Club O J R H

London's predominance as a port has been the foundation of its predominance as the financial centre of the world. For a de scription of the financial system of London see the various ar ticles dealing with banking and insurance. ( J. G. BR.) The Origin of London.—The few facts available indicate that London first rose out of complete obscurity early after the Roman occupation of Britain, in the 1st century of the Christian era. Its geographical position was the determining factor. A Brit ish oppidum, or stronghold, of the Catuvellauni that became Roman Verulam and is to-day St. Albans was sheltered behind the Middlesex forest when Julius Caesar, having landed in Kent in 54 B.c., made his raid. Upon that he marched, crossing the Thames at some point that remains uncertain. Caesar makes no mention of London. The inference is that London did not exist. A British trackway, and later the Roman Watling street, from the Kentish ports to Verulam forded the Thames at Westminster. In A.D. 5 Cunobelin, or Cymbeline, succeeded to the throne of the confederated tribes in southern Britain. Early he transferred his seat of Government to what became Roman Camulodunum (Colchester). London's site was well placed for the service of both cities. The Thames at this point greatly narrowed, twin hills rose upon the left bank, and there was easy access from the sea. The belief now widely held is that London's emergence was due to its service as a landing stage, or bridgehead, for Continental trade with Britain.

When London appears in history it is not as a capital. Tacitus, who wrote early in the 2nd century, refers to it as having been in A.D. 61 a place much frequented by merchants. The name London is not Roman, but Celtic, and the Romans adopted it in their own Londinium. A coin of Cunobelin and a few late Celtic objects have been recovered in city excavations and the Thames bed. Evidence of a pre-Roman settlement, whether a trading or fishing village, is, however, extremely vague. Fragments of Arretine and British pottery found in the area are regarded, not as pre-conquest objects, but as survivals of types into the Roman era.

Roman London.

Aulus Plautius, a general of the emperor Claudius, landed in Britain with Roman troops in A.D. 43. With the fall next year of British Colchester and St. Albans, the whole of south-east Britain after no long interval passed under Roman domination. From Dion Cassius's enigmatical statement (early 3rd century) there was already at the invasion a bridge, "a little above the mouth of the river." The evidence is much stronger that the Romans at some later date themselves constructed a bridge joining London, on the northern bank, with Southwark. This must, indeed, have become a necessity for them. Close by Old London bridge wooden piles, many thousands of Roman coins, medallions and quantities of broken tile and pottery have been found in the Thames bed. What survives of the Roman city is

now buried at depths of from 12ft. to 19f t. below the ground surface.

The first actual knowledge of London comes with its destruction in A.D. 61, when the Roman governor, Suetonius, retired and Boudicca's (Boadicea's) hordes sacked the city and massacred the remaining inhabitants. A crushing victory over the British restored Roman authority, which thereafter endured in London and in England for three and a half centuries.

The Romans cast a wall about the city, with a ditch beyond. Massive fragments of the wall remain. Its thickness at the base is about 8ft., the height being unknown. It consists of a core of rubble faced with Kentish rag-stone, with bonding tiles at regular intervals, and a chamfered footing of sandstone outward.

It is structurally the same wherever found, was evidently carried out as a single undertaking, and evidence now available from silt and deposit against the wall where the Wallbrook entered the City indicates that it was built in the 1st century, after Boudicca's ravages were repaired. Burials imply that the first Roman city was a small rectangle about Cornhill. The area walled, acres, is immense, much greater than that of any other Roman town in Britain, and equalled by few in the world-empire. Lon dinium's importance is attested not only thereby, but by the fact that from it the chief Roman roads radiated, linking up the most distant areas of the province with London. Excavations at New gate in 1908 definitely established a Roman gateway there. Other original gates were probably at or near Aldgate, Aldersgate and opening upon the river bridge. Ludgate has been considered a Saxon postern; but the discovery in 1927 of a Roman cemetery, with urn burials, in Shoe Lane, by the side of Fleet street, strengthens the belief that Ludgate, too, was Roman. Late in the Roman occupation, probably 4th century, the wall was strength ened by bastions, of which there are examples underground at Newgate, at St. Giles Cripplegate (mediaeval above the surface) and beneath the vestry of Allhallows, London Wall.

Not a column of any building has been left standing in his torical times, and in a city without stone, which had to be brought in from distant parts of Kent and Surrey, it is likely that the Roman houses were largely of brick or timber con struction. The city wall is Londinium's greatest monument.

Remains of very thick walls with an apsidal structure found in 1881 beneath Leadenhall Market have been believed to disclose the basilica and forum; an amphitheatre has been conjectured ; the spade has uncovered evidence of riverside wharves; but no definite indication of the street plan of Roman London is to be traced in the modern city.