I have elsewhere ('London,' ch. i.) described the natural reasons which led to this desertion of the City. It appears to us strange and almost impossible that a great city should be so utterly deserted. Where, however, are the cities of Tadmor, of Tyre, of Carthage? Where are the great cities of Asia Minor? The conqueror not only took the City and killed some of the people; he cut off the supplies, and therefore forced them to go. This was most certainly the case with London. Roger of Wendover, it is true, tells us that in the year 462 the Saxons took possession of London, and then successively of York, Lincoln, and Winchester, committing great devastation. 'They fell on the natives in every quarter, like wolves on sheep forsaken by their shepherds; the churches and all the ecclesiastical buildings they levelled with the ground; the priests they slew at the altars; the holy scriptures they burned with fire; the tombs of the holy martyrs they covered with mounds of earth; the clergy who escaped the slaughter fled with the relics of the saints to the caves and recesses of the earth, to the woods and deserts and the crags of the mountains.'
I do not suppose that Roger of Wendover (he died in 1237) had access to documents of the time. I would rather incline to the belief that, given certain undoubted facts of battle, murder, and sacrilege, he presented the world with a little embroidery of his own. An Assault on London is, however, possible; in which case the desertion of the City would be only hastened. With the ruin and desolation of Augusta came also the ruin of the southern settlement.
This silence--this desolation--lasted some hundred years. Then the men of Essex--the East Saxons--came down, a few at a time, and took possession of the deserted City; the merchants began timidly to bring their ships again with goods for trade; the East Saxons learned the meaning of bargains; Augusta was dead, but London revived. The City preserved its ancient name, but the southern settlement lost its name. We know not what the Romans or the Britons called it, but the Saxons called it Southwark. And they repaired the embankment and restored the ancient causeways, and cleared away the ruins.