Page:Survey of London by John Stow.djvu/37

Rh time, being grown to some quietness, gave themselves to gluttony and drunkenness, pride, contention, envy, and such other vices, casting from them the yoke of Christ. In the mean season, a bitter plague fell among them, consuming in short time such a multitude that the quick were not sufficient to bury the dead; and yet the remnant remained so hardened in sin, that neither death of their friends, nor fear of their own danger, could cure the mortality of their souls, whereupon a greater stroke of vengeance ensued upon the whole sinful nation. For being now again infested with their old neighbours the Scots and Picts, they consult with their king Vortigern, and send for the Saxons, who shortly after arrived here in Britain, where, saith Bede, they were received as friends; but as it proved, they minded to destroy the country as enemies; for after that they had driven out the Scots and Picts, they also drove the Britons, some over the seas, some into the waste mountains of Wales and Cornwall, and divided the country into divers kingdoms amongst themselves. These Saxons were likewise ignorant of building with stone until the year 680; for then it is affirmed that Benet, abbot of Wirrall, master to the reverend Bede, first brought artificers of stone houses and glass windows into this island amongst the Saxons, arts before that time unto them unknown, and therefore used they but wooden buildings. And to this accordeth Policronicon, who says, "that then had ye wooden churches, nay wooden chalices and golden priests, but since golden chalices and wooden priests." And to knit up this argument, King Edgar in his charter to the abbey of Malmesbury, dated the year of Christ 974, hath words to this effect: "All the monasteries in my realm, to the outward sight, are nothing but worm-eaten and rotten timber and boards, and that worse is, within they are almost empty, and void of Divine service." Thus much be said for walling, not only in respect of this city, but generally also of the first within the realm. Now to return to our Trinobant (as Caesar hath it), the same is since by Tacitus, Ptolemaeus, and Antoninus, called Londinium, Longidinum; of Ammiamus, Lundinum, and Augusta, who calleth it an ancient city; of our Britons, Lundayne; of the old Saxons, Lundenceaster, Lundenbrig, Londennir; of strangers Londra and Londres; of the inhabitants, London; whereof you may read a more large and learned discourse, and how it took the name, in