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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..04e8de7 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #67308 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67308) diff --git a/old/67308-0.txt b/old/67308-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 78210f2..0000000 --- a/old/67308-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2692 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The River of London, by Hilaire Belloc - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The River of London - -Author: Hilaire Belloc - -Illustrator: John Muirhead - -Release Date: February 3, 2022 [eBook #67308] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Tim Lindell, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was - produced from images generously made available by The - Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIVER OF LONDON *** - - -THE RIVER OF LONDON - -BY HILAIRE BELLOC - -_AUTHOR OF ‘THE PATH TO ROME’_ - - -T. N. FOULIS -LONDON & EDINBURGH - - -[Illustration: ST. PAUL’S FROM BLACKFRIARS] - - -_Published -December 1912_ - - -_Printed by_ MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, _Edinburgh_ - - - - -THE LIST OF CHAPTERS - - I. INTRODUCTION _page_ 3 - - II. THE APPROACH UP RIVER 17 - -III. LONDON, THE FIRST CROSSING OF THE THAMES 39 - - IV. LONDON, THE PORT OF THE THAMES 75 - - V. LONDON AND THE LOWER THAMES IN WARFARE 117 - - - - -LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS - -_reproduced from Oil Paintings by_ - -JOHN MUIRHEAD, R.B.A., R.S.W. - - -ST. PAUL’S FROM BLACKFRIARS _Frontispiece_ - -ERITH _page_ 24 - -RICHMOND BRIDGE 32 - -HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT FROM VAUXHALL 40 - -LIMEHOUSE 48 - -GREENWICH 56 - -GREENHITHE 64 - -STRAND ON THE GREEN 72 - -THE THAMES FROM GREENWICH PARK 80 - -GRAVESEND 88 - -KINGSTON BRIDGE 96 - -SUNBURY 104 - -TWICKENHAM FERRY 112 - -HAMPTON 120 - -TEDDINGTON 128 - -PANGBOURNE 136 - - - - -INTRODUCTION - - -Through the flats that bound the North Sea and shelve into it -imperceptibly, merging at last with the shallow flood, and re-emerging -in distant sandbanks and less conspicuous shoals, run facing each other -two waterways far inland, which are funnels and entries, as it were, -scoured by the tide. - -Each has at the end of the tideway a narrow, placid, inland stream, -from whence the broader, noisier sea part also takes its name. Each -has been and will always be famous in the arms and in the commerce of -Europe. Each forms a sort of long great street of ships crowded in a -traffic to and fro. For each has its great port. The one Antwerp, the -other London. The Scheldt is the name of the first, which leads to -Antwerp, and makes the opportunity for that great market of the world. -But the second is the River of London, much older in its destinies, and -probably more destined to endure in its functions of commerce. - -I know not how to convey that picture in the mind, which the eyes -do not see, and yet by which a man is haunted if he has read enough -of books and seen the maps, when he comes up through the Narrows of -Dover Straits from the wide, empty seas three days behind and knows -that there lies before his owner a choice between the eastern and the -western gate. That choice is in the case of every ship determined long -before. She has the dull duty to do of turning to the right or to the -left, and her orders bind her to the river of the Netherlands or of -England as it may be. But if you will consider many centuries and the -changing adventures of business you will still--as you pass northward -between the two shores of Flanders and of Britain, and as you see their -recession upon either side of the northern way which opens before -you--understand that doubt upon the future and the rivalry of the two -rivers which is soon to be so deeply impressed upon the politics of our -time. - -I could think of the Scheldt and of the Thames as two antagonists -facing each other before conflict across a marked arena, which is that -of the shallow, tumbling, and yellow water of the North Sea; or as two -forces pitted one against the other, streams each of which would force -the other back if it could find the strength; or as two Courts in a -perpetual jealousy one of the other, intriguing and making and losing -point after point in a game of polity. - -When the statisticians have done their talk--and very brainless it -is--of resources and of metals, two opposing _lives_ are left standing -behind either of the great towns, and either of the great sea rivers. -The one is the experiment of the modern Germanies; the other is the -founded tradition of England; and the more closely a man considers each -of these the greater contrast does he discover between the causes of -either’s energy of come and go. - -A third great tidal river is also concerned with these seas, also helps -to determine their commerce, also supports its great inland town. That -river is the Seine, and I shall, in the pages which follow, use the -Seine also for the example it affords in the analogies and contrasts -and parallels which I propose to draw. But it is the Scheldt and the -Thames which still remain the greater opponents. The united political -life of Gaul, which was inherited and transformed by the French -Monarchy, forbade the growth of a great commerce to the north. Paris -became not only the political centre of France but its main market as -well, and to-day the water carriage of Paris--that is, the traffic of -its port--is greater than that of any maritime town in the country. -Only if Normandy had developed as an independent state would Rouen have -become what Antwerp and London have become. Rouen would then have been, -without doubt, the point of transhipment between the inland and the -maritime waterways, and the distance of the town from coal would hardly -have affected it more than does the distance of London. Its situation -as a political junction would have determined its greatness. As it is -the Lower Seine may be set beside the Scheldt and the Thames for an -illustration in their topography and in the origins of their human -settlements, but it does not afford a true commercial parallel to-day, -and Rouen is no third rival to the two great ports which are before our -eyes and in this generation struggling for primacy. - - -It is the custom of sailors to speak of that water by which they -approach a great town under the name of the town. Men coming up from -Yarmouth Roads inland do not speak of the Yare, but of Norwich River. -For, to the sailor the river is but a continuation of, or an access -to, his port, and the Lower Thames is thus universally known from the -sea as London River. The term is an accidental one, but it contains -the true history of the connection between the stream and the town. -The Thames made London. London is a function of the Thames, and it is -in such a connection that I propose to regard it in this essay: London -as the great crossing place of the Thames, and as the custodian and -fruit of what early may have been the chief ferry, but has for nearly -two thousand years been the chief bridge; London as the market of which -the Thames is the approach and the port; London as a habitation of -which the great street is the Thames, a street for centuries the main -highway of its people, lost for a time and now recovering its ancient -use; London as the civil and religious head of revenues which were -drawn from the Thames Valley; and London as the determinant, through -its position upon the Thames, of English military history. - -[Illustration: ERITH] - -This intimate connection between the city and the river we all -instinctively feel, and the two are connected together as no other -waterway with its capital can be connected throughout Europe. For -the Thames is all that every other river is to every other capital, -wherever some great stream is connected with a chief city. But whereas -in every other case it is but one or another of the functions of such -a stream that history can remark, in the case of London it can remark -them all. Little sea-borne traffic reaches Paris by the Seine; the -Tiber could never be a street for Rome; Vienna neglects the Danube; -Antwerp protects no great crossing, nor has ever been the nucleus of a -State; Rouen--the nearest parallel--was not the strategical pivot of -Normandy, nor ever formed, as London forms, a chief fraction in the -economic power of its province. The two rivers which are sacred to -Lyons never fed that town; the Rhone watered but did not lead to Arles. -The towns of Lombardy depend upon the fertility of the Po Valley, but -the stream is nothing to their commerce or to their political eminence, -and Milan, and Venice, and Turin are independent of it. Saragossa was -the mistress of Arragon, but the Ebro did not make Saragossa, and as -for Madrid, the trickle which runs below Madrid is best described in -the story of the Spanish patriot who was dying of thirst after battle, -but upon being offered a cup of water, said, “Give it to the poor -Manzanares.” Lisbon and Cadiz are maritime, not fluvial, and look where -you will throughout the civilisation of Europe you will not find, save -in the case of London, this complete interdependence between a great -town and its river. - - -In tracing or establishing this intimate bond between London and the -Thames one must guard against an error which the modern reader rightly -suspects and is justly ready to criticise or to deny when it appears in -any piece of historical writing. That error is the error of materialism. - -A generation ago it was universal, and there was no phenomenon in the -story of England or of Europe from the emplacement of a city to the -growth of the Church which was not traced to inanimate causes superior -to, and independent of, any action of the Will. This philosophy -narrowed, distorted, and dried up every department of knowledge, and -while the area of learning increased with a rapidity hitherto unknown, -the spirit inhabiting that conquest was starved. It was as though -the time could not contain at once the energy to discover and the -energy to know, and as though the covering of so vast a field in so -short a period was achieved inevitably at a cost of profundity. That -a bias towards the mechanical and the necessary should be present in -the physical sciences--in chemistry for instance--is to be expected, -that it should have invaded biology was less excusable, but that it -should have been permitted to affect (as it did) the business native to -man--his building, his institutions, his very dreams--was an excessive -blunder, and the spirit of all the younger men to-day is running if -anything too strongly in reaction against that ebb-tide of the soul. -They reject the dogmas of their fathers which would bend everything -man has done to material circumstance, which would talk of man as -the slave rather than the master of his instruments, and which, in -an argument absurdly circular, “interpreted history in the terms of -Economics”:--and they are right. - -Even in the sphere of topography, where the physical limitations -of human action are the main subject of the writer, they expect a -full admission of the soul of man and even--which is very wise--some -recognition of that mysterious genius which inhabits every place and is -perhaps its vital part. - -They are right. No one can see the marriage between London and its -river without wondering in what degree things other than ponderable -and measurable things may enter into the habitation of man. There is -nothing man does, of course, which has not in it the soul. But it may -be also true that there is nothing done to man wherein some soul is not -also. Now the homes of man and the air and the water and the wind and -the earth, against which in part and with which in part those homes -arise, are so woven in with his fate--which is a spiritual fate--that -we must properly lend to these insensate things some controlling -motive; and we may rightly say, though only by the use of metaphor, -that all these things have a spirit within them. I cannot get away -from it that the Thames may be alive, and London most certainly is. - -But all these things, though one may put them in the form of -statements, are really questions; and questions to which no sort of -answer has yet been discovered. - - - - -II - -THE APPROACH UP RIVER - - -There is perhaps no journey in the world in which the past and what now -is