History of London — 04 - Lessons 8 - 10: The First and Second Saxon Settlements, and The Anglo-Saxon Citizen

8. THE FIRST SAXON SETTLEMENT.

A hundred and fifty years passed away between the landing of the East Saxons and their recorded occupation of the City.

This long period made a great difference in the fierce savage who followed the standard of the White Horse and landed on the coast of Essex.

He became more peaceful: he settled down contentedly to periods of tranquillity.

Certain arts he acquired, and he learned to live in towns: as yet he was not a Christian.

This means that the influence of Rome with its religion, its learning and its arts had not yet touched him.

But he had begun to live in towns; and he lived in London.

Perhaps the first of the new settlers were the foreign merchants returning, as soon as more settled times allowed, with their cargoes.

London has always been a place of trade.

But for trade no one would have settled in it.

Therefore, either the men of Essex invited the foreign merchants to return; or the foreign merchants returned and invited the men of Essex to come into the City and to bring with them what they had to exchange.

In the year 597 Augustine, prior of a Roman monastery, was sent by Pope Gregory the Great with forty monks, to convert the English.

Ethelbert, King of Kent, and most powerful of the English kinglets, was married to Bertha, a Christian princess.

She had brought with her a chaplain and it was probably at her invitation or through her influence, that the monks were sent.

They landed at Thanet.

They obtained permission to meet the King in the open air.

They appeared wearing their robes, carrying a crucifix, and chanting Psalms.

It is probable that the conversion of the King had been arranged beforehand; for without any difficulty or delay the King and all his Court, and, following the King's example, all the people were baptised.

Augustine returned to Rome where he was consecrated Archbishop of the English nation.

A church was built at Canterbury, and the work of preaching the Faith went on vigorously.

The East Saxons made no more hesitation at being baptised than the men of Kent.

Ethelbert, indeed, could command obedience; he was Over Lord of all the nations south of the Humber.

He it was, according to Bede, who built the first church of St. Paul in London, a fact which proves his authority and influence in London, and his sincere desire that the East Saxons should become Christians.

They did, in a way.

But when King Siebehrt died, they relapsed and drove their Bishop into exile.

Then--Bede says that they were punished for this sin--the East Saxons fell into trouble.

They went to war with the men of Wessex and were defeated by them.

After this, we find London in the hands of the Northumbrians and the Mercians--that is to say--these nations one after the other obtained the supremacy.

It was in the year 616 or thereabouts, that Bishop Mellitus had to leave his diocese.

Forty years later another conversion of London took place under Bishop Cedd, consecrated at Lindisfarne.

The new faith was not strong enough to stand against a plague, and the East Saxons of London went back once more to their old gods.

After another thirty years, before the close of the seventh century, London was again converted: and this time for good.

In the eighth century London passed again out of the hands of the East Saxon kings into those of the Mercians.

The earliest extant document concerning London is one dated 734, in which King Ethelbald grants to the Bishop of Rochester leave to send one ship without tax in or out of London Port.

A witan--i. e. a national council--was held in London in 811. It is then spoken of as an illustrious place and royal city.

The supremacy of Mercia passed to that of Wessex--London went with the supremacy.

In 833 Egbert, King of Wessex, held a witan in London.

[Illustration: MARTYRDOM OF ST. EDMUND BY THE DANES.

(_From a drawing belonging to the Society of Antiquaries.

_)] When Egbert died the supremacy of Wessex fell with him.

Then the Danish troubles fell thick and disastrous upon the country.

When Alfred succeeded to the Crown the Danes held the Isle of Thanet, which commanded the river; they had conquered the north country from the Tweed to the Humber; they had overrun all the eastern counties twice--viz.

, in 839 and in 852: they had pillaged London, which they presently occupied, making it their headquarters.

With this Danish occupation ends the first Saxon settlement of the City.

9. THE SECOND SAXON SETTLEMENT.

The Danes held the City for twelve years at least.

One cannot believe that these fierce warriors, who were exactly what the Saxons and Jutes had been four hundred years before--as fierce, as rude, as pagan--suffered any of the inhabitants, except the slaves, to remain.

