_Parentalia_, is mentioned “a sepulchral earthen lamp figured with two
branches of palms, supposed Christian.” Comparing the description with
Figs. 165 and 166 there cannot be any doubt that Wren’s lamp was
Christian. In the British Museum is a little rough lamp found at
Tidworth, Wilts, which has a pair of palm branches, and I think that
there is another in Canterbury Museum; the former is so like others from
Syria in the Early Christian Room at the British Museum that there
cannot be a doubt that it is not a native work; possibly it was brought
back by a pilgrim from the Holy Land. Fig. 165 illustrates the seal of a
ring found at Fifehead Neville, Dorset, now in the British Museum; on it
we find the sign of Christ in the later form (in which the X has become
a cross) surmounted by a dove, and between two palms. It means something
like “the Believer resting on the victorious Cross of Christ.” The
earlier form of the monogram was made of the first two letters of the
name Christ, XP; the later form was formed by a cross and XP or P, and
this seems to have meant the Crucifixion.
[Illustration:
FIG. 165.
]
These comparisons will help to interpret a fascinating fragment of a
symbolical design engraved on a glass cup found at Silchester. Here,
instead of the sign for Christ, we find the upper part of a letter,
which can hardly have been anything else than T, for nothing else would
be central in the design, and in place of the dove we have a fish. T was
the early form of the sign of the cross, and is found several times in
the Catacombs; the fish is a rebus for the words Jesus Christ, God’s Son
Saviour (ΙΧΘΎΣ); the palms are again signs of victory. It seems to be an
early symbolical representation of Christ on the cross, and one of the
most interesting which exists (compare Figs. 46 and 47 in the British
Museum _Guide to Christian Antiquities_). Another tiny fragment of the
same glass has the letter O on it, and there must have been some short
inscription as well as the fish symbol and palms (Fig. 166).
[Illustration:
FIG. 166.
]
[Illustration:
FIGS. 167, 168, 169.
]
In the London Museum is an enamelled brooch in the form of a fish (Fig.
167). As the fish was a well-known Christian symbol, we may hardly doubt
that this brooch must be counted among our Christian antiquities. It is
exactly similar to a brooch illustrated by Mr. Ward (_Roman Era_, Fig.
75) as having been found in Rotherley. They are duplicates, and must
have come from the same “shop.” In _V.C.H._ it is recorded that a
fish-shaped enamelled fibula was found in excavations at London Wall in
1901-5 (compare _Builder_, December 13, 1902). This may be the same
piece. At Silchester a plain bronze brooch in fish form was found (Fig.
168). The fish symbol in an almost identical form is found engraved on a
pewter dish, one of a set found at Appleshaw (Hants) and now in the
British Museum (Fig. 169); the dish itself on which it appears is
sometimes described as fish-shaped, but it was rather a long oval with
projections at the ends. Another of the same set of pewter pieces has
the XP monogram engraved on it (Fig. 170). As a third of the pieces is
of the form of a chalice, there seems to be every reason to regard the
whole set as church plate, and I find this definitely asserted in an
article in the _Athenæum_ (August 11, 1906): “In 1890 a body was found
at Reading lying east and west, together with Roman British relics, and
a lead plate bearing three crosses; near by was another skeleton with a
small pewter chalice. This may be accepted as the grave of a Christian
priest. This chalice should be compared with that of a Roman altar set
of pewter recently found at Appleshaw.”
[Illustration:
FIG. 170.
]
As said before, when tombs and coffins were discussed, it is probable
that some of these represent Christian burials. A coin of the Emperor
Gratian bearing the monogram of Christ was found at Smithfield, together
with some wooden coffins, and it was probably buried as a sign of faith
(_V.C.H._). Two or three rough stone coffins found in Kent seem to have
been Christian. The first bishops of the Saxon church at Canterbury were
interred in stone coffins of a Roman type.
_St. Peters, Cornhill._—Ancient tradition, which may be traced back to
the twelfth century, claimed that the Church of St. Peter on Cornhill
was older than St. Paul’s Cathedral, and a church of Roman foundation.
