outset a people of mixed race. But the Saxons, and especially the East
Saxons, prevailed. Strangely, it is Essex which has always prevailed in
London. The modern Cockney dialect, which says "laidy" and "baiby" for
lady and baby, and "whoy" and "hoigh" for why and high, is pure Essex:
you can hear it spoken all over the country districts of that
little-visited county: it is a dialect so strong that it destroys all
other fashions of speech, even the burr of Cumberland and the broad
drawl of Devonshire. Saxon London was mainly East Saxon. But, besides
the new owners of London, there was, first of all, some remnant of the
scattered Welsh. I do not mean the miserable survivors of Augustan
London, found in the place when it was first entered, but those Britons
who had taken refuge in the forests of Surrey, Sussex, and Middlesex,
and there lived as they could, until they could safely venture forth
among their conquerors. Gildas, as we have seen, speaks of these people;
and their skulls remain in the Saxon cemeteries to prove how great a
Celtic element survived among the English conquerors. Next, there were
the foreign merchants. This class formed a considerable proportion of
the better class; and it grew larger every day, because the East Saxon
was certainly not so sharp in affairs as the "man of Rouen;" nor was he
in business capacity equal to the Fleming and the German. But as
happens, _mutatis mutandis_, at the present day, those who were Flemings
and the men of Rouen, speaking their own language, under Ethelred, had
all become Londoners, speaking the English tongue, under Henry
Beauclerk.
It was, indeed, a complete revolution in his manners and customs for the
East Saxon when he exchanged his village community for a walled town.
Consider: at first he lived retired in the country, farming and
cattle-breeding, banded with other families for safety; he kept up the
customs of his fatherland, he carried on no trade, he suffered the old
towns to fall into ruin; his kinglet had no capital, but roamed about
from place to place, administering justice in the royal wagon; he
enjoyed a ferocious and blood-thirsty religion suiting his savage
disposition; he knew only the simplest arts; he could till the ground,
grind his corn, brew beer and mead, and work a little in metals; his
women could spin; he knew no letters; he looked for nothing better than
ever-recurring war, with intervals of peace and feasting; to die on a
battle-field was an enviable lot, because it carried him away to
everlasting happiness. Look at the same man four hundred years later. He
is now a Christian; he is, in a way, a scholar; he is an architect, an
artist, an illuminator, a musician, a law-maker, a diplomatist, an
artificer, a caster of bells, a worker in gold and silver; he carries
on fisheries; he is a merchant; he builds ships; he founds
trade-guilds--he is as far removed from the fierce warrior who leaped
ashore at Thanet as the Romano-Briton whom he conquered was removed from
the naked savage who opposed the arms of Cæsar.
The difference is chiefly due to his conversion. This has brought him
under the influence of Rome Ecclesiastic. It has educated him, turned
him into a townsman, and made growth possible for him. No growth is
possible for any race until it first accepts the creed of civilization.
[Illustration: LONDON STONE, CANNON STREET, AS IT APPEARED IN 1800]
London was converted in A.D. 604. This was a hasty and incomplete
conversion, executed to order; for the citizens speedily relapsed. Then
they were again converted, and in sober earnest put away their old gods,
keeping only a few of the more favorite superstitions; some of these
remain still with us. They were so thoroughly converted that the city of
London become a veritable mother of saints. There was the venerable
Erkenwald, saint and bishop, he who built Bishopsgate on the site of the
old Roman gate. There was St. Ethelburga, the wife of Sebert, the first
Christian king; her church still stands, though not the earliest
building, close beside the site of the old gate. There was St. Osyth,
queen and martyr, the mother of King Offa; her name also survives in
Size, or St. Osyth's, Lane, but the Church of St. Osyth was rededicated
to St. Ben'et Sherehog (Benedict Skin-the-Pig); you may see the little
old church-yard still, black and grimy, surrounded on three sides by
tall houses. English piety loved to dedicate churches to English
saints--more likely these than Italian or French--to look after the
national interests. Thus there were in London churches dedicated to St.
