ng. Like her sister, this splendid civic barge was sold at the
Auction-mart, facing the Bank of England, by Messrs. Pullen and Son, on
Tuesday, May 31, 1859. The sale commenced at L100, next L200, L220, and
thence regular bids, till finally it got to L400, when Mr. Alderman
Humphrey bid L410, and got the prize. Though no longer civic property,
it is yet, I believe, in the hands of those who allow it to be made the
scene of many a day of festivity."

FOOTNOTES:

[9] A new Act for the conservancy of the Thames came into operation on
September 30th, 1857, the result of a compromise between the City and
the Government, after a long lawsuit between the Crown and City
authorities.

[10] These functionaries carve the barons of beef at the banquet on Lord
Mayor's Day.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

SAXON LONDON.

A Glance at Saxon London--The Three Component Parts of Saxon
London--The First Saxon Bridge over the Thames--Edward the Confessor
at Westminster--City Residences of the Saxon Kings--Political
Position of London in Early Times--The first recorded Great Fire of
London--The Early Commercial Dignity of London--The Kings of Norway
and Denmark besiege London in vain--A Great _Gemot_ held in
London--Edmund Ironside elected King by the Londoners--Canute
besieges them, and is driven off--The Seamen of London--Its Citizens
as Electors of Kings.

Our materials for sketching Saxon London are singularly scanty; yet some
faint picture of it we may perhaps hope to convey.

Our readers must, therefore, divest their minds entirely of all
remembrance of that great ocean of houses that has now spread like an
inundation from the banks of the winding Thames, surging over the wooded
ridges that rise northward, and widening out from Whitechapel eastward
to Kensington westward. They must rather recall to their minds some
small German town, belted in with a sturdy wall, raised not for
ornament, but defence, with corner turrets for archers, and pierced with
loops whence the bowmen may drive their arrows at the straining workers
of the catapult and mangonels (those Roman war-engines we used against
the cruel Danes), and with stone-capped places of shelter along the
watchmen's platforms, where the sentinels may shelter themselves during
the cold and storm, when tired of peering over the battlements and
looking for the crafty enemy Essex-wards or Surrey way. No toy
battlements of modern villa or tea-garden