t king then made it once more. How long
this condition of desolation prevailed within the Roman wall we have no
information. Unfortunately no successful attempt has been made to
discriminate between the Roman masonry, that of Alfred, and that of the
successive mediaeval repairs, in the recent examinations of what is left
of the wall.

It is well to keep the few chronological facts before us in trying to
judge of the influence of the events of 457 on what was left of Roman
London. These facts may be briefly stated. In 369 London was Augusta of
the Romans. In 457, or ninety-eight years--practically a century--later,
the Saxons caught the Britons of London at the ford over the Cray, in
Kent, fifteen miles down the Thames, and slew 4,000 of them, the rest
flying "in great terror to London." The chronicle does not tell us
whether the Saxons entered the city then or not. Judging by analogy,
they did enter it then or soon after, and slew the Britons that were
left from the slaughter at Crayford. The Britons had certainly ceased
out of London when we hear of it again. They had so utterly perished
that not a single Celtic or Roman local name was left, except the two
already mentioned--Thames and London. There is absolute silence in the
chronicle. This ominous silence lasts from 457 to 609. We have,
therefore, a hundred years from the departure of the Romans to the
battle of Crayford, and 152 years more to the next mention of London; in
all 250 years during which there is only one thing certain--namely, that
owing to some cause, the British and Roman languages ceased altogether
to be spoken or even remembered, and together with them the Roman
religion. The change is complete, as well it might be in that long
time--as long as between the death of Charles I. and the accession of
Edward VII. This blank in the history is all the more marked because no
inscriptions have survived. We have a few--very few--examples of writing
before the Romans left. We have not a line, not a letter, during those
250 years, and when we find anything again, the writers are
Anglo-Saxon--the language is entirely changed, so entirely that not even
one local name survives.

It may be necessary to note here that some excellent authorities,
finding certain traces of Roman law and customs existing in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, have formed the opinion that such laws were
relics of the Roman occupation. It would be interesting if we could
accept this