With his horn, as the horn of the rhinoceros, may he scatter the nations to the extremities of the earth; and may He who has ascended to the skies be his auxiliary for ever!’
Here the coronation ends.”
[CHAPTER VIII]
SAXON REMAINS
As for the monuments which remain of Saxon London there are none; the Roman monuments are older, the mediæval monuments are later. There is not one single stone in the City of London which may be called Saxon. In Westminster the fire of 1835 swept away the buildings which belonged perhaps to Cnut; certainly, with alterations, to Edward the Confessor. Some of the bases of Edward’s columns still exist under the later pavement; the chapel of the Pyx, and portions of the domestic buildings appropriated to the use of the school, were built by Edward.
ANCIENT ENAMELLED OUCHE IN GOLD
DISCOVERED NEAR DOWGATE HILL;
PROBABLY 9TH CENTURY
Roach Smith’s Catalogue of London Antiquities.
Of Saxon coins many have been found. Perhaps the most important find happened on June 24th, 1774, in clearing away the foundations of certain old houses near to the church of St. Mary at Hill, when a quantity of coins and other things placed in an earthen vessel eighteen or twenty inches beneath the brick pavement or cellar were dug up. The vessel was broken by the pickaxe and the coins fell out upon the ground. The workmen, thinking from their blackened appearance that they were worthless, threw them away, but a foreman, finding that they were silver, collected all he could, some three or four hundred pieces. Within the earthen vessel was a smaller one containing coins in a high state of preservation, together with a fibula of gold finely worked in filigree, with a sapphire set in the centre, and four pearls, of which one was lost. The coins consisted entirely of pennies of Edward the Confessor, Harold II., and William the Conqueror. They are stamped with the name of the Moneyer and the place where he kept his Mint. The Minters or Moneyers belonging to London were:—
(1) Under Edward the Confessor: