In the history of a town the first fact is its site. Our knowledgeof the situation of the city is what we know of the earliest Londoners,the men of the dim ancient ages who made their settlement on theroadway of the Thames.
The Thames valley stretches -between the hills of Hertfordshire on thenorth and the North Downs on the south. The channel of the river mustonce have been both broader and straighter than it is at present; andit flowed through a marsh which at high tide was flooded. On eitherside it had tributary streams.
The Westbourne, from the slopes north of Hyde Park, followed a pathsuggested by the Serpentine, and reached the Thames by way of thedistrict now Belgravia. The course of the Tyburn is indicated by thepond in St. James's Park, and near its mouth it formed the island ofThorney, the site of Westminster Abbey.
The Fleet or the Holburn had its source in the slopes of Hampsteadand Highgate, and crossed modern Fleet Street and Holborn: in thetwelfth century it was navigable at least as far as Fleet Street.Walbrook cut the city in two, roughly along the line of the streetwhich has its name ; and the river Lea flowed on the outskirts of thesite of greater London. On the left bank of the Thames the ground formsa terrace,some two miles broad, which consists of flint gravel, more or lesssandy,and which rests on London clay. Its level was broken chiefly by theFleet,eastwards of which the land sloped upwards in what is now Ludgate Hill.Itwas on this gravel terrace to the east of the Fleet that the firstLondoners settled: there, by sinking shallow wells, they could obtain awater supply; there they escaped the malarial vapours of the swamps ofEssex and Kent; no hill was near to provide a vantage point
The Westbourne, from the slopes north of Hyde Park, followed a pathsuggested by the Serpentine, and reached the Thames by way of thedistrict now Belgravia. The course of the Tyburn is indicated by thepond in St. James's Park, and near its mouth it formed the island ofThorney, the site of Westminster Abbey.
The Fleet or the Holburn had its source in the slopes of Hampsteadand Highgate, and crossed modern Fleet Street and Holborn: in thetwelfth century it was navigable at least as far as Fleet Street.Walbrook cut the city in two, roughly along the line of the streetwhich has its name ; and the river Lea flowed on the outskirts of thesite of greater London. On the left bank of the Thames the ground formsa terrace,some two miles broad, which consists of flint gravel, more or lesssandy,and which rests on London clay. Its level was broken chiefly by theFleet,eastwards of which the land sloped upwards in what is now Ludgate Hill.Itwas on this gravel terrace to the east of the Fleet that the firstLondoners settled: there, by sinking shallow wells, they could obtain awater supply; there they escaped the malarial vapours of the swamps ofEssex and Kent; no hill was near to provide a vantage point
for theirenemies ; and the Thames connected them with the rest of the world.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote an account of the origin of London, in the twelfth century, recognised the importance of its site. He told that Brutus, after he had named his kingdom of Britain, " entered upon a design of building a city, and in order to it, travelled through the land to find out a convenient situation; and coming to the river Thames, he walked along the shore, and at last pitched upon a place very fit for his purpose.
Here, therefore, he built a city which he called New Troy, under which name it continued a long time after, till at last by corruption of the original word it came to be called Trinovantum." Subsequently King Belinus made in the city a gate " of wonderful structure, which the citizens call after his name Belingsgate to this day.
Over it he built a prodigious large tower, and under it a haven or quay for ships. . . . When he had finished his days his body was burnt and the ashes put up in a golden urn, which they placed at Trinovantum with wonderful art at the top of the tower above-mentioned." And finally King Lud, who was famous for the building of cities, rebuilt the walls of Trinovantum and surrounded them with innumerable towers.
" He likewise commanded the citizens to build houses, and all other. kinds of structures in it, so that no cities in all the foreign countries to a great distance could show more beautiful palaces. He was withal a warlike man, and very magnificent in his feasts and public entertainments. And though he had many other cities, yet he loved this above them all, and resided in it the greater part of the year, for which reason it was afterwards called Kaerlud, and, by corruption of the word, Caerlondon; and again, by change of languages in process of time, London ; as also by foreigners who arrived here and reduced this country under their subjection, Londres. At last he dying, his body was buried by the gate which is to this time called after his name Porthlud, and in the Saxon Ludesgata."
