I do not know how long a time was necessary for the complete absorption of the Danes among the general population: but there are memories of Danish settlements around St. Clement Danes and outside Bishopsgate Street—perhaps the existence of such a settlement may account for the burial of King Harold in the church of St. Clement.
The Danes, therefore, occupied London first for a period of twelve years. We do not expect to find any remains of that brief occupation: and indeed there are none. When Cnut and his sons were kings they ruled, but did not occupy, the City for some five-and-twenty years. We might expect some remains of that period. If Cnut built the King’s House at Westminster, then the vaults and crypts which were filled with cement when the Houses of Parliament were built were probably his work, and the Painted Chamber destroyed by fire in 1835 was also his work. Otherwise there is nothing, not a stone or a fragment, which we can recognise as Danish work. One little relic alone remains. During excavations for a warehouse in the south side of St. Paul’s Churchyard there was found a Danish gravestone inscribed with Runic characters, probably of the tenth or eleventh century. It is now in the Guildhall Museum.
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.
5. The manners and customs of the people.
Cædmon’s _Metrical Paraphrase_ (10th cent.), Bodleian.]
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).