THE CITADEL—SOUTHWARK—THE DANES’ QUARTER—THE
PORTLANDS AND CNIHTENGILD

The Citadel.—The Saxon Chronicle under the year 886 reads: “In this year gesette Alfred Lundenburh and gave the burh to Æthered the ealdorman to hold.” This is usually understood to mean that Alfred restored the city wall, but Mr. John Earle in a note on the passage argues that the burh was a citadel. He points out that Æthelweard’s Latin paraphrase reads, “dux Æthered ... custodiendi arcem”; he says further that gesette meant “founded,” “peopled,” and concluding that the passage means that Alfred established a military colony with an endowment of land, he suggests that we have here an account of the military occupation of Tower Hill.[105] I cannot think that the suggestion as to the limited meaning of burh is made out;[106] but the endowment of a garrison as suggested would give a perfect point of departure for the “English Cnihten gild,” an association to which a part of the portlands adjoining the east wall was granted, Stow says, by King Edgar. Moreover, the resumption by Alfred of London from the Danes would not only make such a body of soldiers especially necessary, but give good reason for their being called “English”; besides, it is known that Alfred did set up town garrisons. Mr. Coote has already suggested that the relinquishment in 1125 by the members of the gild of the lands which they held seems to have been in consequence of the Conqueror’s garrison at his new Tower having taken over their duties. A traditional connection between the city guard and the Portsoken seems to be suggested also by the account in the Liber Custumarum of how the city host was wont to assemble at the west end of St. Paul’s, and then march to Aldgate, where the banner of St. Paul was presented to them. The council of this force, moreover, was held in Holy Trinity, which in 1125 took over the endowment of the gild.[107]

Since writing the above I find that Mr. Oman has also argued that the Cnihten gilds of London and some other places were the military associations which Alfred and his immediate successors placed in their burhs. “That the system started with Alfred, rather than his son, seems to follow from two passages in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where, under the year 894, we hear of “the King’s thegns who were at home in the fortresses,” and again of “the fyrd being half in the field and half at home, besides those men that held the burhs.”[108]

It is likely enough that a great city like London would have had a citadel, and Tower Hill, situated at the angle of the wall by the river, seems itself to proclaim that from Roman days it has been a site of military importance. It has been doubted whether Roman buildings actually occupied the site, but some excavations in 1898-99 laid bare some remnants about three yards away from the south-west angle of the keep, together with a portion of a hypocaust.[109] Again, in the British Museum there is an ingot of silver found in the eighteenth century on the site of the Tower, and inscribed

EX OFFI
HONORII.

A similar inscribed ingot was found not long since in the castrum at Richborough, and this goes to raise the old theory of a treasury at the Tower again.

The account given by William of Poitiers seems to show that the Conqueror took over and added to an existing stronghold (see Freeman), and Geoffrey of Monmouth, writing within the lifetime of those who were living at the Conquest, and when the Norman Tower was barely finished, attributes the “prodigiously big tower” by Billingsgate to Belinus. Elidure, a descendant of Belinus, he tells us, was shut up in the Tower at Trinovantum (London). All tradition is in favour of its having been a stronghold before the Conquest, and Henry of Huntingdon, c. 1130, says that Eadric’s head after his execution by Cnut was placed on the highest battlement of the Tower of London. Again, there is no tradition of the Conqueror having taken land from the city for the foundation of his Tower. “Who built the Tower of London?” asks Dr. Maitland. “Let us read what the chronicler says of the year 1097: ‘Also many shires which belonged to London for work were sorely harassed by the wall that they wrought around the Tower, and by the bridge, which had been nearly washed away, and by the work of the King’s Hall that was wrought at Westminster.’ There were shires or districts which from of old owed work of this kind to Londonbury.”[110]

According to the Welsh story, Bran the Blessed, King of Britain, “exalted from the crown of London,” when wounded in battle commanded that his followers should cut off his head. “‘And take you my head,’ said he, ‘unto the White Mount in London and bury it there with the face towards France.’ And they buried the head in the White Mount. It was the third ill-fated disclosure when it was disinterred, as no invasion from across the sea came to this island while the head was in concealment.” The White Hill is always explained to mean the Tower of London.[111]

