London ... With ... illustrations

Front matter

Crown 8vo. cloth extra, 3*. 6d. SIR RICHARD WHITTINGTON. By WALTER BESANT and JAMES RICE. With a Photogravure Frontispiece. ' Mr. Besant is an enthusiast about London, and revels in its archives, i's traditions, its historic associations, and its literary memories. He loves the town, not exactly as Dr. Johnson loved it, but somewhat after the manner of Leigh Hunt or Charles Dickens. He has much to say that is pleasant and picturesque about City life and municipal splendour when Whittington was Lord Mayor, and he has something also that is impressive to relate about the personal character and wise public spirit of a man who left his mark on the city of his fortunes by golden deeds of princely generosity, Whi'ttington's own life — apart altogether from the exploits of his fabled cat— was full of romance and dignity, and Mr. Besant has contriv<-d, in these pages, to paint the civic worthy's portrait with artistic skill against the spacious background of his times.' — Speaker. ' Readers interested in getting a view of the great City and its past from the biography of a single citizen will find ju.st what they want in the life of Whittington.' — Guardian. 'A relic of the literary partnership between tbe two novelists (Besant and Rice), yet not itself a novel, but a biography founded, as Mr. Besant's Preface to the edition reminds us, upon a diligent study of London antiquities,' — Times. ' This book is designed not only as a biography, but as one specially to instruct those interested in the history of London.

It is delightfully written, and makes its hero quite as interesting in history as he is in his more familiar legendary character.' — Scotsman. ' It is a book that no one who loves City lore ought to dispense with.' — Citizen. 'The mark of Mr. Besant pervades every page of this pleasant and impressive record.' — Leeds Mercury. ' The pictures of London life read like pages from a romanc?. There are brilliant pages in the book which make us forget at times that Mr. Besant is not spinning a story.' — Star. Crown Svo. cloth extra, 3s. 6d. GASPARD DE COLIGNY. By WALTER BESANT. With a Photogravure Portrait. ' This biography of the great Protestant Admiral is one of the most inspiriting historical essays a reader could turn to, whether for instruction or for the encouragement that comes of looking on a great example of a noble life.'— Scotsman. ' The art ofthe novelist combined with the skill ofthe historian. ...

It is delightful. . . . Readers who were fascinated with Mr. Stanley Weyman's " A Gentleman of France " will find " Gaspard de Coligny " of special interest to them, inasmuch as the two books deal with the same stirring time> from a diverse point of view.' — Morning Leader. 'Mr. Besant has portrayed his hero with a loving touch. . . . His fascinating account of the career of so picturesque a personality as the great Admiral cannot but be welcome.' — Sun. 'We recommend this little volume as recording a life which has the strongest claims on our sympathy and admiration.' — Spectator. ' Coligny's career is not only full of interest in itself, but is of great historical importance. . . . Mr. Besant has consulted every possible authority concerning the character and deeds of Coligny, and the result of h;s labour is a volume from which the reader may in an hour or two acquire in the pleasantest way a great deal of knowledge concerning one of the most stirring times of history, and one of its principal figures.'— Saturday Review. ' Coligny won distinction as an admiral and general, but it is as one of the great leaders of the Huguenots that he will be remembered.

Preface

IN the following chapters it has been my endeavour to present pictures of the City of London — instantaneous photographs, showing the streets, the buildings, and the citizens at work and at play. Above all, the citizens ; with their daily life in the streets, in the shops, in the churches, and in the houses ; the merchant in the quays and on 'Change ; the shopkeeper of Cheapside ; the priests and the monks and the friars ; the shout ing of those who sell ; the laughter and singing of those who feast and drink ; the ringing of the bells ; the dragging of the criminal to the pillory ; the Riding of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen ; the river with its boats and barges ; the cheerful sound of pipe and tabor ; the stage with its tumblers and its rope-dancers ; the 'prentices with their clubs ; the evening dance in the streets.

I want my pictures to show all these things. The history of London has been undertaken by many writers ; the presentment of the city and the people from age to age has never yet, I believe, been attempted. The sources whence one derives the materials for such an attempt are, in the earlier stages, perfectly well known and accessible to all. Chaucer, Froissart, Lydgate, certain volumes of the ' Early English Text Society,' occur to everybody. But the richest mine, for him who digs after the daily life of the London citizen during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, is certainly Riley's great book of ' Extracts from the City Records.' If there is any life or any reality in the three chapters of this LONDON viii book which treat of the Plantagenet period, it is certainly due to Rile*,*. As regards the Tudor period, the wealth of illustration is astonishing.