Dunstan, St. Swithin, St. Botolph (whose affection for the citizens was
so well known that it was recognized by four churches), St. Edmund the
Martyr, and, later on, when the Danes got their turn, churches to St.
Olaf and St. Magnus.
The Englishman, thus converted, was received into the company of
civilized nations. Scholars came across the Channel to teach him Latin,
monks came to teach him the life of self-sacrifice, obedience,
submission, and abstinence. The monastery reared its humble walls
everywhere; the first foundation of the first bishop of London was a
monastery. In times of war between the kinglets--when were there no
wars?--the monasteries, after the whole country had been converted, were
spared. Therefore the people settled around them, and enjoyed their
protection. The monastery towns grew rapidly and prospered. New arts
were introduced and taught by the monks, new ideas sprang up among the
people, new wants were created. Moreover, intercourse began with other
nations--the ecclesiastic who journeyed to Rome took with him a goodly
troop of priests, monks, and laymen; they saw strange lands and observed
strange customs. Some of them learned foreign languages, and even made
friendships with the men who spoke them, discovering that a man who
speaks another tongue is not necessarily an enemy. The Englishman was
changed; yet he remained still, as he always does, whether he creates a
new empire in America, or one in Australia, always an Englishman.
Meantime the kinglets made war with each other, and London became a
prize for each in turn. It passed from the East Saxon to the
Northumbrian, to the Mercian, to the West Saxon, as the hegemony passed
from one to the other. Each kinglet learned more and more to recognize
its importance and its value. One of the oldest civic documents extant
is a grant of King Ethelbald to the Bishop of Rochester. He gives him
the right of passing one ship of his own, or of another's, free of toll
into the port of London. The toll of incoming and outgoing vessels
formed, therefore, part of the royal revenue.
The history of London between A.D. 600 and the Norman Conquest is the
history of England. How the City fell into the hands of the Danes, how
it was finally secured by Alfred, how the Danes again obtained the City
without fighting, and how the Norman was received in peace, belong to
history. All this time London was steadily growing. Whatever king sat on
the throne, her trade increased, and her wealth.
The buildings, till long after the Norman Conquest, were small and mean:
the better houses were timber frames, with shutters or lattices, but no
glass for the windows; the poorer houses were of wattle and daub. The
churches were numerous and small. Some of them were still of wood,
though a few were built of stone, with the simple circular arch. The
first church of St. Paul's was destroyed by fire, a fate which awaited
the second and the third. By the time of Edward the Confessor the second
church was completed; but of this church we have no record whatever. The
Saxon period, as concerns London, is the darkest of any. You may see at
the Guildhall nearly everything that remains of Roman London. But there
is nothing, absolutely not one single stone, to illustrate Saxon London.
The city which grew up over the deserted Augusta and flourished for four
hundred years has entirely disappeared. Nothing is left of it at all.
The chief destroyer of Saxon London was the great fire of 1135, which
swept London from end to end as effectually as that of 1666. Had it not
been for these two fires, we should very likely have still standing one
or two of the sturdy little Saxon churches of which the country yet
affords one surviving example. Yet London is not alone in having no
monuments of this period. If we take any other town, what remains in it
of the years A.D. 600-1000? What is left in Rome to mark the reigns of
the eighty Popes who fill that period? What in Paris to illustrate the
rule of the Carlovingians? Fire and the piety of successive generations
have destroyed all the buildings.
For outside show the city of Edward the Confessor and that of the second
Henry were very nearly the same, and so may be treated together. The
churches burned down in 1135 were rebuilt in stone, but the houses
presented much the same appearance. Now, everybody who speaks of Norman
London must needs speak of William Fitz Stephen. He is our only
authority; all that we can do is to make commentaries and guesses based
on the text of Fitz Stephen.