In the story of Bran we get the constantly recurring idea of a palladium. It seems to be referred to again in Merlin’s prophecy, “Till the buried kings be exposed to view in London.” Some object like the statue of Pallas in Troy, and the shield of Numa in Rome, was, as it were, the soul of a city. In Geoffrey of Monmouth a brazen horse on Ludgate figures as the protecting talisman; London Stone may have had some such mystical meaning attached to it by the Saxons (see p. 181), and the Shrine of Erkenwald in St. Paul’s was the sacred heart of the city in the Middle Age. That the idea of a palladium was known in Britain is proved by the case of the sacred stone of Scone—the Coronation Stone. A similar story is told of the tomb of Iver in the Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok. William the Conqueror had to break it down before he got the victory at Hastings.Southwark or the Borough.—The Burgal Hidage, a document which has recently been critically examined,[112] containing “a list of ancient fortresses,” which dates from “the days of Edward the Elder at the latest,” gives us the earliest reference to Southwark. “It sets forth, so we believe, certain arrangements made early in the tenth century for the defence of Wessex against the Danish inroads. It names divers strongholds, and shows how in the great age of burh-building they had wide provinces which were appurtenant to them.”

Amongst the burhs named comes Sutheringa-geweorc, in a position which is satisfied by Southwark.[113] Dr. Maitland concludes generally that the boroughs had their origin in such royal burhs founded for national defence. “The borough belongs to the genus villa (tun), but it was in its inception royal.” The South-work was evidently a tÊte-du-pont, and became a royal borough. By means of special privileges such burhs, like the bastides of Edward I., attracted a heterogeneous population of traders, and Southwark became the great “cheaping town” of the Heimskringla, and “the Borough” par excellence to this day. In the Pipe Roll of 1130 it stands with Guildford as the second borough in Surrey, and it returned members to Parliament from the first. It must have been protected by a ditch, and remains of this, or of Cnuts dyke, might have given rise to the tradition recorded by Stow that the course of the Thames had been altered when the bridge was built by a trench cast from Rotherhithe to Battersea. The older Maitland seems to have gathered some evidence of its palisaded bank.[114] Even in the time of the Confessor the “burghers” are spoken of. Some coins of Ethelred II. bear the mint mark of Southwark: this also is a sign of being a royal burh. The whole of Surrey seems to have been under contribution for the maintenance of Southwark and Eashing [bridge?]. The churches of Southwark are of considerable antiquity. The parish church of St. Olave is mentioned 1096, and St. George’s and St. Margaret-on-the-Hill can be traced back to about 1100. Margaret Hill is the continuation of Borough High Street to St. George’s Church; the name may mark a military mound.

In Domesday it appears that Southwark had been subject to the Confessor and Godwine.[115] The men of Southwark testified that in King Edward’s time no one took toll on the Strand or in the Water Street save the king. Godwine had a house here, and he must have held the burh. In the dispute of 1051-52 between the Confessor and Godwine, the earl carried his forces up the river to Southwark, the burghers of which followed his cause and supported him by land. The king’s navy and land force faced him from the north. The Londoners sympathised with the earl, but officially it was a case of Southwark against the city.[116]

It would probably be possible even now to lay down the course of the “walls” (of earth, like Wareham and Wallingford) by comparing the boundary of the old manor or “town” with street lines and names and other evidence.[117] Godwine’s holding seems to have coincided with the gildable manor which extended along the river from St. Mary Overie’s dock to Haywharf in the east, and southward nearly to St. Margaret Hill. Two other adjoining manors were included in the parliamentary area. Even the site of the great earl’s manor house can, with some probability, be pointed to.[118] Excavations have shown that before Saxon days there was a considerable Roman settlement on the site of Southwark, and that the present High Street lies over the Roman approach to London. Roach Smith says that substantial remains of Roman houses have been found, particularly on both sides of the High Street up to the vicinity of St. George’s Church, in which district the wall paintings and other evidence indicated villas of a superior kind. Nearer the river, where the ground had been subject to inundation, the houses were built upon piles.

In 1016 Cnut, to turn the flank of the bridge, dug a “mickle dyke” on the south, and dragged his ships to the west side of the bridge. Sir W. Besant has shown that quite a little dyke a few yards long would go round the bridge end and take a Danish ship, but he has not considered the preliminary forcing of the South-work which would have been necessary. As to the probable course of the dyke, see Allen’s History of London, vol. i., and Faithorn’s map, 1658, which shows a considerable stream flowing into St. Saviour’s dock. It was required more for the investment of the stronghold than for the ships (which, as at Constantinople, could have been dragged over land), as shown by the complete passage: “They dug a great ditch on the south side, and dragged their ships to the west side of the bridge, and then afterwards ditched the city around, so that no one could go either in or out.”

