In September 1666, the Great Fire devastated London. In a desperate
scramble, the authorities at the Tower of London set about destroying buildings
to create a fire block between the city and the Tower of London.
Diarist and man about town Samuel Pepys ran from the flames
towards the tower. He stopped off at the church of All Hallows by the Tower,
and climbed its steeple. From it, he watched the world burn. He wrote in his
diary:
“So I made myself ready presently, and walked to the Tower, and there got up upon one of the high places, Sir J. Robinson’s little son going up with me; and there I did see the houses at that end of the bridge all on fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other side the end of the bridge; which, among other people, did trouble me for poor little Michell and our Sarah on the bridge.”
Most of the medieval and early modern city passed away on a single day. But the actions of the men at the tower meant that a little pocket of the medieval and early modern city survived in the very east corner of the London.
Today I want to look at All Hallows by the Tower, one of
London’s great survivors. Today this little church is a time capsule for two
thousand years of London’s history.
Above: All Hallows by the Tower in 1955. The tower, built in 1658, is the same one that Pepys would have climbed. Commons license
The earliest architecture on the site can be found in the
basement, where a Roman pavement peeks through the floor. It is thought to be
the floor from a second century house.
The roman pavement. Taken from trip advisor, see here
The church was built on top of this Roman layer. Its origins can be dated as far back as 675, when it was founded by the nun and saint, Ethelburgh (Aethelburh) of Barking. On this blog we have met Ethelburgh and her brother Erkenwald bishop of London in other posts.
It was long thought that there were no traces left of this
early Anglo-Saxon church. However, in 1940 the church was hit by a falling
German bomb. Amid the tumbling masonry some fascinating discoveries were made.
Within the walls was hiding an old Anglo-Saxon arch.
Above: The Anglo-Saxon arch of All Hallows by the tower. Taken from the parish website, here.
We can’t date this arch precisely, but one interesting feature is that the top of the arch is made up mostly from recycled Roman bricks and tiles – this probably suggests that it was put up at a time when Roman ruins were still visible and accessible. It probably argues for an early date.
A little later in the Anglo-Saxon period, a crypt was built.
This is now the under-croft chapel. There are still some Anglo-Saxon burials
here.
The Undercroft chapel. Taken from the parish website, here.
Several other Anglo-Saxon and medieval artifacts can be seen in the church’s museum, including an Anglo-Saxon stone cross with an inscription that states that it was made by Thelvar.
The church also has numerous medieval and Tudor tombs.
Perhaps the most remarkable survival is this Tate panel, a late fifteenth
century Flemish altarpiece
The Tate alterpiece, from the Parish website, here
All Hallows by the Tower is a building with so many layers
of history buried within it. People sometimes think that all of Old London
passed away with the great fire. In All Hallows by the tower we can get a
little window onto Anglo-Saxon and medieval London.
The main aisle of All Hallows by the Tower. Commons licence.
If you liked this blog post then why not check out the virtual tour of All Hallows by the Tower on the parish website; or maybe listen to this podcast by London Undone.
About this series: In the period I work on – fifteenth century
London – Londoners had developed all sorts of legends and myths and had lots of
ways of retelling their past. These histories fascinate me and are my main
topic of research. However, in this series I am investigating the truth or
fiction behind some of those myths.
This post concludes a four-part miniseries where I investigate London’s early history, pre 800 A.D.
We don’t have much good knowledge of Anglo-Saxon pagan
religion. We know the names of their principal Gods: Wodin, king of the Gods;
Tiw, a god associated with heroic glory, war, and law; and Thunor, the god of
Thunder. We assume that their mythology was similar to the better recording
legends of the Scandinavians, with Odin Wodin being Odin and Thunor being Thor.
Anglo-Saxons didn’t build temples but preferred to worship outdoors. Judging
from archaeology they were fond of adopting ancient British and Roman places of
worship such as old standing stones, and also liked to worship around trees or
at streams.
