Such is the history of London from the beginning of the seventh century to the third quarter of the eleventh century. We have next to consider—
1. The appearance of the town and the nature of the buildings.
2. The trade of the town.
3. The religious foundations.
4. The temporal government.
5. The manners and customs of the people.
I. The Appearance of the Town
If there had been any persons living to remember Augusta when the army of King Alfred took possession of the place, then, indeed, they would have shed tears, while standing on the rickety wooden bridge, to behold the shrunken and mean town which had taken the place of that stately City: to consider the ruins of noble houses; to see how trees grew upon the crumbling wall; to mark how great gaps showed the site of City gates; how broad stretches of ground lay waste, where once had stood the Roman villas. After a year or two, when the wall was repaired, and people flocked again to the “mart of all nations,” the aspect of the City improved. The stones of old erections—those above ground—had been used to repair the City wall; new gates had been built and the old gates had been restored; the quay was once more covered with merchandise, and the river was again filled with shipping—among the vessels was the king’s fleet maintained to keep off the Danes. The town behind the quays was rebuilt of wood—within two hundred years it was five times either wholly, or in great part, destroyed by fire. There were no palaces or great houses; some few had the great hall for the living-room and for the sleeping-room of servants and children, with the “Solar” or the chamber of the lord and lady, the Lady’s Bower, and the kitchens (see also p. 224).
After the time of Alfred, London rapidly advanced in prosperity and wealth. The restoration of the wall was recognised as an outward and visible sign of the security enjoyed by those who slept within it: trade increased; the wealth of the people increased; their numbers increased, because they were safe. Stone buildings began to be erected, and the outward signs of prosperity appeared. London threw out long arms within her walls. The vacant grounds, the orchards and fields and gardens began to be built over. Artificers of the meaner kind and trades of an offensive kind were banished to the north part of the town. The lower parts, especially the narrow lanes north of Thames Street, became more and more crowded. Quays under the river wall extended east and west; the foreshore was built upon; the river wall was gradually taken down, but I know not when its destruction began or was permitted. The shipping in the river was doubled and trebled in amount; some of the ships lying off the quays were too large to pass the bridge; the warehouses became more ample; Thames Street, or the street behind the wall, then the only place of meeting for the merchants, was thronged every day with the busy crowd of those who loaded and unloaded, who came to buy and to sell. The ports of the Walbrook and Billingsgate being found insufficient, that of Queen Hithe, then called Edred’s Hithe, was constructed: quays were built round it, and perhaps a new gate was formed in the river wall.
In the year 981, Fabyan says (p. 128) that a fire destroyed a great part of the City of London.
“But ye shall understand that at this day, the City of London had most housing and buylding from Ludgate toward Westmynster, and little or none where the Chiefe or hart of the Citie is at this day, except in divers places where housing be they stood without order, so that many towns and cities, as Canterbury, Yorke, and other, divers in England passed London in building at those days, as I have seen and known by an old book in the Guildhall named Domesday.”
I quote this passage but cannot give credence to the statement, for the simple reason that London was always a place of trade, and that where her shipping and her quays and ports lay, there were her people gathered together. Probably at this time the northern parts of the City were not yet built over and occupied. But how could the City successfully hold her own against the Danes if her people lived along Fleet Street and the Strand?
A very important question arises as to the rights of the citizens over the lands lying around the City.
If we consider, for instance, the county of Middlesex, we observe that it is bounded by the river Colne on the west and by the Lea on the east. The Thames is its southern march: that of the north was partly defined by the manors belonging to St. Albans Abbey in after times. The whole of the northern part, however, was covered with a vast forest which extended far on either side of Middlesex, and especially into Essex. Another forest occupied the greater part of Surrey, beginning with wastes and heaths as soon as the land rose out of the marsh.
Some kind of right over these forests, and especially over that in the north, which was especially easy of access, was necessary for the City, as much as its rights over the river. For as the river was full of fish and the marshy river-side was full of innumerable birds, so the forest was full of game—deer, boar, hares, rabbits, and every kind of creature to be hunted and trapped and to serve as food. Also the forest furnished timber for building purposes, a feeding-ground for hogs, and wood and charcoal for fuel. The City would not exist without rights over the forest.
If we ask what these rights were, we find that London certainly claimed possession of some lands. Thus in the A.S. Chronicle it is stated that in the year 912 “King Edward took possession of London and of Oxford, and all the lands which owed obedience thereto.” What were these lands? Surely they lay outside the wall.