The Danes and their Quarter.—London Bridge was not only a roadway over the river: it was a fortification linking the walled city to the South-work and barring progress up the river. The Knytlinga Saga refers to this when it says: “King Cnut went with all his host to Tempsa (the Thames). In the river was built a large castle, so that a ship-host might not go up the river.”

It was natural that a suburb should spring up under the shelter of the bridge along the Strand, which is probably a Roman way.

In Fabyan’s Chronicle is the following curious passage referring to the reign of Ethelred: “In the third year [982] a great part of the city was wasted by fire. But you shall understand that the city of London had most building from Ludgate towards Westminster, and little or none where the heart of the city is now, except in divers places was housing, but without order, so that many cities in England passed London in building, as I have known by an old book sometime at Guildhall named Domysdaye.” From another passage quoted below (p. 189) it would appear that this book was about the age of the great Domesday (1087).

FitzStephen also tells us that the Palace of Westminster was joined to the city by a populous suburb. In early thirteenth-century documents the Strand is sometimes called Vico Dacorum. The church still called St. Clement Danes certainly, as we shall see, dates from before the Conquest, and in some special way was the church of the Danes. The early existence of this western suburb would explain satisfactorily the name of Westminster, and possibly its origin. We first hear of the Abbey, independently of its own documents, towards the end of the tenth century, when in 997 Elfwic signs a charter as abbot of Westminster.[119] It is probable that Cnut was the first to choose Westminster for a royal residence, and Harold I. was buried here. All these facts go to show that the Strand in Cnut’s day had become the Danish quarter. And London itself had become so Danish that Malmesbury says Harold I. was elected by the Danes and the citizens of London, who from long intercourse with these barbarians had almost entirely adopted their customs.

An account in the Jomsvikinga Saga, however inaccurate in detail, contains some interesting allusions to the Danes in London.

We are told that Sweyn made warfare in the land of King Ethelred and drove him out of the land; he put “Thingamannalid” in two places. The one in “Lundunaborg” was ruled by Eilif Thorgilsson, who had sixty ships in the “Temps,” the other was north in Slesvik. The Thingamen made a law that no one should stay away a whole night. They gathered at the Bura church every night when a large bell was rung, but without weapons. He who had command in the town [London] was Eadric Streona. Ulfkel Snilling ruled over the northern part of England [East Anglia]. The power of the Thingamen was great. There was a fair there [in London] twice in every twelvemonth, one about midsummer, and the other about midwinter. The English thought it would be the easiest to slay the Thingamen while Cnut was young (he was ten winters old) and Sweyn dead. About Yule waggons went into the town to the market, and they were all tented over by the treacherous advice of Ulfkel Snilling and Ethelred’s sons. Thord, a man of the Thingamannalid, went out of the town to the house of his mistress, who asked him to stay, because the death was planned of all the Thingamen by English men concealed in the waggons, when the Danes should go unarmed to the church. Thord went into the town and told it to Eilif. They heard the bell ringing, and when they came to the churchyard there was a great crowd, who attacked them. Eilif escaped with three ships and went to Denmark. Some time after, Edmund was made king. After three winters Cnut, Thorkel, and Eric went with eight hundred ships to England. Thorkel had thirty ships, and slew Ulfkel Snilling, and married Ulfhild his wife, daughter of King Ethelred. With Ulfkel was slain every man on sixty ships, and Cnut took Lundunaborg.

The massacre of the Danes at the “Bura church” must be the same event as is noticed by Stow in his account of St. Clement Danes, and also by Matthew of Westminster under the year 1012. Stow seems to suggest that it was in consequence of an attack on Chertsey Abbey. Messrs. Napier and Stevenson, in a recent reference to this story in their Crawford Charters, are “inclined to think that this account of the fate of the Jomsborg Thingamenn is based on real events.” They have found Eilif and Thordr signing charters for Cnut. The fight with Ulfkel was at Ringmere, near Thetford.