In 604 a man arrived in the city named Mellitus. He was part of a great mission, authorised by the Pope, sent to convert the people of England. Mellitus set himself up as apostle to the men of Essex, and installed himself as bishop of London. He probably spent a lot of time at the royal court, but the building of a new Cathedral must have provided jobs and stirred interest in the city.
Above: the ‘Gospels of St Augustine’, now at Canterbury Cathedral. Tradition states that this book was the personal property of St Mellitus. Public domain image.
St Paul’s was probably raised on its current site – that is inside the old walls of the Roman city, at a time when most Londoners lived outside of the walls. Mellitus was making a powerful claim that the church was bringing back the Roman glory days. Early Christians would have had to traipse in to the old ruined city, through the old city wall in order to worship – this must have been a daunting experience!
Pagan
Reaction
Perhaps it was too daunting, because the first generation of
the mission didn’t go very well. In 616 the Christian king, Saebert, died and
his three pagan sons took over. Bede claims that burst in on Mellitus whilst he
was trying to say mass at his Cathedral:
“And when they saw the bishop, whilst celebrating mass in the church, give the eucharistic bread to the people, they, puffed up with barbarous folly…[said]… to him, ‘Why do you not give us also that white bread, which you used to give to our father Saebert, and which you still continue to give to the people in the church?’
To them, the Bishop answered, ‘If you will be washed in that water of salvation, in which your father was washed, you may also partake of the holy bread of which he partook; but if you despise the water of life, you may not receive the bread of life.’”
(Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book 2, chapter 5, here )
The pagans were outraged. They wanted the magic bread, and they weren’t going to wash for it! If these quarrelsome Christians were going to make a massive fuss and disobey the kings for something as minor as a piece of bread, then they must be troublemakers! They ran Bishop Mellitus out of town and for thirty years the Cathedral stood empty.
Above: The Princely grave at Prittlewell. This is the grave of an East Anglian ruler from about this period who shows mixed evidence of some pagan and some Christian art. Scholars have speculated that this could be the burial of Saebert, although some evidence suggests it could be a generation earlier. Original image by MONA, taken from this BBC article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-48203883
Introducing Earconwald
Christianity was down, but it was not out. There were several decades where London could have gone either way, but by the 660s, the Christian King Sebbi expelled his pagan brother and restored Christianity. Sebbi was so pious that later he would abdicate his throne and retire to a monastery. He had a particularly strong partnership with a pious monk named Earconwald. Nowadays you’ll commonly see it spelled ‘Erkenwald’, which is the middle English version of the same name.
Rather handily, Earconwald would later become a saint and have legends written about him. Much of the rest of this blog post relies on the twelfth century life of St Erkenwald written by Arcoid of London: The Saint of London: The Life and Miracles of St Erkenwald, ed. E. Gordon Whatley, (Binghampton, 1989).
With Sebbi’s help, Earconwald set about rebuilding Christianity. He first founded Chertsey abbey for monks. Next, Earconwald’s sister Ethelburga founded Barking abbey for nuns.
Finally, in around 675 Earconwald got a promotion and became Bishop of London. He liked to be seen in public and to preach to the people – so much so that, even when he was too old and frail to walk, he had a horse litter built so that he could still preach in the streets. According to a much later (and not very reliable) story, once a wheel fell off his litter but the vehicle carried on travelling smoothly as if nothing had happened! The people apparently appreciated his common touch and his sense of charity, and Christianity flourished under his rule – or at least so his late biographers tell us.
The unlikely tale of the stolen body
He was staying at Barking abbey, with his sister and the nuns, when illness finally took him. His later biographer tells us that “as he passed from among them, a most marvellous fragrance and sweetest odour filled the cell where he lay, as if the whole house were drenched in perfume” (Vita of St Erkenwald, 91).
