It would be interesting, if it were possible, to trace the gradual change in the manners and customs of the Saxons which enabled them to live in towns. That it was very gradual we may learn from the small number of towns in Saxon England, from the large number of Roman-British cities left “waste,” and from the fact that not until Alfred’s time did they begin to build or to restore the walls of their towns. It was, however, a Saxon population that occupied London as soon as the days of desolation were fulfilled. This is certain from the names of the streets, which, with one doubtful exception, are all Saxon—why the name of the river itself never became Saxon is a fact impossible to explain. First came the merchants with the sailors and the ships. They established themselves, as of old, along the river, beside the ports afterwards called Billingsgate and Dowgate or Walbrook. These ports with their quays were easily repaired by means of piles and planks. The ships and traders came with the spring, and in the summer the chapmen, with their caravans of pack-mules and pack-horses, rode from one clearing to another with their wares. Then it became convenient that some should stay all the year at the port. The streets within the river wall began to be reconstructed and houses rose, and the country folk, losing their dread of magic, began to drop in and to settle among the ruins of Augusta and near their new friends the foreign merchants.

GREGORY THE GREAT, ST. BENEDICT, AND ST. CUTHBERT
From St. Athelwold’s “Benedictional” (10th cent.).

The site of the Citadel was still marked by a broad and open area; its walls were gone—we have seen that they were used to build the City wall; it was partly occupied by buildings then in ruins; its four gates were all open—through them ran the road for wheeled vehicles to London Stone, and so down to London Bridge. North of these streets, i.e. north of Cannon Street, lay a great expanse of land, enclosed by the wall, with the remains of Roman villas and the débris of streets and houses lying scattered over it. This large area was the ancient Augusta. A great part of it was cultivable land overgrown by trees and bushes, wanting nothing more than the removal of foundations here and there and the clearance of the underwood. Where there is cultivable land there will be land-owners. Before long every acre within the wall had its proprietor. From private property thus acquired by settlement grew up most of the City wards; they were manors belonging to certain families. On this subject I have spoken elsewhere. (See Mediæval London, vol. ii. chapter v.) The Saxon settlement of London, according to this view, followed the return of the foreign merchants. They repaired the quays and restored the ports; it is probable that they repaired the wooden bridge. They occupied that part of Thames Street which lies round the mouth of the Walbrook and Billingsgate. The country people, perceiving that no harm followed, despite the magic of the walls, began to settle in the waste parts of the north within the old walls. There they carved out estates and made farms and orchards, and gradually filled up the whole area, and, also gradually, learned the meaning of trade. As they filled up the area enclosed by the walls, they absorbed the mixed population of foreign residents, craftsmen, and the “service” of the port. This view of a gradual settlement, in the north first, afterwards spreading south, seems partly borne out by the broad waste places—the Room-lands and ground in the Saxon city. Thus West Cheap, now a narrow street, was then a broad waste-land; there was another Room-land at East Cheap on the site of the old Roman citadel; and there were Room-lands near Billingsgate and Dowgate. That there was also a Room-land at Newgate may be accounted for by the simple fact that here were the shambles, and that no one cared to settle down, build a house, and cultivate a piece of ground in a place so foul and noisome.

LADY IN A CHARIOT
Prudentius MS., 24199.

And if Bede is right in saying that London in 604 was a “mart of all the nations,” then this Saxon occupation must have commenced fifty years before—we can hardly suppose a period of less than fifty years for the re-establishment of London trade; but the silence of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as to the restoration of London, and the vagueness of Bede’s statement made two hundred years afterwards, forbid us to consider the assertion that London was “the mart of all the nations” to be accepted literally.

As for the people by whom the settlement of London was effected, they could be no other than the East Saxons, the people of Essex. If we look at the map, it is clear that the situation of the town invited them, and that in a very remarkable manner it lay open to them. The river, peculiarly their own river, for they were settled along the coast where it rose above the marshes, conveyed them easily to the place. An impenetrable forest covered the whole of the north, but left a way over a high moorland, between the forest and the marsh, from the settlements along the shore to the walls of London. There was no such way open for the men of Mercia, of Anglia, of Kent, or of Wessex; to them there was only the river.

To the argument from the nature of the site we must add the very important fact that, when first we hear of London restored, the City is under the rule of the King of Essex. It is true that the overlord of Essex was the King of Kent. But if London had been settled by the men of Kent, how would the King of Essex, never so strong as other kinglets, have acquired his right of superiority?

I must, however, refer to a paper read by Mr. T. W. Shore before the London and Middlesex Archæological Society in March 1900, in which he contends that London was resettled from Kent. His argument is, briefly, as follows:—