and the links between them stand out more clearly stratified than a -journey up the Thames upon the tide from the Sea-reach to the Pool. - -I will describe it; for it is upon a physical experience of this kind -(I mean the seeing of history through the eye to the north and to the -south of the narrowing river and the feel of the stream under one) that -any historical essay upon the River of London must be built. - -I have heard it said that the experience is a common one, seeing that -so many thousand men of the articulate, travelled, and experienced -class (who can relate their experience to some purpose) have entered -London by river. Any one (I am told) who comes in from the East or from -Holland to the docks will know what I mean. But I do not think this -is so. I do not think that the thing seen rapidly from the decks of a -liner, perhaps cut short at Tilbury, perhaps missed because the voyage -is at night, is quite what I intend to emphasise. Nor am I certain that -the proportion of those fifty miles is accurately seized when they are -experienced from the height of some great steamer whence the strength -and nature of the stream, its ebb and flow, its local life, are missed. - -It is so with all other great ports. The myriads that come in nowadays -to England by the Mersey have no opportunity for judging the estuary, -the meaning of the opposing shores, nor that character of south -Lancashire which lies before their eyes in the mist and is so singular -a factor in the makeup of England. - -I think that to know the River of London the journey must be made from -the sea upwards, in something not larger than a barge, in a motor boat, -or in a fishing vessel, or little half-rater, and taken upon one tide -with an easterly wind, as all the men of the past took it, making the -great port upstream under the weather they had chosen. In this way, -with little freeboard between one’s feet and the changing level of -the broad water, and with not too rapid a passage of the stations upon -either bank, and with some true measure wherewith to gauge in detail -what one sees, one can understand the river. It was in a progress such -as this that the painters came to understand the Lower Thames, and -nothing has nourished a more national art than this valley, though its -interpreters have been rare. - -You see five successive stages clearly marked in such a voyage. - -You see, in the first place, that everything up to the very gates of -London must have been, at the beginning of our history, as desolate -as any province in Europe. The rare places at which high and firm -land comes down to the modern stream are, as it were, isolated, and -live a life upon the defensive. Nowhere (as we shall see when we come -to examine London as a crossing place) does some good habitable site -stretch down to either opposing bank. There is no natural gateway -upon the Lower Thames; no twin villages defending a gap; nor the -projection from the north as from the south of tongues of high land or -even good arable land, the proximity of which, one to the other upon -either shore, would give humanity to the river. All the miles of it are -desolate marshes, either to the one side or to the other, most commonly -upon both, and the few spots where an exceptional formation has given -firm building ground and fertile fields as well close to the river -have something about them exceptional and, as it were, beleaguered. -It is a gross and an unhistorical exaggeration to say (as many of our -academic people are saying) that all that valley was a flooded lagoon -until historic times. It was not that. But it was a long succession of -very wide, watery marshes, with knolls of slightly higher land standing -up therein. Consider, for instance, the view to the northward, from -the height just above and east of Dartford. There you have two good -miles of what was marsh and still is largely marsh to the main stream, -and beyond, upon the farther shore, another three or four miles of -the same flats, with odd, exceptional rises at Rainham, at Aveney, or -upon the edge of the flat of Upminster. It is the same from the Abbey -Wood, east of Woolwich. Plumstead Marshes and Barking Level made one -morass, four miles wide at least, or nearer five, drowned twice a day -into a great level sheet of water, until some civilisation came to -dyke up the tidal stream and confine it to the central bed, which it -had scoured in its windings through such a desolation. Now of all that -primitive effect of waste, abandoned places very much remains in such a -journey as I have suggested. It is true that a wall of earth everywhere -controls the flood to-day, and that the traveller in his boat does not -see, as he would have seen two thousand years ago, the glint of water -to the north and south at high tide over tufted grass and drowned banks -of mud for miles upon either side of his going. But he still sees in -so many places as to make them the chief note of the lower reaches, at -least, great Flats without a soul upon them, unbroken by tree or house -or hedge, and plainly saved by artifice alone from flooding. This run -up the Lower Thames is, save for the exceptional approach of high land -in one place or another (as at Gravesend or Erith) like a sail through -the Fenland, and this character of desertion, silence, and morass, the -oldest foundation of all, is still quite plainly the background of what -one sees and remembers when one comes up the River of London to London -from the sea. - -So much, then, for the first layer. - -The second should by right be Roman: but nothing Roman remains; no, -nor anything of the Dark Ages. Unless we believe what is probable -enough, but not proved in any way, that the great containing walls of -earth (notably that round the Isle of Dogs) were Roman work, we can -distinguish nothing in such a journey to mark the first thousand years -of Christendom. Far out beyond the Sea-reach, Reculvers was a Roman -station in the estuary, but the ways have eaten it away. No great -monastic nucleus of the Dark Ages could be founded in that inhospitable -land. There was no palace of the kings standing near the central stream -until the neighbourhood of London was approached. There was not even a -fortress. Indeed it is odd to think how empty all that approach from -the sea to the greatest of the western Roman towns was and remained. It -was not until the Middle Ages began to flower that the Lower Thames put -forth any human signs--at least of such a sort as have come down to us. -The remains of them are very few, but they are distinctive. - -Of all that life of the Middle Ages which the English countrysides -preserve in so many visible relics--and especially in a host of parish -churches surpassing all of the kind in Europe--the Lower Thames has -but one clear instance remaining to the eye; and that is the little -isolated church of St. Clement’s. Rainham is too far from the water, -the legends and associations surrounding the well of St. Chad are -also too distant to count in the picture. The endowed foundations of -religion either stood remote from the river-bank or have disappeared. -London, but for the Great Fire, would have supplied in this the -emptiness of the lower river. - -But for that capital accident in the history of the city, which renders -London so different in outward aspect from all other great European -towns, the Middle Ages would still break upon one in a sheaf of spires -showing over the flats from Woolwich Reach, at least, and perhaps -from farther down the stream. But that accident--the Great Fire of -the seventeenth century--has left London stripped of the Gothic and, -alone of the great capitals of Europe, no impress of our four hundred -years of Gothic remains with the traveller as he comes upstream. -When we consider the two parallels to London upon the Continent--the -parallels I have chosen as ports upon the two great tidal rivers of the -north-west--Antwerp and Rouen, the loss will be apparent. - -For miles and miles over the flats of the Scheldt the sailor making for -Antwerp sees the high steeple upon his horizon fixed against the sky, -and, late as was its building, this watch-tower of Antwerp is of the -true Middle Ages; Europe was still Europe and one when its last stone -was laid. - -Still more does the sailor making for Rouen have the Middle Ages before -him as he rounds the Ferry Reach and comes up northward into the -sweep of the river before the town. In spite of the extraordinary and -meaningless gate which the new travelling bridge makes for the city, -its cathedral still dominates the whole view; surrounding it, the high -pitch of St. Vincent, the belfry of St. Maclou, the rebuilt towers of -St. Ouen, give their character to all the smoky basin of houses between -the Seine and the hills. - -A far more splendid sight was the Gothic group of London as one came -upon it up river before the Great Fire. A score of spires stood -in varying height and perspective before the master spire of the -cathedral. Old St. Paul’s upon its hill carried the loftiest cross in -Christendom--far higher in the air than Strasburg; and old St. Paul’s -had been built, as had nearly every great monument of the Middle Ages, -with a special eye to the landscape whence it should be seen and which, -in a sense, it should control. The huge and somewhat ill-proportioned -pyramid of St. Dunstan’s by the very excess of its bulk made a landmark -which is the first thing to strike us when we look at a sketch of -the river made at any time before 1665. We are fortunate, moreover, -in our retention of such memorials. No other northern town, I think, -possesses a complete panorama of its appearance in the first half of -the sixteenth century such as London possesses in the great work of -Wyngaerde in the Bodleian. And though the seventeenth century, with -its triumph of engraving, produced a great number of such documents -throughout Europe, Visscher’s drawing is unique in its importance, -while we have at the end of the series Hollar’s careful delineation of -the square mile of ruins after the Great Fire. - -This is perhaps the most remarkable piece of pictorial evidence open -to English history, and any one who will look at that long string of -churches burnt out to shells, and of private houses reduced to a few -feet of black and crumbling wall, will see what a revolution in the -outward aspect of the river and of its port, and what a breach in the -outward continuity of London the Great Fire means. The Conservative -temper into which the English fell (with regard to their externals, -at least), after the sixteenth century, would have preserved the -architectural past of London (and that to our own day) much more -perfectly than the past of any great city of the Continent has been -preserved. It seems due to the national spirit that a view more ancient -even than that of Rouen should greet the traveller coming in by Thames; -but the accident of the Great Fire has forbidden it. - -On the contrary, the note of the approach to London nowadays from -the Lower Thames is a note peculiarly and strongly modern. It is as -though the abnormal expansion of our perilous Industrialism in the last -hundred and fifty years had not only conquered but obliterated the -eighteen centuries from which it suddenly arose. Here and there an odd -survival left remaining of deliberate purpose serves but to emphasise -the capture of the Lower Thames by that crazy mechanical giant so -recently born and already so blind and old. You have the noble front -of Greenwich, you have the charming little “mail” opposite, you have, -most distinctive, perhaps, of all the survivals upon the river, the -Fort of Tilbury. Save for these a huge and hardly national commerce, -plainly suffering the domination of a few, has eaten up the scene -of Thames-side and marks it more and more as one comes in through -the outlying miles until one is relieved by older, dingier, and more -gracious things near the heart of the whole business in the Pool. - -It seems unjust to pass, with no more than a mention, that lovely -little isolated relic at Tilbury. Here was for centuries the natural -gate, the military defence of the port. When the range of ordnance -was not much more than hailing distance, no defences could be thought -of upon the broadening water of the Hope, still less in the funnel of -the Sea-reach. But Tilbury, standing over against Gravesend, defended -the first point at which the river had narrowed sufficiently to be -commanded by batteries