Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/871

 HISTORY.] LONDON 841 Allectus, but before the Franks who chiefly formed this army could fly Constautius sailed up the Thames and disembarked under the walls of the city, thus taking them by surprise. Under Julian London was the headquarters of Lupicinus in his campaign against the Scots and Picts ; and in the reign of Valentinian, Ammianus tells us, Theodosius came to London from Boulogne to mature his plan for the restoration of the tranquillity of the province. It is on this occasion that Ammianus speaks twice of Loudinium as an ancient town, to which the title of Augusta had been accorded. By the anonymous chorographer of Ravenna it is called Londinium Augusta. As Theodosius is said to have left Britain in a sound and secure condition, with its dilapidated places restored, it has been supposed that to him was due the wall of the later Londinium. According to old tradition, however, Constantine the Great walled the city at the request of his mother Helena, who was said to be a native of Britain. In spite of these various references we should know very little of Roman London if it had not been that a large number of excavations have been made in different parts of the city, which have disclosed a considerable amount of early history. 1 These go to prove that the early city occupied a somewhat small area, for it has been discovered that the site of the Royal Exchange was originally a gravel-pit, and had then become a dirty pond. outside the walls used as a receptacle for refuse. Cemeteries also once existed in Cheapside, on the site of St Paul s, close to Newgate, and various other places known to have been included in the later Roman London. As it was illegal in Roman times to bury within the walls, these places must at one time have been extra-mural. Among the large number of important sepulchral remains lately found by Mr Taylor in Newgate Street were several ossuaria, or leaden vessels for the reception of the calcined bones of the dead. Little attention had been paid to these objects until Mr Roach Smith specially alluded to them in an article on &quot; Roman Sepulchral Remains discovered near the Minories, London &quot; (Collectanea, Antigua, iii. 45-62). Subsequently Mr Smith wrote a very elaborate article on &quot;Roman Leaden Coffins and Ossuaria&quot; (Ibid., ii. 170-201), in which he refers to the wealth of the British mines as one of the chief incentives to the conquest of the country by the Romans, and points out that the large use of the costly metal, lead, &quot;manufactured with such skill and so profusely as to supply not only the inhabitants of the towns, but those of villages and villas, with one of the daily requisites of advanced civilization,&quot; proves the prosperity and even luxury of the province. When Sir Christopher Wren was making excavations for his building of Bow Church he sunk about IS feet deep through made ground, when he came upon &quot;a Roman causeway of rough stone, close and well- rammed, with Roman brick and rubbish at the bottom for a foundation, and all firmly cemented.&quot; In consequence of this dis covery the great architect came to the conclusion, which was corro borated by other reasons, that the causeway he had found continued for the whole length of the town, and formed the northern boundary &quot; the breadth then north and south was from the causeway now Cheapside to the river Thames, the extent east and west from Tower Hill to Ludgate, and the principal middle street or Praetorian Way was Watling Street&quot; (Parcntalia, p. 265). Although it is generally agreed that this early Roman city was com paratively small, and in form an oblong square (a Londinium quad- ratum), its exact situation must be a matter of conjecture. The late Mr Arthur Taylor marked out a district which should be bounded on the west by the Walbrook, on the east by Billingsgate, and on the south by the elevation of the bank of the Thames, the northern boundary to be a line drawn below Lombard Street and Coruhill. Cannon Street and East Cheap would pass straight through the centre of this enclosure, with the other streets north and south (Arch&oloyia, xxxiii. 101). In corroboration of his views, Mr Taylor lays stress on the fact that no funereal urns have been discovered in the district he has marked out. Mr Roach Smith agrees generally with Mr Taylor, but includes a rather larger area. He writes &quot; I should be inclined to place the northern wall somewhere along the course of Cornhill and Leaden- hall Street ; the eastern, in the direction of Billiter Street and Mark Lane ; the southern, in the line of Upper and Lower Thames Street ; and the western, on the eastern sids of Walbrook. This suggested plan will give the form of an irregular square, in about the centre of each side of which may be placed the four main gates corresponding with Bridge Gate, Ludgate, Bishopsgate, and Aldgate &quot; (Illust. of Roman London, p. 14). The late Mr W. II. Black, like his predecessors, takes the Walbrook as a boundary, but, instead of making it the western limit, he makes it the eastern boundary, and places his western line at Ludgate. Newgate Street and Cheapside form the main thoroughfare of his city (Archteo- lotjid, xl. 41). Although Mr Black argues his case with ability, his view is open to two principal objections, (1) it leaves the site of London Bridge outside the enclosure, and (2) cemeteries have been 1 A chvonolofrical list of the tessclated pavements discovered in London between 1681 and ixi!4 is -riven in a paper of the late Sir William Tite (Archtvologia, vol. xxxix. p. 4yl). It is impossible to say how much more remains hidden many feet b