In the laws of Athelstan, injunctions are laid down for the pursuit of thieves “beyond the March.” What was the March?
In the laws of Cnut the right of every man to hunt over his own land is recognised.
And in Henry the First’s Charter we find the clause, “And the citizens of London shall have their chaces to hunt, as well and fully as their ancestors have had: that is to say, in Chiltre, and in Middlesex, and in Surrey” (see p. 279).
In the same Charter, which was avowedly a recognition of old rights, he gives them the county of Middlesex, with which was included the City of London, “to farm” for the annual payment of £300 a year.
From all of which it appears that the county of Middlesex had been regarded as including London, and, in a sense, a part of London, and that a large part of its lands “owed obedience” to London. In that part the citizens could hunt, just as they could fish in the river and trap birds in the river-side marshes.
II. The Trade of the Town
The early trade of London can be approximately arrived at by taking into consideration (1) that London was the principal receiving, distributing, and exporting place; (2) what it had to sell; and (3) what it wanted to buy.
Nearly everything that was wanted was made on the farms and in the towns. On the farms, the butter, cheese, bread, beer, bacon, were prepared; the grain was grown and ground; the fruit and vegetables were grown in the gardens; the honey was taken from the hives; spinning, weaving, carpentering, clothing, shoemaking were all carried on in the house. Nothing that could be made in the house was bought; nothing that could be made in the house was exposed for sale in the market. What, then, did the people want, and what did they buy? First, they wanted, as necessities, metal for working, weapons, knives, and utensils. Next they wanted salt. Iron and salt were the two absolute necessities of life that could be obtained only by purchase or by barter. If we pass on to luxuries, the wealthier class drank foreign wine in addition to home-made beer, cider, and metheglin; they dressed in foreign silk; they used gold and silver cups, which were made by London goldsmiths; they imported foreign glass; spices brought from outre-mer; and weapons made abroad of finer temper and better workmanship than their own. The Church wanted ecclesiastical vestments, pictures, incense, and gold and silver vessels. All these things the City had to offer and to sell. For purposes of purchase or of exchange the City was prepared to buy slaves, wool, metal, corn, and cattle. All over the country the people bred slaves and sold them; they sent to London large quantities of wool; they also sent lead, tin, iron, jet, fish, and cattle. And there was a great demand among the foreign merchants, though there was but a small supply, for the lovely embroidery of the Anglo-Saxon women, and for the beautiful goldwork of the Anglo-Saxon goldsmiths. The position of the goldsmiths in London, where they were the richest and most important citizens, proves that there was more than a home demand for their work. The words used for the arts and for many articles of common use show that they were at first imported, and from a nation where the Latin language was largely used. Common objects, such as candle, pin, wine, oil; names of weights and measures; names of coins are also derived from Roman sources. Wright’s theory that the people in the cities spoke Latin, and that the Saxon gradually became amalgamated with the people in the cities before the grand irruption may account for the survival of Latin names for common objects. One means of introducing these words may have been the communication kept up by the Church with the Continent, and especially between the monasteries of England and France.
That the trade of London was large and constantly increasing is certain. The abundance of gold in the country is instanced by the wealth of the shrines and the monasteries, and the importance and value of the exports. Sharon Turner23 sums up this advance in trade in such general terms as I have indicated:—
“The property of the landholders gradually multiplied in permanent articles raised from their animals, quarries, mines, and woods; in their buildings, their furniture, their warlike stores, their leather apparatus, glass, pigments, vessels and costly dresses. An enlarged taste for finery and novelty spread as their comforts multiplied. Foreign wares were valued and sought for; and what Anglo-Saxon toil or labour could produce, to supply the wants or gratify the fancies of foreigners, was taken out to barter. All these things gave so many channels of nutrition to those who had no lands, by presenting them with opportunities for obtaining the equivalents on which their subsistence depended. As the bullion of the country increased, it became, either coined or uncoined, the general and permanent equivalent. As it could be laid up without deterioration, and was always operative when it once became in use, the abundance of society increased, because no one hesitated to exchange his property for it. Until coin became the medium of barter, most would hesitate to part with the productions they had reared, and all classes suffered from the desire of hoarding. Coin or bullion released the commodities that all society wanted, from individual fear, prudence, or covetousness, that would for its own uses have withheld them, and sent them floating through society in ten thousand ever-dividing channels. The Anglo-Saxons were in this happy state. Bullion, as we have remarked, sufficiently abounded in the country, and was in full use in exchange for all things. In every reign after Athelstan the trade and employment of the country increased.”