Massacre and pillage--or the fear of both--drove away all the residents.

But the City was the headquarters of the Danes.

Alfred recovered it in the year 884. He found it as the East Saxons had found it three hundred years before, a city of ruins; the wall a ruin; the churches destroyed.

King Alfred has left many imperishable monuments of his reign.

One of the greatest is the City of London, which he rebuilt.

A recent historian (Loftie, _Historic Towns_, 'London') says that it would hardly be wrong to write, 'London was founded, rather more than a thousand years ago, by King Alfred--who chose for the site of his city a place formerly fortified by the Romans but desolated successively by the Saxons and the Danes.'

The first thing he did was to rebuild the wall.

This work re-established confidence in the minds of the citizens.

Alfred placed his son-in-law Ethelred, afterwards Alderman (i. e. Chief man--Governor) of the Mercians, in command of the City, which seems to have been immediately filled with people.

The London citizens went out with Ethelred to defeat the Danes at Benfleet, and with Alfred to defeat the Danes at the mouth of the river Lea; they went out with Athelstan to fight at Brunanburgh.

London was never again taken by the Danes.

Twice Sweyn endeavoured to take the City but was repulsed.

Nor did London open her gates to him until the King had left the City.

And when the Danes again entered the City there was no more pillage or massacre; London was too strong to be pillaged or massacred, and too rich to be abandoned to the army.

King Ethelred came back and died, and was buried in St. Paul's; the old St. Paul's--that of King Ethelbert or that of Bishop Cedd--was burned down and the Londoners were building a new cathedral.

Edmund Ironside was elected and crowned within the City walls.

Then followed a siege of London by Canute.

He dug a canal through the swamps, and dragged his ships by its means from Redriff to Lambeth.

But he could not take the City.

But the Treaty of Partition between Edmund and himself was agreed upon and the Dane once more obtained the City.

He has left one or two names behind him.

The church of St. Olave's in Hart Street, and that in 'Tooley,' or St. Olave's Street, Southwark, and the Church of St. Magnus, attest to the sovereignty of the Dane.

[Illustration: SAXON HORSEMEN.

(_Harl.

MS.

603. _)] At this time the two principal officers of the City were the Bishop and the Portreeve: there was also the 'Staller' or Marshal.

The principal governing body was the 'Knighten Guild,' which was largely composed of the City aldermen.

But these aldermen were not like those of the present day, an elected body: they were hereditary: they were aldermen in right of their estates within the City.

What powers the Knighten Guild possessed is not easy to define.

Besides this, the aristocracy of the City, there were already trade guilds for religious purposes and for feasting--but, as yet, with no powers.

The people had their folk mote, or general gathering: their ward mote: and their weekly hustings.

We must not seek to define the powers of all these bodies and corporations.

They overlapped each other: the aristocratic party was continually innovating while the popular party as continually resisted.

In many ways what we call the government of the City had not begun to be understood.

That there was order of a kind is shown by the strict regulations, as strictly enforced, of the dues and tolls for ships that came up the river to the Port of London.

10. THE ANGLO-SAXON CITIZEN.

The Londoner of Athelstan and Ethelred was an Anglo-Saxon of a type far in advance of his fierce ancestor who swept the narrow seas and harried the eastern coasts.

He had learned many arts: he had become a Christian: he wanted many luxuries.

But the solid things which he inherited from his rude forefathers he passed on to his children.

And they remain an inheritance for us to this day.

For instance, our form of monarchy, limited in power, comes straight down to us from Alfred and Athelstan.

Our nobility is a survival and a development of the Saxon earls and thanes; our forms of justice, trial by jury, magistrates--all come from the Saxons; the divisions of our country are Saxon, our municipal institutions are Saxon, our parliaments and councils are Saxon in origin.

We owe our language to the Anglo-Saxon, small additions from Latin, French, and other sources have been made, but the bulk of our language is Saxon.

Three-fourths of us are Anglo-Saxon by descent.