jlou- tiie modern streets. discovered within the proposed limits. As to the date when the limits of this early London were lost sight of in the larger area of the better known Roman city, we have hardly sufficient data even to hazard a conjecture. There is reason to believe, as already stated, that the site of the Royal Exchange was outside the city until the early part of the 3d century, because coins of Vespasian, Domitian, and Severus have been found among the refuse of the gravel-pit. Mr Roach Smith suggests, however, that as no coins of the period between Domitian and Severus were found it is just possible that the plated denarius of the latter emperor may not have been found in the pit itself, but in the vicinity of the houses which were built over the pit in subsequent years. On the other hand, Sir William Tite, in describing the tesselated pavement found in 1854 on the site of the Excise Office (Bishopsgate Street), expresses the opinion that the finished character of the pavement points to a period of security and wealth, and fixes on the reign of Hadrian (117-138 A.D.), to which the silver coin found on the floor belongs, as the date of its foundation. Of course this is not conclusive, as the pavement might have belonged to a villa outside the walls, but Sir William Tite places it within them. When the line of the walls which continued until the great fire was first planned out it is impossible to say with any certainty. Some antiquaries hold the opinion that these walls were post-Roman ; but this is not the view of Mr Roach Smith, one of our greatest authorities. Mr J. E. Price, after describing &quot; a bas tion of London wall&quot; discovered in Camomile Street, Bishopsgate, arrives at &quot; the conclusion that these interesting relics are portions of a Roman sepulchral monument which, falling into decay, became, as years rolled on, a suitable quarry for mediaeval builders, providing from its position on the spot convenient materials for the erection of a structure requiring such solidity and strength as would a bas tion to the city wall.&quot; In describing the outline of the Roman city it is impossible to make ourselves intelligible unless we use names adopted subsequently. The line of the wall runs straight from the Tower to Aldgate, where it bends round somewhat to Bishops- gate. It is bordered on the east by the Minories and Houndsditch. One of the finest remaining portions of the old wall was hidden from view a few years ago when some large buildings were erected round it. The line from Bishopsgate ran eastward to St Giles s churchyard, where it turned to the south, as far as Falcon Square, again westerly by Aldersgate under Christ s Hospital towards Gilt- spur Street, then south by Ludgate, and then down to the Thames. Mr Roach Smith points out that this enclosure gives dimensions far greater than those of any other Roman town in Britain. In 1843 a portion of the old wall was exposed to view in Playhouse Yard, Blackfriars, when a Roman monument erected to a &quot;speculator&quot; of the second legion, named Celsus, was discovered. On the same line further north Sir Christopher Wren, while building St Martin s, Ludgate, found a similar sepulchral monument &quot;in the vallum of the prfetorian camp&quot; to the memory of Viviauus Marcianus, a soldier of the second legion (Parcntalia, p. 266). In the year 1276 the old wall south of Ludgate was pulled down and a new one built to enclose a larger circuit further west for the benefit of the Black Friars. There appear to be strong reasons for believing that a wall ran along the south, and that the Romans did not consider the river sufficient protection. William Fitzstephen. a monk of the 12th century, who wrote the earliest description of London, men tions the walls and tower in the south, and Sir Christopher Wren also alludes to the colony being walled next the Thames (Parcntalia, p. 265). The line from Lower Thames Street to Temple Street has been retrieved from the river by embankments, and in certain parts of the line the embankment was formed by substantial walling, such being found at the foot of Fish Street Hill, at the end of Queen Street, and from Broken Wharf to Lambeth Hill (Tite s Catalogue of Antiquities found in (Jtc Excavation at the New Royal Exchange, 1848, p. xxiv). Mr Roach Smith writes&quot; It was from 8 to 10 feet thick, and about 8 deep, reckoning the top at 9 feet from the present street level, and composed of ragstone and flint, with alternate layers of red and yellow, plain and curve-edged tiles, cemented by mortar as firm and hard as the tiles, from which it could not be separated. For the foundation strong oaken piles were used, upon which was laid a stratum of chalk and stones, and then a course of hewn sandstones from 3 to 4 feet long, by 2^ in width&quot; (Archaeological Journal, i. 114). The names of the gates give us no clue as to which of them existed in Roman times, but we cannot doubt that the chief traffic was carried through the city from Ludgate to Aldgate, although some antiquaries have supposed that Newgate was the chief gate on the west side, leading as it would to Holborn. where Roman remains have been discovered. Bishopsgate must have been the principal outlet to the noith. Mi- Roach Smith has suggested that outside Newgate there was an amphitheatre built into a hill on the rising ground near what was lately the Little Old Bailey. He had often noticed the precipitous descent from Green Arbour Lane opposite Newgate into Seacoal Lane and the level space by Fleet prison, and he presumed it to have been an excavation in the side of the hill. Many a smaller town than Londinium possessed a theatre in Roman times (Middle- XIV. 106