This is the story which the men of old London believed of their city, andwhich has historic value to the extent of its effect on their imagination.Mr. Lethaby holds that the legend of New Troy is the explanation bymediaeval etymologists of the memory of the Trinobantes, that tribe ofEssex and Middlesex whom Caesar found to be "the strongest state of thoseregions." There is in the myth evidence of the extreme traditionalantiquity of the walls of London.
Geoffrey is probably right in concluding from the city's name that it hada pre-Roman origin. But when he assigns to so early a date the beginning ofLondon's greatness he is guided only by the chronicler's desire to exaltthe honour of his subject. All knowledge of London previous to the Romanoccupation is conjectural; and warranted conjecture cannot even base itselfon a certainty of the permanent occupation of the site in the first centurybefore the Christian era. It is remarkable that Julius Caesar, who, duringhis second attempt on Britain, was in the neighbourhood of the LowerThames, does not mention London. Therefore it cannot have been in his timean important town.
Possibly the impenetrable nature of the surrounding country had prevented it frombecoming anything but an occasional camping ground for the Trinobantes orother tribes.
In a.d. 62 occurs, in the pages of Tacitus, the first mention of the city.The Roman General Suetonius was quelling the rebellion of the easternBritons under Queen Boadicea. He marched along the Watling Street andentered Londinium, " uncertain whether he should choose it as a seat ofwar." It was still a place of comparative insignificance, and evidentlyunwalled, but as a trading port it had risen to some importance; "thoughnot distinguished by the name of colony, it was much frequented by a numberof merchants and trading vessels."
The inhabitants were sympathetic to theRomans; but Suetonius " as he looked round on his scanty force of soldiers,resolved to save the province at the cost of a single town. Nor did thetears and weeping of the people, as they implored his aid, deter him fromgiving the signal of departure and receiving into his army all who would gowith him. Those who were chained to the spot by the weakness of their sexor the infirmity of age or the attractions of the place were cut off by theenemy," who had for booty all the riches possessed by this early London.
In the two succeeding centuries the city arose again, and appears to have enjoyed peace and prosperity. It would seem to have consisted of houses which stood in gardens and orchards and were irregularly disposed. Because it was conveniently situated on the Thames the Romans made it the chief centre of their road system, a circumstance which was to give it an unrivalled place in the mediaeval kingdom. From the Kentish ports the Watling Street, not to be confused with the city street of that name, led by Greenwich,
Deptford and St. George's Fields, across the river atWestminster, and then to the south end of Park Lane, where it made anangle, and subsequently followed the line of the Edgware Road, to lead to Verulam and Chester. From Colchester another road crossed theLea at Old Ford, passed to the north of the city, and, keeping roughlyalong the line of Oxford Street, intersected with the Watling Streetnear Marble Arch, and thence, by way of Brentford and Hounslow, led to thewest, crossing the Thames near Staines.
Ermine Street, the road fromChichester, actually traversed the city; it crossed the Thames to the eastof modern London Bridge, and passed northwards near the line of BridgeStreet, Gracechurch Street, and Bishopsgate, and thence by a straight road,of which parts are now Kingsland Road, High Street and Stoke NewingtonRoad, on to Lincoln.
Another Roman highway seems to have branched off fromthe western road near the site of Brentford, and thence, keeping to thenorth bank of the Thames, to have crossed the Watling Street at the anglenear Hyde Park Corner, and thence to have led to Ludgate; and yetanother and a shorter way, of which Newgate formed part, connected theriver bank of the city with Watling Street.
In the year 197 London was held by a company of Franks who had been in theservice of Allectus, the usurper of the imperial throne. They were ejectedwhen part of the fleet of Constantine arrived in the river. The fact that the city had at this time become an object to invadingbarbarians goes to justify those who hold that the wall around it was builtat the close of the third or the beginning of the fourth century.According, however, to another and an ably supported theory its origin isno later than the middle of the second century.
