London Stone, a fragment of which is fixed in the exterior wall of St. Swithin's church, Cannon street, has been deemed a milliarium, marking a starting point for the measurement of dis tances along the Roman roads ; but there is no actual evidence of its purpose.
Abundant relics in sculptured altars and tombs, bronzes, tesse llated pavements, hypocausts, pottery, domestic utensils and ar ticles of apparel attest a very high state of culture that Roman London attained. Guildhall museum, the London museum and the British Museum have rich collections of these. Remains of a Roman house are preserved undisturbed beneath the Coal Ex change at Billingsgate. Christianity was introduced late in the 3rd century, but its records are very meagre. Restitutus is.
named as a bishop of London at the Council of Arles in A.D. 313.
The political history of Roman London remains vague. Although it became a chief city and centre of administration it did not receive the superior title Augusta until A.D. 368. Information is available concerning the province, but it is curious that London is rarely linked with it. Hadrian presumably passed through on his visit to Britain in A.D. 2 the wonderful bronze head of this emperor, of colossal size, that was dredged from the Thames bed near London bridge and is now in the British Museum, is the most perfect example of Roman art found in Britain. After Boudicca's ravages, there is no mention of London by any classical author till late in the 3rd century, and what little is known is derived solely from archaeology. London, then possessing a mint, appears again in record after the revolt of Carausius and his murder by Allectus, when the Frankish seamen and mercenaries of the last named were trapped in the city in A.D. 296. Its sack ing was stayed by the timely arrival of Constantius Chlorus and his fleet. A Roman boat, preserved in the London museum, was recovered from the Thames mud at Lambeth where to-day the County Hall stands, and is conjectured to have been a craft in Allectus's fleet sunk in the fight; coins of both Carausius and Allectus were associated with the find.
Following a peaceful period, the last half-century of the Roman occupation was much disturbed. London was in jeopardy on several occasions of ter A.D. 36o from raids by Picts and Scots,
augmented by Northern races from overseas, who ultimately penetrated as far south as Kent. The Roman general Theodosius, sent by the emperor Valentinian, cleared them from southern Britain, and in A.D. 368 he made a triumphal entry into London. Near the end of this century internal troubles were almost con tinuous; and early in the 5th century Rome, in grave peril herself, withdrew her legions from Britain.
Mellitus was despatched by Augustine to London to become its bishop in 604, and on its re-emergence at this date London was the tribal capital of the East Saxons, whose kingdom was sub ordinate to the power of the kings of Kent Already recurrent invasions had resulted in a considerable Saxon settlement in Britain, but the newcomers were not by choice town-dwellers. Sebert was then king in London, and Mellitus appears to have been well received. With Sebert's death in 616, and that of his overlord, Ethelbert of Kent, the East Saxons relapsed into paganism. The bishop fled; and though after an interval Cedd (633) and Wine (665) are mentioned as bishops, and laboured to restore Christianity, it was in the period of Earconwald, who about 675 was appointed by Archbishop Theodore as "bishop of the East Saxons in the city of London," that the faith was firmly re-established. Bede gives Ethelbert as the builder of the first Cathedral of St. Paul's, and in the years of returned heathenism it is to be presumed that his fabric was destroyed.