The site is important, being close to (as I suppose) or within the
boundary of the Forum and Civil Basilica of Londinium. The main walls of
the present church are neither parallel with Cornhill nor square with
Gracechurch Street, and Roman foundations have recently been found in
the neighbourhood of the church. Until all the lines of the walls which
have been discovered have been carefully laid down on a large-scale
plan, it would be rash to offer any opinion as to a possible Roman
foundation of the church; but if the church should prove to have been
near, but outside the Forum, the position of the church at Silchester
would be significant evidence. If, on the other hand, the church site
proves to have been within the boundary of the Forum, its Roman
foundation would be improbable.
Recent records of finds near the church mention “an old piece of Roman
wall passing through the present wall of the church at a slight angle
under demolished buildings [along the north front].... This may possibly
belong to the original church” (March 2, 1922). From an article in _The
Times_ of September 29, 1922, I condense the following account of
discoveries made at the end of the year 1921 on the north side of St.
Peter’s Church: “A magnificent wall went down about 20 ft., but at 15
ft. were the footings. The wall was here 5 ft. wide; above the footings
were three courses of tiles four abreast, each 13 in. wide, making 52
in. wide. This wall had been plastered on the south side, and at some
subsequent date [?] rooms had been made by other walls, on the
plastering of which was still to be seen a pattern of imitation marble
or alabaster. There were two layers of plaster and then a layer of white
cement almost as thin as paper, on which designs had been painted by a
skilful artist. This wall had been broken down, and at a level 5½ ft.
higher, a tessellated pavement had been laid. Later, at 56 and 57
Cornhill, a similar wall was uncovered. The mortar joints between the
tiles were wide. The wall was found on the south [afterwards corrected
to _north_] side of the church wall, so that the ancient Church of St.
Peter was probably built inside what was a Roman fortress.” For fortress
I would read the Forum. The church can hardly have been founded in such
a position until the Forum had gone out of use and the Roman age in
Londinium had passed, but it might then very well have been constructed
within old Roman walls or on their foundations. We saw before that wall
tiles of exceptional size had been used in the Civil Basilica of the
Forum, and the tiles, 13 in. wide, mentioned above would seem to be of
the same size. Twenty-five years ago a Roman wall was found, described
as “very close to St. Peter’s upon Cornhill, of immense thickness,
proceeding in a westerly direction from Leadenhall Market, under the
Woolpack Tavern in Gracechurch Street, along St. Peter’s Alley, a few
feet on the south side of St. Peter’s, continuing under the
banking-house of Messrs. Prescott, Dimsdale & Co. (50 Cornhill),
_supposed_ to continue under the roadway of Cornhill, and appearing
again in the foundations of the new building now being erected on the
_north_ side of Cornhill (No. 70) for the Union Bank of Australia.”
(Middlesex and Herts _Notes and Queries_, 1897.) This wall, if one may
guess, appears to have been parallel to the 5 ft. wall on the north of
the church, and between them seem to have been important chambers of the
Forum buildings.
Dr. Bury has lately given reasons for thinking that the Romans did not
finally evacuate Britain until 442 (_J.R.S._, vol. x.).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
+CHAPTER XII+
THE ORIGIN OF LONDON[3]
“There Thames runs by beneath the wall,
Where pass the merchant vessels all,
From every land, both high and low,
Where Christian merchants come and go.”
TRISTRAM, _c._ 1175.
Footnote 3:
The substance of this chapter was read at the Society of Antiquaries
about 1917, but it has not been printed before.
_FIRST BRITISH CITIES._—Ancient cities were not planted down by an act
of will, they sprang up on lines of communication as centres of control
and commerce. On a geological map it appears that a chalk belt passes
from Kent to Hampshire towards the south bank of the Thames. From the
north bank another wide belt diverges to the north-east. The backbones
of these chalk regions are the North Downs of Kent and the Chiltern
Hills; they contain between them a long triangle of gravel drift and
marsh flats through which the Thames flows to the sea. These downs, as
we know to-day, when we find ourselves on them, are pre-eminently
walking grounds, and they must have been the prehistoric ways of
communication. “Primitive man traversed the ranges lengthways: in the
valleys were forests almost impenetrable, whereas the backbone of each
ridge would stand bald above the ocean of trees.” The oldest roads were
“Ridge-ways.” On the high Wiltshire downs at, or near, a point where the
southern system of downs converge, stands Stonehenge, and I cannot doubt
that it was in some way conceived as being a centre and “capital” of the
country. The Gauls recognised such a centre, or “omphalos,” near
Chartres. Since writing this, I find that Sir C. Oman has said, “Britain
must have had some focus corresponding to that for Gaul; possibly among
the prehistoric monuments of Salisbury Plain.” Stonehenge, I may say in
passing, is a monument of wrought stone set out with precision, and I
cannot see how it can be earlier than about 500-700 B.C.