It was this Romanwall, frequently heightened and repaired, which mainly guarded Londonthroughout the middle ages, which had eventually the gates of Aldgate,Bishopsgate, Moorgate, Cripplegate, Aldersgate, Newgate and Ludgate, andwhich was demolished only in 1766. A portion of it was removed in the reignof Richard I. in order to allow the construction of Tower Ditch; and in1297 Edward I. gave permission for its rebuilding from Ludgate to the riverin such manner as should include the precincts of Blackfriars monastery.
In 367 a mixed force of Franks, Picts and Scots, and Saxons attackedLondon, but were driven away by Theodosius, then in command of the forcesof Valentinian I., and afterwards emperor. To the late Roman period, whenthere was constant danger of barbarian incursions into the Thames, theconstruction of a wall of the city along the river bank has been ascribed.
The fact that Roman London unmistakably aroused the cupidity of invadinghosts is a proof of its wealth. Such is otherwise attested by evidences ofthe culture and luxury of its inhabitants which excavators have discovered.While it would seem never to have been an eminent place in the militarysystem, it was probably a very important trading town. Its dignity was suchthat it received the title of Augusta, apparently in the period ofConstantine the Great, the early fourth century.
The Roman protection was withdrawn from London about the year 410, andthen a dark period supervened in the history of the city. Probably tradeand population dwindled almost or quite to nothing. There may have beenmany attempts, successful and otherwise, on the part of one or anotherforce to hold or to acquire the walled town which commanded the Thames.
A hint of such a course of eventsis given by the record that in 457 the Britons fled from Kent to London.There is indeed a theory that the history of London has been exceptionallycontinuous from Roman until modern times ; but this presupposes in theLondoners after the departure of the Romans very unusual and unattestedstrength and organisation. The hypothesis is moreover unnecessary to theexplanation of later conditions. There is no absolute proof that the Romansinfluenced the mediseval and modern city except in so far as they had madethe wall and the roads. The gap in knowledge was in a less critical agefilled by Arthurian legends.
In the beginning of the seventh century London is, through the writings ofthe Venerable Bede, rediscovered. As in 62 its commercial importance isemphasised : it is described as an emporium of many peoples to which mentravelled by land and by sea. It was also the metropolis of the EastSaxons, and one of the two archiepiscopal sees instituted in 601 by PopeGregory. St. Augustine in 604 ordained Mellitus bishop of the East Saxons,and their king, Ethelbert, made on the site near the west gate of his chiefcity the church of St. Paul, for the bishop and his successors.
Thus SaxonLondon, a city built of wood within the area which the Romans had enclosed,and partly along the lines of their streets, was a centre of trade, thecapital of a kingdom, and a cathedral town. Its life probably centred inthe cathedral precincts, for there, where until the sixteenth century stoodthe city belfry, was the meeting-place of the folkmoot. This institutionwas called in later mediaeval times a thing of ancient custom, and it is soSaxon in character that there is little hardihood in asserting itsexistence when London was the capital of Essex. Under the pious KingEthelbert a bell must have rung to bring the people together outside thecathedral; and there they must have assembled in arms, shaken their spearsin dissent, or clashed their shields in applause, and responded with criesof approval or condemnation, as the proposals of their rulers were laidbefore them.
After the death of Ethelbert in 616 London relapsed into heathendom, butwas again converted in the second half of the century.
There are fairly continuous records of the part played by London, from theninth century onwards, in the struggle with the Danes. From the reign ofAlfred the increasing independence and importance of the city is apparent;it acted as a unit, and as one which wielded much influence in Englishpolitics. It played moreover a very gallant part. From all this followsthat it possessed an efficient form of government and was inhabited by anintelligent people.
But in the first part of the ninth century the history of the city is sadand chaotic. The war of defence was being waged in the Thames valley: in839 a great slaughter occurred in London ; in 851 the town was sacked by ahost of pagans who brought three hundred and fifty ships to the mouth ofthe Thames. Then came a time of confusion, " down and up, and up and down,and dreadful." In the winter of 872-3 the Danish army wintered in London.At last in 885 the partition of the country between Alfred and Gruthrumgave the city to the English king; and he restored it, and committed the "burh" to the keeping of his son-in-law, Ethelred ealdorman of Mercia.
