olume lx. of
_Archaeologia_, and illustrated by a series of plans, sections, and other
drawings by Mr. Reader, who seems to have proved that the marsh on which
Moorfield was laid out in 1605 did not exist in the early Roman time,
but was caused by the building of the wall.

III.--SAXON LONDON

If we know but little about Roman London, we know still less, if
possible, about Saxon London. So far as it was inhabited at all, it was
the capital of the kings of Essex, and is so described in a very few
documents. On this account it was an episcopal see. How the Saxons
became possessed of it we do not know. Probably Stow's account may be
accepted as the most likely:--

"This citie of London having beene destroyed and brent by the
Danes and other pagan ennemies about the yere of Christ 839,
was by Alfred King of the West Saxons, in the yere 886,
repayred and honorably restored and made againe habitable."

That Stow's account is according to the best authorities will be
apparent to any reader of Green's _Conquest of England_. In chapter iv.
he describes the condition of London and the neighbouring kingdom of the
East Saxons--"A tract which included not only the modern shire that
bears their name, but our Middlesex and Hertfordshire, and whose centre
or 'mother-city' was London." He goes on to point out that at the time
of Alfred's great campaigns against the Danes, London had played but
little part in English history: "Indeed," he affirms, "for nearly half a
century after its conquest by the East Saxons, it wholly disappears from
our view." Its position, he goes on to show, was sure eventually to draw
in both trade and population, but the Danish war arrested progress.

"To London the war brought all but ruin; so violent, in fact,
was the shock to its life that its very bishoprick seemed for a
time to cease to exist. The Roman walls must have been broken
and ruined, for we hear of no resistance such as that which in
later days made the city England's main bulwark against
northern attack."

Asser, in his _Life of Alfred_, tells us plainly enough of the condition
of the space within the ruined walls. It must have been that of Pevensey
now, or of Silchester before the grass grew over it. Alfred, he says,
"restauravit et habitabilem fecit." "To make a town habitable" implies
that it was uninhabited; "to restore it" implies that at some previous
period it had been what the grea