from the shore. - -In the earliest map of this point (which is preserved in the Admiralty) -one may trace the way in which the river was closed. There ran out from -the northern bank, pointing somewhat downstream, a sort of barrier. -We have no indication of its structure. A few piles would have been -sufficient to prevent a passage and to canalise traffic into the open -space that was left in the midst of the stream; for this space was not -left free, as we might have supposed, just under the guns of the fort, -but at a range which seems upon the drawing to be about 250 yards. -Whether a corresponding permanent work existed upon the Gravesend shore -I am ignorant, but it was obviously easy to emplace guns there when -they might be needed. Meanwhile Tilbury, with its continual preparation -for arms and as continual innocence of them, with its one chief -historic memory of the Armada, remains the most perfect relic of the -past upon all the stretch of the river. The swamped land round about -has defended it and isolated it, and that great regard for the old -things of the nation which is a virtue to be proud of has saved it from -decay. - -For the rest, as I say, and with the exception of those rare survivals -of which Tilbury is the most striking, modern industrialism, down to -its last manifestations, has captured the Lower Thames and stands in a -bleak contrast against the windy emptiness of the flats. Nowhere is one -more oddly struck by this than opposite the great tanks which have been -put up for the storage of petrol--the last of our necessities. From -Tilbury upwards, wherever there is available space or good ground, it -is the haste, the necessity, and the carelessness of modern exchange -directed for the immediate profit of men who perpetually change their -methods of acquirement (and even their homes) that marks the river. It -is a new sort of desolation, the obverse (and not a pleasant one) of -that more natural desolation which Nature made by stretching out her -marshes and lagoons upon either side of the tideway. - -And I say “exchange,” not production. Thames-side used to do many -things, but in particular to tan leather and to build ships. The -tanneries have nearly gone; the shipyards are in process of death. -In the last journey which I made up the tide some months ago to see -London once more from the river I passed what may be the last of the -men-of-war built upon Thames-side. It lay completing upon the northern -shore. It was the ship round which had turned the discussion whether -or no the Thames could still successfully build against the north, and -if the official answer is to be that it cannot, then this decision will -mark the end of the oldest trade of the river and that most native to -its life. But we live in a time when most things are dying. - -For all this lamentable cloak of purposeless industrialism, chaotic and -already murmuring with the sounds of its own dissolution, the gradual -envelopment of a man who comes up river, his reception by the hugeness -of modern London is a thing which no one who has experienced it can -forget. - -Indeed, the utter ruin of order and of plan, which is but the outward -manifestation of the ruin of religion, has destroyed the sense of -approach everywhere around that great helpless, apathetic nation which -we call London, save where it could not be wholly destroyed, and that -is along the water which was its most ancient highway. - -[Illustration: RICHMOND BRIDGE] - -Come in from what direction you will, save by the Thames, and the -approach to London is a waste of eyesight. No one has imagined for two -hundred years such a thing as a gate or a limit. There is no kind of -salutation offered or of barrier presented or of definition laid down. -Draggle-tail financial experiments of no interest or purpose to those -responsible for them, save abstract wealth, stand isolated in fields -as often as not given up to weeds and rubbish, and new roads half made -end everywhere in dust-heaps or in mud. Then for one mile after another -you pass the thousands of little houses all shamelessly similar, for in -none does a man intend to make his being, to possess his soul, or to -live and die there. There is not even a city wall remaining from the -past, nor so much as a broad outer street, delimiting what may still be -noble and permanent from these hopeless suburbs. Little scraps of what -were once happy and united villages still stand like islands in this -flood of mean brick. For the most part they are to be distinguished no -longer save by the narrowness and crookedness of their streets, and -when at last one comes to the inner part, where there is something of -history and of meaning and of an inherited culture, one comes upon it -without introduction and without grace. Of all cities that ever were, -modern London least deserves a wall, gates, and a senate. - -But the entry by the river cannot be wholly destroyed. The river is too -strong. And therefore a man does here receive a physical impression -almost worthy of the magnitude of the things he seeks. He does get some -idea of London and some introduction to it. The houses and the places -of change, and the great stores and the abrupt street-ends with their -water steps, cluster in groups with narrower and narrower gaps between -them, until at last they come up all together in rank and enclose -one avenue of flood, banked everywhere by brick and crowded with the -interlacing of vessels. It is a thing which, if a man could draw it -properly, would make the best record of our time for the curiosity of -those who are to come after us. Accustomed as we are to an eternal -noise drowning thought and human life wherever the haphazard and -violent activity of our time is at work, there is an odd broken silence -in this waterway of sails and chains and alarms, guarded and hemmed in -by the leagues of houses. The mainspring of the moving road is silent, -the power of that one thing in the view which is not made by man, the -rushing upward of the water; between all these new and artificial -things the strength of the Thames survives with no more sound in its -going than when it went through other silences before men found it. - - - - -III - -LONDON THE FIRST CROSSING OF THE THAMES - - -It is a commonplace which must be repeated whenever the connection of -the Thames with London is referred to, that the capital matter in that -connection is London’s position as _the lowest crossing point upon the -Thames_. That affirmation, standing alone, is of no use to history -unless one also explains why it was so important to find a crossing -place as low as possible down the river, and the many causes which -combine to make that lowest crossing place the neighbourhood of London -Bridge. These last especially require a full explanation because, of -the many converging reasons for selecting that site, the chief were, -until quite recently, imperfectly studied. - -Why was it of such great importance for man, from the beginnings of a -settled occupation in this island, to discover a convenient crossing -place as low down as possible upon the course of the Thames? And why, -when once this crossing place had been established, would it become the -principal meeting-place in the country? - -The answer to these questions is to be found, not only in the shape of -the island, but in the position of its best soil and in its relation to -the Continent. - -[Illustration: HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT FROM VAUXHALL] - -It is obvious that the main connection between Great Britain and the -Continent must be by the Straits of Dover. It is not only the shortness -of the trajectory from the mainland to the island which makes the -Straits of Dover the necessary and permanent entry into this country, -it is a number of other things as well: as, that communication is -very easy from the opposing shore inland; that that opposing shore -was provided for ages with a harbour peculiarly suitable to early -traffic--the Portus Itius (now the silted-up plain between the hills -behind Boulogne); the conformation of the high land upon either side -at Grinez and at Dover Cliffs which, in the centuries when the thing -was important, gave an uninterrupted sight of land during the crossing; -and the choice of entry which the various inlets (now filled up) afford -from the Portus Lemanis behind Folkstone, the old inlet at Dover, -and the old Mouth of the Stour to what was once the sheltered channel -between Thanet and the mainland behind the island of Richborough. -So powerful has been the topographical effect of the Straits that -no revolution in travel has dispossessed them of their original -importance. The great expansion in our means of communication has only -emphasised the bond which is established by the Straits between this -island and the Continent of Europe, and so throughout the whole of the -old world. When, a few years hence, a man sets out to travel by land -to India or to China, he will cross from Dover and will take his train -at Calais. Were communication inland as uninterrupted throughout this -island as it is throughout the opposing portion of the Continent, a -system of roads would naturally have established itself, radiating -from some depôt common to the various ports of Kent, just as a system -of roads grew up upon the Continent, radiating from Calais and from -Boulogne, and forming a network inland with such central points as -Bavai, Amiens, Cassel, etc., to form pivots for the whole. - -But communication within the island of Britain was not thus -uninterrupted in all directions. One great obstacle lay across it -from east to west, and that obstacle was the Thames. How complete an -interruption the Thames formed, especially in its lower course, I will -describe in a moment; it must suffice to notice here that for one who -would reach all the fertile land of East Anglia and of what is now -Hertfordshire, for one who would reach from the landing-place in Kent -the wheat lands of what is now Essex, and the centres of population -in what is now Norfolk (both of them originally capital sites of -population before the growth of modern industry), the profound wedge -driven into the land by the estuary of the Thames and its continuation -in the tidal river formed an almost insurmountable obstacle. There was -no straight line from say Canterbury to the Midlands and to the central -east of the island with its great mass of arable soil. More than this: -if one looks at a map of England on which moorland and waste country is -distinguished from the arable soil, it will be apparent that north of -the Wash the latter takes the form of a long and somewhat narrow strip -corresponding at first to the lower valley of the Trent and farther -north again to the Vale of York. A direct line to this arable northern -strip from any principal Kentish centre (and Canterbury was such) would -take one across the Thames estuary and was therefore impossible. The -farther up river a practicable crossing was found the longer the detour -it involved. The only considerable population in Britain that was early -accessible to a road-system proceeding directly from Kent was the -population of what later came to be called Wessex, that is, the central -southern districts of which Winchester was the capital. As a matter -of fact we find a road of immemorial antiquity proceeding directly -east and west from Canterbury to Winchester along the ridge of the -Chalk, but a similar road northward was blocked by the obstacle of the -Thames. We shall see in a moment that the discovery of a good crossing -place fairly low down in the course of the river not only saved a long -detour by the upper valley for travel proceeding from the Straits of -Dover to the eastern Midlands, and ultimately to the plain of York, -but also afforded a fairly direct line in another direction which was -essential to travel, namely, the direction of the north-west and the -main ports which establish communication with Ireland. - -We may take it, then, as established, that there existed from the -earliest times a necessity, or a necessary tendency, to found and keep -up a permanent crossing place at the lowest practicable point in the -Thames valley. - -Once that crossing was founded and continuously maintained it was -equally necessary that it should grow into the chief meeting place of -the island; that is, the chief market and therefore the chief town. -Indeed the various advantages such a crossing would have form so rare -a combination