Thus security and order returned in some degree to the Londoners. Therehas been discussion as to the king's exact measures: by some he is held tohave built a citadel, perhaps on Tower Hill; by others only to haverestored the wall. At all events, when in 893 the Danes again attacked the city,Ethelred led out the Londoners and they obtained a victory outside thewalls. In 897 the men of London seized on certain Danish ships in theriver, and such as were stalwart they brought up to their city.
In 912 Edward the Elder took possession, apparently without violence, ofLondon. This must mean either that he secured the immediate rule delegatedby his father to Ethelred, or that the city had fallen away from theEnglish supremacy. In 982 there occurred the first of the many fires ofLondon on record; the chronicler does not state whether the town was burntby accident or by the Danes. A reference in the description of the event isto a suburb which was evidently situated along the Strand. That street wasprobably a Roman way, and it is likely that the settlement which at thisdate existed on it was that one of the Danes which caused it afterwards tobe called " Vicus Dacorum," and which named the church of St. ClementDanes.
In 992 the Londoners saw a fine sight on their river, for all theships that were of any worth were gathered together beside the city bydecree of Ethelred the Unready and his witan. Two years later, on the 8thof September, ninety-four ships of the Northmen were brought to London byOlaf, King of Norway, and Sweyn, King of Denmark, who would have set thecity on fire. " But they there sustained more harm and evil than they everweened that any townsmen could do to them. For the Holy Mother of God, onthat day, manifested her mercy to the townsmen and delivered them fromtheir foes." Again, under the year 1009, the chronicler states that theDanes "often fought against London, but to God be praise that it yet standssound ; and they there ever fared ill; " and in the winter of that year theDanes avoided the city because they heard that a force was there gatheredagainst them.
In 1013 the city yielded to the Danes. King Sweyn had received thesubmission of Oxford and of Winchester, and he marched to London. As hecrossed the Thames many of his force were drowned, apparently because theytried to swim their horses across the river. King Ethelred was in the city,and this is given as a reason for the determined resistance offered by thetownsmen. They withstood King Sweyn in battle until he abandoned his attackand marched westwards.
In the course of the year all the nationacknowledged him as king, and then the Londoners realised that by furtherobstinacy they would doom themselves. They tendered their submission toSweyn and gave him hostages, and Ethelred took refuge with the fleet on theThames, whence at midwinter he passed to the Isle of Wight on his way toNormandy.
A contemporary poem tells how Holy Olaf, King of Norway, broke down London Bridge about the year 1014 in an attack on the Danes made in the interest of Ethelred, evidently after the death of Sweyn. As the result Ethelred was restored to the city, and in 1016 he lay there sick unto death. He died on the 23rd of April, and then the townsmen and all of the Witan who were in London assembled, and chose Edmund for their king. This was to give remarkable prominence to the city.
In the same year another event had illustrated the high place held by the citizens. Edmund, as the king's son, had summoned the Mercian fyrd, but they had told him that " it did not please them to go forth unless the king were with them, and they had the support of the burgesses of London."
The struggle between Edmund and Cnut, King of Denmark, centred roundLondon. In May the Danish ships came up the Thames, and by means of agreat ditch dug on the Southwark side they dragged their ships from LondonBridge to the part of the river above it. Evidently therefore the bridgehad been rebuilt. Then by ditches the Danes prevented any passage in orout of the city; and they repeatedly engaged in fights with the townsmen,but were boldly withstood.
Edmund raised the siege and drove theNorthmen back to their ships. But later in the year they returned to "London, " and beset the city around, and obstinately fought against it bothby water and land. But almighty God saved it," and the Danish armydeparted.
After Cnut's great victory at Assendune the country was divided between the kings: Wessex fell to Edmund, and Mercia withLondon to Cnut. And then the Londoners bought peace from the Danes, andthe Danish army took up their winter quarters in the city. " Ever sincethe hard fight was fought," wrote a Danish poet, " we sit merrily in fairLondon." The whole kingdom accrued to Cnut after the death of Edmund onSt. Andrew's day.