Above: Ethelburga, sister of Erkenwald and Abbess at Barking, the Nunnery at which he died. sourced from here
What a sweet end. What came next however, spoiled it. Two separate crowds turned up at the same time to claim the body: one was made up of monks from Chertsey, the monastery that Earconwald had founded. The other was a large crowd of ordinary people from London, led by the canons of St Paul’s. Both sides wanted to take the cold, dead Earconwald back with them to be buried
There was an ugly stand off in the yard: nasty names were
called and the Londoners broke into the nunnery. A crowd of laymen grabbed the
body and legged it! The monks and nuns set out in hot pursuit, “weeping and
wailing for the body of the blessed man” (Vita, 91). The chase was on!
As if there was not enough melodrama in this tale, a storm
began to gather. The rain lashed down, the wind “was so violent that people
could scarcely stand upright” (Vita, 91). The candles around the body were
blown out. As the chase tried to cross the river Hile, also known as the River
Roding, the waters surged up and blocked their paths forwards and backwards.
Above: The site of the confrontation on the River Roding. Itis perhaps a little less dramatic or romantic than I had hoped. Public domain image
Still the two parties fought each other. But then, from amongst the Londoners stood up a learned and devout man who cried out that they must stop. This ridiculous chase had gone on long enough and was angering God. Everyone had to lie on the floor, pray for forgiveness, and let God decide.
This seemed a sensible enough suggestion and they all did so. Quickly the storm passed, and all of the candles around the body spontaneously lit themselves. The river lowered and presented them with their path back to London. Earconwald was going back to St Paul’s! God had spoken: Earconwald was a Londoner, through and through!
Above: The Shrine of St Erkenwald, as drawn by William Dugdale, History of St Pauls Cathedral in London, (London, 1658), pp. 112-3
The monks and nuns didn’t miss out completely though. Earconwald’s horse litter – the one that did the wheel miracle earlier in the story – was given to Barking. It was quickly found that if an ill person took a ride on the chariot then they would become miraculously better. It quickly became a tidy little money spinner, and the monks took some pieces of the chariot back to Chertsey with them.
Both Earconwald and Sebbi were buried in St Paul’s Cathedral
and they quickly became the focus of saints’ cults and pilgrimages. This local
mania for miracles and relics is really the first evidence that Londoners were
becoming properly enthusiastic about Christianity. The new religion had found
its footing.
About this series: In the period I work on – fifteenth century London – Londoners had developed all sorts of legends and myths and had lots of ways of retelling their past. These histories fascinate me and are my main topic of research. However, in this series I am investigating the truth or fiction behind some of those myths.I don’t claim to be an expert Anglo-Saxonist.
This post continues a four-part miniseries where I investigate London’s early history, pre 800 A.D.
We start in the old and abandoned city of Londinium. I want
you to imagine a city in ruins. The city walls are still there and are standing
strong, but most of the rest is disintegrating. Some of the strongest old
public buildings may be holding out quite well. However the private
architecture was mostly of brick and wood – neglect and the elements must be
taking their toll. It wouldn’t be a pretty sight.
But in the west quarter of the city, activity has returned. There
is a great wooden Cathedral and St Paul’s, and the church of St Martin Ludgate
stands to attention at the west gate of the city. Around it there presumably
would have been a bishop’s palace with all of the administration, food, priests
and monks that that entailed. The singing of monks would have echoed through
the empty city.
Below: I’ve found this map on the internet of Anglo-Saxon find-sites, but haven’t been able to verify its original source. Sourced.
Moving to the West, a great road runs out of the gate and
along the north side of the river. Lundenwic has grown up around this road,
with jetties protruding into the river and a messy tangle of houses. Lundenwic
looks quite different to the Roman city: it is unplanned, spontaneous and
messy. Expect bendy and confusing sideroads, and mud underfoot.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the city is how low
density it is. The Anglo-Saxons pretty much never built houses of multiple
stories. Most of the houses would be small, low, wooden buildings which were
widely spread out, each house in the middle of a large and spacious plot.
