This being the first form of the city, its proportion of length to breadth was as 3 to 2. Now, for the cross streets, I conceive one to have been that of St. Martin’s lane from Aldersgate continued downward to Paul’s wharf; the next was from Aldermanbury and Bow-lane, to Queenhithe: the other, Walbroke to Dowgate, or Watergate, being the outfall of the rivulet; boundary of the eastern wall of the original city, as in in the time of Mandubrace. The street which accompanied the western wall, on the inside Ludgate, is quite absorbed by houses at present.
There might then have been many lesser cross streets both ways, of which we cannot now take any account, our purpose being to consider it only in the great; but there are many collateral indications of the justness of our assignment: it would be a trifling minuteness to push conjectures farther, than to observe the gate on the south side was at Queen-hithe.
Thus we see a great conformity between old London and Cunobeline’s Cæsaromagus, especially as to the general distribution and design; the four gates of the sides corresponding to different streets obliquely.
Afterwards, when the Romans became possessed of the island, and made the great roads across the kingdom, three of them had respect to this metropolis, but none went precisely through it; and such was often their method. The Watling-street, from Chester to Dover, came by Tyburn, crossed the Thames at Stanegate, by Lambeth, and so to Shooters’ hill: this is crossed at Tyburn by another equally strait, but unnoticed by any writer, reaching across the kingdom from Chichester to Dunwich in Suffolk: I call it via Iceniana: it goes by Old-street north of the city, and is the high road of Essex to Colchester; but, when the Romans found it useful to enlarge this city by a new wall, they made a branch to proceed from St. Giles’s, which we call Holborn, and so built a gate at Newgate, and continued the road to Cheapside.
A third road is the Hermen-street from the sea-side in Sussex to Scotland: it went by Bishops-gate, but on the eastern and outside of the city, till its enlargement; and that enlargement was done by Constantine the Great, or by his mother the empress Helena, our country-woman: and we may well credit the reports of the Britons concerning this matter. Then it acquired the title of Londinium Augusta: then it was that the Tower was built; an armamentarium, as the castle of Colchester, of the same manner and model of building, Roman brick and stone; a chapel with a semicircular window, as Colchester, and dedicated to St. Helena. This in after-times; but in regard to the age we are treating on, that of Cæsar and our aboriginal Britons, it is a just enquiry, after we have given the plan of primitive London of the Novantes, Where may we suppose their temple to have been? for assuredly we must pronounce, that, whenever the ancients built a city, they certainly took care to erect a temple for divine worship.
In answer to this enquiry, we are to reflect, that the Britons were under the ecclesiastic regimen of the Druids, who were of the patriarchal religion, the religion indeed of ABRAHAM: for they came from him. We find in sacred writ, wherever he removed from one country to another, “there builded he an altar to Jehovah, and invoked in the name of Jehovah,” who sometimes personally appeared to him: consequently we must infer Jehovah to be the Messiah, or Son of God, in an angelic form.
Other times ABRAHAM removed into a country abounding with groves of oak; sometimes he planted a grove of oak for religious purposes, as a temple. All these things the Druids did; they built such open temples as the great patriarch; they used oak-groves, or planted oak-groves as temples: we cannot say that Jehovah appeared personally to them; yet we may well think they were sometimes vouchsafed the spirit of prophecy, and particularly in regard to Messiah, who they knew was to be born of a virgin, and likewise was to be born at the winter solstice, whence their famous misleto solemnity.
Moreover, at Chartres in France, which was the place of the principal meeting of the Gaulish Druids, there is now a magnificent church, built upon the spot where then was that most celebrated open temple: for the Druids very easily passed over into christianity; the transition was but natural. This church is dedicated to the Mother of God, as they there style the virgin Mary: there is under it a chapel cut in the rock, with a flight of stairs descending to it: on the door of the frontispiece is this inscription in Latin,
I apprehend this to be analogous to the caves of Mithras in Persia; for Mithras is Mediator, or Messiah; and they say there, that Mithras was born in such a rocky cave; and they worship him therein. Both the ancient Persians and the Druids, who were of the same patriarchal religion, had the same notion of the Messiah to be born in the rocky stable at Bethlehem.
We have many instances of Druid men and women endowed with the spirit of prophecy. I shall mention but one, out of Josephus, Antiq. xviii. The Jewish Agrippa fell into the displeasure of Tiberius, who put him in bonds. As he stood leaning against a tree before the palace, an owl perched upon that tree: a German Druid, one of the emperor’s guards, spoke to him to be of good cheer, for he should be released from those bonds, and arrive at great dignity and power; but bid him remember, that when he saw that bird again, he should live but five days. All this came to pass: he was made king by Caligula; St. Paul preached before him: Josephus speaks of his death, agreeable to the prediction. But concerning the Druids, I have before now opened my mind largely, in some papers read at the Antiquarian Society; wherein I have sufficiently vindicated them from the imputation of paganism and idolatry.
As to the temple belonging to the city of Trinobantum, or London, we may be assured, they erected no temple within the city. When the Romans became masters here, they built a temple of their own form, to Diana, where now St. Paul’s stands: they placed it in the open space, then the forum; but the British temple, appropriate to the city, was upon the open rising ground to the west, where now is Knave’s-acre. The name of the place both gives a very good foundation to my opinion, and also at the same time acquaints us with the particular form of the temple: for the Druids, as I have shown, had three kinds of temples, of the patriarchal mode. 1. The round, or circular work of upright stones, innumerable to be seen. 2. The serpentine temple, or a snake transmitted through a circle; as those of Abury and Shap. 3. The alate, or winged temple, composed of a circle and wings: and this was the sort of temple here placed; of which the name of Knaves-acre is a sure memorial. This was made only of mounds of earth, in Latin agger, thrown out of the ditch camp-fashion: this word is corrupted into acre. The word knave is oriental, canaph, volavit; the Kneph of the Egyptians; by which they meant the Deity, in the most ancient times, before idolatry prevailed.