One might as well be writing of the city life of this day, so copious are the materials. But it is not to Shake speare and the dramatists that we must look for the details so much as to the minor writers, the moralists and satirists, of whom the ordinary world knows nothing. The reign of Charles II. directs one to the Plague and to the Fire. I was fortunate in finding two tracts, one dealing with the plague of 1603, and the other with that of 1625. These, though they are earlier than Charles II., were invaluable, as illustrating the effect of the pestilence in causing an exodus of all who could get away, which took place as much in these earlier years as in 1 666. Contemporary tracts on the state of London after the Fire, also happily discovered, proved useful. And when the Plague and the Fire had been dismissed, another extraordinary piece of good fortune put me in possession of certain household accounts which enabled me to present a bourgeois family of the period at home.

Where there is so much to speak about, one must exercise care in selection. I have endeavoured to avoid as much as possible those points which have already been presented. For instance, the growth of the municipality, the rise of the Guilds and the Companies, the laws of London, the relations of the city to the Sovereign and the State — these things belong to the continuous historian, not to him who draws a picture ofa given time. In the latter case it is the effect of law*, not its growth, which is important. Thus I have spoken of the pilgrimizing in the time of Henry II. ; of the Mysteries of that time ; things that belonged to the daily life ; rather than to matters of policy, the stubborn tenacity of the city, or the changes that were com ing over the conditions of existence and of trade. Again, in

PREFACE.

ix Plantagenet London one might have dwelt at length upon the action taken by London in successive civil wars. That, again, belongs to the historian. I have contented myself with sketch ing the churches and the monasteries, the palaces and the men at-arms, the merchants and the workmen. Again, in the time of George II., the increase of trade, which then advanced by leaps and bounds, the widening of the world to London enterprise, the part which London took in the conquest of India and the ejection of France from North America, belong to history. For my own part, I have preferred to show the position, the influence, and the work of the Church at a time generally believed to be the deadest period in the whole history of the Church of England. This done, I have gone on to illustrate the day-by-day life of the citizens, with the prices of things, the management, and the appearance of the city.

One thing remains to be said. Mr. Loftie, in his ' History of London ' (Stanford), first gave the world a reconstruction of the ground — the terrain — of London and its environs before ever a house was erected or an acre cleared. The first chapter cf this book — that on Roman London and After — is chiefly due to a study of this map, and to realising what that map means when applied to the scanty records of Augusta. This map enabled me to recover the years which followed the retreat of the Romans. I cannot allow this chapter to be called a Theory. It is, I venture to claim for it, nothing less than a Recovery. WALTER BESANT. United University Club : May 2, 1892. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. AFTER THE ROMANS i II. SAXON AND NORMAN 31 III. PLANTAGENET 73 IV. PLANTAGENET— continued . 10S V. PLANTAGENET— continued 144 VI.

TUDOR 176 VII. TUDOR— continued 212 VIII. CHARLES THE SECOND. 247 IX. GEORGE THE SECOND 286 INDEX ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Fart of Old London Bridge, St. Magnus, and thf. Monument, 1831. From an Etching by Ed-uard William Cooke . . . Frontispiece Lud Gate Vignette-title Stowe's Monument, in North Aisle of St. Andrew Undershaft . 1 Roman Marble Sarcophagus. Guildhall ...... 4 Statues of Mercury, Apollo, and Jupiter or Neptune : found inthe Thames, 1837 5 Bronze Articles for Domestic Use 6 Bronze Fibulæ and other Ornaments : found in London . . . 8 Roman Pavement : Leadenhall Street ...... g Bronze Bust of the Emperor Hadrian : found in the Thames. British Museum . . . . . . . . . 12 A Bit of Roman Wall. From a photograph by IV. H. Grove, 174 Brompton Road .......... .13 Lamps and Lamp Stand 15 Sepulchral Cists, etc. : found in Warwick Square, Newgate Street, 1881.

British Muslim ....... .24 Roman Keys. Guildhall 25 Toilet Articles— Hair-pins ; Hair-pin (Sarina, Wife of Hadrian); Bone Comb and Case (Cloakham) ; Bone Comb (Lower Thames Street) 26 Statuettes : found in Thames Street, 1889.