Even in their urban setting Londoners would have maintained large and generous gardens with farm animals and some crops – archaeologists have found many pig, sheep and cow bones throughout London. Pigs would have been ideally suited to the urban environment – able to eat any refuse and rubbish. They probably broke out and ran loose regularly. Expect to see dogs, pigs, and small children in the messy, muddy street!
For the ordinary Anglo-Saxons in these small houses, there
would be a great variety of trades. The women probably gather in a hall to spin
wool and make cloths – this appears to have been considered distinctive women’s
work at the time.
For the men, their jobs are more various. There are boats to
be made, and pots to be shaped, which were probably two major industries. Other
craftsmen would have worked metal. Some particularly fine Anglo-Saxon metalwork
and jewellery survives. It is likely that they were similarly skilled in more
perishable materials such as ivory, bone and wood. Others would have worked
leather, hides or fur.
More surprising to modern people might be the range of rural
professions: gardens needed to be tended and livestock looked after. There were
still large forests close to London so forestry and hunting would have been
significant employers.
Slave Life
Anglo-Saxon craftsmen were not the poorest or worst off in
society. Instead they were the middle. At the bottom were the slaves.
Anglo-Saxon slaves were, for the most part, war captives. Some were kept in
personal service by the big men of London. Many however would have reached
their highest prices by being exported. We should expect to find a slave market
and many chained humans on the dockside of London, awaiting export.
At least one of these exported slaves made it into the pages
of history. He was a blond haired and blue-eyed boy of a fair and striking beauty
who was sold to Italian slavers. Pope Gregory the Great encountered him in the
street in the year 595AD and asked what sort of a boy this was. His owner
replied that the slave was an Angle, that is an Englishman. ‘He is not an Angle’,
the pope replied, ‘but an Angel’. It was apparently at this moment that Pope
Gregory resolved that he had to bring the English to Christianity.
Image: Pope Gregory meets the blond slave boy. A mosaic of Westminster Abbey. Public domain
Imma
the Slave
A rather different London slave shows up in another anecdote from Bede, (Ecclesiastical History, IV, Ch. 22, see here). It is however a story which may stretch the credulity of a modern reader.
There once was a noble boy called Imma, who was a personal
servant to King Egfrid of the Northumbrians. In 679 he was sent to fight for
his king in a great battle with the Mercians. The Northumbrians lost.
Cowering in fear, Imma hid amongst the slain corpses for a
day and a night. Eventually he sat up, and bound his wounds as best as he
could. He tried to sneak off to find shelter but on the way, he was rumbled by
a Mercian Earl. The earl demanded to know who he was.
Facing a powerful Mercian and his fearsome army, Imma’s
courage failed him. He did not admit who he was but instead cried out: “I am a peasant, poor and married, and I came
to the army with others to bring provisions to the soldiers”. The Earl seemed
convinced that he Imma was not worth killing, and instead took him into slavery.
Imma was bound in heavy iron chains, but around 9am on the
next day something remarkable happened: the chains fell off of their own
accord. The Earl had Imma bound again. Yet the next day at 9am, the lock popped
open once more. And the next day, and the next day. The Earl was perplexed.
What was this, magic? A cunning trick?
Back in the north, news of Imma’s death reached his brother,
Tunna, the abbot of Tunnachester. Tunna fell into deep mourning and resolved to
say a mass for the soul of his dear departed brother, every day around 9am. And
every day, just as he said mass, Imma’s chains popped open.
Back in the south, the Earl was perplexed. What was going
on? Was it magic? Or some sort of a trick? Imma informed him that he knew the
cause: his brother’s monastery was praying for him. The Earl was furious! This
meant that Imma was not a peasant but a noble! He had deserved to die on the
battlefield! But now that the Earl had taken Imma under his protection, he
could hardly kill him now! Yet as his chains kept falling off, he couldn’t even
keep him as a slave.