[Illustration: BATTLE BETWEEN TWO ARMED KNIGHTS]
He was a clerk in the service of Thomas à Becket; he was present at the
archbishop's murder; he wrote a Life of the saint, to which he prefixed,
by happy inspiration, a brief eulogy of the City of London. It is far
too brief, but it contains facts of the most priceless importance.
London, we learn, possessed, besides its great cathedral, thirteen large
conventual churches and one hundred and twenty-six parish churches. The
White Tower was already built on the east side; the walls of the City,
now kept in good repair, encircled it on all sides except the river;
here the wall which had formerly defended the river front had been taken
down to make way for warehouses and quays; the Royal Palace stood
without the City, but connected with it by a populous suburb. Those who
lived "in the suburbs"--that is, about Chancery Lane and Holborn--had
spacious and beautiful gardens; there were also on this side pasture and
meadow lands, with streams and water-mills; beyond the pastures was a
great forest filled with wild creatures; many springs of water rose on
the north side. The City was so populous that of those who went out to a
muster, 20,000 were chosen as horsemen and 60,000 for the foot. We will
discuss the question of population later on. Meantime one may remark
that a force of 80,000 always ready to be called out means a population
of 320,000 at least, which is indeed absurd, especially when we consider
that the population of London, as shown by the poll-tax of Richard II.,
was only about 40,000.
There were three principal schools, but sometimes other schools were
opened "by favor and permission." We are not told what schools these
were; but there was always a school of some kind attached to every
monastery and nunnery. The boys were taught Latin verse, grammar, and
rhetoric; they disputed with each other in the churches on feast-days,
especially about the "principles of grammar, and the rules of the past
and future tenses"--truly, an agreeable pastime.
The different trades of the City were allotted their own places of work
and sale. Fitz Stephen does not name the various quarters, but they can
be easily ascertained from Stow, though the place assigned to each was
sometimes changed. Thus, the chief market and trading-place of the City
was always Cheap, a broad, open place with booths and sheds for the
exposure of wares, on the north and south. The names of the streets
leading out of Cheap indicate the trades that were carried on in them.
The streets called Wood, Milk, Iron, Honey, Poultry, mark the site of
certain markets on the north. Those named after Bread, Candles, Soap,
Fish, Money-changing, are shown on the south. Along the rivers were
breweries, of which one remains to this day; artificers of various kinds
were gathered together in their own streets about the town. This custom
of congregation was useful in more ways than one: it gave dignity to the
craft and inspired self-respect for the craftsmen, it kept up the
standard of good work, it made craftsmen regard each other as brethren,
not as enemies; it gave them guilds, of which our trades-unions, which
think of nothing but wages, are the degenerate successors; and it
brought each trade under the salutary rule of the Church.
There was then--there has always been--a great plenty of food in the
city of London; on the river-bank, among the vintners, there were
eating-houses where at all times of the day and every day there were
cooked and sold meat and fish and every kind of food. Once a week, on
Friday, there was a horse-fair in Smithfield without the walls; at this
fair there were races every week.
The young men of the City were greatly addicted to sports of all kinds:
they skated in winter, they tilted on the water and on land, they
fought, wrestled, practised archery, danced, and sang. They were a
turbulent, courageous, free and independent youth, proud of their city
and its wealth, proud of their power and their freedom, proud of the
trade which came to their quays from every part of the world. What says
Fitz Stephen?
"Aurum mittit Arabs: species et thura Sabæus:
Arma Scythes: oleum palmarum divite sylva
Pingue solum Babylon: Nilus lapides pretiosos:
Norwegi, Russi, varium grisum, sabelinas:
Seres, purpureas vestes: Galli, sua vina."
The good cleric is a little mixed in his geography. The Arabs certainly
had no gold to send; the Sabæans were, however, Arabs of Saba, in Arabia
Felix: they sent myrrh and frankincense; spices came from another
country. Why does he assign arms to the Scythians? Egypt had turquoise
mines, but no other precious stones. The purple garments of the Seres,
or Chinaman, are silks. Norway and Russia still send sables and other
furs, and France, happily, still sends claret.