The principal work of London was that of collecting and distributing. The port was the centre to and from which the whole business of the country came and went. It was the king’s part to maintain the high roads, but the Roman skill in road-making was lost; branching off from the highways, in connection with the villages, were tracks through the forests and over the moors. It is an indication of the old spirit of tribal separation that merely to be seen on such a track was suspicious. “... If a far coming man or a stranger journey through a wood out of the highway, and neither shout nor blow his horn, he is to be held a thief and either to be slain or redeemed.” Many of the monasteries lay far outside the high road and in the midst of woods; they were apparently in communication with the world by the medium of streams and rivers. Tintern, Fountains, Dryburgh, Crowland, Ely, for instance, stood beside streams or rivers.
There is abundant evidence as to the extent of the trade carried on in the port of London. There were merchants from Gotland, that strangely-placed emporium of eastern and northern commerce. Thousands of coins have been found on the island—Roman, Byzantine, and Anglo-Saxon, giving evidence of the wealth and enterprise of the merchants, who conducted their caravans across Russia and their ships from the Baltic to the German Ocean and the shores of the Bay of Biscay. We hear of Frisian merchants trading to “Lunden tunes Hythe” in the seventh century. The Norsemen were not all pirates. Othere describes the trade with England in skins of bear, marten, otter, reindeer, in eider-down and whalebone; in ropes made of whale and sealskin. In Ethelred’s laws we read of Frisians, called Flandrenses, of the men of the Emperor, men of Rouen, of Normandy, and of France.
It would seem that the greater part of the foreign trade remained in the hands of the foreign merchants, but not all. Athelstan conferred the rank of Thane on one who had voyaged three times to the Mediterranean. And in the Dialogues of Ælfric we have the English merchant’s own account of himself and his trade:—
“I say that I am useful to the king and to ealder men and to the rich and to all people. I ascend my ship with my merchandise and I sail over the sea and sell my things and buy dear things which are not produced in this land, and I bring them to you here with great danger over the sea: and sometimes I suffer shipwreck, with the loss of all these things, scarcely escaping myself. ‘What do you bring to us?’ ‘Skins, silks, costly gems, and gold; curious garments, pigments, wine, oil, ivory and orichalcous; copper and tin, silver, glass, and such like.’”
The voyage of ships from the south and the south-east to London was much safer than we should expect for such small craft as then formed the trading vessels—short, unwieldy, carrying a single mast and a single sail. The ships bound for London hugged the shore round the South Foreland and then, instead of sailing round the North Foreland, they passed into the estuary of the Thames by the shallow arm of the sea called the Wantsum, which there divided Thanet from the mainland and made it an island. At either end of this passage the Romans had constructed a fortress: that on the north called Regulbium, now Reculver; that on the south Rutupiæ;, now Richborough. The latter stood upon a small island separated from the mainland by a narrow channel. The site of Sandwich was another islet lying south of Rutupiæ. The passage was kept open partly by the flow of two or three rivers into it from the highlands of Kent. It gradually, however, silted up and shrank; yet ships continued to pass by this channel until the sixteenth century, when it became too shallow for the lightest ships. The Wantsum must be borne in mind whenever one speaks of early navigation to and from the port of London, because it saved the ships from the rough and dangerous passage round the North Foreland.
The business of distribution, collection of exports, and internal traffic was conducted entirely by English merchants. Every year the chapman started on his rounds. He set out with his caravan of horses laden with goods and conducted by a troop of servants, all armed for defence against robbers; the roads were cleared of wood and undergrowth on either side to prevent an ambush—they were the old Roman roads, many of which still continue; the antiquarian is pleased to find evidences here and there of a road decayed and not repaired, but deflected by an easier way. Where there were no Roman roads there were tracks and bridlepaths; forests covered the country, and even in summer there was danger of quagmires and bogs. The chapman rode not from village to village, or from house to house, but from one market-place to another, reporting himself to the Reeve on his arrival. When the season was over, when he had sold or exchanged his stock, he returned to London, his caravan now loaded with wool, skins, and metals for export, and perhaps with a company of miserable slaves to be sold across the seas.