On Cnut's death in 1035 London again had a voice in the selection of a successor to the throne. At an assembly of the Witan held in London, Harold Harefoot was chosen king by " Earl Leofric and nearly all the thegns north of the Thames and the sailors of London." London must therefore, as in Roman times, have been distinguished by merchantmen who travelled over seas.
Again, at the death of Harthacnut in 1042, the citizens of London joined with others of the Witan who were able to be present, and chose Edward the Confessor king.
On the 15th of September, 1052, a great assembly of theEnglish people met in the open air outside the walls of London. The kingwas reconciled with Earl Godwin, Gytha his wife, and his four valiant sons,Harold, Tostig, Gyrth, and Leofwine, and afterwards the king and the earlwalked unarmed down to the palace of Westminster.
The palace made first by King Cnut had been burnt, but it had been builtagain by Edward the Confessor. In the half century which preceded theConquest it was the principal residence of kings, and its proximity to thecity caused Witanagemots frequently to be held in London. Under Harold sonof Godwin Westminster was a more constant dwelling-place of the court thanever it had been before, and concurrently London became in some degree thecapital of England.
It is most probable that many of the parish churches of London werefounded not long before the Conquest; some must have an earlier origin. Thepopulation in the eleventh century, as afterwards, had a cosmopolitanelement, due to the power of commerce, the church, and the court. The menof Rouen and the abbey of St. Peter at Ghent owned property in the city;the Flemings, the French, and the emperor's men were free to come to theport of London ; many ecclesiastics had French or Norman names. It isnatural that the continental influences which Edward the Confessor broughtto bear upon England should have had much effect in his principal town.
" He likewise commanded the citizens to build houses, and all other. kinds of structures in it, so that no cities in all the foreign countries to a great distance could show more beautiful palaces. He was withal a warlike man, and very magnificent in his feasts and public entertainments. And though he had many other cities, yet he loved this above them all, and resided in it the greater part of the year, for which reason it was afterwards called Kaerlud, and, by corruption of the word, Caerlondon; and again, by change of languages in process of time, London ; as also by foreigners who arrived here and reduced this country under their subjection, Londres. At last he dying, his body was buried by the gate which is to this time called after his name Porthlud, and in the Saxon Ludesgata."
This is the story which the men of old London believed of their city, andwhich has historic value to the extent of its effect on their imagination.Mr. Lethaby holds that the legend of New Troy is the explanation bymediaeval etymologists of the memory of the Trinobantes, that tribe ofEssex and Middlesex whom Caesar found to be "the strongest state of thoseregions." There is in the myth evidence of the extreme traditionalantiquity of the walls of London.
Geoffrey is probably right in concluding from the city's name that it hada pre-Roman origin. But when he assigns to so early a date the beginning ofLondon's greatness he is guided only by the chronicler's desire to exaltthe honour of his subject. All knowledge of London previous to the Romanoccupation is conjectural; and warranted conjecture cannot even base itselfon a certainty of the permanent occupation of the site in the first centurybefore the Christian era. It is remarkable that Julius Caesar, who, duringhis second attempt on Britain, was in the neighbourhood of the LowerThames, does not mention London. Therefore it cannot have been in his timean important town.
Possibly the impenetrable nature of the surrounding country had prevented it frombecoming anything but an occasional camping ground for the Trinobantes orother tribes.
In a.d. 62 occurs, in the pages of Tacitus, the first mention of the city.The Roman General Suetonius was quelling the rebellion of the easternBritons under Queen Boadicea. He marched along the Watling Street andentered Londinium, " uncertain whether he should choose it as a seat ofwar." It was still a place of comparative insignificance, and evidentlyunwalled, but as a trading port it had risen to some importance; "thoughnot distinguished by the name of colony, it was much frequented by a numberof merchants and trading vessels."