that we should be perfectly justified, even if we had not -the evidence we have, in making certain of the existence of a great and -important London early in history. - -All the causes which we have seen to feed the commercial growth of the -site from the sea were reinforced by the inland communications which -met at this crossing place. The bridge (as I have shown elsewhere) made -a terminal not only to sea-borne traffic, but to all the inland traffic -from down the upper valley. It became the place of transhipment. It -was further the terminal, and the necessary terminal, of the three -great roads from north-west, from the north, and from the east, which -combined at this point to seek the Straits of Dover to the south; and -once this nexus was woven, once the market and place of meeting was -fixed, it must further become the goal of other roads against which -the Thames did not originally provide an obstacle. Thus it was that -a road would necessarily be established from this crossing place -to the west and to the south-west. Though the main traffic from the -fertile Lower Severn valley would more naturally make for the Straits -by way of the Chalk ridges, yet, when once London with its market -supplies and depôts was established, a main road would necessarily aim -at the Straits _through_ London rather than south of the Thames. And -though the secondary entries into the island from the Continent by -Southampton Water, and by the ports to the west of it, would naturally -send out arteries of communication northward and westward, yet their -communication north-eastward through London would soon acquire the -chief place. That London would have become what it did through no more -than these domestic causes may well be denied. The main factor in -its growth was throughout the centuries what it remains to-day--the -commerce of the tidal Thames. But standing at the head of that commerce -London also gathered to itself, as the main crossing point of the -Thames, the communications of the whole island. - -The peculiar and determining effect this had upon the military history -of England I have mentioned in another study,[1] and shall expand -in this. Parallel effects could be found in every other department -of activity, not only in commerce but in the political machinery of -England, of English feudalism, and of the English monarchy, and later -of English aristocratic government. London once so formed upon its -river was the centre or support of each in turn supreme in the island. - -Having established this, let us consider why the crossing place came -just here upon the line of the river, and to solve that problem we -must recollect what it is that acts as a barrier to communication, -especially in early times. This barrier is certainly not to be found -in hills of such a gentle sort as diversify south England. The breadth -of a stream, up to half a mile or so, and apart from broken water, -though of considerable importance in the problem, is again not the -chief difficulty, for man has always been able to cross water if -his approach to it was unimpeded. The true obstacle was marsh--bad -going. It is still the chief impediment to modern engineering, and the -difficulty which men found during earlier centuries in negotiating any -considerable breadth of marsh translates itself to-day into the expense -which a similar undertaking now involves. Belts of marsh impeding or -actually forbidding travel across them have been formed upon one, the -other, or both banks in so unbroken a chain down the Lower Thames -valley as to make that valley the obstacle it was and is to transverse -travel. The first factor in the formation of such marsh is the tide. -If you have a considerable difference between high and low water, and -if that difference is further complicated by great variations between -the neap and the spring tides, the difficulty of the barrier of marsh -affected by such a tide will be correspondingly increased. - -[Illustration: LIMEHOUSE] - -This consideration is often missed, and it will therefore be worth -while to explain it. A fairly regular height of tide covering daily -the same expanse lends itself to the establishment of a regular -crossing place, and though that crossing place may not be in continuous -use from the difficulty of using it at low tide, it can be regularly -counted upon to serve twice in the twenty-four hours. But if there is -any very considerable difference in the state of the tides throughout -each fortnight, then the opportunities for using the crossing are very -much reduced, unless, indeed, one has a steep shore to deal with. Under -such conditions one might find a spot where crossing was easy enough at -the springs, and yet impossible at the neaps; and instead of a ferry -regularly in use twice in the twenty-four hours, you would have one -which could only be depended upon a few times in a month. - -Now the Thames is a river in which this difference is considerable, -and it has greatly strengthened the power of the waterway to act as an -obstacle to travel from north to south. - -This, then, is the first of the factors which have combined to make -the Lower Thames the obstacle it was and is to travel. If we compare -the Thames in this respect with the other great rivers which we have -seen to be its parallels upon the Continent, we shall be struck by the -greater effect of the tide in its waters. - - -The second factor in the establishment of such an obstacle is the type -of soil over which the water works. It is evident that a tidal river -and estuary in which sand and gravel or even chalk form the riparian -soils will less produce marsh than clays will. A river which washes -the silt of clays up and down with its tides will be defended by -worse belts of bad land than one which runs through the other types -of rock. Now in this respect also the Thames has a bad pre-eminence -over its rivals. Chalk only comes near the stream once or twice, and -for a very short distance, in its lower course, and though gravel and -sand, as we shall see, approach the banks in more than one place (and -ultimately determine the site of London), this kind of soil is nowhere -that which the mass of the stream churns up or carries down in its -course. The Thames deals for many miles of its upper tidal waters with -clays, bringing them down towards the mouth, and has settled them for -centuries upon either side of its channel in the shape of deep alluvial -marshes. - -But there is more than this. - - -The third factor in the problem depends upon the contours of the land -upon either side of the river. A river with steep banks, fairly narrow, -bounded by hills, even though it be a highly varying tidal stream, and -even though it scour through a great part of its tidal course a soil of -clays, cannot form wide belts of marsh upon either bank. - -It so happens that the Lower Thames--until the site of London is -reached--nowhere enjoys even a short stretch of steep-on shore upon -both banks at once. The few spots where higher land comes down to -the water’s edge upon the southern or right bank are faced in every -case by great level stretches opposite which, until modern works were -undertaken, were regularly flooded with every return of the tide and -were impassable; while the lower and smaller patches of land on the -north bank (as at Purfleet or Grays) have marsh opposite them also to -the south. - -In this respect the Scheldt appears under primitive conditions even -worse off than the Thames; but the Seine continually enjoys steep -banks after the first twenty miles or so up from its estuary, and in -at least half a dozen places from Caudebec (which roughly corresponds -to Gravesend) and Rouen, the first bridge (which we have seen to -correspond to London), there are opportunities for crossing the tidal -Seine, even under primitive conditions, with no considerable obstacle -of marsh upon either bank. - - -Now if we combine all this and consider the total effect of all three -factors in the Lower Thames valley we shall understand why no great -road ever attempted to cross it, and why no line of travel runs -transverse to it to-day. A mere examination of the contours would be -almost sufficient, presenting, as they do, great flats in most places, -stretching for miles from the main stream of the river. But beyond this -you have the great variation of the tide and the type of _surface_ soil -with which the stream deals. - -Civilisation has so considerably changed the aspect of all our streams, -it has so embanked them and drained their neighbourhood, that in order -to appreciate the original conditions which made it impossible to find -a crossing place below London one must consult the new sheets of the -Ordnance Geological Survey. They give us the drift or top-soil--which -alone of course concerns travel. In this new survey the area covered -by alluvium and the line where that alluvium impinges upon the older -and harder soils to the north and the south are very clearly marked. -That area with its boundary line gives one the original area and -the original boundary line of the Thames’ marshes, and it is very -instructive. - - -The problem is one of approach from the south. From the north there is -no firm soil at all within the neighbourhood of the riverbed from the -sea upwards until one reaches the slight eminence of the City, unless -one counts the isolated patches at Purfleet and Grays, the approach to -which from the north was not only originally difficult but connected -with no reasonable line of travel. One has but to look at the map to -see that Purfleet could have been approached from the north by no -considerable road. It might have formed some sort of terminal for an -eastern road but only that at the expense of a long detour such as is -made by the main road to-day through Ockendon or by the railway, for -immediately behind lies a belt of what was originally marsh. Moreover, -even if primitive travel had drifted by this somewhat circuitous route -to the hard patch at Purfleet, it would have found no crossing there; -immediately opposite lay the very wide belt of marshy land which flanks -either side of the Darent. That river comes in almost exactly opposite -the small belt of natural hard on which Purfleet stands. - -Primitive travel, then (and for that matter modern travel too, unless -it is at a great expense of engineering), could not approach the -northern bank of the Thames between the sea reaches and the City of -London save, and that with difficulty, by the very small exceptional -patches of Purfleet and Grays, and at Purfleet would have discovered no -opportunities for a crossing: the bank opposite being a particularly -wide and impossible stretch of marsh at this point. - -Now as to Grays: That very pleasant place does give some approach both -in soil and contour to the water from the north. It is just on the edge -of the chalk, just above the old limit of high water, and its original -nucleus, though not actually on the stream, would require but a short -causeway to reach it. - -But Grays is in the same bad topographical case as Purfleet, only -rather worse. It is still less of a terminal for any road from the -north. It connects with the east only through Stanford and the Horndon -roads. To the north of it lay, completely cutting it off from any -communication, the belt of marsh of which Mordyke is now the drainage -line, and of which Orsett Fenn is the principal survival. - - -We have, then, on the north, only Purfleet and Grays; and both must -be rejected. On the south, however, there is a series of isolated -natural wharves which approach the main tidal stream, and not only -stand fairly steep-on to its rise and fall, but are further of a soil -upon their surface which permitted travel and an easy approach to the -river in early times. These are, counting from the sea-reaches upward: -Gravesend, where the chalk comes right down to the Thames; Greenhithe, -where a tongue of the chalk juts out and touches the water; Erith, the -point where the gravels, which some mighty stream laid down when the -rivers of Northern Europe were discharging ten, twenty, or a hundred -times the flood they have to-day, first approach the existing stream. -At Woolwich sand and gravel closely approach the river and line it for -so considerable a distance as to afford the platform for a fairly large -town. Next up-river the same formation of gravels gives at Greenwich -a hard along the stream, and immediately above another spit of the -same actually touches