The fact of Cnut’s drawing his ships above the bridge, as described in the English Chronicles, when taken together with the above, would seem to suggest as a possibility that the intention was to reach an English fleet lying there. The Thingamannalid appears to have manned a fleet of occupation; it seems to have been none other than the original of the company of the Lithsmen of London mentioned in the English Chronicles, and about which such various opinions have been held.[120]

Even the details of the fairs, the covered waggons, and the church-bell have some historical value. It seems probable that the Danish occupation of this quarter outside the walls of the city may date from the arrangement made between Guthrum and Alfred.

Portlands and Cnihten Gild.—London was surrounded by a wide zone of common land, the boundary of which in its late and probably lessened extent was defined by bars on the several roads, such as Temple Bar, Holborn Bar, Spital Bar, Red Cross Bar, and the bars without Aldersgate and Aldgate. These bars can be traced back to the twelfth century.[121] In 1181-88 the land or the canons of St. Paul’s without the bar beyond Bishopsgate is mentioned.[122]

The “bars” seem to have been posts; those at the limit of Bridge Ward against Southwark were called “stulpes” (by Stow) or “stoples” (in 1372, Riley’s Memorials). In the Hundred Roll of Edward I. we hear of a citizen who had put “stapellos” in front of his house.[123] From these analogies I had come to the conclusion that Staples Inn was the inn at Holborn Bars, or Staples, and I find that this suggestion has already been made because “staple” is Saxon for “post.”[124] The land out to the bars is called suburbs by FitzStephen, and later, franchises or liberties. I cannot but think that the whole of this land was at times included under the designation Portsoken, which more particularly is given to that part outside the east wall of the city; thus the charter of Henry II. grants liberties “within the city and Portsoken thereof”; and the 1212 Assize of Building regulated buildings infra Civitatem et Portsokna. The wider liberties of the city seem to be without guarantee unless Portsoken had this extended meaning.[125]

In any case the suburbs may represent a zone of common pasture and tillage.[126] A consideration of its boundaries, however, suggests that its present form must have been governed by the growth of extra-mural population; this is also shown by the way in which extensions of boundary overlie the main roads. The Portsoken Ward must formerly have been part of this pomÆrium of the city, and it occupied most of the eastern side. Mr. Coote, in the authoritative article on the subject, calls it the city manor. The Cnihten Gild, which held it until 1125, possessed a charter of Edward the Confessor confirming to them the customs which they had in King Edgar’s day.[127]

On the north side of the city the common land was called the Moor, and we have seen how a part of this “Moor” outside Cripplegate was granted to St. Martin le Grand, the rest remaining a common playground as described by FitzStephen. A mandate of Henry III. of 1268 in the Close Rolls, however, commands the mayor and commonality “not to disturb Walter de Merton in possession of a Moor on the north side of the wall of London which the King gave to St. Paul’s in consequence of the late disturbances.”[128] It was fen land; FitzStephen tells how the citizens skated here, and bone skates of pre-Conquest date have been found in Moorfields. It is possible that all the common land surrounding the city was called the Fen or Moor, as a boundary on the west side against the land of Westminster was said at an early time to be in London Fen (see p. 60).[129] The 12½ acres of land, mentioned in Domesday under the name of Noman’s-land, and as having been held by the Confessor, was probably some of the city land. In the fourteenth century Charterhouse was built on ground called Noman’s-land—probably the same.

A part of Portsoken where fairs used to be held in the time of Henry III. was called East Smithfield; at the north-west angle of the city was another Smoothfield where the cattle fairs were held. As says FitzStephen: “Outside one of the gates immediately in the suburb is a field smooth in fact as in name. Every Friday, unless it be a feast, noble horses are here shown for sale. In another part of the field are implements of husbandry, swine, cows, great oxen, and woolly sheep.[130] On the north side there are pastures and pleasant meadow land, through which flow streams turning the wheels of mills. The tilled lands of the city are not barren soil, but fat plains producing luxuriant crops. There are also sweet springs of water which ripple over bright stones; amongst which there are Holy Well [Hoxton], Clerkenwell, and St. Clement’s; they are frequented by many when they go out for fresh air on summer evenings.”It has been properly pointed out by Dr. Maitland and by Mr. Gomme that “the tilled lands of the city” is no mere rhetorical phrase,[131] but it referred to “the arable fields of the town of London.” In the Saxon Chronicle we gain a sight of the citizens reaping their lands: “Then that same year [895] the Danish men who sat down in Mersey [island] towed their ships up the Thames, and thence up the Lea. This year [896] the aforesaid host wrought themselves a stronghold on the Lea, twenty miles above London. And in summer a great body of the townsmen, and other folk beside, went forth even unto this stronghold. And there were they put to flight, and there were slain some four of the king’s thanes. And after, throughout harvest, did the king camp hard by the town [London] while the folk were reaping, that the Danes might not rob them of their crop. Then one day the king rode along the stream, and saw where it might be shut in, so that never might they bring out their ships. And thus was it done. And they wrought them two strongholds on the two sides of the stream. When this work was done and the camps pitched thereby, then saw the host that they might not bring out their ships. Then forsook they their ships, and fled away across the land until they came unto Coatbridge on Severn, and there wrought they a stronghold. And the men of London took all those ships, and such as they might not bring away of them they brake up, and such as were staelwyrthe them brought they to London.”

