Chapter 3

Asser and Stow point out clearly that Alfred's settlement came after a long period of ruin. This period was brought to an end by the renewal of the Roman wall. If we date the events as follows, the slow progress of the re-settlement is apparent. The Danes pervaded London and the neighbourhood in 872. Alfred drove them out twelve years later, in 884. In 886 Alfred commenced his repairs, and before his death in 901, the beginning of the tenth century, he may have seen houses and streets newly rising, some, it is possible, where Roman buildings had stood, but for the most part on wholly new lines. It would not have been like Alfred if he did not leave London with a settled government; and if there are certain foreign usages which can be traced to his time, they had probably been brought in with the concourse of foreign merchants who formed a large part, if not the majority, of the new citizens. A century and a half later they were described by the Norman conqueror as "burghers within London, French and English," and from the prevalence of certain names we find a large Danish element among them, while the term French indicates that perhaps the largest part were either Normans or Gauls from the opposite coast. It is possible that a careful survey of the early history of St. Paul's might bring a few facts to light, whether directly or by inference; but even after the reign of Alfred we have very little knowledge of the condition of the city and its port. It was never taken by the Danes. During the reign of Ethelred "the Unready," the King seems to have been shut up in London while the marauders ravaged the country round. Either the Londoners had great stores of provisions, or they had access to foreign markets. Edgar first recognised the importance of this trade, and no doubt the ill-advised Ethelred, his successor, was well advised in this respect. In years of comparative peace, Edward the Confessor built or rebuilt Westminster Abbey, and lived there; but London trade was not interrupted, and William the Norman was too wise to interfere with it.

We have no remains of Saxon times in the city. The bridge continued to exist, and must have been well fortified. There is a story, which may be true, that Cnut dug a canal through or round Southwark, but as we have seen, this was probably no great feat. He did not succeed in taking London. Soon after, and down to Hastings, Normans, as well as Danes, settled in large numbers in the city, and their names are found in the oldest lists among those of the Saxon aldermen and leading citizens. In the laws of Ethelred, printed by Thorpe, we find two additions to the list of the gates. As we have seen, only two Roman gates are known on the landward side--the Westgate, later known as Newgate, which opened on the Watling Street; and the northern gate, said to have been rebuilt later on a slightly different site, and named Bishopsgate. Ethelred provides for guards at Cripplegate and Aldersgate. This provision seems to show that the gates were then new. Of Aldred, whose name was given to one of them, we have no special knowledge, and Stow supposes it was called "of alders growing there," a typical guess, but nothing to his guess about "Cripplesgate," so called "of cripples resorting there"! But "Crepul geat" is good Anglo-Saxon for a covered way, and the covered way here led to the Barbican. Both gave their names to wards of the city, and in the twelfth century Alwold was alderman of Cripplegate and Brichmar, "who coins the King's money," of Aldersgate, which is distinctly named "Ealdredesgate."

The same document, in which these new gates are mentioned, also gives a few topographical particulars. Thus Billingsgate is mentioned as a place to which ships brought fish, and as being close to the bridge. This was probably what was left of the Roman bridge. It names the merchants of Rouen as entitled to certain consideration in the tax they pay on cargoes of wine. The cities of Flanders, of Normandy, and of France are named in that order, as well as Hogge (Sluys), Leodium (Liege), and Nivella (Nivelle), and there is special mention of the Emperor's men. If any imperial usages, any laws following Roman customs and differing from those of other English cities, prevailed in London it is probably hence that they came, and not through two periods of emptiness and desolation, lasting in all at least 250 years, and probably a good many more.

IV.--NORMAN LONDON

London comes more and more into prominence in the second half of the eleventh century. Whether this was on account of the increase of its trade and wealth when the Danes had ceased from troubling, or on account of the personal qualities of certain citizens, we cannot now distinguish. The French or Norman element increased, and it is possible to name a few individuals who are known to have lived within the walls both before and after Hastings. Among them are Albert the Lotharingian, after whom Lothbury is called. William "de Pontearch" and William Malet, both of whom are mentioned in histories of the Conquest, were citizens. Ansgar, the Staller, who was Portreeve the year of Hastings, appears to have been, like King Harold, of Danish descent. He was described in Edward the Confessor's great charter to Westminster Abbey as "Esgar, minister," so apparently filled several offices, as well as that of Portreeve. We begin about the same time to hear of a governing guild, and of reeveland, or a portsoken, as its endowment. Sired, a canon of St. Paul's, built a church on land belonging to the Knightenguild. There is mention, apparently, of a son of Sired, who was a priest, about the time of Hastings, among the documents preserved at St. Paul's; but I have, so far, failed to find any reference there to this guild, of which Stow has so much to tell. According to him, it was founded by Edward the Confessor, or perhaps by Edgar, and had a charter from William Rufus. Can it be commemorated in the name of the Guildhall which then fronted Aldermanbury?