Whatever there is in the English character of persistence, obstinacy, patience, industry, sobriety, love of freedom, we are accustomed to attribute to our Anglo-Saxon descent.

In religion, arts, learning, literature, culture, we owe little or nothing to the Anglo-Saxon.

In all these things we are indebted to the South.

Let us see how the Anglo-Saxon Londoner lived.

He was a trader or a craftsman.

As a trader he received from the country inland whatever it had to produce.

Slaves, who were bred like cattle on the farms, formed a large part of the exports; hides, wool, iron, tin, the English merchant had these things, and nothing more, to offer the foreigner who brought in exchange wine, spices, silk, incense, vestments and pictures for the churches and monasteries, books, and other luxuries.

The ships at first belonged to the foreign merchants: they traded not only at London, but also at Bristol, Canterbury, Dover, Arundel, and other towns.

Before the Conquest, however, English-built ships and English-manned fleets had already entered upon the trade.

The trader, already wealthy, lived in great comfort.

He was absolute master in his own house, but the household was directed or ruled by his wife.

Everything was made in the house: the flour was ground, the bread was baked, the meat and fish were salted; the linen was woven, the garments were made by the wife, the daughters, and the women servants.

The Anglo-Saxon ladies were remarkable for their skill in embroidery;

they excelled all other women in this beautiful art.

The Anglo-Saxon house developed out of the common hall.

Those who know the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge can trace the growth of the house in any of them.

First there is the Common Hall.

In this room, formerly, the whole family, with the serving men and women, lived and slept.

There still exists at Higham Ferrars, in Northampton, such a hall, built as an almshouse.

It is a long room: at the east end, raised a foot, is a little chapel; on the south side is a long open stove; the almsmen slept on the floor on reeds, each man wrapped in his blanket.

[Illustration: SAXON CHURCH AT BRADFORD-ON-AVON, WILTS.

] Everybody lived and slept in the Common Hall.

All day long the women worked at the spinning and weaving and sewing and embroidery.

Women were defined by this kind of work--we still speak of spinsters.

Formerly relationship through the mother was called 'on the spindle side,' while, long after the men had to fight every day against marauding tribes, relationship through the father was called 'on the spear side.'

All day long the men worked outside in the fields, or in the warehouse, and on the quays or at their craft.

In the evening they sat about the fire and listened to stories, or to songs with the accompaniment of the harp.

The first improvement was the separation of the kitchen from the hall: in the Cambridge College you see the hall on one side and the kitchen the other, separated by a passage.

The second step was the construction of the 'Solar,' or chamber over the kitchen, which became the bedroom of the master and the mistress of the house.

Then they built a room behind the solar for the daughters and the maidservants; the sons and the menservants still sleeping in the Hall.

Presumably the house was at this stage in the time of King Ethelred, just before the Norman Conquest.

The ladies' 'bower' followed, and after that the sleeping rooms for the men.

There was no furniture, as we understand it.

Benches there were, and trestles for the tables, which were literally laid at every meal: a great chair was provided for the Lord and Lady: tapestry kept out the draughts: weapons, musical instruments, and other things hung upon the walls.

Dinner was at noon: supper in the evening when work was over: they made great use of vegetables and they had nearly all our modern fruits: they drank, as the national beverage, beer or mead.

But everybody was not a wealthy merchant: most of the citizens were craftsmen of some kind.

These lived in small wooden houses of two rooms, one above the other: those who were not able to afford so much slept in hovels, consisting of four uprights with 'wattle and daub' for the sides, a roof of thatch, no window, and a fire in the middle of the floor.

They lived very roughly: they endured many hardships: but they were a well-fed people, turbulent and independent: their houses were crowded in narrow lanes--how narrow may be understood by a walk along Thames Street; they were always in danger of fire--in 962, in 1087, in 1135, the greater part of the City was burned to the ground.

They lived in plenty: there was work for all: they had their folk mote--their City parliament--and their ward mote--which still exists: they had no feudal lord to harass them: as for the dirt and mud and stench of the narrow City streets, they cared nothing for such things.

They were free: and they were well fed: and they were cheerful and contented.