gate Hill, the soldiers could see the
Fleet ebbing and flowing with each receding and advancing tide.
Northwards the country afforded a hunting ground, and a temple to
Diana Venatrix would naturally be erected. During the excavations for
New St. Paul's, Roman urns were found as well as British graves; and
in 1830, a stone altar with an image of Diana was likewise found while
digging for the foundations of Goldsmith's Hall in Foster Lane. On
such incomplete evidence rests the accuracy of the story or tradition
that a temple of Diana occupied part of the site of the present
Cathedral.

Suetonius himself restored order in London; and in spite of
insurrections, she progressed during the next three centuries to
become a centre of such importance, Roman highways spreading in
different directions, that the accurate and impartial Ammianus
Marcellinus concedes to her (_circa_ 380) the style and title of
Augusta. And it was during these three centuries of progress that
Christianity obtained a firm footing, but when and how we know not.
The picturesque story, which deceived even Bede, how that Lucius,
"king of the Britons," sent letters to Eleutherus, a holy man, Bishop
of Rome, entreating Eleutherus to convert him and his, must now be put
down as a pious forgery.[2] Tertullian (_circa_ 208) says that the
kingdom and name of Christ were then acknowledged even in those parts
inaccessible to the Romans; and we are probably on the safe side in
asserting that missions had been successfully introduced into London
by the end of the second century. Neither are we in much doubt or
difficulty as to whence they came. Gaul, visited by missionaries from
Ephesus, in turn sent others on; and the Church in London, as
throughout these Isles, in Romano-British times can be safely
described as a daughter of Gaul, and a granddaughter of the Ephesus of
St. Timothy. Beyond we know little, if anything at all, more than that
a Bishop of London, known by the Latinised name of RESTITUTUS, was one
of three British prelates at the Council of Aries (314). And while
there is no reason to suppose otherwise than that the bishops, of whom
Restitutus could not have been anything like the first, had their
principal church erected in the neighbourhood, at least, of St. Paul's
churchyard and dedicated to that saint, neither site nor name can ever
be authenticated. When the Roman troops retired, so thoroughly did the
invading savages destroy all records, that our kn