More authentic are the charter of the Conqueror and a few facts which go to prove that London and its trading and industrial citizens were but little disturbed by the change of government. Things went on as before. The bishop, himself an alderman, the Portreeve and the burghers, French and English, are addressed "friendly." The liberties, whatever they were--whether, as Mr. Gomme thinks, they had come down from Roman times, or whether, as seems to me so much more likely, they had come over from the cities of the continent--were confirmed to them, and everything went on as before.

One other charter in Norman times may suffice to illustrate the position of the great walled city and its busy and wealthy port under the Norman kings. This was the grant of Middlesex to the citizens by Henry I. This grant, which was only abrogated in 1888 by Act of Parliament, gave London the same rights over the county that were held in those days by the earls and reeves of shires. Dr. Reginald Sharpe seems to think that this charter was granted for a heavy money payment. But there are other ways of looking at the matter. It would appear probable that King Henry recognised the help the city had given him; first, in obtaining the crown, and afterwards in maintaining his position. The King, no doubt, wanted money. The citizens did not expect favours without payment; it would have been contrary to all previous experience. But the gift was a very real boon, one which could not very well have been valued in gold. That a Norman king should have been willing to grant away the deer which his father was said to have loved like his children shows clearly that there was a strong sense of obligation in the King's mind.

The constitution of the city during the reigns of the Norman kings, if we may judge by what we find in twelfth-century documents at St. Paul's and in thirteenth-century documents at the Guildhall, must have been, as Bishop Stubbs and Professor Freeman have pointed out, that of a county. The municipal unity was of the same kind as that of the shire and the hundred. The Portreeve accounted to the King for his dues. He was the justice, and owed his position to popular election as approved by the King. Under him were the aldermen of wards, answering very nearly to lords of manors. The people had their folkmote, answering to the shiremote elsewhere. Their weekly husting eventually became a "county court," and there was besides the wardmote, which still exists, and led eventually to the abolition of proprietary aldermen in favour of aldermen elected by the wards.

At this period the buildings of the city began to assume a certain importance we do not hear of under the Saxons. St. Paul's became a notable example of what we now call Norman architecture. The nave survived until the fire in 1666. The church of St. Mary le Bow, in Cheap, still retains its Norman crypt. The great white tower, with which the Conqueror strengthened the eastern extremity of the Saxon and Roman wall, contains still its remarkable vaulted chapel. A few other relics of the style survive, but St. Bartholomew's is outside the line of the wall.

To the old gates must now be added one more--namely, Ludgate. "Ludgate" or "Lydgate" is like Crepulgate, a Saxon term, and signifies a postern, perhaps a kind of trap door opening with a lid. The exact date is unknown, but the building of a new street across the Fleet, with a bridge of access, is evident from documents mentioning the names of persons who dwelt "ultra fletam," which are found early in the reign of Henry I. Another gate was subsequently added--namely, Aldgate--in or about the beginning of the twelfth century. The names of both these gates have been subjects of much guesswork, not only by such topographers as Stukeley, but even by Stow. Ludgate was, of course, assigned to an imaginary King, Lud, celebrated in the great poem of the Welsh bard, who made London the foundation of descendants of Æneas of Troy. Much of this was extensively believed in the Middle Ages; and some of us imagined that Ludgate might have been called in honour of one of the heroes of the poem, until the real meaning of the word was pointed out. With regard to Aldgate, a meaningless name, we always find it spelled without the "d" in old manuscripts, and usually with an added "e." Stow perceived that to be consistent he must put the "e" in; but he did so in the wrong place, with the result that Alegate or Allgate, perhaps meaning a gate open free to all, is turned into Ealdgate, and has its age wholly mistaken. It was, no doubt, built when the Lea was bridged, traditionally by Queen Maud, about 1110. Previously the paved crossing, the Stratford, was reckoned dangerous, and passengers went out by Bishopsgate and sought a safer crossing at Oldford. The last of the city gates, Moorgate, was not opened till 1415. It was erected for the convenience of citizens passing out among the fields. It is evident that fortification had become a secondary object. Accordingly, it is often described as the most spacious and handsome of the city gates.

The others, especially Ludgate and Newgate, were, we may be sure, judging by Roman and mediæval fortifications elsewhere, narrow and inconvenient. There was probably an overlapping tower in front of the exit, and the pathway described a semicircle, as we know was the case at the Tower, where the present arrangement, by which a vehicle can drive in, was not possible till the Lion Tower and its overlapping defence, the Conning Tower, were removed. That something of the same kind existed at the Old Bailey is evident on an inspection of the boundary of the ward in a good map, where the overlapping is clearly marked both at Ludgate and at Newgate. The roadways at both places were made straight, the larger archways opened, and the stately portals, suggested by Stukeley and others, erected, if ever, when the wall was no longer regarded as a fortification. This view may, in part at least, account for a statement that the Roman gate, which answered to Bishopsgate, was considerably to the eastward of the mediæval gate, removed in 1760. The Roman gate, to be useful and at the same time safe, probably consisted of a narrow passage, opening into the city at a point near the northern end of the road from the Bridge. The passage, guarded by towers, would have its exit some distance to the eastward, and probably, before it reached the outer country, passed back under the wall. We see arrangements of this kind at any place, like Pompeii, where a Roman fortification unaltered may be examined.

We have thus, I hope, traced the beginnings of our great city, not so clearly as to its origin as could be wished, but sufficiently as to its development from a Roman fort or bridge head. Others will take up the tale here and show how the walls and gates, the churches and the great castle, the double market and riverside landing places, became by degrees the greatest city in the land. London, rather than royal Winchester, held the balance between Maud and Stephen, and with the election of Henry II., the first Plantagenet, we come upon the establishment of the modern municipal constitution and the long battle for freedom. The Londoner set a pattern to other English burghers. His keenness in trade, his vivacity, his tenacity of liberty and, perhaps above all, the combination of duty and credit which brought him wealth, have made his city what it is--the central feature of a world-wide empire.

THE TOWER OF LONDON

BY HAROLD SANDS, F.S.A.

It has been well and wisely said that "the history of its castles is an epitome of the history of a country," but the metropolis may proudly boast that it still possesses one castle whose history alone forms no bad compendium of the history of England, in the great fortress so familiarly known by the somewhat misleading appellation of "The Tower of London," of which the name of one portion (the keep) has gradually come into use as a synonym for the whole. Of the various fortress-palaces of Europe, not one can lay claim to so long or so interesting a history. The Louvre at Paris, though still in existence, is so as a comparatively modern palace, in which nothing now remains above ground of the castle of Philip Augustus, with its huge circular keep, erected by that monarch in 1204. The Alhambra at Granada is of a by no means so remote antiquity, as the earlier portion of it only dates from 1248, while the Kremlin at Moscow only goes back to 1367. Probably the sole building erected by a reigning monarch as a combined fortress and palace at all comparable with the Tower of London is the great citadel of Cairo, built in 1183 by Saladin, which, like it, is still in use as a military castle; but, secure in its venerable antiquity, the Tower is superior to all. The greater portion of the site upon which the Tower stands has been occupied more or less since A.D. 369, when, according to Ammianus, the Roman wall surrounding the city of London was built. At this point, which may be termed its south-eastern extremity, the wall crossed the gentle slope that descended to the Thames bank, on reaching which it turned westwards, the angle being probably capped by a solid buttress tower or bastion. Although Roman remains have been found at various points within the Tower area, it is not likely that any extensive fortification ever occupied the sloping site within the wall at this point, for the original Roman citadel must be sought for elsewhere, most probably upon the elevated plateau between the valley of the Wallbrook, and Billingsgate, where even now there stands in Cannon Street, built into a recess in the wall of St. Swithin's church, a fragment of the ancient Roman milestone, or _milliarium_ (known as "London Stone"), from which all distances along the various Roman roads of Britain are believed to have been reckoned. From what is known of the Roman system of fortification, it is obviously improbable that there should have been any extensive fortress erected upon the site where the Tower now stands. Not only would this have been opposed to the Roman practice of placing the _arx_, or citadel, as far as possible in a central and dominating position, but in the present instance it would actually have been commanded by higher ground to the north and west, while to the east free exit to the open country would have been seriously impeded by the extensive marshes (not as yet embanked and reclaimed) that then skirted the northern bank of the Thames.

According to the _Saxon Chronicle_,[1] King Alfred "restored" London in 886, and rebuilt the city wall, where it had become ruinous, upon the line of the ancient Roman one; and, until the Norman Conquest, it seems to have remained practically unaltered, nor does it appear to have been damaged by the various Danish attacks in 994, 1009, and 1016,[2] though frequently repaired afterwards during the Middle Ages. Without the wall was a wide and deep ditch, while between the edge of the ditch and the foot of the wall was the characteristic "berm," or external terrace, about ten feet in width.[3] There is every reason to suppose that this wall and ditch extended right across what is now the inner ward, or bailey of the Tower, as far as what was then the river bank, to a point somewhere near the site of the present Lanthorn Tower "k," where it turned to the west; for when, in 1895, the range of buildings of fourteenth century date (then known as the Great Wardrobe, "3") that formerly concealed the eastern face of the White Tower was removed, part of the ancient Roman wall was found to have been preserved within it, and a fragment, having the usual bonding courses of Roman tile bricks, has been spared, which may now be seen above ground close to the south-east angle of the keep, together with the remains of the Wardrobe Tower "s." If a line is drawn northward from this point[4] across the present moat, it will be found to meet what remains of the old city wall, which is still partly visible above ground in a yard known as "Trinity Place," leading out of the eastern side of Trinity Square, on Great Tower Hill. Such Roman remains as have been found within the Tower area do not tend to favour the supposition that any large buildings, save ordinary dwellings of the period, ever occupied the site. On his first approach to the city from Kent, when Duke William discovered that so long as he was unable to cross the Thames London could not be immediately reduced, after burning Southwark in order to strike terror into the citizens, he left it a prey to internal dissensions, and having in the meantime received the submission of the ancient Saxon capital of Winchester, he passed round, through Surrey, Berkshire, and Hertfordshire, by a route, upon which the ravages of the Normans are clearly indicated in _Domesday Book_,[5] to a position on the north of London, thus gradually severing its communications with the rest of England, so that neither men nor convoys of provisions could enter its walls. Placing camps at Slough, Edmonton, and Tottenham, William himself remained some distance to the rear of these last with the main body of the army, and it seems probable that the actual surrender of London took place at or near Little Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire,[6] some four miles to the east of Hatfield, and then about eighteen miles to the north of the city, which could be seen in the distance from the high ground hard by.

According to Orderic, William, after his coronation at Westminster, spent some days at Berkhampstead, during which "some fortifications were completed in the city for a defence against any outbreaks by its fierce and numerous population."[7] Meagre in details as is the history of this early period, it would appear from the foregoing passage that William caused two castles to be erected, one at either end of the city, hard by the river bank, the western one becoming the castle of that Ralph Baynard who gave his name to it and to the ward; the eastern one (after the building of its stone keep) receiving the appellation of the Tower of London.

When erected on new sites, the early castles seem to have consisted of a bailey, or court, enclosed by wooden palisades, and a lofty circular mound, having its apex crowned by a wooden tower dwelling, also within a stockade, the whole enclosed by a ditch common to both; but though nothing remains of these early castles in London, it seems probable that the mound was dispensed with, and that the angle of the wall was utilized to form a bailey, the side open to the city being closed by a ditch and bank, crowned by stout palisades of timber, while the Roman wall would be broken through where the ditch abutted upon it at either end, the whole bearing a strong resemblance (allowing for the difference in the site) to the castle of Exeter. Orderic goes on to say that William at once built a strong castle at Winchester, to the possession of which he evidently attached greater importance than that of London, where the great stone keep was probably not even commenced till quite a decade later, though Pommeraye, in a note to his edition of _Orderic_, tells us "that it was built upon the same plan as the old Tower of Rouen, now destroyed."

The advantages of the site selected for the Tower were considerable, the utilization of the existing Roman wall to form two sides of its bailey, its ditch isolating it from the city, while it was so placed on the river as to command the approach to the Saxon trade harbour at the mouth of the Wallbrook, then literally the port of London, and with easy access to the open country should a retreat become necessary.

It is much to be regretted that London was omitted from the Domesday Survey, for that invaluable record might have furnished us with some information as to the building of the Tower, and perhaps revealed in one of those brief but pithy sentences, pregnant with suggestion, some such ruthless destruction of houses as took place in Oxford and elsewhere[8] in order to clear a site for the King's new castle. Unless the site were then vacant, or perhaps only occupied by a vineyard (for these are mentioned in _Domesday Book_ as existing at Holborn and Westminster),[9] some such clearance must obviously have been made for even the first temporary fortifications of the Conqueror, although contemporary history is silent as to this. The _Saxon Chronicle_ tells us that "upon the night of August the 15th, 1077, was London burned so extensively as it never was before since it was founded,"[10] which may have determined William to replace the temporary eastern fortification by an enlarged and permanent castle, he having then completed the conquest of England and crushed the rebellions of his turbulent baronage.