Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/260

246 existence as a port from the earliest date to which they relate. From its greatness in Roman time, Anglo-Saxon London probably declined, but there is no reason to doubt that it continued to be relatively a great commercial city. The Goths and Frisians, of whom the bulk of the settlers in Kent were composed, were the greatest navigators of Northern Europe. They, called Jutes by Bede, advanced on London. The Thames became their great waterway, and London for a time their chief port. The river by which commodities could be brought into the country and the Roman roads by which they could be distributed are sufficient to show the extreme probability of the continuous existence of London. Nowhere else in England did such a combination of advantages exist.

The city which the newcomers found was one of considerable importance. The great roads alone are sufficient to prove this, and the Roman remains which have been found attest it. It was protected by defensive walls, contained temples, elegant houses, and many other structures characteristic of a place that was the centre of a Roman province.

We must look on the forests around London, in both Roman and Saxon times, as necessities. To have cleared the land and settled a rural population on it, if a sufficient population had existed, would very likely have paralyzed the trade of the city. In an age when pit-coal for fuel was not available a great woodland tract near it was necessary for any great city, such as London was at the end of the Roman period, and continued to be during the Saxon era. We see the same connection of ancient forest land with a city in the Ainsty, which from very ancient time has been within the jurisdiction of York, and which was a great woodland. The forests around London supplied not only fuel for household purposes, but charcoal for arts and handicrafts. The smiths and meta1—workers of all kinds required charcoal, and the charcoal-burners in the forests