Guildhall . . . 27 Roman Amphoræ ........... 28 London Stone, Cannon Street, as it appeared in 1S00 . . . 31 Battle between Two Armed Knights 35 River Tilting in the Twelfth Century 37 Crypt : Remains of the Collegiate Church of St. Martin-le- Grand, E.C 39 The Founder's Tomb, St. Bartholomew the Great, E.C., founded "23 41 South Ambulatory, Church of St. Bartholomew, founded 1123 44 St. Katherine's by the Tower LONDON XIV PAGE Interior of the Church of St. Katherine's by the Tower . -46 Dowgate Dock 48 St. Saviour's Dock 49 North-east View of St. Saviour's 50 Plan of Saxon Church, Bradford-on-Avon 51 Saxon Church, Seventh or Eighth Century, Bradford-on-Avon . 52 First Stone London Bridge, begun a.d. i 176 . . . . . 54 Crypt or Lower Chapel of St. Thomas's Church, London Bridge 55 West Front of Chapel on London Bridge ...... 56 Part of London Wall in the Churchyard of St. Giles, Cripplegate . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Buildings of Knights Hospitallers 59 Crypt in Bow Church, from the North Side, near the East End of the Nave 61 Interior of Porch of the Parish Church of St. Alphege, London Wall, formerly the Chapel of the Priory of St. Elsynge Spitai 63 The Arms and Seals of the Prior and Convent of St. Saviour at Bermondsey ........... 70 Ruins (1790) of the Nunnery of St. Helen, Bishopsgate Street . 77 St. Helen's, Bishopsgate 78 South-west View of the Interior of the Church of St. Helen, Bishopsgate Street .......... 79 Church of St. Augustine (St. Austin) 80 Church of Austin Friars $l Christ's Hospital, from the Cloisters 82 The Charter House gr Ruins of the Convent of Nuns Minories, 1810 .... 93 Bow Church, Mile End Road „, North-east View of Waltham Abbey Church, Essex ... 96 Waltham Abbey Church, Essex, before Restoration . . . . 97 Porch of St. Sepulchre's Church . . . 100 South View of the Palace of the Bishops of Winchester, near St. Saviour's. . . .

T_, 103 Charing Cross. Erected by Edward s. in memory of Queen Eleanor of Castile .... ,„c. . . . IOS The College of Arms, or Heralds' Office. Bridewell. View ofthe Savoy from the Thames II2 View of the South Front of Baynard's Castle, about 1640 . .113 View of Cold Harbour, in Thames Street, about 1600 . . . 115 Crosby House, Bishopsgate Street ... n6 Interior of Crosby Hall .... Interior of Part cf Crosby Hall, called the Council Room! looking East . . „ 118 Gateway, etc., in Crosby Square (now destroyed) . .

IIg ILLUSTRATIONS XV PAGE Crosby Hai.i 120 North-east View of Crosby Hall, showing part of the Interior of the Great Hall 121 Gerrard's Hall 123 Bridewell Palace, about 1660, with the Entrance to the Fleet River, part of the Black Friars, etc 127 The Thames Front, anno 1540 127 Ancient Court of Bridewell Palace ....... 133 Old Charing Cross. .......... 144 The Strand (1547), with the Strand Cross, Covent Garden, and the Procession of Edward VI. to his Coronation at Westminster ............. 163 Arms of Sir Richard Whittington ....... 164 Arms granted to the Craft of the Ironmongers of London by Lancaster King of Arms, a.d. 1466 ....... 166 Guildhall, King Street, London 167 Blackwell Hall, King Street. ........ 168 Ancient Plate 170 The Conduit, near Bayswater. . . . . . . . . 171 South-east View of Stepney Church 173 Boar in Eastcheap 176 Interior of St. Katherine's Church by the Tower . . . 179 The View of London Bridge from East to West . . . . 183 The Pool 184 Burghley House. ........... 189 Ilford Almshouses ........... 190 Old Tavern 191 Front of Sir Paul Finder's House, on* the West Side of Bishotsgate Street Without 192 The Royal Exchange, Cornhill 195 The Steel Vard, etc., Thames Street, after the Great Fire of 1666 196 Collegii Greshamensis a Latere Occidentali Prospectus, a.d. 1739 199 Curious Pump 201 Newgate 208 Sign of the Three Kings, Bucklersbury 212 The Manner of Burning Anne Askew, John Lacels, John Adams, and Nicolas Belenian, with certane of ye Counsell sitting in Smithfield 215 Old Fountain Inn in the Minories.