The ancient trackway along the Chilterns, known as the Ickneld Way,
reached the Thames near Wallingford. Travellers going south and east
from this point struck across the narrow space of low broken ground
between the two chalk ranges by a short linking road. Silchester, the
capital of an important Brito-Belgic tribe, lies on or near the course
of such a road in a corn-bearing region. Silchester was the key of the
old road system over the Thames fords. It is known to have been one of
three most important pre-Roman British centres, and we may, I think,
look on it as the first British city.
The British city of Verulamium lay to the south of the Ickneld Way, in
the same great triangle between the two chalk regions which is here much
wider. The rise of this centre suggests that a road linking the two
chalk ranges had been found across the river valley much lower than
Silchester. The later Roman Watling Street, directed straight on
Verulam, formed such a link, and there are many reasons which suggests
that some underlying British trackway must have been the cause why
Verulam became important. Later, again, Colchester came to be the chief
city. Possibly it was favoured as being more remote when the Romans
should make an attack. It seems to have been named after the Celtic
war-god, and this may be significant. (In Roman days as in mediæval,
there was probably a ferry from Gravesend to Tilbury for direct access
to Colchester from Kent. This seems to be suggested by the Peutinger
roadmap.)
_Origin of London._—By origin I mean the beginning of a development
which led to the establishment of a port and commercial town. Doubtless
the site may have been occupied by some dwellers in the Stone Age. For
many centuries before the Roman conquest Britain had been in commercial
relations with the Continent. Just before the conquest Verulam was the
capital of the leading Celtic kingdom. This Brito-Belgic kingdom had its
southern boundary along the Thames and its eastern at the Lea, and these
are still boundaries of Middlesex. If this kingdom, with its capital
some twenty miles inland, had any sea-borne trade, its port must have
been on or near the site of London. It is even probable that this port
was the cause of the pre-eminence of the little kingdom to which it
belonged. The port was to Verulam what the Piræus was to Athens, Ostia
to Rome, Dover to Canterbury, and Southampton to Winchester. London was
doubtless the source of the wealth of King Cymbeline, and we might very
well look on him as the founder.
Dr. Guest argued that London was founded as a Roman camp at the time of
the Claudian conquest; but it is now agreed that the name is Celtic; and
it must not be forgotten that London is and always was a port. When we
first hear of London only seventeen years after the Claudian conquest,
it was already, as Tacitus says, famous for the number of its merchants,
and this must imply that it was a principal port. Dr. Haverfield, while
admitting that the name is Celtic, went on to say: “The name Londinium,
the place of Londinos, witnesses at most to nothing more than one wigwam
or one barn.” This “at most” can only mean that every town presumably
begins with one building; in London, however, the building is not likely
to have been a barn amid the bare gravels, but rather a boatman’s house.
Further evidence for the existence of a pre-Roman town is brought out by
the large number of Celtic objects found on the site and in the
neighbourhood, but they have never been properly catalogued as a group.
Dr. Haverfield allowed that three pieces of imported Samian ware in the
British Museum might belong to the period A.D. 10-40. “We might then
conclude that through the influx of Roman traders London had been noted
as a suitable trading centre a few years previous to the Roman conquest;
but the minute dating of these potsherds is not easy, and we must leave
the question of pre-Roman London unsettled. Either there was no
pre-Roman London, or it was an undeveloped settlement, which may have
been on the south bank of the Thames” (_Journ. Rom. Studies_, vol. i. p.
146). The evidence of such early imports is greatly strengthened by
other discoveries at Silchester. Mr. May, speaking of the early “Samian”
ware, says: “The Silchester examples are of much significance. Together
with the contemporary Belgic imitations they prove that the inhabitants
of the capital of the Atrebati were importing costly luxuries in
considerable quantities from Italy and Northern Gaul at the beginning of
the Christian era.” Early Belgic pottery has been found in London as
well as “Samian,” and there is in the British Museum a wine jar of an
early type found in Southwark. Some British pottery was doubtless made
in Londinium itself before the Roman conquest. Mr. Lambert has described
specimens of coarse wares in _Archæologia_. Of one of these he writes:
“Bead-rimmed pot, coarse grey ware, irregularly burnt. A pre-Roman type,
surviving into the Roman period.” He dates it A.D. 50-80, I suppose
thinking that it cannot have really been pre-Roman.
London above bridge is an inland city, the English capital; below bridge
it is a great seaport. In a description of England, published in 1753, I
find this: “That part of the Thames, which is properly the harbour, is
called the Pool, and begins at the turning out of Limehouse Reach and
extends to the Custom House quays. In this compass I had the curiosity
to count the ships, and I have found about 2000 sail of all sorts of
vessels that really go to sea.” In a twelfth-century rhyme on English
towns are the words, “London for ships most.” Bede describes London as a
great ship port. The city is placed just where the Thames widened into
an estuary. At Battersea the river was little wider two thousand years
ago than at present; it overflowed wide spaces of marsh about
Westminster and again contracted by London. Her high ground came close
to the water on the north, and on the Southwark side there was only a
narrow margin of low ground. Directly to the east of London was the low
land called in the Middle Ages “Wapping Marsh” (_Middlesex Feet of
Fines_). In the Pepys collection at Cambridge I have seen an engraved
plan of “Lands by Wall or Wapping Marsh, 1683: seven acres of land in
which the millponds and ditches did all over dispersedly lie.” Stow
tells of Limehouse marshes being “drowned.” Before the lower Thames was
embanked the river must have been two or three miles wide, at every
tide, a little below London, where the considerable little river, the
Lea, runs into it. The higher ground of the site of London is in the
angle formed by the Thames and Lea, and is the extremity of the northern
hills, Highgate and Islington. From the hills several streams flowed
through deeply excavated beds into the Thames. The most considerable of
these was the Fleet; the smaller Walbrook intersected the site of the
city. Conyers in his MS. at the British Museum noted how the Fleet was
embanked in 1675 with material taken from old St. Paul’s, “to narrow-in
the spreading breadth of Fleet River.... The waters overflowed these
parts in the old times.” The general topographical conditions were well
observed by Drayton in _Polyolbion_—The city was built on a rising bank
of gravel and sand, surrounded by lower ground: the tide flowing up the
Lea and Fleet prevented the town from growing too long: to the north and
south of the Thames were ranges of hills: “And such a road for ships
scarce all the world commands.”
_Way to the Port._—The men who first came to the site of London must
have come from the higher ground of Islington and Highgate; they did not
cross the Lea or the Fleet. Before some engineering was done the natural
way was from the direction of Verulam. Now, an ancient road lies along
this course from St. Albans to Aldersgate. As it approaches London it
passes between the Walbrook and the Fleet, pointing towards what the old
tablet near St. Paul’s says is the highest land in the city. The
Walbrook where it fell into the Thames must have had steep clean gravel
banks containing a tidal inlet—a perfect landing-place where small
ancient ships could be brought alongside. This creek, afterwards known
as Dowgate, must have been the original port of London. Along the old
road wine, pottery and bronzes were carried into the interior, and corn
was brought for export. Dowgate is known as a port for foreign ships
from Saxon days (Round’s _Commune of London_). It is especially
interesting to find from Stow that in the fifteenth century the Abbot of
St. Albans had a quay by Dowgate. (Old writers supposed that “Dow”
represented the British word for water; recent scholars equate it with
_Dove_; but even so there is the curious analogy with Dover and such
like place-names.) The Roman gates of London, of course, opened on
important routes, and “the street from Aldersgate to Islington” is
mentioned in the twelfth century (_Middlesex Feet of Fines_). Stow says:
“From the further end of Aldersgate Street straight north to the Bar is
called Goswell Street. Beyond leaving the Charterhouse on the left hand
the way stretcheth up towards Iseldon.” Again on the old woodcut,
usually called Aggas’s map, the street out of Aldersgate is inscribed
“the way to St. Albans.” That excellent old book, John Nelson’s _History
of Islington_, carries the account of this road forward, and he thought
that it was Roman. He quotes a passage from Norden, to the effect that
it passed east of Highgate through Tollington Lane to Crouch End,
Hornsey Park, Muswell Hill, etc. “Tolentone,” he points out, is
mentioned in _Domesday_. This road is laid down on old maps. Recent
modifications at Islington may be made out by comparing maps given by
Nelson and by Lewis in 1842.