The suburbs must be the residue of the original clearing in the forest; FitzStephen says the forest was close by London and formed a covert for boars and wild cattle, and as late as the thirteenth century there were wild cattle at Osterley.[132] Scattered about the forest were village settlements, the nearest about the city mentioned in Domesday being Stepney, Hoxton, Islington, Hampstead, St. Pancras, Kensington, Chelsea. The bishop of the East Saxons already, in Alfred’s day, had his house at Fulham.[133]

The citizens had their hunting rights confirmed by Henry I. “as fully as their ancestors have had, in Chiltre, Middlesex, and Surrey.” Middlesex was peculiarly attached to London, and, in its modern form at least, must represent the portion of the old East Saxon kingdom cut off by Alfred’s treaty with Guthrum.[134] The East Saxon kingdom, Malmesbury says, comprised the modern Essex, Middlesex, and half Hertfordshire. The Saxon Chronicle under 912 says: “This year died Æthered, and King Edward [Alfred’s son] took possession of London and Oxford and of all the lands which owed obedience thereto.”[135] A charter professedly dated as early as 704 names Twickenham in the province of Middlesex, but nothing is known to history of a Middle Saxon kingdom or people. Bede says London was a city of the East Saxons, and the London bishopric is coextensive with the East Saxon kingdom, including Middlesex. If we had to find a theory for an earlier origin of Middlesex, it might be suggested that when in 571 the West Saxons and East Saxons formed their common frontiers, London with some dependent land was constituted a middle region accessible to both. This might account for the peculiar circumstances whereby London passed successively under the suzerainty of one state after another. Middlesex was in fact the “country of London,” as it is called by Capgrave.

Besides the suburban land, there remained much common and open land in the city itself through the Middle Ages.[136] Stocks Market, for instance, “the middle of the city,” as Stow says, was made in 1282 on “an open space where, the way being very large and broad, had stood a pair of stocks.” This looks like the “village green” of London. In the original grant in the Liber Custumarum the vacant land is described as north of Woolchurch, where the king’s beam stood and the wool market was held.

At the east end, near the precinct of the Tower, some ground bore the name of Romeland, whatever that may mean:[137] at the west of the city was St. Paul’s Churchyard, with the areas where the folkmote met, and where the city host assembled in arms.

It was not till the centuries following the Conquest that the ground just within the walls seems to have been appropriated; at least large sections remained to be occupied by the monasteries of Holy Trinity, St. Helen’s, Austin Friars, and Greyfriars. The orchards and gardens of citizens are frequently mentioned. A deed of 1316 refers to a grant of land called Andovrefield and a house called Stonehouse by the Walbrook.[138] London in Saxon times indeed was a walled county, and up to the sixteenth century retained much of its character as a “garden city.”

The Cnihtengild, which till 1125 held the Portsoken, has been incidentally dealt with in the course of this chapter (pp. 102 and 118). Of the many problems connected with the history of London, hardly one has been more discussed than the status of this “mysterious institution.” Mr. Loftie thought he had proved that the aldermen formed its members, and that it was the governing gild of London. Mr. Round, however, has adversely criticised this conclusion. It is certain that there were Cnihtengilds in other places, as Winchester and Exeter. As all such places appear to have been county strongholds or burhs, and as we have seen it is probable that the Cnihts of London had the duty of defending the city, and further, as at Cambridge the members of a gild of Thegns were called Cnihts, I conclude the members of the London gild were originally the Thegns who garrisoned Londonburh.[139]