Reference has already been made to a Danish settlement, and there seems some reason for placing it on the ground now occupied by the parishes of St Clement Danes and St Giles’s. For many centuries this district between Aldwich. London and Westminster was a kind of “no man’s land” having certain archaic customs. Gomme in his Governance of London (1907) gives an account of the connexion of this with the old village of Aldwich, a name that survived in Wych Street, and has been revived by the London County Council in Aldwych, the crescent which leads to Kingsway.
3. Norman (1066-1154).—To return to the condition of things after the great battle. The citizens of London were a divided body, and Duke William knowing that he had many friends in the city saw that a waiting game was the The Conquest. best for his cause in the end. The defeated chiefs retired on the city, led by Ansgar the Staller, under whom as sheriff the citizens of London had marched to fight for Harold at Senlac. They elected Edgar Atheling, the grandson of Edmund Ironside, as king, which the Saxon Chronicle says “was indeed his natural right.” On hearing of this action William marched towards London, when the citizens sallied forth to meet him. They were repulsed by the Norman horse, but with such loss to the latter that the duke thought it imprudent to lay siege to the city at that time, and he retired to Berkhampstead.[5] It is reported that William sent a private message to Ansgar asking for his support. The result was that Edgar and Earls Edwin and Morkere and “the best men of London” repaired to Berkhampstead, where they submitted themselves and swore fealty to the Conqueror.
Thus ends the Saxon period, and the Norman period in London begins with the submission of the citizens as distinct from the action of the rest of the kingdom, which submission resulted soon afterwards in the Conqueror’s remarkable Changes in the City. charter to William the bishop and Gosfrith the portreeve, supposed to be the elder Geoffrey de Mandeville. A great change was at once made both in the appearance and in the government of the city under Norman rule. One of the earliest acts of the Conqueror was to undertake the erection of a citadel which should overawe the citizens and give him the command of the city. The Tower was situated at the eastern limit of the city, and not far from the western extremity Castle Baynard was built.
The position of the city grew in importance, but the citizens suffered from severe laws and from serious restrictions upon their liberties. In August 1077 occurred a most extensive fire, such a one, says the Chronicle, as “never was before since London was founded.” This constant burning of large portions of the city is a marked feature of its early history, and we must remember that, although stone buildings were rising on all sides, these were churches, monasteries, and other public edifices; the ordinary houses remained as before, small wooden structures. The White Tower, the famous keep of the Tower of London, was begun by Gundulph, bishop of Rochester, c. 1078. In 1083 the old cathedral of St Paul’s was begun on the site of the church which Æthelbert is said to have founded in 610. But four years afterwards the chronicler tells us “the holy monastery of St Paul, the episcopal see of London, was burnt, and many other monasteries, and the greatest and fairest part of the whole city.” In this same year (1087) william the Conqueror died. In 1090 a tremendous hurricane passed over London, and blew down six hundred houses and many churches. The Tower was injured, and a portion of the roof of the church of St Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside, was carried off and fell some distance away, being forced into the ground as much as 20 ft., a proof of the badness of the thoroughfares as well as of the force of the wind, William Rufus inherited from his father a love for building, and in the year 1097 he exacted large sums of money from his subjects with the object of carrying on some of the undertakings he had in hand. These were the walling round of the Tower and the rebuilding of London Bridge, which had been almost destroyed by a flood. In 1100 Rufus was slain, and Henry I. was crowned in London. This king granted the citizens their first real charter, but this was constantly violated, when Stephen seized the crown on the death of Henry I., he tried successfully to obtain the support of the people of London. He published a charter confirming in general terms the one granted by Henry, and commanding that the good laws of Edward the Confessor should be observed. The citizens, however, did not obtain their rights without paying for them, and in 1139 they paid Stephen one hundred marks of silver to enable them to choose their own sheriffs. In this reign the all-powerfulness of the Londoners is brought prominently forward. Stephen became by the shifting fortune of war a prisoner, and the empress Matilda might, if she had had the wisdom to favour the citizens, have held the throne, which was hers by right of birth. She, however, made them her enemies by delivering up the office of justiciary of London and the sheriffwick to her partisan Geoffrey, earl of Essex, and attempting to reduce the citizens to the enslaved condition of the rest of the country. This made her influential enemies, who soon afterwards replaced Stephen upon the throne. The Norman era closes with the death of Stephen in 1154.
One of the most striking changes in the appearance of Norman London was caused by the rebuilding of old churches and the building of new ones, and also by the foundation of the great monastic establishments. The early history Early parishes. of the parishes of London is one of great difficulty and complexity. Although some of the parishes must be of great antiquity, we have little authentic information respecting them before the Conquest. The dedications of many of the churches indicate their great age, but the constant fires in London destroyed these buildings. The original churches appear to have been very small, as may be judged from their number. It is not easy, however, to understand how it was that when the first parishes were formed so small an area was attached to each. The parish church of which we have the most authentic notice before the Conquest is St Helen’s, Bishopsgate. It was in existence many years before the priory of the nuns of St Helen’s was founded. Bishop Stubbs in his Introduction to the Historical Works of Ralph de Diceto writes: “St Paul’s stood at the head of the religious life of London, and by its side, at some considerable interval, however, St Martin’s le Grand (1056), St Bartholomew’s, Smithfield (1123) and the great and ancient foundation of Trinity, Aldgate” (1108). The great Benedictine Religious foundations. monastery of Black Monks was situated away from the city at Westminster, and it was the only monastic house subject to the rule of St Benedict in the neighbourhood of London, although the houses of nuns, of which there were many dotted over the suburbs of London, were governed by this rule. In course of time there was a widespread desire in Europe for a stricter rule among the monks, and reforms of the Benedictine rule were instituted at Cluni (910), Chartreuse (about 1080) and Citeaux (1098). All these reforms were represented in London.
Cluniac Order.—This order was first brought to England by William, earl of Warren (son-in-law of William the Conqueror), who built the first house at Lewes in Sussex about 1077. The priory of Bermondsey in Surrey was founded by Aylwin Child, citizen of London about 1082.
Carthusians.—When this order was brought to England in 1178 the first house was founded at Witham in Somersetshire. In all there were nine houses of the order in England. One of these was the Charterhouse of London which was not founded until 1371 by Sir Walter Manny, K.G.
Cistercians.—It was usual to plant these monasteries in solitary and uncultivated places, and no other house, even of their own order, was allowed to build within a certain distance of the original establishment. This makes it surprising to learn that there were two separate houses of this order in the near neighbourhood of London. A branch of the order came to England about 1128 and the first house was founded at Waverley in Surrey. Very shortly after (about 1134) the abbey of Stratford Langthorne in Essex was founded by William de Montfichet, who endowed it with all his lordship in West Ham. It was not until two centuries afterwards that the second Cistercian house in the immediate neighbourhood of London was founded. This was the Abbey of St Mary Graces, East-Minster or New Abbey without the walls of London, beyond Tower Hill, which Edward III. instituted in 1350 after a severe scourge of plague (the so-called Black Death).
The two great Military Orders—the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem and the Templars—followed the Augustinian rule and were both settled in London. The Hospital or Priory of St John was founded in 1100 by Jordan Briset and his wife Muriel, outside the northern wall of London, and the original village of Clerkenwell grew up around the buildings of the knights. A few years after this the Brethren of the Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem or Knights of the Temple came into being at the Holy City, and they settled first on the south side of Holborn near Southampton Row. They removed to Fleet Street or the New Temple in 1184. On the suppression of the order by command of the pope the house in Fleet Street was given in 1313 by Edward II. to Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, at whose death in 1324 the property passed to the knights of St John, who leased the new Temple to the lawyers, still the occupants of the district.
The queen of Henry I. (Matilda or Maud) was one of the chief founders of religious houses, and so great was the number of monasteries built in this king’s reign that it was said almost all the labourers became bricklayers and carpenters and there was much discontent in consequence.