tidal inlet; a part of its bed has (in 1900) just been exposed in New Bridge Street; the name Fleet, indeed, must express a tidal creek. Early in the twelfth century the district beyond it is calledultra Fletam.[33]The inlet gave its name to the bridge and street passing over it from Ludgate. Rishanger calls the latter Fleet-Bridge Street. Henry II. gave to the Templars a site for a millsuper Fletam Juxta Castelum Bainard, and all the course of the water of Fleet and a messuagejuxta pontem de Flete. A messuage on the Fleet was also given to them by Gervase of Cornhill,Teintarius, and this record is interesting as giving us the calling of the great Londoner treated of so fully by Mr. Round.[34]Gervase was one of the most importantpersonalities in twelfth-century London, and it is not commonly realised that members of the crafts so early held power.
Into the Fleet, down the still well-marked valley by Farringdon Road, ran a stream sometimes called the Fleet River; it is plotted on some of the earlier maps, and its course has been traced in detail by Mr. Waller.[35]In an agreement as to the land of the nunnery at Clerkenwell, made at the end of the twelfth century, this stream is unmistakably called the Hole-burn; its valley ran north and south by Clerkenwell, and the river and gardens of the Hospitallers of Jerusalem are said to have been upon it.[36]It gave its name to Holborn Bridge and to some extra-mural cottages near by, on the road which passed over it. The modern name should mean Hole-burn-Bridge Street, just as Fleet Street meant Fleet-Bridge Street. Holeburn Street is found in 1249.[37]Cottages at “Holeburne,” which had existed in the time of the Confessor, are mentioned in Domesday, and we may conclude that the Holeburnand Fleet had these names not only in King Edward’s day, but in Alfred’s. The upper part of the stream was also called Turnmill brook; it was the mill stream of London.
Stow also gives the name of the River of Wells to this western stream just described, saying: “That it was of old called of the Wells may be proved thus: William the Conqueror in his charter to the College of St. Martin le Grand hath these words, ‘I do give and grant ... all the land and the Moor without Cripplegate, on either side of the postern, that is to say, from the north corner of the wall as the river of the Wells, there near running, departeth the same moor from the wall, unto the running water which entereth the city.’”[38]He goes on to say that the stream (Hole-burn) was still called Wells in the time of Edward I., citing the Parliament and Patent Rolls of 1307; but on referring to the calendars of these documents I find that this name of Wells appears in neither. The first speaks of “the water-course of Fleet running under the bridge of Holburn,” andthe second of them calls it “the Fleet River from Holburn Bridge to the Thames.” Moreover, the Hole-burn was far away from the north corner of the city wall by Cripplegate, and the land granted cannot have extended all the way to the present Farringdon Road (the bed of the old stream) and have included Smithfield. The land of “Crepelesgate,” taken by William Rufus and restored to St. Martin’s by Henry I., is probably the same, and to-day it may be represented by the parish of St. Giles. Surely the whole construction of the passage requires that the north-west angle of the walls should be the western limit of the land granted.
The Conqueror’s Latin charter is given in Dugdale, and in the passage used by Stow the stream is spoken of asrivulus foncium. Mr. Stevenson, in publishing a Saxon version of the same charter 1068A.D.,[39]shows thatrivulus fonciumwas a translation of the O.E.Wylrithe, meaning a small stream (rithe) issuing from a spring (wyl). This “Well-brook”[40]must surely have been intended, not for the western stream at all, but for the upper part of the “broke” runninginto the “burh” directly afterwards mentioned in the charter, the present Walbrook. Outside the walls the stream possibly ran in a west-to-east direction, and so formed the north boundary of the property against the moor.