the river at the point where used to stand the -isolated village of Deptford. - -[Illustration: GREENWICH] - -Now any one of these natural hards along the south bank of the Thames -between London and the sea would have afforded an excellent platform -for the crossing of the river. It is true that the Thames is somewhat -wider in its lower reaches than at the pool, but the difference was -not so considerable as to balk those who first instituted the ferry -and later the bridge of London. If one could cross the half-mile of -water which lay before one at extreme high tides under the earliest -conditions at Southwark, or bridge (as was done so long ago) the four -hundred yards of the mainstream, there would have been no difficulty in -dealing with the quarter of a mile at Deptford or at Greenhithe, nor -even with the rather broader stream opposite Woolwich. - -Save perhaps by a bridge of boats, a permanent crossing could not have -been attempted at Erith or at Greenhithe, though the narrowing of the -stream at Gravesend might well have allowed a more stable structure to -be established. At any rate, a crossing even so broad as that opposite -Erith has nowhere in Europe interfered with the passage of commerce, -or of arms where both sides of a great stream lent themselves to such -a passage. But it is here that each one of the points I have mentioned -is at fault. Opposite Gravesend as opposite Greenhithe, opposite Erith -as opposite Woolwich, Greenwich, and Deptford, there lies upon the -northern bank a belt of marsh which forbids traffic. Tilbury Fort, -opposite Gravesend, stands upon a tiny circle of harder land, but -all around it are the Chadwell and the Tilbury marshes. Greenhithe -has right against it the projecting expanse of West Thurrock Marsh, -Erith the whole breadth of Wellington and Rainham marshes; and, as one -approaches London, and the river narrows, matters seem only to get -worse. Woolwich faces the expanse of originally flooded soil between -the Lea and the Roding, with the most of which even the economic forces -making for the expansion of London have been able to do nothing, and -of which so unpleasant a relic of its original condition is left in -Plaistow Marshes to-day; while opposite Greenwich and Deptford lay that -perfectly impossible morass, which, though turned into water meadows by -a river wall many centuries ago, is still perhaps the worst building -ground within the London area. We call it the Isle of Dogs. - -The reader must not imagine this lack of any two opposing hards upon -London River below the City to be due to some coincidence. It has a -fairly obvious geographical cause. Those points where the gravels and -the chalk were touched by the scouring of the stream were naturally the -outer cusp of its curves. The river having first determined a bend to -the south or to the north, would eat away more and more on the outer -edge of those bends (which the stream always follows both in flood and -in ebb), and scour away the bank until it struck harder soils and was -there checked. Deptford and Greenwich lie on the outer edge of the -first great southern bend; Woolwich on that of the second; Erith on -that of the third; Greenhithe the fourth; Gravesend the fifth; while -both Grays and Purfleet represent similar checks to the bends towards -the north. - -Now it is evident that the same process which makes a river extend -its curves outward more and more by the scouring the stream along the -exterior edge leaves on the inside of the curve an increasing tongue -or wedge of alluvial deposit. What we have, therefore, on the Lower -Thames, the continual opposition of marsh to the rare hards, is only -what we should expect from the geological history of the river, and the -crossing place which was at last found is much more of a coincidence -and accident than the absence of a crossing place below. - -That crossing place was, of course, finally discovered opposite the -steep gravel bank upon which the oldest part of the City of London is -built. - -The land has been so often turned and returned in at least twenty -centuries of building that it is not easy to-day to reconstruct the -original conditions of that crossing; and, unless we look at all the -evidence, slight as it is, it is easy to fall into errors upon it. -Thus several writers upon this subject have often spoken as though the -gravel-topped knoll upon which the original London stood was the sole -factor in establishing the crossing, and I have myself fallen into the -error of believing that the approach from the south could only be made -over a long artificial causeway. - -A further consideration of the evidence, and especially of that -concerning surface soils to the south of the crossing, has convinced me -(subject to yet further evidence which may appear) that the opportunity -for a crossing near the site of London Bridge was almost as tempting -from the south side as it was from the north. It is true that no -considerable rise of land is to be discovered on the Southwark side -until we have gone some distance from the river, and the contour lines -do not, therefore, suggest an easy crossing at this spot. But much more -important than the lie of the land was the nature of the surface over -which travel must proceed. The rocks across which a road is driven are -not of the first importance in primitive times, though they become -important, of course, when the road is expected to bear very great -loads, or when it is so thoroughly metalled that the presence of good -stone in its neighbourhood has to be considered. What is important to -a primitive track is the immediate soil under foot, and if that be -fairly hard and dry it can be quite shallow and yet sufficient for the -purposes of travel. - -Thus, one can point out to many a path across the clay of the weald -which picks its way from one shallow patch of sand, gravel, or stone -to another, over country the main base of which is clay, and there is -a similar example (with which I have dealt in another volume)[2] in -the upper valley of the river Wey. There, once the primitive track has -left the chalk and come to the marshy alluvials of the lower levels, it -picks its way in this fashion from one long strip of gravel to another; -and though these strips of gravel are shallow--mere casual drifts in -many cases--they are sufficient for the purposes of the road. Now in -the case of the crossing of the Thames at London, the new Geological -Ordnance Survey, as it gives the drift as well as the rocks, shows us -that a spit of sandy gravel projected into the alluvial mud of the -Thames valley just opposite the “bluff” upon which the oldest part of -London stands, and indeed projected so far towards the stream that -the last traces of it are not lost until beyond Guy’s Hospital--that -is, until within little more than a furlong of the present high-water -mark. The causeway which might therefore be necessary to approach the -stream from the south in all states of the tide need only have been -such a hardening of the track over the mud as is necessary between the -high- and low-water mark of any tidal river where a ferry is to be -established, and we must believe that the river at high water washed -the gravel spit. - -Upon the farther or northern bank traces of artificial embankment -(indicating the original limit of alluvial mud upon that side) have -been found upon the line of Thames Street, and the Roman wall ran just -to the north of it. The total width, then, which had to be negotiated -at this point was one at the very most of seven hundred yards, and -perhaps much less than that, and it was one which at high water was -flanked to the south, as to the north, by a hard surface across which -the river could be approached. - -[Illustration: GREENHITHE] - -No such conditions were to be discovered between this point and the -sea, and, far inland as this point was, it was therefore the lowest -practicable crossing of the Thames. Thus it was that the Thames -established London. - -It has also been maintained that this crossing formed not only the -first practicable way to one coming up from the sea and seeking the -_lowest_ passage of the Thames, but also that no practicable passage -could be found for some considerable way _up_ the river either; in -other words, that the opportunity for going over the Thames near the -site of London Bridge was an isolated and all the more valuable one -from the absence of similar opportunities _above_ as well as _below_ it. - -We must be very careful before we accept such an argument. It is as -certain as inference can make it that an original crossing, perhaps -older than that of London, passed the Thames in the neighbourhood of -Lambeth Bridge. The road which the Romans made or straightened from the -south-east, that is, the first great main road from the Straits of -Dover to the north, the Watling Street, points directly to this spot, -and the presence of good going on the south bank at least strengthens -the conjecture, coupled as it is with the antiquity of Westminster -as an inhabited site, and the long-established ferry which plied for -centuries from the neighbourhood of Lambeth Palace to the opposing -“Horseferry” Road. - -The formation of the surface-soil in this neighbourhood is well worthy -of study. - -Immediately in the bounds of Lambeth Church and Palace the superficial -hard gravels (which have been approaching the river for two miles and -leaving a belt of marsh to their right or north) touch the stream. -Not quite opposite, but nearly so--quite nearly enough for the -establishment of a ferry--the large isolated patch of gravel which -lay between the two mouths of the old brooks and which supported the -nucleus of Westminster affords a good landing-place. It is true that -there is (or was) a patch of bad ground immediately to the north of -this gravel, but very soon the rising ground which is now marked by -Constitution Hill and Grosvenor Gardens gave good going and led the -track up, nearly coincident with Park Lane, to “Tyburn,” whence the -Watling Street makes straight for the north and west along the line of -the modern Edgware Road. - -For a mile or two farther up, until the gravel in Chelsea was reached, -opposite the steep land of Battersea crossing may have been difficult, -but between Battersea and Chelsea it was certainly as easy in early -times, or easier than at London Bridge, and after that, of course, as -one goes westward the passage of the river becomes easier and easier -until on the present western limits of London, at Brentford, you have -what is almost certainly an original ford across the river, at low tide -at least, and one which some authorities have regarded as the crossing -place of Julius Cæsar. - -It is not, therefore, because the crossing at London is unique--it -is, on the contrary, but the last of a long series of crossings--it is -because it is the _lowest_ crossing of the Thames that it came to be of -such capital importance in the history of this island. Upon it converge -the great military road from Chichester and the Great Port, the still -more important road from the Kentish ports, and in particular from the -Straits of Dover, the road from Shoreham going directly northward, of -which such slight but such conclusive evidence has been discovered. -These from the south--while from the north the great eastern road -from Colchester and the corn-lands of Essex, the northern road with -its branches to the ports and to the corn-lands of East Anglia, the -north-western road from the garrison at Chester with its branch to the -arable lands of Lancashire, past the fortress of Manchester, and even -the western road from Bath and from the mines of the Mendip and from -the garrison of Caerleon, all converge. - -Once this scheme of ways had been established (and they were certainly -all complete before the end of the fourth century), once London had -thus become the hub of a wheel of such spokes and the centre of such -a web, the Thames which had made it, making also its commerce from -the sea and its value as a point of transhipment between inland and -sea-borne traffic, assured its eminence over all the other towns of the -island. - -I will not here repeat the arguments which I have dealt with in other -studies, and which are advanced in defence of various hypothetical -dates for the first building of the bridge. Its establishment across -the river marked, of course, the completion of the process whereby -London was produced. For once the bridge was there it was a necessary -terminal to sea-borne traffic, and a convenient one to inland traffic; -it was the military communication between north and south, and the -commercial one as well. I will close by distinguishing between the very -few pieces of actual evidence and the presumption built upon them. - -We have a line of Roman remains pointing to a place upon the northern -bank, somewhat to the east of London Bridge and almost coincident with -the opening of the subway. Opposite it we have the old landing place -near “Stoney Lane” which is supposed to indicate a southern causeway -meeting this identical causeway from the north. Between the two there -may have been in early Roman times a ferry. On the other hand, we have -the Stane Street pointing directly at the southern terminal of old -London Bridge (a trifle to the east of the modern bridge) and we have -the undoubted presence of that bridge through the Dark Ages, which did -not, as a rule, possess any considerable monument which they had not -inherited from Rome. We have, further, the fact that the earliest line -traceable for the Roman town puts London Bridge nearly at its centre; -and again the fact that on the line of the bridge certain Roman relics -have been unearthed or fished up. - -In the absence of more positive evidence we may take it as sufficient -for history that in the natural course of things a ferry probably -preceded the bridge, yet the bridge existed, if not when the Romans -came, at any rate shortly after their occupation.