Taken down in 1793 . . . 217 Ancient North-east View of Bishopsgate Street .... 220 South-west View of an Ancient Structure in S«ip Vard, Temple Bar 221 Obsequies of Sir Philip Sidney LONDON XVI PAGE Dr. Shaw preaching at St. Paul's Cross 229 Old St. Paul's J3° Monuments of St. Paul's which survived the Fire (East End of the North Crypt) 23! The Old Bull and Mouth Inn, St. Martin's-le-Grand. Now pulled down 235 Globe Theatre 236 Inside of the Red Bull Playhouse 237 South View of Falcon Tavern, on the Bank Side, Southwark, as it appeared in 1805 . . . . . . . . * . 24 1 Palace of Whitehall in the Reign of James II 24S Hungerford Market 253 Cheafside 254 Fleet Street 255 Below Bridge 257 Old East India House 263 Sion College 264 John Bunyan's Meeting-house in Zoar Street 265 Old Grocers' Hall, used for Bank of England 266 London after the Fire 267 Old St. Paul's, with the Porch of Inigo Jones 273 Houses in St. Katherine's, pulled down in 1827 .... 288 Lud Gate ............. 289 Davenant's School . . . -,„-, 29j St. Dunstan's in the West 297 SlGN 298 Approach to London Bridge 209 Above Bridge ....... ,02 St. James's Palace- March of the Guards 305 Ranelagh ,■ North View of the Marshalsea, Southwark ,07 Charing Cross . . . 3°9 A Dish of Tea ... „ '■•••••■ 313 Visiting Card . ,r 321 VAUXHALL 322 Sir John Fielding's Court, Bow Street ... ,27 Concert Ticket . 33° LONDON 1 AFTER THE ROMANS The only real authorities for the events which took place in Britain during the fifth and sixth centuries are- Gildas and the Anglo-Saxon ' Chronicle.' There are other writers — Ethelwerd, for instance, who copied the ' Chronicle,' and adds nothing ; and Nennius, whose work, edited by one Mark, the Hermit, in the tenth century, was found in the Vatican.

The first edition was published in London in the year 1819, in the original Latin, by the Rev. William Gunn. Nennius gives a brief account of King Arthur and his exploits, but he affords little or no information that is of use to us. The work of Richard of Cirencester is extremely valuable on account of its topo graphy ; it is also interesting as the work of the first English antiquary. But he belonged to the fourteenth century, and has added nothing to the history, of which he knew no more — less, indeed — than we ourstowe's monument, in north aisle of st. andrew under- SHAFT selves can discover.' The book named after Geoffrey of Mon mouth is not worth a moment's serious consideration. In Bede's B LONDON ' Ecclesiastical History ' passages may be found which throw side lights on this period, but they are few.

Gildas, called Badonicus, is supposed to have been born in or about the year 520, in Wales. A great mass of legend has collected about the name of Gildas. He was the son of a British kinglet ; his three-and-twenty brothers fought under King Arthur. He himself preached, taught, and in the matter of miracles was greatly blessed. He wrote — if he did write — about the year 560, and is therefore contemporary with the events of which he speaks. His book contains 1 a vast quantity of rhetoric to a very small amount of history. Unfortunately for him, he was called by his admiring fellow-monks, in his lifetime, Sapiens — the Wise. Perhaps, in order to live up to this designation, he was fain to assume the garb and language of a prophet, and, with what he thought prophetic force, which we now perceive to be ecclesiastical inflation, he proceeded to admonish princes and people of their sins.

Every age, to the ecclesiastical prophet as to the secular satirist, is an age of unbounded profligacy ; of vice such as the world has never before witnessed ; of luxury advanced to heights hitherto untrodden ; of license, wantonness, riot unbridled and unparalleled, insomuch that the city of Jerusalem, even when under the soft influences of Ahola and Aholibah, was really righteous and pure in comparison. No doubt Gildas lived in a most trying and most disappointing time. Things went wrong, and things went steadily from bad to worse. His people were defeated and driven continually westward ; they could not even hold together and fight side by side against the common enemy ; religion was forgotten in the fierce struggles for life, and in the fiercer civil dissensions. As for the enemy, Saxon, Angle, or Jute, all were alike, in that none had the least reverence for priest or for Church ; everywhere fighting, defeat, and massacre.

Yet one cannot but think that a lower note might have been struck with greater advantage ; and now that it is impossible to learn how far the prophet's admonitions brought repentance to his kings, one regrets that a simple statement of the events in chronological ■order as they occurred was not thought useful or desirable in an historical work. Would you hear how the Sapient addresses kings ? Listen. He is admonishing for his good the King of North Wales — Cuneglass by name : ' Thou too, Cuneglass, why art thou fallen into the filth of thy former naughtiness ? Yea, since the first spring of thy tender youth, thou Bear, thou Rider and Ruler of many and Guider of the chariot which is the receptacle of the Bear, thou Contemner of God and Vilifier of his order ! Thou tawny Butcher ! Why, besides thine other innumerable backslidings, having thrown out of doors thy wife, dost thou, against the apostle's express prohibition, esteem her detestable sister, who has vowed unto God everlasting continency, as the very flower of the celestial nymphs ? ' In similar gentle strains he approaches, and delicately touches upon, the sins of other kings.

This kind of language is difficult to sustain, and sometimes leads to contradictions. Thus, in one sentence, the Sapient speaks of his countrymen as wholly ignorant of the art of war, and in another he tells how the flower of the British youth went off to fight for Maximus. As regards the alleged luxury of the time, this poor monk wrote from a dismal cell, very likely of wattle and daub, certainly draughty and cold ; his food was poor and scanty ; his bed was hard ; life to him was a long endurance. The roasted meats, the soft pillows and cushions, the heated rooms of the better sort, seemed to him detestable and wicked luxury, especially when he thought of the Saxons and Jutes over running the ruined country. Of course, in ever}* age the wealthy will surround themselves with whatever comforts can be procured.

We are in these days, for instance, advanced to what our ancestors would have called an inconceivable height of luxury. One would like to invite the luxurious Cuneglass to spend a day or two with a young man of the present day. Those who were neither rich nor free lived hardly, as they do to this day, but more hardly ; those who were young and strong, even though they were not perhaps trained to the use of arms, easily learned how to use them, and when it came to victory or death they soon recovered the old British spirit. This is not the place, otherwise it would be interesting to show what a long and gallant stand was made by these people whom it is customary to call cowardly and luxurious — these ancestors of the gallant Welsh.1 It is manifest that a period of two hundred years and more of peace, almost profound, 1 See The Two Lost Centuries of Britain, by W. H. Babcock ; Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1890 ; an excellent little work on this subject. 1; LONDON 4 their frontiers and their coasts guarded for them by the legions of Rome, must have lowered the British spirit.

But the people quickly recovered it. The Arthurian epic, it is certain, has plenty of foundation in fact, and perhaps poor King Cuneglass himself, the Bear and Butcher, wielded a valiant sword in spite of his family troubles. The Britons were, it is quite certain, prone to internal dissensions, which greatly assisted their defeat and conquest. But they had one bond of union. Their enemies were pagan ; they were Christian. Gildas addresses a nation of Christians, not a Church planted among idolaters. Christian symbols and emblems have been found everywhere on the site of Roman towns, not, it is true, in large quantities, but they are found ; while, though altars have also been found, and pagan emblems and statuettes of gods, there are no ruins anywhere in Britain, except at Bath, of Roman temples.

Their faith, ROMAN MARBLE SARCOPHAGUS ( Guildhall) like the Catholicism of the Irish, was their national symbol. It separated them broadly from their enemies ; it gave them con tempt for Barbarians. The faith therefore flourished with great strength and vigour. But the popular Christianity seems to have been in Britannia, as everywhere, a very mixed kind of creed. As in Southern Italy among the peasants there linger to this day traditions, customs, and superstitions of paganism which the people call the Old Faith, so in Britain there lingered among the people ceremonies and beliefs which the Church vainly tried to suppress, or craftily changed into Christian ob servances. Such things linger still in Wales, though the traveller regards them not. In the same way the folk-lore of our own time in our own villages is still largely composed of the beliefs and superstitions inherited from our old English — not British — ancestors.