Mr. Stevenson appears not to have been of this view himself, as he speaks of the Walbrook as “probably nameless” when the charter was written; but he points out that it was called Walebroc in a charter of Wulfnoth (1114-33)—“probably the Wulfnoth whose name is recorded in St. Mary Woolnoth.” This is a Ramsey charter (in Rolls series), and the terms are most precise by which Wulfnoth of Walebroc, London, sold a piece of land in Walebroc, “whence he was called Wulfnoth of Walebroc,” with a house of stone and a shop, for ten pounds of pence.[41]
St. John “super Walebroc” is mentioned about the same time in the St. Paul’s documents, and that Walbrook was then a proper name of some antiquity seems to be conclusively proved by Geoffrey of Monmouth’s legend that it was called after Gallus by the Britons, “and in the Saxon Gallembourne.” Altogether it can hardlybe doubted that the Wyl- of the charter represents the modern Wal- in Walbrook.[42]
Within the walls the Walbrook ran right through the midst of the city from north to south, and divided the eastern wards from the western. It remained an open stream well into the Middle Ages; in 1286 an order was given to cleanse it “from the Moor of London to the Thames.” Its course is well defined by three churches, St. John’s, St. Stephen’s (formerly on a different site to the west, Stow), and St. Mildred’s, all “super Walbrook.” St. Margaret Lothbury also stood above it on vaults. Its relation to the present street is made clear in a document of 1291 regarding a tenement “between the course of the Walbrook towards the west, and Walbrook Street towards the east.”[43]The arch under which it entered the city through the wall seems to have been discovered. Roach Smith describes this opening thus: “Opposite Finsbury Circus, at a depth of 19 feet, a well-turned Roman arch was discovered, at the entrance of which on the Finsbury side were iron bars placed apparentlyto restrain the sedge and weeds from choking the passage.”[44]
The bed of the brook has frequently been found in city excavations, and its course has been laid down by Mr. T. E. Price.[45]It was of course crossed by many bridges; in 1291 there was an inquiry held as to the repair of one of them near the “tenement of Bokerelesbery.”[46]This stream was probably the first water supply of London, and it must have been a most important factor in the division of the wards and the laying out of the streets.
The Langbourne described by Stow is entirely mythical. As he named Holborn from a merely supposititious “Old-burn” running east and west, so also his Lang-burn has its only origin, as will be shown, in the corruption of a name (seep. 132). Here I need only say that its supposed bed occupies high ground, and no evidence of it has been found in excavations. Mr. Price points out that Stow himself allowed that the name was the only sign of it, and adds that the levelsdemonstrate that no such stream can ever have flowed there; indeed, excavations have shown that its supposed course was one of the most populous parts of the early city.[47]
Stow connects with it still another equally mythical stream, the Share-burne, on the site of Sherborne Lane, but I find this called Shitteborwe in 1272, and the last syllable must be “bury,” not “burn.”
Fords.—The best account of the Thames fords is given by Dr. Guest.[48]Cæsar tells us that the river called Thames was passable on foot only in one place, and this ford was defended against him by stakes. Bede says that the remains of the stakes were to be seen there “to this very day.” Camden suggested that the site of this ford was Coway Stakes, near Walton; King Alfred, however, in an addition he made to Orosius, says that Cæsar, after defeating the “Bryttas in Cent-land,” fought again “nigh the Temese by the ford called Welinga-ford.” Wallingford, where the Icknield Way crossed the river, was certainly the chief ford below Oxford.Dr. Guest showed that a place near Coway Stakes is called Halliford, and argued that although a Roman army, that of Claudius, may have crossed at Wallingford, Cæsar’s passage of the river was at the stakes, and the two passages of the river came to be confused in the tradition. The general argument is too subtle to go into here, but it is less than convincing to make Bede’s account of a ford where stakes yet remained in the river apply to Cæsar and the Coway Stakes, while Alfred’s applied to Wallingford and the army of Claudius, especially as we may suppose that a principal ford would be fortified if a lesser one were. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Sweyn’s army passed the river at Wallingford; here William the Conqueror also crossed; and here too it seems likely that the English invaders also first crossed.[49]
Another place nearer to London which is named from a ford is Brentford, but Dr. Guest thought that the ford so named was over the Brent instead of the Thames. He allows that the English army here twice crossed over the Thames in 1016, as recorded in the Chronicle, but argues that there was only a “shallow” in the Thamesat this point, and that thefordwas over the Brent. William of Malmesbury, however, seems to have anticipated all this by saying very distinctly “the ford called Brentford” and the “ford at Brentford” when speaking of the crossings of the Thames in 1016. Gough in his edition of Camden says that the Thames was easily passed here at low water.