The Gilds or Guilds, out of which sprang so great a number of trade corporations and companies, are met with very early. We shall have to consider this subject later on; let us note here, however, that the actual rules of many early Guilds have survived. They were not trades unions: that is, they did not exist for the purpose of keeping up prices and wages. They were essentially social, even convivial in character; they were benefit societies; and they were religious. We have the complete code of the “Frith Guild” of London under Athelstan. The laws are drawn up by the Bishop and the Reeve. The members, who were numerous, met together once a month for social purposes; they feasted and drank together; when a member died each brother gave a loaf, and sang, or paid for singing, fifty psalms. There was an insurance fund to which every member contributed fourpence in order to make good the losses incurred by the members; they also paid a shilling towards thief-catching; they were divided into companies of ten and into groups of hundreds; each company and each group had its own officer. The pursuit and the conviction of thieves were the principal objects of this Guild. In a commercial city theft or the destruction of property is the crime which is most held in abhorrence by the citizens.
There was a Guild of another kind, peculiar, apparently, to the City of London. It was called the Cnihten Guild (see p. 329). We shall have occasion to speak of this Guild at greater length farther on. For the present it is enough to say that it was in all probability—for its laws have perished—an association bound together by religious forms and vows for the defence of the City—the “Cnihten” were in fact the officers of the City militia, which consisted of all the able-bodied citizens; they were trustees for the funds collected for the purpose of providing arms for the citizens; they administered an estate belonging to the town called the Portsoken, lying outside Aldgate, whose rents were received and set aside, or expended in the repair of gates and walls, as well as providing arms.
Attempts have been made to derive the Anglo-Saxon Guilds from the Roman collegia. It is not impossible, supposing that the imitation came through Gaul. At the same time, the points of resemblance on which the theory rests are so extremely slight that one is not disposed to accept it as proved. That is to say, they are points of resemblance such as naturally belong to every association of men made for purposes of mutual support and for the maintenance of common interests. Thus:—
1. Under the Roman Empire there existed collegia privata, associations of men bound together for trade purposes.
2. They were established by legal rights.
3. They were divided into bodies of ten and a hundred.
4. They were presided over by a magister and decuriones—a President and a Council.
5. They had their Treasurer and their Sub-Treasurer.
6. They could hold property in their corporate capacity.
7. They had their temples at which they sacrificed.
8. They had their meeting-houses.
9. They had a common sheet.
10. They had jus sodalitii, the laws, rights, and duties of the members.
11. They admitted members on oath.
12. They supported their poor.
13. The members had to pay contributions and subscriptions.
14. They buried their dead publicly.
15. Each had its day of celebration or feast.
Now, suppose we found among the Chinese or the ancient Mexicans institutions with similar laws, should we be justified in claiming a Roman origin for them? Not at all. We should merely note the facts, and should acknowledge that humanity being common to every age and every country, such rules must be laid down and maintained by every such association as a Company or Guild in the interests of any trade or mystery. So far and no farther the Anglo-Saxon Guild is a copy of the Roman collegium. Unless further points of resemblance are found, we shall be justified in believing that the Guild was not derived by the Saxon from the Roman, and that the latter was not preserved among the provincial towns of England. Against the theory it may also be argued that if it was so preserved, every Guild being separated from every other could develop on independent lines, and that some of the Roman names at least would be preserved, and some of the Roman customs, apart, that is, from the customs common to every such association in every age and in every country.
III. The Religious Foundations
The religious spirit, which has always been found among the Teutonic peoples, was strongly manifested in the Saxon as soon as he became converted. He multiplied monasteries and churches; all over the country arose monastic houses; Bede mentions nineteen of them, including those of Ely, Whitby, Iona, Melrose, Lindisfarne, and Beverley. He does not, however, include Westminster, Romsey, Barking, or Crowland. Kings, queens, princesses, and nobles, all went into monasteries and took the vows; partly, no doubt, from fear of losing their souls, but partly, it is certain, from the desire to enjoy the quiet life, free from the never-ending troubles of the world; free also from its temptations and from its attractions. The monastery provided peace in this world and bliss in the world to come. It has been too much the custom to deride the rule and the discipline, the daily services, the iteration that made prayer and praise a mere mechanical routine. Yet it is easy to understand the kind of mind on whom this deadening effect would be produced. It is also easy to understand the kind of mind to which a rigid rule would be like a prop and a crutch on life’s pilgrimage; to which daily services, nightly services, perpetual services, would be so many steps by which the soul was climbing upwards. Again, to a harassed king, arrived, after many years of struggle and battle, at middle age or old age, think how such a house, lying in woods remote, among marshes inaccessible, would seem a very haven of rest! Or again, to the princess who had suffered the violent and premature deaths of her brothers, her father, most of her people; who remembered the tears and grief of her widowed mother; who had passed through the bereavements which made life dreadful in a time of perpetual war; how admirable would it seem to preserve her virginity even in marriage, and, as soon as might be, to retire into the safety and the peace of the nunnery!