The city (Fitz Stephen adds), like Rome, is divided into wards, has
annual sheriffs for its consuls, has senatorial and lower
magistrates, sewers and aqueducts in its streets--its proper places
and separate courts for cases of each kind, deliberative,
demonstrative, judicial--and has assemblies on appointed days. I do
not think there is a city with more commendable customs of church
attendance, honor to God's ordinances, keeping sacred festivals,
almsgiving, hospitality, confirming betrothals, contracting
marriages, celebration of nuptials, preparing feasts, cheering the
guests, and also in care for funerals and the interment of the dead.
The only pests of London are the immoderate drinking of fools, and
the frequency of fires. To this may be added that nearly all the
Bishops, Abbots, and Magnates of England are, as it were, citizens
and freemen of London, having their own splendid houses to which
they resort, where they spend largely when summoned to great
Councils by the King or by their Metropolitan, or drawn thither by
their own private affairs.
A noble picture of a noble city!
[Illustration: RIVER TILTING IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY]
Let us consider the monuments of the City. There remains of Saxon London
nothing. Of Norman London, the great White Tower, the crypt of Bow, the
crypt of St. John's Priory (outside the City), part of the church of
Bartholomew the Great, part of St. Ethelburga's, Bishopsgate; there is
nothing more.[7]
The cathedral of St. Paul's when Fitz Stephen wrote was slowly rising
from its ashes. It had been already twice destroyed by fire. First, the
church founded by Mellitus and beautified by Bishop Cedd and King Sebbi
was burned to the ground in the year 961. We know nothing at all of this
building or of its successor, which was destroyed in the year 1086.
Bishop Maurice began to rebuild the church in the following year, but it
was two hundred years before it was completed. This cathedral therefore
belongs to a later period. That which was destroyed in 1084 must have
resembled in its round arches and thick pillars the cathedral of Durham.
The church and the various buildings which belonged to it in the reign
of Henry I. were surrounded by a wall. This wall included the whole area
now known as St. Paul's Church-yard, and as far as Paternoster Row on
the north side. There were six gates to the wall; the sites of two are
preserved in the names of St. Paul's Alley and Paul's Chain. The
Bishop's Palace was on the north-west corner; the chapter-house was on
the south side of the church; on the north was a charnel-house and a
chapel over it; close beside this was a small enclosure called Pardon
Church-yard, where a chapel was founded by Gilbert à Becket, the saint's
father. This enclosure was afterwards converted into a beautiful
cloister, painted with a Dance of Death, called the Dance of St.
Paul's. Close beside Pardon Church-yard was the chapel of Jesus,
serving for the parish church of St. Faith until the chapel was
destroyed, when the parish obtained the crypt for its church. St.
Faith's is now coupled with St. Augustine's.
[Illustration: CRYPT: REMAINS OF THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST.
MARTIN-LE-GRAND, N.E.]
Of the thirteen large conventual churches mentioned by Fitz Stephen, we
may draw up a tolerably complete list: St. Martin-le-Grand, St.
Katherine's by the Tower, St. Mary Overies, Holy Trinity Priory, St.
Bartholomew's Priory, St. Giles's Hospital, St. Mary of Bethlehem, the
priory of St. John of Jerusalem, the nunnery afterwards turned into
Elsing's Spital, the nunnery of St. John Baptist, Hollywell, the nunnery
of Clerkenwell, the new Temple in Fleet Street, and the old Temple in
Holborn, perhaps make up the thirteen. I cannot believe that Fitz
Stephen could have included either Barking Abbey or Merton Abbey in his
list.
