Early London: Prehistoric, Roman, Saxon and Norman

by Walter Besant

London, in a word, was not afraid of William. We have seen that the City had been able to beat off six successive sieges by Danes and Northmen; and this within the memory of men over forty. Are we to believe that a city with such a history of defiance and victory was going to surrender because Duke William had won a single battle? Why, King Cnut had won a dozen, yet the town would not surrender. Then, as to the burning of Southwark. That suburb was never more than one line of houses on an embankment and two along a causeway. In times of peace there stood upon the causeway certain inns for the reception of traders and their goods; and on the embankment certain cottages for the fishermen of the Thames and some of the river-side people, the stevedores, lightermen, and wharfmen. The inns were wooden shanties, they were mere shelters; the cottages were mere huts of wattle and daub. In time of war the inns were deserted. If there were no traders there could be no need of inns. William’s soldiers fired these deserted inns, and, at the same time, the thatch of the fishermen’s huts; not with any deep political object, but, as I have said, because they were Norman soldiers, on whose coming the villages burst into spontaneous combustion. As for the fishermen, they looked on, with their families, from a safe position in their boats in the middle of the river. When the soldiers had gone they returned and put on a new thatch. As for the City’s feeling the least alarm because these cottages were burned, nothing could be more absurd. The City looked on from the battlements of her river-wall and shouted defiance. Then William turned and rode away. He had no stomach for a long and doubtful siege of London while the new armies of the English were forming.

The Londoners took time to consider their next step. They had within their walls Edgar Atheling, grandson of Edmund Ironside; they had many of the Bishops; they were quite strong enough to refuse submission: but they had also among themselves many “men of Rouen”; they were already familiar with the Normans; their Bishop, William, was of French, if not of Norman, origin. They took time, then, to consider; there was no hurry; they could keep out William as long as they pleased, just as they had kept out Cnut. They began, probably on the advice of the two earls, by electing young Edgar Atheling as their king. Why, however, did William sit down at Berkhampstead? It has been suggested that he could thus cut off the earls from their earldoms. But when they wished to withdraw from London, they did so, and betook themselves to these earldoms without molestation, so that William did not cut them off. The reason for thus withdrawing is not apparent, though one can understand that the Atheling was unable to persuade or to command them to unite against the common enemy, and they retired to their own country, leaving the Londoners to themselves, seemingly without any promise or pledge to raise new armies in their own earldoms.

It is also suggested that, by harrying the country around, William was cutting off the City and depriving it of supplies. He certainly did harry the country, as is proved by the depreciation in the value of land wherever his footsteps had been (see English Historical Review, vol. xiii. No. 49). But, first of all, the harrying of the country was necessitated by the needs of the army which had to be fed; and secondly, London never was cut off: the river remained open, and Essex, once the garden of England, was not touched and still remained open.

In other words, neither the burning of Southwark, nor the harrying of the country, nor any threats of the Conqueror moved the proud City at all. She who had beaten off Cnut—still living in their memory as the great king—even when he had command of the river and had invaded the City by land, who had broken down six sieges of the Danes, was certainly not going to surrender at a word because the invader had won a single victory.

KING HAROLD SHOWN IN A MÊLÉE OF FIGHTING-MEN
Vit. MS., A. xiii.

William, for his part, did well to consider before attacking London. Thirty years before, as he knew perfectly well, another king had ridden to London like himself, only to find the gates shut. Cnut laid siege to London: he was beaten off: he had to divide the kingdom with Edmund Ironside. Not till London admitted him was he truly King of England. William certainly knew this episode in history very well, and understood what it meant. In the north there were Saxon lords who needed nothing more than the support and encouragement of London to raise an army equal to that of Harold’s, and to march south upon him. William, who had many friends in London, therefore waited.

In London there was much running to and fro; much excitement, with angry debates, in those days. The funeral procession, simple and plain, carrying the body of Harold from the field of battle to the Abbey of Waltham, had passed through the City. It must have passed through the City, because there was no other way. The King was dead; who was to succeed him? And some said Edgar Atheling; and some said nay, but William himself—strong as Cnut; just as Cnut; loyal to his people as Cnut.

First they chose the Atheling, but when the great bell of St. Paul’s rang for the Folkmote, to Paul’s Cross all flocked—the craftsmen in their leathern doublets, the merchants in their cloth. All assembled together; all the citizens and freemen of the City, according to a right extending beyond the memory of man, and a custom as old as the City itself, claiming for every man the right of a voice in the management of the City.

Standing above the rest was the Bishop; silent at first amid the uproar, silent and watchful, beside him the Atheling himself, a stripling unable to wield the battle-axe of Harold; beside him, also, the Portreeve, the chief civil officer of the City; behind the Bishop stood his clergy and the canons of St. Paul’s. Outside the throng stood the “men of Rouen” and the “men of Cologne,” who had no voice or vote, but looked on in the deepest anxiety to learn the will of the people.