London Before the Conquest

TO LONDON-A

other of the

aray'd with

diademe em

turrets, like

one was Thami

eet the famou

aerie

t appears in Tacitus under the date of A.D. 61 as that of an oppidum "not dignified wi

.... The name of London refers directly to the marshes."[3] Dr. Guest is here apparently in agreement with Godfrey Fausett's view that the name London represents Llyn-din, the

e Weapons fr

ted to Nodens (or Lud), and say that London means Lud's-town,[6] thus coming round to Geoffrey.[7] This Nodens, who was worshipped at Lydney "as god of the sea," appears "in Welsh as Nudd and Llu

Celtic Bronze Shie

eltic Bro

ition. Yet that very tradition may be founded on an attempt to provide an origin for the name, acco

of Cunobeli

ourhood; and it seems unlikely that a mere camp in 43 would have grown in 61 to the important place celebrated by Tacitus. Green says that the chief argument against its antiquity is the fact that the great Watling Street[11] passed wide of the city through Westminster, but surely there might be settlements below the lowest convenient passage of the river. The Watling Street, if earlier than the settlement, did not in any case cause the town to be built on its course, and, if later, it did not pass t

Lamp, Roman,

found on its bank a site most suitable for his purpose, and building the city there, he called it New Troy-Troiam Novam, "a name afterwards corrupted into Trinovantum." Here King Belinus afterwards built a prodigious tower and a haven for ships under it, which the ci

e as fiction and forgery. From this extreme position there is again a reaction, and Geoffrey is allowed to have foun

founder for their race as much as the Israelites required an Israel, or the Romans a Romulus. This founder (a supposititious Brittus) was at some time equated with Brutus, and Britain, like so many cities in Italy, was said to be founded by a fugitive from Troy. From C?sar we learn that a tribe of the Trinobantes was found by him near the north bank of the Thames. This true name of a tribe was in

is evident on the face of it that it is not the clever work of a romance-w

the Londoners claimed dated from the foundation of the city before Rome was founded.[14] Perhaps there is no absolutely certain proof that the Troy story was told in London before Geoffrey's time, but it seems likely, judging from the number of detailed London allusions in Geoffrey's work, that there was a British and Arthurian tradition current there before he wrote. Of the latter, at least, one positive scrap of confirmation may be offered. Amongst the names appended to a deed at St. Pa

. Billings kept a posting-house.[17] The weight of evidence seems to allow of the view that there really were some remarkable Roman structures at the Tower and Billingsgate which tradition pointed to as the work of the Celtic culture-god Belinus, or of a king who bore his name. Some remnants of a building seem to have had the myth attached to them in the Middle Ages. Harrison, giving a version of the story, says of the Tower, "In times past I find this Belliny held his abode there, and thereunto extended the site of his palace in such wi

us," a brother of Cassibelaunus and Lud, takes his place and perishes from a blow of C?sar's sword, Crocea Mors. "Nennius" was then buried at the North Gate of "Trinovantum" with the sword that had slain him.[18] All this is too confused to work out in detail, but it almost looks like a repeated echo of some legend which made Cassibelaunus fall

laudius and anoth

ribed London (p

one of those occasionally found in England, and we may suppose ancient antiquaries reasoned thus about it: "It must represent a city gate in Britain; the most important is the gate of London-Ludgate." Why was the brazen horse put there? "For a terror to the Saxons" (so in Geoffrey). Who put it there? "King Lud himself, or Cadwaladr, the last British king.

are real city assets. London is rich in romantic lore. In her cathedral Arthur was crowned and drew the sword from the stone. Here Iseult attended the council called by King Mark. From the quay Ursula and her virgins embarked; Launcelot s

s, Gog and Magog, who represent the Gogmagog of Geoffrey, a giant of the primitive people overcome by the Britons-the Mag

I cannot find that the form Caer Lud was used in Welsh documents of an earlier date, although in a recent history of Wales London is so called throughout. If a single instance of "Caer Lud" could be addu

h Church as a link between Roman and Saxon days. Before the imperial forces were withdrawn from Britain the dwellers in the cities would ha

stian Monogr

found at

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 th

t 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 co

es 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 reco

Bronze B

nmouth 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 archbi

.-Head

parison of evidence gathered from the British legends with the Saxon Chronicle suggests that it is just possible

ably 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 an

-Enamell

e 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 orig

om Mosaic Pavemen

ain or doubtful, for the Briti

Museum. There are two varieties of stamps; one has the letters Α.Ω. added to the monogram; in the other the word

ith a simple cross attached, now

imperial head and a cross; probably Constantine

a vase, as so often found in early Christian art; probably, as s

Fig. 12). The last three have been figured by

quare with the ?X monogram, or possibly on

s way to St. Albans, preached to the British citizens of Lond

.-Saxon

hat 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 be

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 l

idents in London during the sixth century, culminating in the flight of Th

ied 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 Mellitu

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

ushing 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

own 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 li

et 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 Bedfor

Halfdan with Mo

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

-Saxon S

fe and customs, and it is very probable that some of the institutions shaped by the great organiser