London Before the Conquest. W. R. Lethaby

which followed the Conquest. More patient research allows of pushing still further a large number of “origins” to a time anterior to the Conquest, but subsequent to the Roman evacuation of the city. As the greatest of all London events in this space of time was the resettlement of the city by Alfred, less than two centuries before Duke William entered within its walls, and as London may readily be supposed to have altered very little in that time, we may well take the reign of the great king, who died exactly a thousand years ago, as the centre of gravity of the whole period, and the pages which follow might very well be called an account of London in the time of Alfred.

      The strife with the Danes in the Thames valley raged from before the time of Alfred’s birth. Stow and others have supposed that London was wrecked in 839, and lay waste until Alfred restored it; but it has been shown that the first attack on the city must have been in 842.[24] In 851 a great host of the pagans came with 350 ships to the mouth of the river Thames, and sacked Canterbury “and also the city of London, which lies on the confines of Essex and Middlesex, but the city belongs of right to Essex.”[25] Before this time London had become subject to the overlordship of Mercia, and Behrtwulf the Mercian was killed in its defence.

There is a charter of Burgred, king of Mercia, relating to London, 857; in 872-74 the city was taken by Halfdan the Dane, and Burgred, king of Mercia, was ejected from his kingdom. In the coin room of the British Museum there is a remarkable coin which bears the legend ALFDENE RX✠, and on the reverse the monogram of London which was later used by Alfred on his coins (Fig. 14). The obverse bears the same type as that used on the coins of Ceolwulf, whom Halfdan set up as his creature in Mercia: it cannot be doubted that Halfdan’s coin was struck as a memorial of his wintering in London in 872-73, as described in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. All now was confusion, “down and up, and up and down, and dreadful,” till at the peace of Wedmore, in 878, Alfred made a division of the country with the Danish leader Guthrum, by a boundary defined in the agreement as “upon the Thames along the Lea to its source, then right to Bedford and upon the Ouse to Watling Street.” London thus fell to Alfred, who repaired it in 886 and made it again habitable, and gave it into the hands of his son-in-law Ethered.[26] Ethered was Ealdorman of Mercia, so London was still practically the Mercian capital, and remained so till the death of Ethered. London all the time was the chief city in the kingdom, but it then had to enter into competition with Winchester, the local capital of the dominating kingdom.

      Fig. 14.—Coin of Halfdan with Monogram of London.

      In 893 there was a fresh attack by the Danes, but they were defeated outside the city by the men of London, led by Ethered. In the account of this raid from the south coast through Farnham and northwards across the Thames, as given in Ethelweard’s Chronicle, the Danes are said to have been besieged on Thorney Isle (Thornige Insula), the site of the abbey of Westminster. The Danes then passed eastward and took up positions at Mersea, Shoebury, and probably Welbury, near the Lea, in all of which places there are traces of earthworks.[27]

      Fig. 15.—Saxon Swordhilt.

      Since the resettlement of London in 886 there has been no interruption of the continuity of city life and customs, and it is very probable that some of the institutions shaped by the great organiser, whom William Morris called the one man of genius who has ever ruled in England, remain to this day.

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

      RIVERS AND FORDS

And dream of London, small and white and clean, The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green. The Earthly Paradise.

      The city of London, when the Roman garrison was withdrawn from its walls, occupied two hills on the north river-bank, between which ran the Walbrook. The river, which still retains its British or pre-British name of Thames,[28] spread, as may be seen from a geological map, over wide tracts of morass, which at an early time began to be protected by embankments, which are “no less than 50 feet above low water, and, counting side creeks, 300 miles long.”

      The Chronicle of Bermondsey records of a flood in 1294-95:—“Then was made the great breach at Retherhith; and it overflowed the plain of Bermundeseye and the precinct of Tothill.” The French Chronicle, written some two generations afterwards, shows that this was still remembered as “Le Breche.” Edward I. at once issued a mandate that the banks from Lambeth to Greenwich should be viewed and repaired. Stow, under Westminster, says that in 1236 the river “overflowing the banks made the Woolwich marshes all on a sea” and flowed into Westminster Hall; and again in 1242 “drowned houses and fields by the space of six miles” on the Lambeth side. In 1448 “the water brake in out of Thames beside Lymeost and in another place.”[29] Howel (1657) writes: “The Thames often inounds the bankes about London, which makes the grounds afterwards more fertile.”

      Fig. 16.—Earliest Printed View of

       London from the Chronycle of

       Englonde, Pynson 1510.

      The embankments seem to have been called walls. The names of Bermondsey Wall and Wapping Wall still survive opposite one another; and “wall” enters into the names of several places bordering on the river, as Millwall and Blackwall, and St. Peter’s on the Wall, at Bradwell, Essex, where the north bank ends. At Lambeth Pennant noted that the name Narrow Walls occurred. The general opinion is that these banks are either Roman or pre-Roman work. Wren thought Roman.[30]

      Before the locks were made on the river the tide ran up past Richmond to near the inlet of the Mole.[31] London held the jurisdiction over the river from Yanlet to Staines from the twelfth century at least. The limit at either end is marked by a “London Stone.”

      FitzStephen calls the river “the great fish-bearing Thames.” Howel in his Londinopolis says: “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 renowne

       Whose beryall stremys, pleasant and preclare

       Under thy lusty wallys runneth down

       Where 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 called ultra 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 mill super Fletam Juxta Castelum Bainard, and all the course of the water of Fleet and a messuage juxta 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 important personalities