The inhabitants were sympathetic to theRomans; but Suetonius " as he looked round on his scanty force of soldiers,resolved to save the province at the cost of a single town. Nor did thetears and weeping of the people, as they implored his aid, deter him fromgiving the signal of departure and receiving into his army all who would gowith him. Those who were chained to the spot by the weakness of their sexor the infirmity of age or the attractions of the place were cut off by theenemy," who had for booty all the riches possessed by this early London.
In the two succeeding centuries the city arose again, and appears to have enjoyed peace and prosperity. It would seem to have consisted of houses which stood in gardens and orchards and were irregularly disposed. Because it was conveniently situated on the Thames the Romans made it the chief centre of their road system, a circumstance which was to give it an unrivalled place in the mediaeval kingdom. From the Kentish ports the Watling Street, not to be confused with the city street of that name, led by Greenwich,
Deptford and St. George's Fields, across the river atWestminster, and then to the south end of Park Lane, where it made anangle, and subsequently followed the line of the Edgware Road, to lead to Verulam and Chester. From Colchester another road crossed theLea at Old Ford, passed to the north of the city, and, keeping roughlyalong the line of Oxford Street, intersected with the Watling Streetnear Marble Arch, and thence, by way of Brentford and Hounslow, led to thewest, crossing the Thames near Staines.
Ermine Street, the road fromChichester, actually traversed the city; it crossed the Thames to the eastof modern London Bridge, and passed northwards near the line of BridgeStreet, Gracechurch Street, and Bishopsgate, and thence by a straight road,of which parts are now Kingsland Road, High Street and Stoke NewingtonRoad, on to Lincoln.
Another Roman highway seems to have branched off fromthe western road near the site of Brentford, and thence, keeping to thenorth bank of the Thames, to have crossed the Watling Street at the anglenear Hyde Park Corner, and thence to have led to Ludgate; and yetanother and a shorter way, of which Newgate formed part, connected theriver bank of the city with Watling Street.
In the year 197 London was held by a company of Franks who had been in theservice of Allectus, the usurper of the imperial throne. They were ejectedwhen part of the fleet of Constantine arrived in the river. The fact that the city had at this time become an object to invadingbarbarians goes to justify those who hold that the wall around it was builtat the close of the third or the beginning of the fourth century.According, however, to another and an ably supported theory its origin isno later than the middle of the second century.
It was this Romanwall, frequently heightened and repaired, which mainly guarded Londonthroughout the middle ages, which had eventually the gates of Aldgate,Bishopsgate, Moorgate, Cripplegate, Aldersgate, Newgate and Ludgate, andwhich was demolished only in 1766. A portion of it was removed in the reignof Richard I. in order to allow the construction of Tower Ditch; and in1297 Edward I. gave permission for its rebuilding from Ludgate to the riverin such manner as should include the precincts of Blackfriars monastery.
In 367 a mixed force of Franks, Picts and Scots, and Saxons attackedLondon, but were driven away by Theodosius, then in command of the forcesof Valentinian I., and afterwards emperor. To the late Roman period, whenthere was constant danger of barbarian incursions into the Thames, theconstruction of a wall of the city along the river bank has been ascribed.
The fact that Roman London unmistakably aroused the cupidity of invadinghosts is a proof of its wealth. Such is otherwise attested by evidences ofthe culture and luxury of its inhabitants which excavators have discovered.While it would seem never to have been an eminent place in the militarysystem, it was probably a very important trading town. Its dignity was suchthat it received the title of Augusta, apparently in the period ofConstantine the Great, the early fourth century.
The Roman protection was withdrawn from London about the year 410, andthen a dark period supervened in the history of the city. Probably tradeand population dwindled almost or quite to nothing. There may have beenmany attempts, successful and otherwise, on the part of one or anotherforce to hold or to acquire the walled town which commanded the Thames.
A hint of such a course of eventsis given by the record that in 457 the Britons fled from Kent to London.There is indeed a theory that the history of London has been exceptionallycontinuous from Roman until modern times ; but this presupposes in theLondoners after the departure of the Romans very unusual and unattestedstrength and organisation. The hypothesis is moreover unnecessary to theexplanation of later conditions. There is no absolute proof that the Romansinfluenced the mediseval and modern city except in so far as they had madethe wall and the roads. The gap in knowledge was in a less critical agefilled by Arthurian legends.