The Earl decided to cut his losses and brought Imma to the
London slave mart. There he was sold to a rich man named Freson. Freson soon
discovered, no doubt to his horror, that he had purchased the only slave in all
of England who could not be bound. Freson made the best of it that he could and
ransomed Imma back to his relatives.
And so the story ended happily, for almost everyone. Unlike,
sadly, the stories of most slaves in reality.
Elite Life
We have looked at the world of the slave and the craftsman;
but what about Freson and his ilk, the rich men of London. What was their lives
like?
Freson probably lived in a great hall. Halls were the
biggest sort of Anglo-Saxon home, but they were also more than that: they were
hubs for the community, centres of hospitality and hubs for the economy. Halls were
wooden structures built on a grand scale: one at Mucking, 30 miles from London
was about 50 feet (15m) long and 25 feet (7.5m) wide.
Below: West Stow Anglo-Saxon village. This is an attempt to
re-create early Anglo-Saxon halls and houses, and gives a good introduction to
domestic architecture:
To understand the hall, you really need to understand how
the economy works. In the early Saxon economy, there was not a lot of money. By
that I don’t mean that everyone was poor, but rather that there weren’t many
coins. In particular there was a lack of small change. Small transactions were
very hard to do. It made much more sense for people to exchange goods, and only
use coins for big things like long distance trade or taxation.
Our local big man comes in here: local craftsmen and farmers
will give him their produce. Beneath his wooden floor there are storage
containers full of cloth, leather, hides and jewels – all of the things that
the community makes. He is hoarding them, ready for his next voyage. When he
comes back, he’ll have traded them for things in demand – better cloth, foreign
jewels, wine, silks, spices and other exotic items.
In return for taking these goods, he has to throw open his
house to his dependents. Wine, ale, mead, pork, grain, pottage – he provides it
to them. So don’t be surprised as you enter the hall – through the doorway in
the middle of the long side – to find that it is packed with people. The hall
is the centre of the social life of the area!
The atmosphere is thick and heavy in the hall. That isn’t
just because of the crush of people and the sweet-smelling food. It is also
because the hall is poorly ventilated. A hearth burns in the middle and the
smoke rises into the thatch above. There is no chimney, only some vents in the
gable ends. Even more puzzling to modern eyes, a section of the hall is often devoted
to the animals, adding a whole new range of smells to the palette.
The people in the hall have finished eating. As the dark
night sets in, an elder stand up and offers to recite some poetry. The
Anglo-Saxons were great tale tellers and I would like to end this tour with a
section from a real Anglo-Saxon poem.
This poem is called ‘The Ruin’ and it is pretty much the
only poem from this period about a city. In it, the poet wanders in a ruined
city and laments its destruction. He tries to imagine what it was once like to
live there when it was a thriving town.
Whilst we don’t think that this poem is about London – more
likely it is about Bath or Chester – but I think it can give us an idea of what
the city was like. When he describes the crumbling ruin, it gives us an idea
what it was like to stand in the ruins of Londinium. And when he imagines a
city filled with life and treasure, maybe we can find an echo of thriving
Lundenwic.
I’ve rearranged the pieces of the poem to try and make it a
bit easier to understand:
Bright were the castle buildings, many the bathing-halls, high the abundance of gables, great the noise of the multitude, many a meadhall full of festivity, until Fate the mighty changed that. Far and wide the slain perished, days of pestilence came, death took all the brave men away; their places of war became deserted places, the city decayed. The rebuilders perished, the armies to earth. And so these buildings grow desolate, and this red-curved roof parts from its tiles of the ceiling-vault. The ruin has fallen to the ground broken into mounds, where at one time many a warrior, joyous and ornamented with gold-bright splendour, proud and flushed with wine shone in war-trappings; looked at treasure, at silver, at precious stones, at wealth, at prosperity, at jewellery, at this bright castle of a broad kingdom.