[3] - -Thus it was, then, that the River of London seems to have made London. - -The Thames was so situated in the island that a crossing place of -a permanent sort had to be established as far down the stream as -possible. This place was found where the stream was still broad, -tidal, and a port. Once bridged the same spot would mark the terminal -of sea-borne traffic and the place of exchange between foreign and -domestic produce, while the roads radiating north and south from such a -crossing would further establish its pre-eminence. - -But that pre-eminence was, from some very early period, _commercial_. -The first mention of London in recorded history, the phrase of -Tacitus, speaks of the town particularly as a _market_. As a market -London has grown, and as a market it is still chiefly eminent. But -London is a market only because it is a port, and it is the port of the -Thames. In that aspect I will next consider the connection between the -town and its river. - -[Illustration: STRAND ON THE GREEN] - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] _Warfare in England_, Williams & Norgate. - -[2] _The Old Road_, Constable & Co. - -[3] The arguments with regard to the age of the bridge and the earliest -position of the crossing will be found set out in their most recent -form and most fully by Mr. R. A. Smith, F.S.A., in the first volume of -_London_ in the Victoria County Histories. - - - - -IV - -LONDON - -THE PORT OF THE THAMES - - -That a town would group up on the lowest crossing of the Thames, once -that crossing with its bridge or ferry was definitely established, -is obvious enough. That this town would be important and large if -there were a sufficient development of population and culture in the -island is equally obvious. Both consequences would naturally follow -from the topography of Britain. But that this town should become of -such high importance in the European scheme and of such overwhelming -importance in the national scheme; further, that this town should soon -grow to be the second town in size of Western Europe, and at last -by far the first, is not so immediate a conclusion from the known -topographical conditions which brought it into being. That moral and -material growth of London is due, of course, to the supremacy which -London enjoyed and enjoys as a place of _commerce_. It is London as a -market, and as a market the port of which was the Thames, which we must -next consider, and we must ask ourselves upon what so considerable -and historical a phenomenon has been based. The matter is usually -dismissed by an affirmation lacking analysis and still more lacking -proof. Our text-books are too often satisfied with telling us that “the -exceptionally favourable position of London as a commercial centre” was -at the root of the town’s greatness. The affirmation is perfectly true, -but it does not provide its own explanation nor satisfy our curiosity -as to _why_ this position should have meant so much. - -I think, indeed, that most observant people in reading this or similar -phrases must, if they had any knowledge of the map, have been struck -with the apparent disadvantages under which a site such as that of -London suffers. It has not behind it a vast hinterland from which it -should be able to gather raw material for export, nor is it a natural -outlet for the various products of several different regions as is, for -instance, the region surrounding the mouths of the Rhine. It is not -central to the European scheme as Lyons was for so many centuries, and -Paris for so many centuries more. It lies a long way up its stream from -the sea. No system of converging waterways unites in its neighbourhood. -There seems at first sight, therefore, no reason why London should have -obtained more than a local importance. - -When we consider its advantages as a general meeting-place for varied -foreign commercial interests, a first view will profit us little. -London is on no general European highway but lies ex-centric to Europe -far upon the north and west of the general area which European culture -covers; nor does its more central position since the discovery of the -New World avail the argument, for the greatness of London was planted -and its future continuance assured long before Europeans had known and -developed the Western Continent. London, again, does not seem to invite -commerce by lying upon the frontier common to two civilisations; it -does not lie upon any economic boundary line as do the cities of the -Levant and notably the cities of Palestine. It is, if we consider the -economics of commerce during at any rate the first 1500 years of our -era, almost at the edge of the world. - -To explain the supremacy of London as a market more than one thesis is -put forward for general acceptance which must, I think, be condemned. -Thus we have the thesis that London occupies the position it does -_because it is almost in the centre of the land hemisphere_. As a -matter of fact the actual centre of that hemisphere is not far from -the neighbourhood of Falmouth, and is at any rate within the limits -of Britain. If we trace upon a globe a great circle or “equator” so -as to include the greatest mass of land surface possible, we find -our southern ports, and London amongst them, to lie near the Pole -of such an Equator, and this argument has been of some weight with -those who have not paused to consider what that “land hemisphere” -means. If the climate of the world were everywhere equal and most -of its soil equally productive, then the fact that the great estuary -of the Thames lay almost central to the greatest mass of land would -have its importance--though the mouths both of the Seine and of the -Scheldt, of the Rhine, and for that matter of the Elbe, would not be -so far distant as to explain the peculiar supremacy of London. But -in the first place the most part of that mass of land did not enter -into the commercial scheme until quite modern times, and secondly, -the variations of its climate and of its productivity destroy the -theory. Not far to the north of our port (relatively to so great a -thing as the planet) lies that vast circle of uninhabited or hardly -habitable frozen land which is not only almost useless for the purposes -of exchange, but which also bars any passage of commerce across it. -Not so very far to the south, again, runs the belt of desert east and -west across Africa and Asia, the worst part of which, the widest, is -also the nearest to us and is called the Sahara. It is of little use -to have a central position between, say, Japan upon the one side and -Cape Town upon the other, if the Greek Circle which connects us with -Japan passes, as it does, through the Polar Ice. There are certain -central positions which explain the supremacy of some particular site, -but these positions are nearly always central to limited areas over -which travel is uninterrupted. The great market of Nijni Novgorod in -Russia is an example of this sort. Chicago in the United States of -America is another. But London is no parallel to such cases as these, -so far as the world or even Europe is concerned. It is fairly central -(as we shall see) to what was once the chief wealth of England: it is -ex-centric to all else. - -[Illustration: THE THAMES FROM GREENWICH PARK] - -Still less will the many arguments based upon fairly modern conditions -solve the problem which confronts us. Thus the great export trade of -modern England is mainly based upon coal. But the estuary of the Thames -is not a natural place of export for coal. The political relations -which necessarily bind this country to-day to other countries of the -same speech throughout the New World have a vast effect in continuing -and expanding our oversea exchanges, but all the ports natural to such -ties lie upon our south or west. London does not face the New World. It -looks away from it. - -The truth is that the singular position of the Lower Thames as -a terminal for international commerce, and of its port as an -international market, must be sought in a medley of causes, the chief -of which fall into two clear categories. We have first the causes which -made London what it was before the transformation of commerce through -the discoveries of the Renaissance and the later gigantic expansion -which reposes upon modern facilities of communication. Once London is -thus established as the second great city of the West, we have the -later causes which permit it to continue in the enjoyment of that -position, and to nourish it until the city whose port was the Thames -became not the second but by far the first of all the great markets in -wealth, population, and shipping. - -I will take these two sets of causes separately. - -As to the first, what made the greatness of the Thames as a port for -London, and of London, therefore, as a market before the modern era of -geographical discovery? - -A natural market exists only where two natural conditions are present: -ease of approach from without, and what may be called _draining power_ -from within. - -I mean by ease of approach from without a natural facility for the -arrival of goods from areas of production foreign to those of the -market. And I mean by “draining power from within” some topographical -or other condition which makes domestic produce run naturally towards -the one centre of this market. - -To these two natural conditions must be added two further political -ones: first, one must have such a society connected with that market as -gives it security, and, secondly, such a society as is organised by -its activity and adventure for production or for exchange, or for both. - -Now all these four conditions London enjoyed from a very early time. I -have pointed out elsewhere, and shall point out again in these pages, -the nature of the political security which London has enjoyed for so -many centuries. It did not lie in any particularly peaceful character -peculiar to the country as a whole, for while London was growing to -greatness England was a continual theatre of domestic war. It lay in -the great size which the city had attained, coupled with the breadth of -its stream, and in its numerical proportion to the general population -of which it was the capital. The fact that London was never besieged -or sacked depended upon these characters, and they in turn, therefore, -guaranteed that local security which is the first political necessity -of a great and continuous market. - -As to the commercial and productive character of the inhabitants of -Britain, it escapes any material analysis. We must postulate it as -a constant fact running through the known and recorded centuries of -our history, and we may ascribe it according as we more love ease or -veracity to whatever cause we feel most flattering or most true. No -proof is possible. We can only say in this respect that certain areas -of Europe have shown these characters for greater or less periods of -time, and that others equally well endowed have not shown them, but -have