In the beginning of the seventh century London is, through the writings ofthe Venerable Bede, rediscovered. As in 62 its commercial importance isemphasised : it is described as an emporium of many peoples to which mentravelled by land and by sea. It was also the metropolis of the EastSaxons, and one of the two archiepiscopal sees instituted in 601 by PopeGregory. St. Augustine in 604 ordained Mellitus bishop of the East Saxons,and their king, Ethelbert, made on the site near the west gate of his chiefcity the church of St. Paul, for the bishop and his successors.
Thus SaxonLondon, a city built of wood within the area which the Romans had enclosed,and partly along the lines of their streets, was a centre of trade, thecapital of a kingdom, and a cathedral town. Its life probably centred inthe cathedral precincts, for there, where until the sixteenth century stoodthe city belfry, was the meeting-place of the folkmoot. This institutionwas called in later mediaeval times a thing of ancient custom, and it is soSaxon in character that there is little hardihood in asserting itsexistence when London was the capital of Essex. Under the pious KingEthelbert a bell must have rung to bring the people together outside thecathedral; and there they must have assembled in arms, shaken their spearsin dissent, or clashed their shields in applause, and responded with criesof approval or condemnation, as the proposals of their rulers were laidbefore them.
After the death of Ethelbert in 616 London relapsed into heathendom, butwas again converted in the second half of the century.
There are fairly continuous records of the part played by London, from theninth century onwards, in the struggle with the Danes. From the reign ofAlfred the increasing independence and importance of the city is apparent;it acted as a unit, and as one which wielded much influence in Englishpolitics. It played moreover a very gallant part. From all this followsthat it possessed an efficient form of government and was inhabited by anintelligent people.
But in the first part of the ninth century the history of the city is sadand chaotic. The war of defence was being waged in the Thames valley: in839 a great slaughter occurred in London ; in 851 the town was sacked by ahost of pagans who brought three hundred and fifty ships to the mouth ofthe Thames. Then came a time of confusion, " down and up, and up and down,and dreadful." In the winter of 872-3 the Danish army wintered in London.At last in 885 the partition of the country between Alfred and Gruthrumgave the city to the English king; and he restored it, and committed the "burh" to the keeping of his son-in-law, Ethelred ealdorman of Mercia.
Thus security and order returned in some degree to the Londoners. Therehas been discussion as to the king's exact measures: by some he is held tohave built a citadel, perhaps on Tower Hill; by others only to haverestored the wall. At all events, when in 893 the Danes again attacked the city,Ethelred led out the Londoners and they obtained a victory outside thewalls. In 897 the men of London seized on certain Danish ships in theriver, and such as were stalwart they brought up to their city.
In 912 Edward the Elder took possession, apparently without violence, ofLondon. This must mean either that he secured the immediate rule delegatedby his father to Ethelred, or that the city had fallen away from theEnglish supremacy. In 982 there occurred the first of the many fires ofLondon on record; the chronicler does not state whether the town was burntby accident or by the Danes. A reference in the description of the event isto a suburb which was evidently situated along the Strand. That street wasprobably a Roman way, and it is likely that the settlement which at thisdate existed on it was that one of the Danes which caused it afterwards tobe called " Vicus Dacorum," and which named the church of St. ClementDanes.
In 992 the Londoners saw a fine sight on their river, for all theships that were of any worth were gathered together beside the city bydecree of Ethelred the Unready and his witan. Two years later, on the 8thof September, ninety-four ships of the Northmen were brought to London byOlaf, King of Norway, and Sweyn, King of Denmark, who would have set thecity on fire. " But they there sustained more harm and evil than they everweened that any townsmen could do to them. For the Holy Mother of God, onthat day, manifested her mercy to the townsmen and delivered them fromtheir foes." Again, under the year 1009, the chronicler states that theDanes "often fought against London, but to God be praise that it yet standssound ; and they there ever fared ill; " and in the winter of that year theDanes avoided the city because they heard that a force was there gatheredagainst them.