The form of our alate temple here exactly corresponds with that now to be seen on Navestock common, Epping forest; which name of Navestock preserves its memorial, meaning the sacred tree by the alate temple: it is composed of mounds of earth and ditch; as ours was at Knaves-acre.
Observe, the word agger remains at Edgeware, the Suellanacis of our king Casvelhan, uncle to Mandubrace: it is the Roman road called Watling-street. Egham by Stanes acknowledges the like derivation, being upon the via Trinobantica at Stanes, the Ad Pontes of the Romans. Many more like instances I could give.
These sort of temples were properly dedicated to the Divine Spirit, the author of motion, which moved upon the face of the new-created matter, as Moses writes, and were more particularly assigned to the religious festivity celebrated at the summer solstice, when the pigeon was the first and peculiar sacrifice of the season. I shall not speak more about them here: but besides this temple, the Britons had a magnificent cursus, or place for sports and races on foot, in chariots, on horseback, when they celebrated their public sacrifices and religious observances on the solstices and equinoxes.
These cursus’s were likewise made of mounds of earth thrown up in two parallel lines: such a one is that at Leicester in the meadow near the river; it is called Rawdikes, from the ancient name of the city, Ratæ, capital of the Coritani; such another there is, called Dyke-hills, in the meadow of Dorchester, Oxfordshire, where the Tame and the Isis unite; Dobuni.
Exactly such another, belonging to our Trinobantum, is that we call Long-acre, or agger; which, we may be confident, was originally two parallel banks, the whole length of that street, and breadth: it has the same gentle sweep, or curve, as those other cursus’s: it then commanded a beautiful prospect over the present Covent-garden to the Thames, and an extensive view, both upward and downward, of the river, and into Surrey. The banks were designed for the spectators, and admirably well adapted to the purpose.
So that we may justly conclude, Knave’s-acre was the proper temple to the city of Trinobantum, and Long-acre their solemn place of races, accompanying the religious celebrations of the ancient citizens here, in the time of Cæsar. Long-acre is 1400 English feet in length, which is exactly 800 Druid cubits, two furlongs of the east, two stadia.
Give me leave to mention my fancy or conjecture of the founder of this alate temple and cursus, viz. ELI, father of Immanuence, and of Casvelhan: there was his tumulus on Windmill-street edge, at the end of Piccadilly: a windmill was erected on it in after-times. From it descends the street called Hedge-lane, from agger, the tumulus. I suppose the name of Piccadilly may be from its elevation, a Hybrid word composed from peak cad Eli, the tumulus ducis Eli. Cad is a common name of the Welsh kings.
Westminster, in Druid times, was a great wood, called afterward Thorney-isle, where they celebrated the autumnal Panegyre. Mr. Denman, a brass-founder, told me of three brass Celts dug up very low in the foundation of the Sanctuary at Westminster, which he melted; they were of whitish metal: also two more of the like, dug up in the bottom of the Thames, on digging the foundation of Westminster bridge, which he melted.
I shall only add a few observations, more than what is already done, concerning the plan of the oldest city of London. Where now is St. Paul’s was the forum, or market-place, comprehending the square area between Cheapside, the Old ’Change, Watling-street, and where now is the west end of St. Paul’s. The highest end of the city was the north-west corner, guarded by a steep precipice, where Madan-lane is, which imports as much. The north side of the city had a deep ditch, always filled with water from the morass of Moorfields and Smeethfield, now Smithfield. From hence the name of Lade-lane; for lade, in Saxon, is an artificial ditch, or drain: and this discharges the vulgar opinion of Ludgate taking its name from the river Flete, as if porta flumentana. Now we may well assert Dowgate to be truly such, the water-gate.
Our Saxon ancestors had some remembrance of the enlargement of London walls, by their naming of Aldgate, and Aldersgate, as sensible of the priority of one in date. It was A. D. 450, that they beat the Scots at Stamford, which is but little more than 100 years from the time of Constantine the Great, when these walls were built, and the title of Londinium Augusta commenced. That the city-walls were made by the empress Helena, is strongly confirmed by the history of the recovery of Britain to the Roman empire by Constantius Chlorus: for Asclepiodotus his general fought the Britons under the dominion of Allectus, under the old walls of London, at Walbrook, then the eastern boundary of the city, as historians particularly recite; and we may easily believe Cornhill to have been originally without the city, where the waggons stood that brought it. The historians likewise tell us, that the first palace of the British kings was in the south-west corner of the city, where afterwards Baynard’s castle stood, which likewise became a palace of our kings, before Bridewell was built: but when the empress Helena built the walls of the enlarged city, which walls for the most part now remain, the palace was then the present tower. Lastly, I apprehend, the oldest city which we are describing was walled about; for I cannot allow the Britons to be any wise inferior to the Gauls in art, either military or civil. When the city was enlarged and incompassed with new walls, the three roads beyond the east gate were converted into streets, as at present, Threadneedle-street, Cornhill and Lombard-street; as well as the Roman road, Gracechurch-street.