Whether the Bread Street, Milk Street, and Cornhill markets date from the Saxon times is uncertain. It is not unlikely that they do, yet the earliest mention of them in London chronicles is found several centuries later.
We must be therefore content to search for allusions to London's growth and wealth in Saxon history, and there the allusions are frequent, clear, and interesting.
In the earlier time London fluctuated, according to one of the best authorities on Saxon history, between an independent mercantile commonwealth and a dependency of the Mercian kings. The Norsemen occasionally plundered and held it as a point d'appui for their pirate galleys. Its real epoch of greatness, however ancient its advantage as a port, commences with its re-conquest by Alfred the Great in 886. Henceforward, says that most reliable writer on this period, Mr. Freeman, we find it one of the firmest strongholds of English freedom, and one of the most efficient bulwarks of the realm. There the English character developed the highest civilisation of the country, and there the rich and independent citizens laid the foundations of future liberty.
In 896 the Danes are said to have gone up the Lea, and made a strong work twenty miles above Lundenburgh. This description, says Earle, would be particularly appropriate, if Lundenburgh occupied the site of the Tower. Also one then sees the reason why they should go up the Lea—viz., because their old passage up the Thames was at that time intercepted.
"London," says Earle, in his valuable Saxon Chronicles, "was a flourishing and opulent city, the chief emporium of commerce in the island, and the residence of foreign merchants. Properly it was more an Angle city, the chief city of the Anglian nation of Mercia; but the Danes had settled there in great numbers, and had numerous captives that they had taken in the late wars. Thus the Danish population had a preponderance over the Anglian free population, and the latter were glad to see Alfred come and restore the balance in their favour. It was of the greatest importance to Alfred to secure this city, not only as the capital of Mercia (caput regni Merciorum, Malmesbury), but as the means of doing what Mercia had not done—viz., of making it a barrier to the passage of pirate ships inland. Accordingly, in the year 886, Alfred planted the garrison of London (i.e., not as a town is garrisoned in our day, with men dressed in uniform and lodged in barracks, but) with a military colony of men to whom land was given for their maintenance, and who would live in and about a fortified position under a commanding officer. It appears to me not impossible that this may have been the first military occupation of Tower Hill, but this is a question for the local antiquary."
In 982 (Ethelred II.), London, still a mere cluster of wooden and wattled houses, was almost entirely destroyed by a fire. The new city was, no doubt, rebuilt in a more luxurious manner. "London in 993," says Mr. Freeman, in a very admirable passage, "fills much the same place in England that Paris filled in Northern Gaul a century earlier. The two cities, in their several lands, were the two great fortresses, placed on the two great rivers of the country, the special objects of attack on the part of the invaders, and the special defence of the country against them. Each was, as it were, marked out by great public services to become the capital of the whole kingdom. But Paris became a national capital only because its local count gradually grew into a national king. London, amidst all changes, within and without, has always preserved more or less of her ancient character as a free city. Paris was merely a military bulwark, the dwelling-place of a ducal or a royal sovereign. London, no less important as a military post, had also a greatness which rested on a surer foundation. London, like a few other of our great cities, is one of the ties which connect our Teutonic England with the Celtic and Roman Britain of earlier times. Her British name still remains unchanged by the Teutonic conquerors. Before our first introduction to London as an English city, she had cast away her Roman and imperial title; she was no longer Augusta; she had again assumed her ancient name, and through all changes she had adhered to her ancient character. The commercial fame of London dates from the early days of Roman dominion. The English conquest may have caused a temporary interruption, but it was only temporary. As early as the days of Æthelberht the commerce of London was again renowned. Ælfred had rescued the city from the Dane; he had built a citadel for her defence, the germ of that Tower which was to be first the dwelling-place of kings, and then the scene of the martyrdom of their victims. Among the laws of Æthelstan, none are more remarkable than those which deal with the internal affairs of London, and with the regulation of her earliest commercial corporations. Her institutes speak of a commerce spread over all the lands which bordered on the Western Ocean. Flemings and Frenchmen, men of Ponthieu, of Brabant, and of Lüttich, filled her markets with their wares, and enriched the civic coffers with their toils. Thither, too, came the men of Rouen, whose descendants were, at no distant day, to form a considerable element among her own citizens; and, worthy and favoured above all, came the seafaring men of the old Saxon brother-land, the pioneers of the mighty Hansa of the north, which was in days to come to knit together London and Novgorod in one bond of commerce, and to dictate laws and distribute crowns among the nations by whom London was now threatened. The demand for toll and tribute fell lightly on those whom the English legislation distinguished as the men of the Emperor."
BROAD STREET AND CORNHILL WARDS. (From a Map of 1750.)
In 994, Olaf king of Norway, and Sweyn king of Denmark, summoning their robber chieftains from their fir-woods, fiords, and mountains, sailed up the Thames in ninety-four war vessels, eager to plunder the wealthy London of the Saxons. The brave burghers, trained to handle spear and sword, beat back, however, the hungry foemen from their walls—the rampart that tough Roman hands had reared, and the strong tower which Alfred had seen arise on the eastern bank of the river.