The most ancient monastic foundation, next to that of St. Paul's, was
St. Martin's House or College. Why St. Martin was so popular in this
country, which had so many saints of her own, is not easily
intelligible. Perhaps the story of the partition of the cloak at the
gate of Amiens, while the saint was still a soldier, struck the
imagination of the people. Certainly the saint's austerities at Ligujé
would not attract the world. In London alone there were the church of
St. Martin's, Ludgate Hill, said to have been founded in very early
Saxon times, that of St. Martin's Outwich, of St. Martin Orgar, St.
Martin Pomary, and St. Martin Vintry--five parish churches to attest his
sanctity and his popularity.
St. Martin-le-Grand, sanctuary and collegiate church, was a Liberty to
itself. Here criminals found safety and could not be arrested, a
privilege which lasted long after the dissolution of the religious
houses. Among the deans of St. Martin's was William of Wykeham.
One church only of the whole thirteen still stands. Part of the present
church of St. Bartholomew the Great is that actually built by Rahere,
the first founder, in the beginning of the twelfth century.
The story of Rahere is interesting but incomplete, and involved in many
difficulties. He is variously said to have been the king's minstrel,
the king's jester, a knight of good family, and a man of low origin, who
haunted great men's tables and made them laugh--nothing less than the
comic person of the period, entirely given over to the pleasures of the
world. In short, the customary profligate, who presently saw the error
of his ways, and was converted. The last statement is quite possible,
because, as is well known, there was at this time a considerable revival
of religion. The story goes on to say that, being penitent, Rahere went
on a pilgrimage. Nothing more likely. At this time, going on pilgrimage
offered attractions irresistible to many men. It was a most agreeable
way of proving one's repentance, showing a contrite heart, and procuring
absolution. It also enabled the penitent to see the world, and to get a
beneficial change of air, food, and friends. There were dangers on the
way: they lent excitement to the journey; robbers waylaid those of the
pilgrims who had any money; fevers struck them low; if they marched
through the lands of the infidel, they were often attacked and stripped,
if not slain; the plains of Asia Minor were white with the bones of
those cut off on their way to the Holy Land. But think of the joy, to
one of an inquiring and curious mind who had never before been beyond
sight of the gray old London walls, to be travelling in a country where
everything was new--the speech, the food, the wine, the customs, the
dress--with a goodly company, the length of the road beguiled by
pleasant talk! Everybody pilgrimized who could, even the poorest and the
lowest. The poorest could go as well as the richest, because the pilgrim
wanted no money--he would start upon his tramp with an empty scrip.
Such an one had naught to lose, and feared no robbers; he received bed
and supper every night at some monastery, and was despatched in the
morning after a solid breakfast. When he at length arrived at the
shrine for which he was bound, he repeated the prayers ordered,
performed the necessary crawlings, and heard the necessary masses; he
then returned home, his soul purified, his sins forgiven, his salvation
assured, and his memory charged with good stories for the rest of his
life. The English pilgrim fared sometimes to Walsingham, sometimes to
Canterbury, sometimes farther afield. He journeyed on foot through
France and Italy to Rome; he even tramped all across Europe and Asia
Minor, if he could be received in some great company guarded by the
knights of St. John to the Holy Land. The roads in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries were covered with pilgrims; the Mediterranean was
black with ships going from Marseilles, from Genoa, from Naples, to the
port of St. Jean d'Acre. Even the rustic, discovering that he, too,
simple and unlettered as he was, had a soul to be saved, and that it
would be better not to trust altogether to the last offices of the
parish priest, threw down his spade, deserted his wife and his children,
and went off on pilgrimage. At last the bishops interfered, and enjoined
that no one should be considered and received as a pilgrim who could not
produce an episcopal license. It was no longer enough for a man to get
repentance in order to get the run of the road and of his teeth; and,
since the episcopal license was not granted to everybody, the rustics
had to fall back on what the parish church afforded, and have ever since
been contented with her advice and authority.
[Illustration: THE FOUNDER'S TOMB, ST. BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT, E.C.,
FOUNDED 1123]
There was an Office of Pilgrims, which was to be rendered in the
following fashion: