London Before the Conquest

by W. R. Lethaby

EX OFFI
HONORII.

A similar inscribed ingot was found not long since in the castrum at Richborough, and this goes to raise the old theory of a treasury at the Tower again.

The account given by William of Poitiers seems to show that the Conqueror took over and added to an existing stronghold (see Freeman), and Geoffrey of Monmouth, writing within the lifetime of those who were living at the Conquest, and when the Norman Tower was barely finished, attributes the “prodigiously big tower” by Billingsgate to Belinus. Elidure, a descendant of Belinus, he tells us, was shut up in the Tower at Trinovantum (London). All tradition is in favour of its having been a stronghold before the Conquest, and Henry of Huntingdon, c. 1130, says that Eadric’s head after his execution by Cnut was placed on the highest battlement of the Tower of London. Again, there is no tradition of the Conqueror having taken land from the city for the foundation of his Tower. “Who built the Tower of London?” asks Dr. Maitland. “Let us read what the chronicler says of the year 1097: ‘Also many shires which belonged to London for work were sorely harassed by the wall that they wrought around the Tower, and by the bridge, which had been nearly washed away, and by the work of the King’s Hall that was wrought at Westminster.’ There were shires or districts which from of old owed work of this kind to Londonbury.”[110]

According to the Welsh story, Bran the Blessed, King of Britain, “exalted from the crown of London,” when wounded in battle commanded that his followers should cut off his head. “‘And take you my head,’ said he, ‘unto the White Mount in London and bury it there with the face towards France.’ And they buried the head in the White Mount. It was the third ill-fated disclosure when it was disinterred, as no invasion from across the sea came to this island while the head was in concealment.” The White Hill is always explained to mean the Tower of London.[111]

In the story of Bran we get the constantly recurring idea of a palladium. It seems to be referred to again in Merlin’s prophecy, “Till the buried kings be exposed to view in London.” Some object like the statue of Pallas in Troy, and the shield of Numa in Rome, was, as it were, the soul of a city. In Geoffrey of Monmouth a brazen horse on Ludgate figures as the protecting talisman; London Stone may have had some such mystical meaning attached to it by the Saxons (see [p. 181]), and the Shrine of Erkenwald in St. Paul’s was the sacred heart of the city in the Middle Age. That the idea of a palladium was known in Britain is proved by the case of the sacred stone of Scone—the Coronation Stone. A similar story is told of the tomb of Iver in the Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok. William the Conqueror had to break it down before he got the victory at Hastings.

Southwark or the Borough.—The Burgal Hidage, a document which has recently been critically examined,[112] containing “a list of ancient fortresses,” which dates from “the days of Edward the Elder at the latest,” gives us the earliest reference to Southwark. “It sets forth, so we believe, certain arrangements made early in the tenth century for the defence of Wessex against the Danish inroads. It names divers strongholds, and shows how in the great age of burh-building they had wide provinces which were appurtenant to them.”

Amongst the burhs named comes Sutheringa-geweorc, in a position which is satisfied by Southwark.[113] Dr. Maitland concludes generally that the boroughs had their origin in such royal burhs founded for national defence. “The borough belongs to the genus villa (tun), but it was in its inception royal.” The South-work was evidently a tête-du-pont, and became a royal borough. By means of special privileges such burhs, like the bastides of Edward I., attracted a heterogeneous population of traders, and Southwark became the great “cheaping town” of the Heimskringla, and “the Borough” par excellence to this day. In the Pipe Roll of 1130 it stands with Guildford as the second borough in Surrey, and it returned members to Parliament from the first. It must have been protected by a ditch, and remains of this, or of Cnuts dyke, might have given rise to the tradition recorded by Stow that the course of the Thames had been altered when the bridge was built by a trench cast from Rotherhithe to Battersea. The older Maitland seems to have gathered some evidence of its palisaded bank.[114] Even in the time of the Confessor the “burghers” are spoken of. Some coins of Ethelred II. bear the mint mark of Southwark: this also is a sign of being a royal burh. The whole of Surrey seems to have been under contribution for the maintenance of Southwark and Eashing [bridge?]. The churches of Southwark are of considerable antiquity. The parish church of St. Olave is mentioned 1096, and St. George’s and St. Margaret-on-the-Hill can be traced back to about 1100. Margaret Hill is the continuation of Borough High Street to St. George’s Church; the name may mark a military mound.

In Domesday it appears that Southwark had been subject to the Confessor and Godwine.[115] The men of Southwark testified that in King Edward’s time no one took toll on the Strand or in the Water Street save the king. Godwine had a house here, and he must have held the burh. In the dispute of 1051-52 between the Confessor and Godwine, the earl carried his forces up the river to Southwark, the burghers of which followed his cause and supported him by land. The king’s navy and land force faced him from the north. The Londoners sympathised with the earl, but officially it was a case of Southwark against the city.[116]

It would probably be possible even now to lay down the course of the “walls” (of earth, like Wareham and Wallingford) by comparing the boundary of the old manor or “town” with street lines and names and other evidence.[117] Godwine’s holding seems to have coincided with the gildable manor which extended along the river from St. Mary Overie’s dock to Haywharf in the east, and southward nearly to St. Margaret Hill. Two other adjoining manors were included in the parliamentary area. Even the site of the great earl’s manor house can, with some probability, be pointed to.[118] Excavations have shown that before Saxon days there was a considerable Roman settlement on the site of Southwark, and that the present High Street lies over the Roman approach to London. Roach Smith says that substantial remains of Roman houses have been found, particularly on both sides of the High Street up to the vicinity of St. George’s Church, in which district the wall paintings and other evidence indicated villas of a superior kind. Nearer the river, where the ground had been subject to inundation, the houses were built upon piles.

In 1016 Cnut, to turn the flank of the bridge, dug a “mickle dyke” on the south, and dragged his ships to the west side of the bridge. Sir W. Besant has shown that quite a little dyke a few yards long would go round the bridge end and take a Danish ship, but he has not considered the preliminary forcing of the South-work which would have been necessary. As to the probable course of the dyke, see Allen’s History of London, vol. i., and Faithorn’s map, 1658, which shows a considerable stream flowing into St. Saviour’s dock. It was required more for the investment of the stronghold than for the ships (which, as at Constantinople, could have been dragged over land), as shown by the complete passage: “They dug a great ditch on the south side, and dragged their ships to the west side of the bridge, and then afterwards ditched the city around, so that no one could go either in or out.”