In the year 731, the year of his death, Bede wrote: “Such being the peaceable and calm disposition of the time, many of the Northumbrians, as well of the nobility as of private persons, laying down their weapons, do rather incline to dedicate themselves and their children to the tonsure and monastic vows than to study martial discipline. What will be the end thereof the next age will show.”
The next age did show very remarkably what happens to a country which puts its boys into monasteries. In the next age the people continued still to flock into the monasteries; they not only deserted their duties and their homes, they also deserted their country; they flocked in crowds on pilgrimage to Rome as to a very holy place; noble and ignoble, laity and clergy, men and women, not only went on pilgrimage, but went to Rome in order to die there. Those who could neither take the monastic vows nor die at Rome put on the monastic garb before they died.
Anglo-Saxon London, during the eighth century, thus became profoundly religious, and although the history of the time is full of violence, it is also full of exhortations to the better life. The Bishops constantly ordered the reading of the Gospels. Every priest, especially, was to study the Holy Book out of which to preach and teach. The modern spirit of an Anglo-Saxon sermon is most remarkable, and this in spite of the superstitions in which the time was plunged. The churches, for instance, were crammed with relics; perhaps the people regarded them as we regard collections in a museum. Here were kept pieces of the sacred manger, of the true Cross, of the burning bush, of St. Peter’s beard, of Mary Magdalene’s finger. There were also the popular beliefs about witchcraft. The priests inveighed against witches—“that the dead should rise through devil-skill or witchcraft is very abominable to our Saviour; they who exercise such crafts are God’s enemies and truly belong to the deceitful Devil.” The priests were also zealous in forbidding and in stamping out all heathen survivals, such as fountain worship, incantations of the dead, omens, magic, man worship, the abominations practised in various sorts of witchcraft, worship of elms and other trees, of stones, and other “phantoms.” Long after Christianity had covered the land, the people practised their old incantations for the cure of disease, for good luck in enterprise, against poisons, disease, and battle. They had a thousand omens and prognostics; days were lucky or unlucky; days were good or bad for this or that kind of business—it is within living men’s recollection that Almanacks were published for ourselves giving the lucky and the unlucky days—those beliefs are hardest to destroy which are superstitious and irrational and absurd. Are we not living still in a mass of superstitious belief? It is sufficient to record that the Saxons were as superstitious as our grandfathers—even as superstitious as ourselves.
It is interesting to note the simple and beautiful piety of Bede and other Anglo-Saxon writers, and to mark the extraordinary credulity with which they relate marvels and miracles. Every doctrine had to be made intelligible, and explained and enforced by a special miracle. Take, for instance, the doctrine of the efficacy of masses for the dead. Who could continue in doubt upon the subject after such testimony as the following? Who can argue against a miracle?
In the year 679—only a few years before the history was written—a battle was fought near the river Trent between Egfrith, King of the Northumbrians, and Ethelred, King of the Mercians. There was left for dead on the field of battle one Imma, a youth belonging to the king. This young man presently recovered, and binding up his wound tried to escape unseen from the field. Being captured, however, he was taken to one of Ethelred’s earls. Being afraid of owning himself for what he was, he said he was a peasant who had brought provisions for the army. The earl ordered him to be cared for and properly entertained as a prisoner. Now he had a brother called Tunna, a priest, and the Abbot of a monastery. This priest heard that Imma was dead, and went to search for his body on the field of battle. He presently found one so like that of his brother that, carrying it to the monastery, he buried it and said masses for the soul. Now when Imma had recovered of his wounds, the earl ordered him to be bound so that he should not escape. Lo! as fast as the bonds were laid upon him they were loosened. The earl suspected witchcraft; he was assured by Imma that he knew no spells. Being pressed, however, he confessed who and what he was, viz. no peasant, but a soldier belonging to King Egfrith. Then the earl carried him to London and there sold him as a slave to a certain Frisian, who bound him with new fetters. But at the third hour of the morning they all fell off; and so every morning; wherefore the Frisian, not knowing what to do with this miraculous slave, allowed him to return on promise of sending his ransom. Now when Imma conversed with his brother, he discovered that the loosening of his bonds had been miraculously effected in answer to the masses said for his soul.
