tected by their wretchedness and
poverty. No one would kill those who offer no defence and have no
treasures; and their condition under any new masters would be no worse.
They shut the gates and barred them: they closed and barred the Bridge:
they took out of the houses anything that they wanted--the soft warm
mantles, the woollen garments, the coverlets, the pillows and hangings,
but they abode in their hovels near the river banks; as for the works of
art, the pictures, statues, and tesselated pavements, these they left
where they found them or for wantonness destroyed them. They fished in
the river for their food: they hunted over the marshes where are now
Westminster, Battersea, and Lambeth: the years passed by and no one
disturbed them: they still crouched in their huts while the thin veneer
of civilisation was gradually lost with whatever arts they had learned
and all their religion except the terror of the Unknown.

Meanwhile the roofs of the villas and churches fell in, the walls
decayed, the gardens were overgrown. Augusta--the proud and stately
Augusta--was reduced to a wall enclosing a heap of ruins with a few
savages huddled together in hovels by the riverside.

For the East Saxon had overrun Essex, the Jute covered Kent and Surrey,
the South Saxon held Sussex, the West Saxon held Wessex. All around--on
every side--London was surrounded by the Conqueror of the Land. Why,
then, did they not take London? Because London was deserted; there was
nothing to take: London was silent. No ships going up or down the river
reminded the Saxon of the City. It lay amid its marshes and its moors,
the old roads choked and overgrown; it was forgotten; it was what the
Saxons had already made of Canterbury and Anderida, a 'Waste Chester,'
that is, a desolated stronghold.

Augusta was forgotten.

This is the story that we learn from the actual site of London--its
position among marshes, the conditions under which alone the people
could be maintained.

How long did this oblivion continue? No one knows when it began or when
it ended. As I read the story of the past, I find a day towards the
close of the sixth century when there appeared within sight of the
deserted walls a company of East Saxons. They were hunting: they were
armed with spears: they followed the chase through the great forest
afterwards called the Middlesex Forest, Epping Forest, Hainault Forest,
and across the marshes of the river Lea, full of sedge and reed a