Of a ford at Westminster, which from a mere unsubstantial hypothesis has swollen into quite a big myth in the pages of Sir W. Besant, there is not a scrap of evidence. There was, however, throughout the Middle Age a ferry here, and the name still survives in Horseferry Road. The Roman bridge at Staines (Pontes) may be the one, the existence of which is implied in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1013, and in 1009 we are told that the army went over the river at Staines.[50]In the Middle Ages there was a bridge between Staines and London on the river at Kingston, and Horsley thought that Cæsar crossed by a ford here.
ROADS AND THE BRIDGE
Roads.—The Roman roads of the Antonine Itinerary which affect London are: Iter 2, the great road from Canterbury to London and St. Albans and beyond (the Watling Street); Iter 5, London to Colchester, and from thence to Lincoln; Iter 6, London to Lincoln, starting by the Watling Street; Iter 7, from Chichester through Silchester and passing the river at Staines (Pontes), through Brentford to London.[51]
Fig. 17.—London and the Roman Roads.
In the (so-called) Laws of Edward the Confessor, a clause treats of the King’s peace on the four great roads,Watlingestrete,Fosse,Hekenildestrete, andErmingestrete, two of which are said to run through the length of the realm and two across.[52]In the British legends given by Geoffrey, the making of these roads is ascribed to Belinus, and they are said to have been paved with stone and mortar; the four are evidently the chief Roman roads in the island. The identification of the Watling Street is certain, for Bede says that St. Albans was called Watlingcester, and Saxon charters show that Hampstead and Paddington were on it; it is the modern Edgware Road. Henry of Huntingdon tells us that the Watling Street ran from the south-east to the north-west, and that Erming Street ran from north to south. Higden, in the fourteenth century, says that the Watling Street began at Dover and passed through Kent and “over the Thames at London, west of Westminster,” then to St. Albans, Dunstable, Stratford, etc.[53]Camden says: “The Roman road commonly called Watling Street leads straight to London over Hampstead Heath, whence is afine prospect of a beautiful city and cultivated country.”
The best reasons that can be given for the position of the Watling Street are that it was first formed before London became of much importance, that it avoided the great Essex forest, and passed over the Thames at a point convenient for a ferry on its way to and from Dover.
Such prehistoric traffic as there was, by a sort of commercial drainage, gathering together in a stream directed on Dover, must have tended to pass the river with the least possible deflection. Whether or not the great Watling Street is entirely of Roman date, a ferry at Westminster may have superseded the Brent-ford. The actual passage was probably from Tothill Street to Stangate on the south side of the river: “Stangate” is still used as the name of a Roman road in the North by Hadrian’s Great Wall. After the Palace of Westminster was built, the ferry must have been diverted by the Horseferry Road, and Higden may refer to this position.
Clark suggests that “the Tothill” was a Saxon military mound, as such mounds are sometimes called “toot-hills”; if so, it was a protection overlooking the Watling Street, and may very wellhave been a mound raised by Alfred in the Danish struggle.[54]“Le Tothull” is mentioned in 1250, when Henry III. granted the Abbey to hold a fair there. Hollar’s view shows a mound. The Tothill was common ground, and everything points to its having been formerly a defensive work. The west gate of Westminster was “towards Tothill” (1350), and Vincent Square now represents Tothill Fields. The Lang ditch, which nearly surrounded Westminster, and which can be traced back to the twelfth century, was probably a dyke of defence.
