The commonly received history of the coming of the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons is chiefly legendary. It is impossible to arrive at the truth, save by conjecture from a very few facts ascertained. Thus it is supposed that the Saxons began, just as the Danes did four hundred years afterwards, by practical incursions leading to permanent settlements; that the words littus Saxonicum signified, not the shore exposed to Saxon pirates, but the shore already settled by Saxons; that in some parts the transition from Roman to Saxon was gradual; that the two races mixed together—at Canterbury, Colchester, Rochester, and other places we find Roman and Saxon interments in the same cemetery; that the Saxons had gained a footing in the island long before the grand invasions of which the Saxon Chronicle preserves the tradition.
This long history of warfare, of civil commotion, of mutiny and usurpation, of conscription and taxation, is not a pleasant picture of Britain under the famous Pax Romana. How did the City of London fare? It was the residence of the Proprætor before the new scheme of Diocletian. This is proved by the discovery of certain inscribed tiles. These tiles record the legions or the officers stationed in various places. At Chester they bear the name of the 20th Legion; at York, those of the 6th and the 9th. At Lymne and Dover the usual inscription is Cl.Br., supposed to mean Classiarii Britannici. Some of the tiles above referred to are inscribed PRB. Lon., or PPBR. Lon., or P.PR.BR. Roach Smith reads these letters Prima Cohors Britanniæ Londinii, and assumes that the first British Cohort was once stationed in London. Wright, however, reads Proprætor Britanniæ Londinii, thus showing that London was the seat of government. As there is no hint elsewhere that the first British Cohort served in Britain, but plenty of evidence as to its being elsewhere, as in Egypt and Germany, Wright’s interpretation is probably the correct one.
Except for the attempted sack of the City after the defeat of Allectus and for the sanguinary revenge by Paulus Catena, London seems to have been but little disturbed by the invasions and the mutinies and the usurpations. Her trade went on. In bad times, as when Magnentius or Maximus drew off the soldiers, and the invaders fell upon the country on the north, the east, and the west, destroying the towns and laying waste the country, London suffered. In the intervals of peace her wharves were crowded with merchandise and her port with ships.
The introduction of Christianity into London, as into Britain generally, began, there can be little doubt, in the second century. The new religion, however, made very slow progress. The first missionaries, believed to have been St. Paul or St. Joseph of Arimathæa, with Lazarus and his two sisters, were probably converts from Gaul who came to Britain in pursuit of their ordinary business. In the year 208 Tertullian mentions the existence of Christians in Britain. Early in the fourth century there were British Bishops at the Council of Arles.
In 324 Christianity was recognised as the religion of the State.
In the year 325 the British Church assented to the conclusions of the Council of Nicæa. In 386 there was an Established Christian Church in Britain, in habitual intercourse with Rome. As to the reality of the Christianity of the people and how far it was mixed up with remains of Mithraism and the ancient faiths of Rome and Gallia, we have no means of judging.
BRONZE ROMAN LAMP FOUND
IN CANNON STREET
What was the government of London itself at this time? We can find an answer in the constitution of other Roman towns. London never became a municipium—a town considered by the Imperial authorities as of the first importance. There were only two towns of this rank in Britain, viz. Eboracum (York) and Verulam (St. Alban’s). It was, with eight other towns, a colonia. Wright[16] is of opinion that there was very little difference in later times between the colonia and the municipium. These towns enjoyed the civitas or rights of Roman citizens; they consisted of the town and certain lands round it; and they had their own government exempt from the control of the Imperial officers. In that case the forum would not necessarily be placed in the fort or citadel, which was the residence of the Vicarius when he was in London with his Court and establishment. At the same time this citadel occupied an extensive area, and the City being without walls till the year 360 or thereabouts, all the public buildings were within that area. The governing body of the City was called the curia, and its members were curiales, decuriones, or senators; the rank was hereditary, but, like every hereditary house, it received accessions from below. The two magistrates, the duumviri, were chosen yearly by the curia from their own body. A town council, or administrative body, was also elected for a period of fifteen years by the curiales from their own body; the members were called principales. The curia appointed, also, all the less important officers; in fact it controlled the whole municipality. The people were only represented by one officer, the defensor civitatis, whose duty it was to protect his class against tyrannical or unjust usurpations of power by the curiales. No one could be called upon to serve as a soldier except in defence of his own town. The defence of the Empire was supposed to be taken over by the Emperor himself. Let every man, he said, rest in peace and carry on his trade in security. But when the Emperor’s hands grew weak, what had become of the martial spirit? The existence of this theory explains also how the later history of the Roman Empire is filled with risings and mutinies and usurpations, not of cities and tribes, but of soldiers. At the same time, since we read of the British youth going off to fight in Germany and elsewhere, the country lads had not lost their spirit.[17] The people of London itself, however, may have become, like those of Rome, unused to military exercises. Probably there was no fear of any rising in London, and there was not a large garrison in the citadel. The citizens followed their own trade, unarmed, like the rest of the world; even their young men were not necessarily trained to sports and military exercises. Their occupations were very much the same as those of later times: there were merchants, foreign and native, ship-builders and ship-owners, sailors, stevedores and porters, warehousemen, clerks, shopmen, lawyers, priests, doctors, scribes, professors and teachers, and craftsmen of all kinds. These last had their collegia or guilds, each with a curialis for a patron. The institution is singularly like the later trade guilds, each with a patron saint. One would like to think that a craft company, such as the blacksmiths’, has a lineal descent from the Collegium Fabrorum of Augusta. But as will be proved later on, that is impossible. London was a city of trade, devoted wholly to trade. The more wealthy sort emulated the luxury and effeminacy of the Roman senators—but only so long as the Empire remained strong. When one had to fight or be robbed, to fight or to be carried off in slavery, to fight or to die, there was an end, I believe, of the effeminacy of the London citizens.
Let us consider this question of the alleged British effeminacy. We have to collect the facts, as far as we can get at them, which is a very little way, and the opinion of historians belonging to the time.