I now quote the passage relating to this old ridgeway road to Verulam
from Norden’s MS. (British Museum, 570). He begins at Clerkenwell
instead of from the City: “It is not to be omitted to declare the old
and ancient highways heretofore used by our fathers though the new be of
greater regard and account for that they yield more ease unto the
travellers. There was an old way that passed from Clerkenwell as also
from Portpoole [Gray’s Inn] towards Barnet and so to St. Albans. From
Clerkenwell it extended as the way now is unto a bridge or brooke
between Gray’s Inn Lane and Pancras Church, near which brooke it entered
into an old lane leaving Pancras Church on the west. It is called
Longwich Lane, through which lane it passed along leaving also Highgate
on the west and passed through Tollington Lane, whence it extended to
Crouch End and thence through the Park to Muswell Hill near by Colney
Hatch and so to Friern Barnet, from thence to Whetstone and there
meeteth the new way. The cause why travellers left this old and ancient
way was the deep and dirty passage in the winter.”
The road is well described in Pennant’s Tour (1782): “On quitting St.
Albans I passed the wall of Sopwell Nunnery mixed with quantities of
Roman tiles. After London Colney on the Colne I reached Ridgehill (!), a
most extensive view. At South Mimms enter Middlesex and about a mile
farther made Barnet; in Saxon times a vast wood filled this tract. From
this town is a quick descent. Just beyond Whetstone the road passes over
Finchley Common, infamous for robberies, and often planted with gibbets.
About a mile beyond stands Highgate, a large village seated on a lofty
eminence overlooking the smoky extent beneath. Here, in my memory, stood
a gateway at which in old time a toll was paid to the Bishop of London
for liberty, granted between four and five hundred years ago, for
passing from Whetstone along the present road instead of the old miry
way by Friern Barnet, Colnie Hatch, Muswell Hill, Crouch End, and
leaving Highgate to the west by the Church of St. Pancras. After resting
for a small space over the busy prospect, I descended into the plain,
reached the metropolis, and disappeared in the crowd.”
The old miry way by Crouch End is, I cannot doubt, the original British
road from Verulam to Londinium. (St. Pancras, it may be mentioned here,
must be a very old settlement; near by was a bridge over the Fleet
River, at a later time called “Battle Bridge,” on which name theories
have been founded, but I think the bridge may have taken the place of
“Bradford in the Parish of St. Pancras,” mentioned in the _Feet of
Fines_, 23 H. viii.)
A summer’s day journey to London, such as Matthew Paris would have known
it, must have been of beauty unimaginable when the miry lane was not too
wet. Mention is made in the time of Henry VIII. of “a capital messuage
called Muswell Farm in the parish of Clerkenwell and Hornsey, and the
site of a certain chapel in the said parish, now dissolved, lately
called Muswell Chapel” (_Middlesex Feet of Fines_, 35 H. viii.). A
memory of the view of St. Paul’s rising from the midst of the walled
city is given in a little sketch by Matthew Paris himself. I find this
of Highgate in 1753: “On the summit of the hill a view over the whole
vale to the city, and that so eminently that they see the ships passing
up and down the river for twelve or fifteen miles below London.” Of
Hampstead: “The Heath affords a most beautiful prospect, for we see
within eight miles of Northampton, and the prospect to London and beyond
it to Banstead Downs, Shooter’s Hill, Red Hill, and Windsor Castle is
uninterrupted.”
A note of Camden speaks of another old road striking across to Edgware.
“Hampstead Heath, from which you have a most pleasant prospect of the
most beautiful city of London and the lovely country about it, over
which the ancient Roman military way led to Verulam by Edgworth and not
by Highgate as now, which new way was opened by the Bishop of London
about 300 years since.”
Drayton showed remarkable perception when, describing the hills about
London, he wrote of Highgate:
“Appointed for a gate of London to have been
When first the mighty Brute that city did begin;
Its holts to the east stand to look
Upon the winding course of Lea’s delightful Brook.”