Stukeley, writing in 1722, when material evidence was not so hard to find, says that the Watling Street crossed over another Roman road (now Oxford Street), which passed by the back of Kensington into the great road to Brentford and Staines, “a Roman road all the way.” The Watling Street then went across the end of Hyde Park, and by St. James’s Park to the street near Palace Yard called the Wool Staple, and crossed to Stangate on the opposite side of the river. The southward continuation of the road then passed over St. George’s Fields to Deptford and Blackheath; “a small portion of the ancientway pointing to (or from) Westminster Abbey is now the common road: ... from the top of Shooters’ Hill the direction of the road is very plain both ways: ... beyond the hill it is very straight as far as the ken reaches: on Blackheath is a tumulus.”
From the Watling Street, on Blackheath, was obtained the first prospect of London, where travellers during the Middle Age paused, as visitors to Rome paused on their way only half a century agone. The mayor with all the crafts of the city, in 1415, rode out thus far to meet Henry V. returning from France.
The King from Eltham sone he cam,Hys prisenors with hym dede brynge,And to the Blak-heth ful sone he cam.He saw London withoughte lesynge;Heil, ryall London, seyde our Kyng,Crist the Kepe evere from care.—Lydgate.
In his letter to Wren Dr. Woodward says that in several places lying near by in a line, particularly on this side of Shooters’ Hill, where the country is low, there remained a raised highway 40 feet wide and 4 feet high. According to Allen’s history a portion of the Roman way leading to Stangate was found just north of Newington Church in 1824.
Stukeley thought that the west-to-east road, over the present Oxford Street, originally passed to the north of London into Essex (by Old Street), “because London was not then considerable, but in a little time Holborn was struck out from it, entering the city at Newgate, and so to London-Stone, theLapis Milliaris, and hence the reason why the name of Watling Street is still preserved in the city.”
There can be no doubt that Stukeley’s account of the Roman roads is generally true, but the theory of the great road by Old Street seems unlikely, although the latter is quite certainly a Roman way, and was called Ealde Street in the twelfth century.[55]The Roman road has been found 11 feet below the surface, together with Roman coins.[56]There cannot be a doubt that, in late Roman days at least, the great west-to-east road passed through the city and by the Mile End Road through Stratford and the other places named from “street” to Chelmsford and Colchester. Besides the great Roman roads there were of course many local ways. The High Streetfrom Aldersgate to Islington, also mentioned in the twelfth century,[57]is probably, like the gate through which it passed, Roman too. Stow’s hypothesis that Old Street branched away from the top of Aldersgate Street seems best to meet the case. Stukeley’s suggestion about the naming of “Watling Street” in the city, which has been so embroidered upon by recent writers, seems, as we shall show (p. 150), to be a mistake.
It is asserted in a fourteenth-century document quoted by Lysons that the great east road passed the Lea by Old Ford before Matilda built Bow Bridge; but this has no weight in excluding the road by Aldgate against the evidence of the great road itself. The name Stratford is mentioned as Strachford in a charter of the Conqueror.[58]In the life of St. Erkenwald given in the Golden Legend, it is said that his body was brought to London from Barking through Stratford after a miraculous passage of the Lea. Theremayhave been a road by Old Street and Old Ford, but theremusthave been a road by Holborn and Whitechapel through Newgate and Aldgate.[59]
The branch from the great Watling Street to the city, by Tyburn and St. Andrew’s Holborn, is described in a charter giving in Saxon the boundaries of Westminster, dated 951, but not original. This charter, even if forged, can hardly be later than the era of the Conquest, when the coterminous manor of Eya was given to the Abbey by Geoffrey de Mandeville; and the names found in it must then have been of immemorial antiquity. Mr. Stevenson, in a recent criticism of the document, accepts it as genuine and proposes the date 971.[60]It reads: “First up from the Thames along Merfleet to Pollenstock, so to Bulinga Fen, and along the old ditch to Cuforde. From Cuforde along the Tyburn to theHere Straet, and by it to the Stock of St. Andrew’s Church, then in London Fen south to Midstream of Thames, and by land and strand to the Merfleet.”Here Streetis the usual Saxon name for a Roman road, but it will be convenient to use it in this case as a proper name.
The stream of Tyburn crossed Oxford Street just west of Stratford Place, and ran through the Green Park, and so to the west of Westminster. Cufford I find again,temp.Edward I., as in, ornear, theCampis de Eya—now Hyde Park and St. James’s.[61]This Cowford was probably where Piccadilly “dip” crosses the Tyburn valley. A bridge is shown here in Faithorne’s map. The Here Street or military road is of course Oxford Street and Holborn, and London-Fen is the Fleet valley.[62]
The manor of Tyburn appears in Domesday. There can be no doubt as to the identification of the Here Street, for a document of 1222 gives as the boundaries of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, the water of Tyburn running to the Thames and theStrata Regiaextending to London past the garden of St. Giles [in-the-Fields], and Roman remains have been found in Holborn. The Here Street has been traced between Silchester and Staines through Egham, and on this side of Staines, not far from Ashford, it has been found.[63]An under road to Kensington, etc., by Knightsbridge must also have been ancient. Knightsbridge is named in a twelfth-century charter, and it seems to be the same as the Kingsbridge in a charter of the Confessor.[64]
From the fact that the Antonine Itinerary gives two routes to Lincoln,—one round to the west by the Watling Street, and one to the east by Colchester,—it seems probable that the direct Erming Street was made in the later Roman era.
The best critical account of the four Roman ways is inOrigines Celticæand theArchæological Journalfor 1857, in which Dr. Guest, working from charters, verifies their position. He considers that the portion of the Erming Street between London and Huntingdon was not a Roman paved road, although “it must have existed in the days of Edgar, and perhaps as early as the times of Offa.” “Tracks of an ancient causey may still be found alongside the turnpike road which leads from London to Royston,” beyond which the road passes straight on over the fens to a place called Ermingford in Domesday and Earmingaford in a charter of Edgar. To the south of London he lays down a “Stone Street” from Chichester through Bignor (Roman villa) and Dorking. In vol. ix. ofArchæologia, Bray, the co-author of theHistory of Surrey, traces this “Roman road through Sussex and Surrey to London.” “That there was a great road from Arundel which ran northand north-east to London is very certain, considerable remains of it being now (1788) visible in many places.” Another road from the south seems to have passed through Croydon and Streatham, which in a charter of the Confessor is called Stratham.[65]Near Ockley the former was called “Stone Street Causeway,” and Camden speaks of it as “the old military road of the Romans called Stone Street.” It was “some 30 feet broad and some 4 or 5 feet thick of stones.” Considerable vestiges of this Roman road may even now be traced on the Ordnance Survey; approaching London it evidently passed through Epsom, Ewell, Merton, Tooting, and Clapham. Here then we have a great road from Chichester through Surrey over London Bridge and by Stamford Hill to Lincoln—the Erming Street. It seems impossible that such a work could have been undertaken in the time of the “Heptarchy,” and it must be a Roman road made subsequently to the Antonine Itinerary.
When London Bridge was built, or when a regular ferry over the Thames was established on this line, a new connection with the Canterbury Road (Watling Street) was evidently called for,and this link was provided by Kent Street (now Great Dover Street). Bagford, in his letter to Hearne, says that the Roman approach and military way led along Kent Street on the left-hand side, “and pointed directly to Dowgate by the Bishop of Winchester’s stairs, which to this day is called Stone Street.” I cannot, however, accept the inference as to the name Stone Street in this place, as it ran directly through what was Winchester Palace, where, as old views show, there cannot have been a street in the Middle Ages. The highway from the bridge going southwards really ran straight through the borough (Burh or South-work), and deflected on to Kent Street at St. George’s Church, which stood here early in the twelfth century (see Southwark, below,p. 110).
The English invaders came up the Watling Street and were unsuccessfully met at Crayford. At Ockley on the Stone Street there was a great battle with the Danes. William the Conqueror, after the battle of Hastings, took Dover and Canterbury and came to London by the Watling Street; then burning Southwark, but not venturing to assault the walled city, he moved down the Stone Street and across to Farnham and Wallingford, and then north-east, by the IcknieldWay, and so commanded the northern Watling Street and Erming Street and cut off retreat. A recent study of his route made from Domesday Book makes him pass through Camberwell, Merton, Guildford, and Farnham. Then crossing the river by both Wallingford and Streatley, he approached London by Little Berkhamstead, Enfield, and Tottenham.[66]
A final consideration of the roads in relation to the city shows two great routes: (1) from west to east, through Staines to Colchester; and (2) from south to north, from Chichester to Lincoln. These roads, entering the city by Holborn and the bridge, and issuing by Aldgate and Bishopsgate, were throughout the Middle Ages the great market streets, and their intersection at Leadenhall formed the “Carfax” of London.
The best elucidation of the names of the roads we have been concerned with is given by Dr. Guest. One is the street of the Ermings or Fenmen, who gave their name to places on its course. The Icknield Way, which he gives good reasons for thinking was a British road, led to the district of the Iceni (compare Dr. Rhys,Celtic Folklore, p. 676). The Watling Street hesupposes to be the Irishmen’s road, from WelshGwythel—Goidel—Irishman. These derivations seem to be a little over symmetrical. Other roads than that through St. Albans were called Watling Street, which almost seems to be a generic term, just as in Wales the Roman ways are called Sarn Helen. In the story of Maxen Wledig (Maximus Emperor) we are told that the Empress Helen made the roads. It is probably a similar legend where Florence says that old tradition had it that London was walled by Helen. Florence says that the Watling Street was called so from the sons of King Weatla: Can this be a corruption of Wledig, or can the reference be to the British prince Guithlin, who seems to have been in power about the time of the coming of the Saxons?[67]
Horsley and others have thought that these roads were laid down for the most part immediately after the Roman conquest by Claudius, and there can hardly be a doubt of their early existence when we consider the great works of Agricola as far off as the Roman Wall.[68]Moreover, one or twomilestones which have been found bear the name of Hadrian. The antiquity of our place-names, roads, and bridges is well brought out in a seventh-century charter to Chertsey Abbey. The land boundary, beginning at the mouth of the Wey, passed by Weybridge, then by the mill-stream to the old Here Street and along it to Woburn Bridge, etc. This Here Street is doubtless the present road on the south bank of the Thames; it probably led from Southwark, through Clapham—called Cloppaham in the ninth century—by Wandsworth, where was a church in the tenth century, and by Kingston, the royal town and crowning place of the later Saxon kings.[69]
The Bridge.—We hear of the existence of the bridge about seventy years after Alfred’s time inconnection with the punishment of a woman who was to be taken and “a-drownded at Lundene-brigce.”[70]In a poem on Holy Olaf the King of Norway, by a contemporary, he is said to have broken down London Bridge in an attack on the Danes in the interest of Ethelred about 1014.[71]It is curious that the English Chronicles do not speak of this, and it is difficult to fit in, but in any case the story is almost contemporary.
An extended but later account of the incident is given in theHeimskringla: “Now first they made for London and went up the Thames with the host of the ships, but the Danes held the city. On the other side of the river there is a great Cheaping-town called Southwark (Sudurvirke); there the Danes had great arrayal; they had dug great dykes, on the inner side whereof they had built a wall of turf and stone.... A bridge was there across the river betwixt the city and Southwark, so broad that waggons might be driven past each other thereover. On the bridge were made strongholds, both castles and bulwarks, looking down stream, so high that they reached a manabove his waist; but under the bridge were pales stuck into the bottom of the river. And when an onset was made the host stood on the bridge all along it and warded it. King Ethelred was mickle mind-sick how he was to win the bridge.” King Olaf made wooden shelters over his boats, “and the host of the Northmen rowed right up under the bridge and lashed cables round the pales which upheld the bridge, and they fell to their oars and rowed down stream as hard as they might, ... and the pales having broken from under it, the bridge broke down by reason thereof; ... and after this they made an onset on Southwark and won it. And when the townsfolk [of London] saw that the river Thames was won, so that they might not hinder ships from faring up into the land, they were afeared, and gave up the town and took King Ethelred in. So says Ottar the Swart:—
O battle-bold, the cunningOf Yggs storm! Yet thou brakestDown London Bridge: it happed theeTo win the land of snakes there.”
This verse is sometimes translated so as to read “London Bridge is broken down” in the first line, like the well-known children’s song; butthere have been many breakings down since the time of Olaf, and it is unnecessary to force such a remote origin for the ditty. As to the bridge itself, the account just given as to its being of wood agrees with the fact that no piers seem to have been preserved when it was rebuilt in the twelfth century. That it should have been fortified agrees with contemporary events, for Charles the Bald had built a fortified bridge at Paris to stop the pirates going up the river.
The bridge, as we have seen, was required by the Roman roads, and must have been of Roman origin. Roach Smith, indeed, even considered that it might have been the bridge by which Claudius is said to have crossed the river, and points out that the Itinerary shows that bridges were not uncommon in Britain.[72]“This presumptive evidence” [as to London Bridge being of early Roman origin] “is supported by recent discoveries. Throughout the entire line of the old bridge, the bed of the river was found to contain ancient wooden piles; and when these piles, subsequently to the erection of the new bridge (about1835), were pulled up to deepen the channel of the river,many thousandsof Roman coins, with abundance of Roman tiles and pottery, were discovered; and immediately beneath some of the central piles, brass medallions of Aurelius, Faustina, and Commodus. All these remains are indicative of a bridge. The enormous quantity of Roman coins may be accounted for by the well-known practice of the Romans to use them to perpetuate the memory of their conquests and public works. They may have been deposited either upon the building or repair of the bridge. The great rarity of the medallions is corroborative of this opinion.” Many bronzes and other works of art were also found.[73]
I incline to the view that the bridge may with greatest probability be assigned to the century when the Romans were consolidating their work in Britain, from the arrival of Agricola inA.D.78. Within this period falls the date of the earliest medals found and the great building age of Hadrian, who reared the “Roman Wall.” It is tempting to suggest that the fine head of Hadrian, in 1863 found in the Thames, may have formed a part of a statue placed on the bridge tocommemorate his visit. Bronze has always been too valuable a material for the head to have been wilfully cast away. Moreover, we have evidences of two bridges by the Roman Wall which were the work of Hadrian. That at Newcastle, called after him, Pons Ælii, had a history curiously parallel with London Bridge, for it gave way to a mediæval bridge in 1248, which was destroyed in the flood of 1771. During the rebuilding parts of the Roman structure were found. Near Hexham, where the line of the wall crosses the North Tyne, there are still vestiges of a bridge which seems to have lasted down to 1771; it has three piers of masonry, having angular cut-waters up-stream. The spans were 35 feet, the piers about 16 feet transversely; the roadway was about 20 feet wide; at the ends, standing over the masonry abutments, were towers through which the roadway passed. “The platform of this bridge was undoubtedly of timber. Several of the stones which lie on the ground have grooves in them for admitting the spars. No arch-stones have been found.”[74]
Old London Bridge crossed the river just east of the existing bridge. Stow thought that theoriginal bridge was still farther east, because St. Botolph’s Port is mentioned in connection with the bridge in a charter of the Conqueror. Notwithstanding that this conjecture was disproved so fully when the old bridge was destroyed, the theory still appears in standard books and on maps which profess to represent Old London.