What happens is always the same, and must be the same. In times of religious revolution the com mon folk change the name of their God, but not his nature or his attributes. Apollo becomes the Christ, but in the minds of the Italian peasants he remains the old Apollo. The great Sun-God, worshipped under so many names and with so many attributes, remains in the hearts of rustics long, long centuries after mass has been said and the Host has been elevated. Nay, it has even been said that the mass itself is an adaptation of pagan ritual to Christian worship. But the people, whatever their old beliefs, called themselves Christian, and that one fact enabled them to forget their jealousies and quarrels in times STATUES OF MERCURY, APOLLO, AND JUPITER OR NEPTUNE : FOUND IN* THE THAMES, 1837 of emergency, and sometimes to act together.

They were Christian ; their enemies were pagan. It is significant that in one passage Gildas — who is quoted by Bede — reproaches them for not converting their conquerors, among whom they lived. This proves, if the fact wanted proof, (i) that the Britons were not exterminated by their conquerors ; (2) that they were allowed to continue unmolested in their own religion ; and (3) that they kept it to themselves as a possession of their own, and a consolation in disaster and a mark of superiority and dignity. LONDON One thing is quite clear, that when the Roman legions finally withdrew, the Britons were left thoroughly awakened to the fact that if they could not fight they must perish. They understood once more the great law of humanity in all ages, that those who would enjoy in peace must be prepared to fight in war.

The)- fought, therefore, valiantly ; yet not so valiantly as the stronger race which came to drive them out. In particular, however, we have to deal with the fate of London, which was then Augusta. Let us first endeavour to lay down the facts. They are to be drawn from two sources ; the first from the meagre notes of the historians, the second from certain topographical and geographical considerations. BRONZE ARTICLES FOR DOMESTIC USE The latter have never yet been fully presented, and I believe that the conclusion to be drawn by comparing the double set of facts will be accepted as irresistible. The following are the facts related by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle : a.d. 443. This year the Britons sent over the sea to Rome, and begged for help against the Picts * but they had none, because they were themselves warring against Attila, King of the Huns.

And then they sent to the Angles, and entreated the like of the Ethelings of the Angles. a.d. 449. Hengist and Horsa, invited by Vortigern, King of the Britons, landed in Britain on the shore called Wippidsfleet (Ebbs fleet ?), at first in aid of the Britons, but afterward they fought against them. King Vortigern gave them land in the south-east of this country on condition that they should fight against the Picts. Then they fought against the Picts, and had the victory wheresoever they came. Then they sent to the Angles, desired a larger force to be sent, and caused them to be told the worthlessness of the Britons and the excellence of the land. Then they soon sent thither a larger force in aid of the others. At that time came men from three tribes in Germany — from the Old Saxons, from the Angles, and from the Jutes.

From the Jutes came the Kentish men and the Wight warians, that is, the tribe which now dwells in Wight, and that race among the West Saxons which is still called the race of Jutes. From the Old Saxons came the men of Essex, Sussex, and Wessex. From Anglia, which has ever since remained waste, betwixt the Jutes and Saxons, came the men of East Anglia, Middle Anglia, Mercia, and of Northumbria. a.d. 455. This year Hengist and Horsa fought against King Vortigern at the place called Ægelsthrop (Aylesford), and his brother Horsa was slain, and after that Hengist obtained the kingdom, and Æsc, his son. a.d. 456. This year Hengist and Æsc slew four troops of Britons with the edge of the sword in the place which is named Crecganford (Crayford). a.d. 457. This year Hengist and Æsc, his son, fought against the Britons at a place called Crecganford, and then slew 4,000 men.

And the Britons then forsook Kent, and in great terror fled to London. a.d. 465. This year Hengist and Æsc fought against the Welsh near Wippidsfleet (Ebbsfleet), and there slew twelve Welsh ealdormen, and one of their own Thanes was slain there whose name was Wippid. a.d. 473. This year Hengist and Æsc fought against the Welsh, and took spoils innumerable ; and the Welsh fled from the Angles like fire. a.d. 477. This year Ælla and his three sons came to the land of Britain with their ships at a place called Cymensrova, and there slew many Welsh, and some they drove in flight into the wood that is named Andredes-lea. (Probably the landing was on the coast of Sussex.) a.d. 485. This year Ælla fought against the Welsh near the Bank of Mearcriediburn. a.d. 491. This year Ælla and Cissa besieged Andredacester (Pevensey), and slew all that dwelt therein, so that not a single Briton was left. a.d. 495.