shown other characters perhaps as valuable. - -The main fact in this connection is that whether the productive areas -of Great Britain were exporting raw material (as during the most -active centuries of the Middle Ages, when wool was our chief export), -or whether (as later became the case) manufactured articles and coal -were the stand-by of our oversea trade; whether we consider the period -before or after the development of our carrying trade; whether we are -concerned with an industrial or an agricultural England; whether we -are observing late centuries in which the English showed a passionate -interest in novelty and foreign adventure, or far more numerous early -centuries in which they were indifferent to distant voyages--throughout -the whole story with all its changes the productive area of the island -has always maintained a high standard of wealth in comparison with its -neighbours and its aptitude for exchange has always been equally high. - -It is a point often neglected that the Norman Conquest, though of -course it introduced a new and much more developed culture than Saxon -England had possessed, did not find an impoverished land which the -newcomers might “develop.” It found an exceedingly wealthy country -according to the standards of the time; and the extent and variety of -that wealth stands out very clearly in the narrative of contemporaries. -Four centuries later, at the end of the Wars of the Roses, foreign -observers make precisely the same comment. It is the packed wealth of -South England filling its comparatively small area which the foreign -envoy notes. We have a striking piece of evidence surviving before our -eyes in the number, decoration and amplitude of our churches to which I -have already alluded. - -To continue the proof after the Tudors would be superfluous. There -was even a phase, the beginning of which is to be found in the -seventeenth century, the close of which we have unhappily seen in our -own generation, when the wealth of England was so superior to that -of any other rival that the material circumstances of life among the -wealthier classes of the country seemed to belong to a different world -from that of neighbouring nations, and when the economic supremacy of -England was translated into a credit, a command of money, and an almost -contemptuous security to which no other European people could pretend. - -London, then, for all these centuries has enjoyed the two political -conditions necessary to the establishment of a chief market, security -and a productive area in the hands of a race by its genius inclined to -exchange. - -There remain the two natural conditions: ease of approach from without -and “draining power” from within. - -Now when we turn to these natural conditions we find that in the matter -of ease of approach the Thames was unrivalled. London was, of course, -far from the sea--a point with which I will deal in a moment--but -there was no haven north of the Mediterranean which called so readily -for commerce upon a large scale. Given the political conditions for -a market--security and active powers of production and exchange--the -Thames was as good a highway to that market as any that could be found. -No vessels until quite modern times had to consider their draught or -fear the entry of the river (at least, through channels which the -pilots commanded), and once within the inland water a swinging tide was -at the service of the ships. There were, within that inland stretch, no -obstacles, no high intervening hills to becalm, no narrows or islands. - -In this ease of access, again, must be reckoned the position of the -Thames relatively to opposing ports. The wide funnel opened at a few -hours’ sail from all that line of ports which begins with the mouth -of the Seine and ends with the northernmost mouths of the Rhine. What -we now call the coasts of Normandy, Picardy, Flanders, Belgium, and -Holland lay, even at their extremes, within one double tide of the -Thames. - -It is true that they also lay equally convenient to any one of the -lesser havens upon the Sussex, the Kent, the Essex, or the Norfolk -coasts, but the ample space afforded by the river, the opportunity for -a crowd of shipping, coupled with opportunities for inland trading, -were to be found nowhere else in the south and east of the island as -they were to be found up London River. - -[Illustration: GRAVESEND] - -In this connection the use of the tide should be noted. By a -peculiarity which has not been without its effect upon the history of -the river the flood carries a man past the Kentish coast long past -high water and indeed until a moment very close to that in which -_another_ tide, that from the North Sea, carries its sweep of water up -the river. Thus, though the tide reach high water shortly after noon -in Dover Harbour, a man outside will carry the stream with him all up -past the Kentish coast until close upon five o’clock. He has but to get -round Longnose and he finds this other tide serving him--a tide that -has been making from three o’clock or thereabouts, coming in from the -North Sea, and that will carry him right up river as long as the wind -or daylight permits him to follow it; a tide that does not reach its -height at Gravesend until eight that evening, or in the Pool of London -until nine. In other words, the River of London afforded to the vessel -coming in from the south a double tide which, clever picked up, gave a -continuous voyage from the Channel right down into the sheltered water -inland. - -At this point it is interesting to consider why the principal harbours -of the Middle Ages, in the north and west of Europe, at least, and upon -tidal seas, so constantly developed not upon the coast itself, but at -some distance up a stream or creek and inland. - -Consider the examples: Havre comes late in the development of the -Seine--the original port is Harfleur; Bristol stands up a tortuous -and narrow channel well inland, and not upon the estuary of the -Severn at all; Liverpool had its first nucleus four miles from the -open sea; Preston quite twelve; Chester more than twenty, of which -the last five or six were a narrow river above the estuary; Nantes is -another striking example--something like one day’s sail from the sea; -Antwerp, Rotterdam--Bruges itself lying those few miles inland upon -its canal--follow the general rule; and so does Norwich, and so does -Colchester, and so does Boston, and so does Glasgow; Bordeaux tells the -same story, and so does the Royal Harbour of Montreuil. And in general, -while a great number of smaller ports rose upon the very coast of the -Atlantic, the North Sea, or the Channel, there seemed to be, until -modern times at least, a tendency for the main depôts of sea-borne -commerce to lie thus inland. Why was it? - -We can only guess, but I would suggest that three factors combined to -establish such a state of things: First, the little boats used for -inland transport and the vehicles dependent upon roads and therefore -upon bridges would seek a place of trans-shipment at some point upon -the river where it had not yet become too broad or too rough, and so -long as this place was accessible from the sea, the higher up river it -was the better for them. - -Next must be counted the security of a perfectly land-locked harbour -for the smaller craft, which formed so much the largest part of -maritime transport. A perfectly land-locked natural harbour upon the -coast was a very rare thing. Let the stretch of water be only of the -size of Southampton Water at its mouth, or of the Solent, and they -would be wrecked in a high wind, but rivers everywhere afforded a -secure protection when once one had entered their narrow channel. - -Thirdly, we must consider the advantage which such sites presented -against the attacks of pirates, and the better opportunities for -defence which a considerable inland town possessed, with its resources -in the surrounding fields and population over the smaller seaports. - - -In considering the first of these points we must remember that there -was always a tendency for the central depôt or main commercial town -to arise somewhat inland and to be served by subsidiary ports, if -there were no direct access to it by water--and even if there were. -Canterbury is an example of this, so is Winchester, so is Amiens, and -so is Arras, and so is Caen, and so is Rennes, and a host of others. - -In balancing the various advantages offered by various sites for the -establishment of a market, a preponderating advantage must always be -a position lying in the midst of several centres of production, and, -since man is a land animal, these sites would normally lie inland. When -they were served by a river so much the better; when they were served -by a great and secure river, they could not fail to grow as London has -grown. - -As part of this ease of access must be reckoned, the peculiar character -of the Thames, much more open to the wind than the Seine, not blocked -by any island, affording once within the estuary a constant depth amply -sufficient for all vessels until quite recent times. - -But all this would not have given London its place had not a city -established at the lowest crossing of the Thames exercised in a -peculiar degree that “draining power” of which I have spoken. - -We have seen how the system of British roads necessarily converged -upon London, and if we consider one or two other features in English -topography, we shall see why London provides a common depôt for nearly -the whole of English exports in a fashion which no other city could -show for any other equally large area of production. - -Before the north of England was industrialised, three things were -mainly required to establish what I have called the “draining” power -of any market in the island. First, that it should be fairly central -to all the south and Midlands; secondly, that it should afford a -convenient centre of demand for various foreign products; thirdly, -that it should be as close as possible to such continental markets as -principally received our export. - -Given those three conditions combined in any one place, and so far as -the great mass of Britain was concerned, a point would be established -to which would flow the main part of the produce which the Continent -desired to purchase by exchange. - -Observe how all these three conditions coincide in the case of London -and of that Lower Thames which was its port. - -When I say with regard to the first condition that the point we are -seeking must be “central” to the south and east of the Island and to -the Midlands, I am using a word which needs expansion. I mean that we -must have a point to which the communications of commerce already lead, -and one not too ex-centric to the area tapped. - -Now at the first glance at the map London does give an impression of -ex-centricity, of lying upon one side: and that towards the east and -the south. - -But when we begin to consider certain qualifying conditions, we shall -find that London is fairly central, even geometrically, to the area in -question, and that, when we are considering the economic “weight” of -the various parts of this area, London may by a metaphor be said to be -near the “centre of gravity” of such an area. - -Cut off, in the first place, the Dumnonian Peninsula--that is, Devon -and Cornwall,--the Welsh Highlands, and the Pennines. Consider (that -is) South England, East Anglia, and the Midlands. You have an area -roughly square, and about two hundred miles every way. - -In drawing such a square, take for your extreme points Chester on -the north-west, a point midway between Portland and Exmouth on the -south-west; upon the north-east a point a little north of Cromer, and -upon the south-east a point in the Straits of Dover, a trifle west of -the line between Dungeness and Boulogne. Such a square includes a good -deal that is outside our area, much of the estuary of the Severn, a -strip of the Channel, a wedge of the North Sea and of the Wash, and -a wedge of Pennine land to the north; but it also excludes a certain -amount properly within our area as some of the richest parts of Kent -and of Norfolk and Suffolk. We may therefore take this square for a -fair average, and we shall see that even upon the test of distance -London is not so ex-centric as might be imagined. Draw the two -diagonals of this square, and you will find that London lies upon one -of them at a distance of less than forty miles from the centre. - -[Illustration: KINGSTON