In 1013 the city yielded to the Danes. King Sweyn had received thesubmission of Oxford and of Winchester, and he marched to London. As hecrossed the Thames many of his force were drowned, apparently because theytried to swim their horses across the river. King Ethelred was in the city,and this is given as a reason for the determined resistance offered by thetownsmen. They withstood King Sweyn in battle until he abandoned his attackand marched westwards.
In the course of the year all the nationacknowledged him as king, and then the Londoners realised that by furtherobstinacy they would doom themselves. They tendered their submission toSweyn and gave him hostages, and Ethelred took refuge with the fleet on theThames, whence at midwinter he passed to the Isle of Wight on his way toNormandy.
A contemporary poem tells how Holy Olaf, King of Norway, broke down London Bridge about the year 1014 in an attack on the Danes made in the interest of Ethelred, evidently after the death of Sweyn. As the result Ethelred was restored to the city, and in 1016 he lay there sick unto death. He died on the 23rd of April, and then the townsmen and all of the Witan who were in London assembled, and chose Edmund for their king. This was to give remarkable prominence to the city.
In the same year another event had illustrated the high place held by the citizens. Edmund, as the king's son, had summoned the Mercian fyrd, but they had told him that " it did not please them to go forth unless the king were with them, and they had the support of the burgesses of London."
The struggle between Edmund and Cnut, King of Denmark, centred roundLondon. In May the Danish ships came up the Thames, and by means of agreat ditch dug on the Southwark side they dragged their ships from LondonBridge to the part of the river above it. Evidently therefore the bridgehad been rebuilt. Then by ditches the Danes prevented any passage in orout of the city; and they repeatedly engaged in fights with the townsmen,but were boldly withstood.
Edmund raised the siege and drove theNorthmen back to their ships. But later in the year they returned to "London, " and beset the city around, and obstinately fought against it bothby water and land. But almighty God saved it," and the Danish armydeparted.
After Cnut's great victory at Assendune the country was divided between the kings: Wessex fell to Edmund, and Mercia withLondon to Cnut. And then the Londoners bought peace from the Danes, andthe Danish army took up their winter quarters in the city. " Ever sincethe hard fight was fought," wrote a Danish poet, " we sit merrily in fairLondon." The whole kingdom accrued to Cnut after the death of Edmund onSt. Andrew's day.
On Cnut's death in 1035 London again had a voice in the selection of a successor to the throne. At an assembly of the Witan held in London, Harold Harefoot was chosen king by " Earl Leofric and nearly all the thegns north of the Thames and the sailors of London." London must therefore, as in Roman times, have been distinguished by merchantmen who travelled over seas.
Again, at the death of Harthacnut in 1042, the citizens of London joined with others of the Witan who were able to be present, and chose Edward the Confessor king.
On the 15th of September, 1052, a great assembly of theEnglish people met in the open air outside the walls of London. The kingwas reconciled with Earl Godwin, Gytha his wife, and his four valiant sons,Harold, Tostig, Gyrth, and Leofwine, and afterwards the king and the earlwalked unarmed down to the palace of Westminster.
The palace made first by King Cnut had been burnt, but it had been builtagain by Edward the Confessor. In the half century which preceded theConquest it was the principal residence of kings, and its proximity to thecity caused Witanagemots frequently to be held in London. Under Harold sonof Godwin Westminster was a more constant dwelling-place of the court thanever it had been before, and concurrently London became in some degree thecapital of England.
It is most probable that many of the parish churches of London werefounded not long before the Conquest; some must have an earlier origin. Thepopulation in the eleventh century, as afterwards, had a cosmopolitanelement, due to the power of commerce, the church, and the court. The menof Rouen and the abbey of St. Peter at Ghent owned property in the city;the Flemings, the French, and the emperor's men were free to come to theport of London ; many ecclesiastics had French or Norman names. It isnatural that the continental influences which Edward the Confessor broughtto bear upon England should have had much effect in his principal town.
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