“William Stephanides, or Fitzstephen, a monk of Canterbury, born of worshipful parents in the city of London, well brought up at the first under good masters, did more and more increase in honest conditions and learning; for ever in his young years there appeared in him a certain light of a gentleman-like disposition, which promised many good things, afterwards by him performed. Such time as other spent in brawls and idle talk, he employed in wholesome exercises for the honour of his country, following therein the example of Plato, and was very studious both in humanity and divinity.”
The city of London, his birth-place, the most noble of all other cities of this land, and the prince’s seat, situated in the south part of this island, he loved above all the other, so that at length he wrote most elegantly in Latin of the site and rights of the same. Leland, in divers of his books, commendeth him for an excellent writer. He lived in the reign of King Stephen, wrote in the reign of Henry II., and deceased in the year of Christ 1191, in the reign of Richard I.
THE SURVEY OF LONDON CONTAINING THE ORIGINAL, ANTIQUITY, INCREASE, MODERN ESTATE, AND DESCRIPTION OF THAT CITY
As the Roman writers,[2] to glorify the city of Rome, derive the original thereof from gods and demi-gods, by the Trojan progeny, so Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Welsh historian, deduceth the foundation of this famous city of London, for the greater glory thereof, and emulation of Rome, from the very same original. For he reporteth that Brute, lineally descended from the demi-god Æneas, the son of Venus, daughter of Jupiter, about the year of the world 2855, and 1108 before the nativity of Christ, built this city near unto the river now called Thames, and named it Troynovant, or Trenovant. But herein, as Livy, the most famous historiographer of the Romans, writeth, antiquity is pardonable, and hath an especial privilege, by interlacing divine matters with human, to make the first foundation of cities more honourable, more sacred, and, as it were, of greater majesty.
King Lud (as the aforesaid Geoffrey of Monmouth noteth) afterwards not only repaired this city, but also increased the same with fair buildings, towers, and walls, and after his own name called it Caire-Lud,[3] as Lud’s town; and the strong gate which he built in the west part of the city he likewise, for his own honour, named Ludgate.
This Lud had issue two sons, Androgeus and Theomantius, who being not of age to govern at the death of their father, their uncle Cassibelan took upon him the crown; about the eighth year of whose reign, Julius Cæsar arrived in this land with a great power of Romans to conquer it; the manner of which conquest I will summarily set down out of his own Commentaries, which are of far better credit than the relations of Geoffrey Monmouth.
The chief government of the Britons, and ordering of the wars, was then by common advice committed to Cassibelan, whose seigniory was separated from the cities towards the sea-coast by the river called Thames, about fourscore miles from the sea. This Cassibelan, in times past, had made continual war upon the cities adjoining; but the Britons being moved with the Roman invasion, had resolved in that necessity to make him their sovereign, and general of the wars (which continued hot between the Romans and them); but in the meanwhile the Troynovants, which was then the strongest city well near of all those countries (and out of which city a young gentleman, called Mandubrace, upon confidence of Cæsar’s help, came unto him into the mainland of Gallia, now called France, and thereby escaped death, which he should have suffered at Cassibelan’s hand), sent their ambassadors to Cæsar, promising to yield unto him, and to do what he should command them instantly, desiring him to protect Mandubrace from the furious tyranny of Cassibelan, and to send him into their city with authority to take the government thereof upon him. Cæsar accepted the offer, and appointed them to give unto him forty hostages, and withal to find him grain for his army; and so sent he Mandubrace unto them.
When others saw that Cæsar had not only defended the Trinobants against Cassibelan, but had also saved them harmless from the pillage of his own soldiers, then did the Conimagues, Segontians, Ancalits, Bibrokes, and Cassians, likewise submit themselves unto him; and by them he learned that not far thence was Cassibelan’s town, fortified with woods and marsh ground, into the which he had gathered a great number both of men and cattle.