and no evidence remain of its capture or surrender. Yet even Green denies to Londinium any place in English history.1 2 The conclusions of the great historians do not, however, cover the whole ground of possible events. The Romans left Britain in A.D. 410. The last mention of London before that event was in 369, and the first mention after that event was in 457. It would be unsafe to argue that between 369 and 410 London was otherwise than a Roman city in a Roman province. Ammianus Marcellinus supplies the earlier date when he records the renaming of the ancient city of Londinium by its new name of Augusta. There is the note of success in the historian's words, a success which looked forward to a future when the ancient city of Londinium would justify her new name of Augusta. From 410 to 457 is only forty-seven years, and the record of 457 is as distinctly against the probability either of destruction or desertion, as the record of 369 has proved to be. It comes to us from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. "Here Hengist and Esc fought against the Britons at the place which is called Crecganford, and there slew four thousand men; and then the Britons forsook Kent-land and in great fear fled to London." London, therefore, sheltered the beaten army, and must have been in its full strength for the purpose. If the hundred years of silent history 1 Green, Making of England, pp. 98–111. 66 is to be fixed at 457-560, as Green apparently argues,' events do not help his conclusion. None of them tells for destruction. Collectively they tell for active organisation and life, and individually, even if the latter point is rejected altogether, they tell for active organisation. Green fixed his last date, 560, by the progress of Anglo-Saxon conquest, but the next historical dates after 457 belong to the early seventh century, and are very confusing. In 604, says the Chronicle, Æthelbert gave Mellitus a bishop's see in London"; and Beda records of the same year that London was the metropolis of Sæberct, king of Essex.2 In 616 we are told that "at that time the men of London, where Mellitus had been before, were heathens." Evidently events were moving, but they do not appear to be more than phases in the struggle for the sovereignty of a conquered district which should include London. There is no word as to the conquest or the ruling of London itself. The king of Kent and the king of Essex, each in his turn, added it to their kingdom. They would not have struggled for a destroyed city. They claimed it as an asset in their cause, and the terms of the claim, "metropolis Lundonia civitas," are sufficient to discount the argument for destruction. There is another argument. That the successive conquests of the country by Anglo-Saxon, Dane, and Norman means also continuous occupation of 1 Making of England, p. 109. 2 Beda, Hist. Eccles., lib. ii. cap. 3. London through the changes is certain in the two last cases. The only difficulty that arises is in respect of the Anglo-Saxon, and this can be met by an historical parallelism. The Danes were kept out of London until London accepted them as overlords. The Normans were kept out of London until they entered by agreement, William treating with Ansgar the great sheriff on terms almost of sovereign equality. This great parallel means a continuity of policy and power, and it seems to me to be an absolute denial of historical influences not to allow such a parallel to cover the earliest as well as the two latest of the three occasions. This leaves an independent, unknown existence of a hundred years which has to be reckoned with. It is a period devoid of recorded history, but full of history nevertheless. It has much to do with what will be said in the following pages. It belongs to London, and to London alone, and though it was a troubled and anxious period, there is room in it for the birth of a very wide range of facts which lifts London history out of touch with the history of other Roman towns of the period in Britain. This period contains one factor of supreme importance, the tradition of London—a tradition which illustrates the passing of London from the position of a city of the Roman Empire, connected by roadways to the mother city of Rome, to the position of a city-state in Britain disconnected from all outside states or state governments. The new position needed tradition to help it on its way. All cities have their traditions - Athens, Rome, Paris, Bath, Caerleon, Silchester, York-and the extent to which tradition works itself into the city life is the test of much that cannot be recovered from any other source than tradition, of events, indeed, which history has wholly neglected. It is perfectly idle to neglect these traditions. They, at all events, are the beliefs which citizens worked into their lives, and upon which they built much of their later history. That London, by the mere fact of continued life, has become separated from her earliest history is most true. That she has lost touch with her traditions is not true. They contain just that impact of truth, just that kernel of substantive fact, which will enable the scientific inquirer to discover the lost threads which connect broken periods. Tradition is fed by the feelings of generations of people, not by the emotions, the exultations, or the disasters of a moment or even of a period. And the strongest feeling to generate and to keep tradition alive is the feeling of love for the object of tradition. There has always existed a feeling of love for London-by its citizens and by the country. The love of citizens for their city, as it has been so often expressed in song and narrative of modern times, as it was so wonderfully recorded in the twelfth century by the historian of King Stephen's reign, is carried back by tradition to the far older and interesting period of Roman London. Geoffrey of Monmouth preserves in the story of King Lud the traditional love of London, "Albeit he had many cities in his dominion, yet this did he love above all other"—and this links on with recorded history in that interesting passage where Tacitus, the first historian to mention London, tells how there were inhabitants of London in A.D. 61 who stayed behind to face the storm with which Boudicca threatened them because of "their attachment to the place." This love of London, continuous from the earliest ages, bursts into expression whenever Londoners have become aware of their great city, and we shall come across periods when this becoming aware of London has played a great part in contemporary events. It will play a further part yet once again. The London which will in this way come under review in these pages will, it is obvious, not be a complete London. The story will be one of events, not of places, one of special events, not all events. It will relate to one side of London only, but a side which, although the greatest, has been neglected and denied and scouted. It needs to be emphasised. In attempting this, details which would assist the argument, and nearly all which might be held to resist the argument, will be omitted. This is a necessary sacrifice to space. But omissions such as these do not affect the main point. They would divert the stream of argument at various points and compel consideration of the means to bring it back again. But they would at no stage break up the argument. There would remain the strong element |