Fig. 5.—Coin of Cunobelin (enlarged).
It is difficult to see why under Dr. Guest’s theory of Roman foundation, which is accepted in Green’s Making of England, London should have had a Celtic name at all. Dr. Rhys says that the name was so ancient that the Roman attempt to change it to Augusta failed. That it was a local habitation before the Roman occupation seems to be almost proved by the prehistoric and early objects found on the site, amongst which are four or five inscribed coins of Cunobelin (Cymbeline) found in the city and neighbourhood; and it seems unlikely that a mere camp in 43 would have grown in 61 to the important place celebrated by Tacitus. Green says that the chief argument against its antiquity is the fact that the great Watling Street[11] passed wide of the city through Westminster, but surely there might be settlements below the lowest convenient passage of the river. The Watling Street, if earlier than the settlement, did not in any case cause the town to be built on its course, and, if later, it did not pass through the settlement. The argument, indeed, goes only to prove that either the Watling Street or London could not be where they are. Or, at most, it might be contended that the road was more likely to go to the town than the town was to settle on the road, and as they are not together, that the road may be earlier than the town; but of actual time the argument can show nothing. Altogether, nothing can be got out of this argument, and we are free to conclude that London is at least as old as our era.
Fig. 6.—Bronze Lamp, Roman, found in London.
The Legend of London.—Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history of the Britons, written about 1130, contains a legend of the founding of London, which tells how Brutus, migrating from Troy to this western island, formed the design of building a city. On coming to the Thames he found on its bank a site most suitable for his purpose, and building the city there, he called it New Troy—Troiam Novam, “a name afterwards corrupted into Trinovantum.” Here King Belinus afterwards built a prodigious tower and a haven for ships under it, which the citizens call after his name—Billingsgate—to this day. Still later King Lud surrounded the city with strong walls and towers, and called it Caer Lud; when he died his body was buried by the gate which is called in the British tongue Porthlud, and in the Saxon Ludesgata.
All this was received as firm history, until, with the critical reaction against “mere legend,” it was all cast aside as fiction and forgery. From this extreme position there is again a reaction, and Geoffrey is allowed to have founded on earlier writings, now in part lost, and to have embodied genuine folk-stories and lays of British origin.[12]
The Britons like all peoples must have had a legend of their origin, and this one falls in too well with the general type of such legends for it to be anything else than true folk-lore. Indeed, the legend of the derivation from Brutus, and of his Trojan antecedents, appears centuries before Geoffrey in Nennius, and the steps of its evolution can be easily retraced. The Britons required an eponimous founder for their race as much as the Israelites required an Israel, or the Romans a Romulus. This founder (a supposititious Brittus) was at some time equated with Brutus, and Britain, like so many cities in Italy, was said to be founded by a fugitive from Troy. From Cæsar we learn that a tribe of the Trinobantes was found by him near the north bank of the Thames. This true name of a tribe was in the legend made to yield a city, Trinovantum, and this step had been made before Bede and Nennius, who say that Julius defeated the Britons near a place called Trinovantum. This name in turn was explained by Geoffrey as being “a corruption” of Troy-novant. Thus “New Troy” again quite naturally connects “Brutus” (or Brittus) with “Old Troy,” and the whole scheme may date back to Romano-British days.