About this series: In the period I work on – fifteenth century London – Londoners had developed all sorts of legends and myths and had lots of ways of retelling their past. These histories fascinate me and are my main topic of research. However, in this series I am investigating the truth or fiction behind some of those myths.
This post begins a four-part miniseries where I investigate London’s early history, pre 800 A.D.
London goes back a long way. Historians and archaeologists
have speculated that London could be older than the Romans – in Celtic
languages ‘-don’ means a fort or fortified palace. However, if there was ever a
British chieftain’s palace, fort or village at London, then archaeologists
still haven’t found it.
The Romans
thundered into Britain in 43AD. They didn’t just want to conquer Britain: they
wanted to remake it in a Roman style. A key part of this was to introduce city
living. The Romans built planned settlements with all of the cultured features
that Romans would expect: from grand government buildings down to everyday
things such as under floor heating in houses. These showy little propaganda
projects declared to the Britons exactly what they could expect if they got on
board with the Roman project. The Romans also built a series of forts, military
walls and army bases to show the Britons what would happen if they didn’t get on board with the Roman project.
London was not
originally one of these showcase towns. Roman military engineers spotted that
London was a good site for a bridge. They build a fort to defend the bridge,
and a port to provision the fort.
London was a great
place for a port because the river at London is tidal. This means that at some
times of the day, the flow of the river reverses: ships can ride the tide in to
the port, wait a while and then ride the river currents out. London is also far
enough from the sea that the river water is not salty.
Combine that with
an important bridge, a prominent place in the road network and a site of
military importance, and it is easy to see why the town grew so fast. They
christened their new settlement ‘Londinium’, and it grew up as a grubby little
port city.
And yet it all could have ended so easily. In 60 AD a serious revolt spread through the Britons. Queen Boadicea of the Iceni led her chariot-riding armies down Watling street and burned London to the ground. Soon her rebellion was crushed.
But London’s site was too good to waste, and the Romans
rebuilt. Out of the ashes, Rome started to build Londinium again. This time it
was not to be a ramshackle, unplanned little military port: it was to be one of
the biggest and best planned cities north of the Alps.
London was set out, like most Roman towns, as a great grid. Londinium had all of the mod cons: a forum, which was the centre of political and commercial life; a bustling port; steamy bathhouses; large and grand temples; and an amphitheatre. It wasn’t just a political capital though – it was a busy port, a thriving commercial city and in the second century it established itself as the largest city north of the Alps at about 60,000 strong.
One fun way to learn more about the city at its height is from this interactive map of archaeological sites and finds in the city, (here).
The second century was the city’s peak. The peace of the
early Roman period began to give way after around 200 AD and the British
provinces suffered from invasions from the Picts, Germans and others. It was
also the site of a number of soldier revolts, in which the garrisons of Britain
declared their generals to be Emperor. The empire fractured and split into
pieces.
The greatest and most lasting symbol of this period was
London Wall: the Romans constructed huge stone walls around London which
enclose an area of around one square mile. Parts of these walls are still
standing today, and they mark the historic divide of the old town (‘the Square
mile’) and the rest of London.
The empire reunified gradually in the late 200s and was ruled as a whole by Emperor Constantine the Great (306-337). While the empire was successfully stuck back together, the province of Britain did not quite return to how it had been. It had been ravaged by invaders repeatedly and lost much of its prosperity. The Romans were also very suspicious of its loyalty on account of the revolts, and maintained a heavy military presence.
Londinium was rebuilt as a political and military centre, and for a while was renamed ‘Augusta’, a title which suggests that it was a city favoured by the Emperors. However, it never quite recovered as a commercial centre. Dominic Perring suggests that in the early 300s the city might have consisted of as little as 100 houses (D. Perring, Roman London p. 127): hardly a thriving imperial capital! Roman Britain was a fundamentally rural place. The Roman experiment with cities had never quite taken.
Troubles returned to haunt the Empire and in around 410 the Romans withdrew their last garrisons. The Britons seem to have fragmented quickly into lots of little states. Mercenaries who had been invited over from Germany – from the Angle and Saxon tribes – quickly became important to the military and began to dominate. Our picture of exactly what was going on in London in this period is hazy. The archaeology suggests that very few people were living in the city after the year 400, but a few may have held on as late as about 450. But by the mid-400s at the latest, the site of London within the walls was abandoned.
Lundenwic
We used to think that there was a big gap in London’s story
here: there is simply no archaeology within the walls of London between about
450 and about 800 AD. And yet, in Anglo-Saxon chronicles and charters there are
occasional references to something called ‘Lundenwic’. ‘Wic’ means market: what
exactly was Londonmarket?
It wasn’t until the 1980s that archaeologists figured this
puzzle out. In a part of town called ‘Aldwych’ (a name which probably comes
from ‘Old Wic’) they found the remains of an Anglo-Saxon town. This is around Covent
Garden, lying between the modern-day Westminster and the Square Mile. This is a
very sought-after area with many historic buildings – as such archaeologists
haven’t been able to do as much digging as they would like. Our picture of Lundenwic
is therefore still developing.
Below: I’ve found this map on the internet of Anglo-Saxon find-sites, but haven’t been able to verify its original source. Sourced:
In Anglo-Saxon times this site would have been a rural area
outside of the walls of the Roman town. It appears that it may have begun as a
small fishing port and import market, but grew steadily as Anglo-Saxon England
began to gain some stability. At its peak size, around 800 A.D., it may have
housed 10,000 people. This is small by today’s standards, but large for the
early middle ages.
Early Anglo-Saxon England was a violent and chaotic place,
full of petty kings and Kingdoms. Every King in England wanted a piece of
London. Just for example, consider the length of the Thames. London’s area was
settled by the Middle Saxons, or the men of ‘Middle Sex’. They were wedged
between the East Saxons (Essex), South Saxons (Sussex), and the Kingdom of
Kent. If we follow the Thames further in land, it would have flowed through the
territories of two other powerful kingdoms, Wessex in the West of England and
Mercia in the middle.
Rather staggeringly, every single kingdom that I just named
had a go at taking over London at some point. First Essex gobbled up London and
Middlesex. Next Essex was bullied and dominated by Sussex and Kent, with Kent
as the main winner by about 600AD. This couldn’t last: Mercia stormed down to
beat Kent, and took London as a prize. Mercia squabbled with Wessex but mostly held
its own until England was invaded by Vikings from Scandinavia. The Vikings humbled
Mercia and took over London in 886. London was burned at least once in this
period. Finally, Wessex drove out the Vikings by about 900AD. In the process it
renamed itself England and took over the whole country, including London.
It wasn’t just politics that was in flux: different religions were in a battle for souls. London bounced back and forth between pagan religions and Christianity.
London was clearly a place of struggle and strife. It often
found itself on the frontiers between kingdoms and between religions. What did
this mean for the average Londoner? This is the question that I hope, at least
in part, to answer in the rest of this miniseries.
I’ve set up Chronicles of London to blog about Medieval and early modern London. For my research I work on 1400-1550 so expect to see that period well represented. I also want to expand my comfort zone so will range backwards and forwards from 600 to the Great Fire of 1666. I’m especially interested in history, literature and learning.
On this blog I want to try to explore the reality of life in the pre-modern city.
Another particular interest will be the Literature of London. Historians sometimes act as though the Tudors invented the idea of writing about cities. I want to show that there was a long and fascinating tradition of writing about London. I will retell, and where appropriate translate, some of the best literature of London.
I will also do series on Myths and Legends. This will cover what Londoners thought about their own past. It will cover their parades, statues, law books, chronicles, literatur and any other ways that Londoners used to talk about the history of London.
Chronicle of London 
