DID LONDINIUM EXIST IN CAESAR’S TIME?

The earliest mention of London occurs in the Annals3529 of Tacitus, who, describing the events of the year 61, speaks of it as a busy centre of commerce. It has been argued3530 that a settlement existed there before the Roman conquest of Britain, because the name Londinium is Celtic. Lewin3531 maintains further that if London had been founded by the Romans, it would have been a strong military post, whereas in 61, eighteen years after the invasion of Britain by Aulus Plautius, it was attacked by the Iceni and Trinovantes because it was defenceless and wealthy.3532 ‘It must,’ he insists, ‘have attained to this height of prosperity, not under the Romans, who did not patronise it, but by the silent progress of trade, a work that could not ... have been accomplished in ... 19 years.’ ‘We know,’ he continues, referring to Dion Cassius,3533 ‘that Camulodunum was a flourishing British city before the ... time of Plautius, and, if so, London, which enjoyed far greater advantages, must also have been a British city.’ Lewin holds that this city stood upon the hill between the river Flete and the Wallbrook. On the west was Ludgate, the name of which is Celtic: on the east Dowgate,—‘a corruption of the Celtic Dwrgate or water-gate.’ The river Flete, or Fleet, entered the Thames just below the site of Blackfriars Bridge; while at Dowgate, about 1,000 yards to the east, was the mouth of the Wallbrook.3534

Mr. W. J. Loftie3535 finds the site of British London on the western side of the Wallbrook. In his History of London,3536 however, he affirmed that the British settlement stood ‘on the eastern hill [that is to say, on the gently rising ground east of the Wallbrook], if anywhere’. Canon Isaac Taylor3537 asserts that the British hill-fort was ‘formed by Tower Hill, Cornhill, and Ludgate Hill, and effectually protected by the Thames ... the Fleet ... the great fen of Moorfields and Finsbury’, &c. Seeing that it has been proved that ‘the great fen’ did not exist in Roman times,3538 and that the very existence of the British hill-fort can as yet only be inferred, it is plainly useless to attempt to determine its site.

Dr. Guest3539 holds that ‘the notion ... that a British town preceded the Roman camp [of Aulus Plautius] has no foundation ... and is inconsistent with all we know of the early geography of this part of Britain.’ ‘Such town,’ he adds, ‘could not have belonged to the Trinobantes, for it lay beyond their natural limits, nor to the settled district of the Catuvellauni, for then Caesar’s statement that the Thames divided their country from the maritime states “about eighty miles from the sea” would be grossly inaccurate.’ I cannot see the force of these arguments. ‘The notion that a British town preceded the Roman camp’ has a foundation,—the solid foundation of etymology. London is indisputably a Celtic name;3540 and if London had been founded by the Romans, why should it have had a purely Celtic name3541 at all, and why should its Celtic name have outlasted Augusta,—the name which the Romans gave to their London? Assuming that Caesar’s statement is to be interpreted in the sense which Dr. Guest attaches to it, the distance by road of British London from Sandwich, in the neighbourhood of which Caesar landed,3542 is 67 English miles, or nearly 73 Roman miles. Is the difference between 73 and ‘about 80’ so great as to justify the use of the words ‘grossly inaccurate’?

More recently John Richard Green has endeavoured to disprove the existence of British London.3543 ‘Much,’ he says, ‘has been made of its name, but “Llyn-dyn” ... is as likely to be the designation of a spot as of a town on it. An almost conclusive proof, however, that no such town existed west of the [river] Fleet may be drawn from the line of the old British road from Kent (the predecessor of the Watling Street), which, instead of crossing the river as in Roman and later times at the point marked by London Bridge, passed, according to Higden, to a point opposite Westminster ... (Loftie, “Roman London”, Archaeological Journal, volume xxxiv, page 165) ... the rise of such a town [Roman London] is the best explanation of the later change in the line of this road.’

‘According to Higden!’ According to the monk of the fourteenth century who wrote the Polychronicon! And Higden does not so much as mention ‘the old British road from Kent’,—a road the very existence of which can only be conjectured. What he says is that ‘Watlingstrete’ crossed the Thames west of Westminster;3544 and Mr. Loftie, to whom Green appeals, affirms that he is ‘driven to the conclusion that there was a British town’.3545 Accepting the statement of Higden, he argues that the ‘Watlingstrete’ which is said to have crossed the Thames west of Westminster was a pre-Roman road and followed the line of Park Lane and Edgware Road. I will only add that, having failed to discover any paper worth reading about the direction of Watling Street in that part of its course which passed through or by Roman London, I consulted Professor Haverfield. ‘I know nothing satisfactory,’ he replied, ‘about the line of Watling Street, and nothing to suggest that it existed before A.D. 43.’

The very large number of palaeolithic implements which have been found in London and its environs prove that in the earliest times it was a centre of population;3546 but it would hardly be safe to infer from the discoveries of bronze and iron tools and weapons and of British coins3547 that the Romans found a town on the site. If there was such a town, it certainly had little political importance; for while numerous British coins issued from the mints of Verulamium and Camulodunum, not one has been discovered which bears the name of Londinium.3548 Nevertheless it may reasonably be affirmed that London existed before the Roman conquest: first, because the same advantages that attracted the traders of Rome would also have commended themselves to those of Britain; and secondly, I repeat, because it is improbable that a Celtic name would have been given to a town which the Romans had built upon a virgin site.3549