CHAPTER THREE
How the City grew (Saxon Days)
IN the year 410 the Romans were compelled to leave Britain. Troubles had become so great in Rome itself that it was necessary to abandon all the outlying colonies to their fate. From that moment began a century and a half of pitiful history for our country. There was now no properly drilled army to ward off attacks; and the raids of the “sea-robbers” increased in number and intensity. Saxons, Angles, and Jutes, they came in vast numbers, gradually working their way inland from the coast.
And what happened to Londinium, as the Romans called our city? We do not know, for there is a great gap in our history; probably it perished of starvation. We know that little by little the strangers increased their grip—the Jutes in Kent and Hampshire (and later in Surrey), the Saxons in Kent, Essex, and Sussex; and that as they did so London was gradually surrounded.
Now London was a comparatively large place, with a considerable population, even after the Romans had gone; and the slow tightening of the Saxon grip must have meant starvation, for everything London wanted for its use came from a distance, owing to the impossibility of growing anything in the surrounding marshy districts. And in the absence of any reliable account we can only assume that in consequence the inhabitants little by little deserted the city, and made their way westwards; that the quays were deserted, the ships rotted at their moorings, the finely constructed streets were befouled with grass and briars, the splendid villas fell to pieces, the great wall in places crumbled to ruins. So that when eventually the Saxons did reach London, after years of struggle and fierce engagements, their victory was a hollow one. And there is much to support this assumption, for we find that in their chronicles the Saxons make practically no mention of the first city of the land, which they most assuredly would have done had it been anything other than derelict. Nor did they stay at London when they arrived. Probably such a place of desolation was of no use to them; they were not interested in ruined cities; they wanted open ground with growing crops. So they passed on, and London probably stood silent and dead for years, the empty skeleton of a city, while Time and Nature completed the ruin which savage assaulters might otherwise have carried out. Thus we may conjecture ended the first of London’s three lives.
When, after a time, things settled down in Britain, a new London began to rise on the site of the old city. Gradually the folk, mainly the East Saxons, settled on the outskirts of the deserted city, and, little by little, they made their way within the old walls; numbers of the old fugitives crept back to join them; merchants came and patched up the broken, grass-grown quays; houses were built; and life began anew. Steadily the progress continued. At first the houses were rough wattle-and-mud affairs, set down in any fashion on the old sites, but gradually proper rows of small, timbered houses rose on all sides, with numbers of little churches dotted here and there.
Then at the end of the eighth century the old trouble, invasion, began again. This time it was the Vikings (or Danes), the adventurous spirits of the fiords of Norway and the coasts of Denmark, men who risked the terrors of the hungry North Sea that they might plunder the monasteries and farms of the north and east of England. They, too, found our country a fair place, after their own cold, forbidding coasts; and the raids increased in frequency.
In the year 832 they were at the mouth of the Thames, landing in Sheppey; and in 839 came their first attempt to sail up the Thames. They were beaten off this time, but they had learned of a proper entry to which they might return later. In 851 came their great attempt. With three hundred and fifty of their long ships they came, sailed right up the River to London Bridge, stormed and plundered the city. But their triumph was short-lived, for their army was well beaten at Ockley in Surrey, as it made its way southward down the Stane Street.
It seemed as if England and London might be tranquil once more; but the Vikings came in still greater numbers, and began to winter in our land instead of returning as had been their custom. The record of the next twenty years is one of constant harrying, with great armies marching throughout the countryside—plundering, killing, burning, with apparently no object.
When Alfred came to the throne, London was practically a Danish city; but he soon set to work and drove them out. And, though England suffered long and often from these foes, from that time onwards, the fortress being rebuilt, London never again fell to the invaders. When, eventually, Canute did enter London in 1017, after a considerable but entirely unsuccessful siege, it was at the invitation of the citizens, who accepted him as their King.
Under this wise King followed an era of prosperity for the growing city. Danish merchants settled within its walls; the wharves were busy once again; foreign traders sailed up the River to Billingsgate, their boats laden with wine, cloth, and spices from the East; and so rapidly London became once more a great commercial centre. Indeed, such was its size and importance that it paid one-fifth of the whole tax which Canute levied on the kingdom.
From this time onward London progressed steadily; and so, too, did that other city, Westminster, which had sprung into being at another crossing, a few miles higher up the Thames—one more city made by the River, as we shall see later on.