The ravages of the Danes in the eighth and ninth centuries destroyed most of the monasteries. For, at first, being heathens, they rejoiced in the destruction and pillage of holy houses and churches, which were rich, full of precious things in gold and silver, embroidery, pearls and gems, silks and fine stuffs. Wearmouth, they destroyed, also Jarrow, Tynemouth, Coldingham, Crowland, Peterborough. When the destroyers retired, those of the monks who had escaped murder timidly came back. Crowland Abbey, for instance, found itself reduced to the Abbot and two monks.
When Alfred had restored peace, he tried to renew some of the monasteries, but failed; no one would become a monk. With nunneries he succeeded better, founding one at Shaftesbury and one at Winchester. Glastonbury, in the time of Dunstan, was served by Irish priests. In the precinct of Paul’s Minster there was a college—St. Martin’s-le-Grand was a college; but there was in London at this time neither monastery nor nunnery. Why?
It may be explained on the ground that at the time when the great zeal for monasteries moved the hearts of the people there was comparative peace in the land, and it was sought to build a religious house far away from what were thought to be the disturbing influences of a town. For instance, St. Erkenwald, Bishop of London, founded two houses, but placed neither in London; one of these he built at Barking down the river, the other at Chertsey up the river. Other instances occur. Romsey, Crowland, Medehamsted (Peterborough), Lindisfarne, Iona, Ely, Glastonbury, not to speak of many later foundations, were placed in quiet retreats far from the busy world. Westminster, it is true, was built on an island once populous and lying on the highway of trade; but the earlier foundation was destroyed by the Danes, and Edward’s House arose long after the highway had been turned aside and most of the trade diverted. Still, Westminster was never remote from the haunts of men, and it may be observed that when the foundation of new houses began they were erected in and around London itself, with no thought of seclusion. Again, when the Danish troubles came upon the land and the monasteries were sacked, for many years the monastic life became impossible; the old desire for it entirely vanished, and long years passed before it awakened again. When it did, monastic houses were founded within the walls of London, or close beneath the protection of the walls, as at St. Mary Overies and Bermondsey and Aldgate. The Danish pillage was not forgotten.
Another explanation of the absence of monastic houses in Saxon London may be the fact, which one is apt to overlook, that every Minster was provided with a college, or a monastic house where the priests—not monks—lived the common life, though not yet the celibate life; where they had a school and where they brought up boys for the Church. In Domesday Book there are no lands owned by religious houses in London except by the Church of St. Paul’s, which had lands in Essex and elsewhere; by certain individual canons, the Bishop of London, who had lands in Middlesex, Hertford, and Essex; and by the Church of St. Martin’s, the Abbey of Westminster, and the Abbey of Barking.
The churches of London, with the houses, were at first built of wood. You may see a Saxon church, such as those which were dotted all over the City area, still standing at Greenstead, near Chipping Ongar, in Essex (see p. 211). When the houses began to be built of stone, the churches followed suit; you may see a stone Saxon church at Bradford-on-Avon, near Bath. The churches were quite small at first, and continued to be small for many centuries. They were by degrees provided with glass, with richly decorated altars, with chapels and with organs: in the last respect being better off than their successors in the eighteenth century, when many City churches had no organ. Bede describes an organ as a “kind of tower made with various pipes, from which, by the blowing of bellows, a most copious sound is issued; and that a becoming modulation may accompany this, it is furnished with certain wooden tongues from the interior part, which the master’s fingers skilfully repressing, produce a grand and almost a sweet melody.”
And Dunstan, who was a great artificer in metals as well as a great painter, constructed for himself an organ of brass pipes.
It is interesting to gather, from the dedications of the City churches, those which certainly date from Saxon times. Thus there are five dedicated to Allhallows, of which four are certainly ancient; of the churches dedicated to Apostles, there are two of St. Andrew, three of St. Bartholomew, one of St. James, one of St. Paul, three of St. Peter, one of St. Stephen, four of St. Mary, one of Mary Magdalene; of later saints, St. Martin, St. Bridget, St. Benedict, St. Anne, St. Clement, St. Giles are represented, while Saxon or Danish saints are found in St. Ethelburga, St. Swithin, St. Botolph, St. Olave, St. Magnus, St. Vedast, and St. Dunstan. None of the Norman saints seem to have crossed the water. None, certainly, supplanted the Saxon saints, while not one British saint remained in Saxon England, which shows how different was the Norman Conquest from the Saxon occupation.