BRIDGE] - -When we consider something more than distance and think of London as -the “centre of gravity” of the Midlands, the east and the south, we -find it still more central for the centuries immediately preceding our -own. Their staple export was wool. The pasturage of the chalk ranges -runs right round London in the Chilterns and their extension into East -Anglia, in the north and south Downs and the Uplands of Wiltshire, -Hampshire, and Dorset. London is the obvious centre of all that -triangle of chalk. It is again nearly equi-distant from the principal -markets of Norfolk, of the Upper Trent valley, of Dorset, and of the -Cotswolds. If we treat as exceptions the Lancashire and Yorkshire -Plains (each with their local ports), the Vale Royal and the Lower -Severn (each with its local port at Chester and at Bristol), London is -very near the commercial centre of gravity of what remains. We must not -forget that the Marlborough Downs and Salisbury Plain are but a few -miles more distant from London Bridge than is the extremity of Kent. -From the town of Pewsey to London Bridge as the crow flies is almost -exactly eighty-eight miles. From the South Foreland the distance is -not ten miles less. It needs but a slightly longer radius to include -all the Warwickshire Midlands and very nearly all the county of -Norfolk: all, of course, of Suffolk, of Essex, of Kent, Sussex, Surrey, -and Hampshire. - -London is geographically and commercially central at any rate to the -older England--which was all that was needed for its establishment. - -It was even more central when regarded as a nexus of communications. - -How all the main roads centred there we have already seen. The roads -alone would have given London a pre-eminence as a market above all -other towns in Britain even if the Thames had dried up after their -establishment. But the position was meanwhile further strengthened by -the conditions of water carriage; and it is here that the meaning of -the Thames as a whole appears, and the way in which the upper as well -as the lower river has built up the greatness of London. - -I have no space to show why and how water carriage was of supreme -importance both in primitive times (that is, before the Roman -civilisation came) and during the Dark Ages through which, in spite of -decline, it survived. It should be sufficient to point out that in the -decline of a civilisation, or in its absence, water carriage--suited -to heavy burdens, requiring no repair of ways, and providing a mode of -traction ready-made--is, wherever it is available, the chief economic -factor of commerce. - -Now when we recognise that the bulk of English wealth lay for centuries -south and east of a line drawn from Exmouth to the Wash, and when we -appreciate what the Thames valley is in that triangle, we shall see -how necessarily the main market of the Thames was also the main market -of England. The natural water communications of the south consist in -a number of small streams, only one of which, the Salisbury Avon, may -have been navigable for more than a dozen miles or so inland. East -Anglia was better served, and particularly the northern area, which -was drained by the three rivers converging upon Breydon Water. The -northern part of that area was also fairly well served by the three -parallel rivers of the Ouse, the Nen, and the Welland, but their -service as a means of communication was handicapped by the nature of -their entry into the sea through the Fens, and after that through the -perils, sandbanks, and shallows of the Wash; while the good service of -rivers along all the East Anglian coast had this drawback: that, as we -there have nothing but a series of short systems, there was no water -connection between one group of short valleys and another, not even -one thought-out road. A dozen streams will carry produce from the sea -to Worstead, to Norwich, to Beccles, to what was once the considerable -port of Orford, to Ipswich, to Colchester, etc. But each avenue is a -separate avenue. There is no “trunk” connecting the system. - -With the Thames it is otherwise. Glance down the valley and see how -one point after another, each the natural market of a whole district -of its own, drains the produce from the north and the south of the -river, to discharge it upon the main stream. From Lechlade (up to which -point ran the “measure and the bushel of London”)[4] through Oxford, -Abingdon, Wallingford, Reading, Marlow, the Middle Hythe (which we now -call Maidenhead), and Windsor, you have a whole string of such centres, -each gathering its own section’s produce from its scheme of roads, -or of subsidiary streams, and turning the mass down seaward upon the -“trunk” afforded by the Thames. - -The Thames, therefore, with London as its port of transhipment between -the inland communications and the sea, tapped the very heart of all -that was wealthiest in England for fifteen hundred years, and all that -commerce by river as by road drained upon London because London was -“central” to exchange in the rich south and east of the island. - -But, as we have seen, two further characters were attached to -“draining” power. We must not only seek a point central for -communications, we must also seek a point where there was a ready -demand for import and a ready access to the best foreign markets. - -Let us consider these two characters in their order: - -A ready demand for import must exist either in a port itself or -behind it, if that port is to develop into a great town and to -acquire political importance. You have many instances, especially in -contemporary commerce, of ports which do little more than export, and -of other ports in which there is no demand for import, but which merely -serve to pass the import inland. In the first case the international -exchange is effected through imports at some other point. The clearing -between export and import is a paper clearing, and the ships at the -export point arrive in ballast--a drawback. In the second place, though -a town may grow to some importance as a mere place of transhipment, -it will never acquire the importance of a capital nor even of a great -city--it will never have a great _political_ place unless, round -the handling of its imports destined for the interior, there grows -up a considerable local power of demand for values. In other words, -something of the imports transmitted through the town must “stick on -the way.” Modern Liverpool is a good example of this. The primary -economic function of modern Liverpool is still the transhipment of -cotton to Lancashire just beyond its boundaries, but in the pursuit -of this function Liverpool has claimed its tribute for now three -generations, and so vast an accumulation of other activities connected -with the port has grown up that even the digging of the Manchester Ship -Canal, the effect of which was so much feared in Liverpool, seems -to have been, if anything, a benefit to that town. What proportion -the power of demand exercised for imported goods in Liverpool itself -may bear to the total of values entering the port cannot be exactly -calculated, but it is safe to say that the toll levied is not much less -than one-fifth. - -Now when to this power of demand created by the “sticking” at the point -of transhipment or port of import, of goods coming from abroad, there -is added the power of demand caused by the residence of government, of -a court and of wealthy men apart from those who are wealthy through -commerce, you get, of course, a very highly increased power of demand -which makes of the port of import a specially great economic centre. A -ship coming to such a port in order to take on board there the export -in which it deals, can enter loaded with imports which are sure of a -ready market. - -[Illustration: SUNBURY] - -It so happens that London during all the centuries of its growth, and -especially during those four hundred years of the Middle Ages which -chiefly established its great position, was in exactly this position. -Not only was it, as modern Liverpool is, a point of transhipment -round which a vast quantity of subsidiary activities had grown, it -was also close to the more or less permanent residence of the court, -to what became the permanent seat of legislature, and to what was -very early the permanent seat of the central courts of justice. The -process continued uninterruptedly. After the loot of the church land -of the endowments of the poor under the Tudors, the great palaces of -the new aristocracy lined the Strand, and from the early seventeenth -century--when this process was completed--onwards, the power of demand -exercised by London alone and its local call for imports, has never -ceased to grow, until to-day the position of London as an importing -centre is due almost entirely to this character, next to its value -as a clearing house: It is now only in a much less degree a point of -transhipment. - -The type of goods for which this local power of demand existed had also -a very great effect in helping the growth of London through the traffic -of the Thames. - -Perhaps the principal import of the Middle Ages in value was that of -wine. It was a luxurious import for which there was a local demand, -especially where you had the residence of the wealthier people, and, -what was exceedingly important, it was _an import large in bulk_. -It meant that ships would come either in great numbers or in heavy -tonnage, and this in itself suggested London as a place of export for -their return, made a speculative voyage to London worth taking, and -developed the warehousing space and the wharf space of the port. Later -came coal, later still the tropical products, and last of all the -great passenger traffic. But in every stage of the development London -has exercised a local power of demand for that kind of import which -demanded bulk in storage. - -As to the second point, the easy access to the foreign port whither -export was to be made, London was again especially favoured, in its -point of growth. To-day it is no longer so, as we shall see in a -moment. London is going forward with the momentum of its past. But -until quite modern times London looked more favourably at the points -to which England exported than did the other island ports, its rivals. -It lay in the full focus of that long curve of the Norman, the Picard, -the Flemish and Dutch coasts, which were the principal markets of the -Middle Ages. Right opposite were the Flemish cities that bought English -wool--the staple export--right opposite, also, the mouths of the Rhine -for communication with the interior Germanies and, though a little more -distant than the northern ports, agreeable to all that Baltic and North -Sea trade which grew up with the close of the Middle Ages. The league -of mercantile towns called Hanseatic had its depôt in London from the -middle of the thirteenth century. The northern ports of England that -lie a little nearer had no hinterland to feed their commerce, and -London was, moreover, the best clearing-house and centre of general -exchange for them in all the north and west. In this character it -surpassed even Bruges. - -When all these conditions changed--when the discovery of the New World, -and of the Cape route to the Indies, when the growth of north-country -industries and one hundred other factors had taken away from the site -of London its old topographical supremacy, the port was so firmly -established that it provided its own sources of vitality. - -It is always so in the economic affairs of a town or of a nation. -Material causes are discovered to be more powerful in the middle period -of their growth; once the town or nation are rooted they nourish -themselves. The River of London to-day is the capital example of this -truth out of all Europe. A basin far too small for modern commerce, -lying much too distantly up a river too narrow for modern commercial -needs, dangerous of entry for ships of modern draft, and needing -perpetual and enormous labour to keep it properly open, none the less -preserves its place at the head of the ports of the world. As a depôt -for commerce its wharves and docks extend to Tilbury, and that system -of clearing which grew up naturally on the low gravel height above -London Bridge, when the pool held all the shipping of the place and was -a large and secure harbour, is still established on that same hill in -the shape of the banks and the exchanges of the City of London, which -cancel the exchanges, not of the pool below, but of I know not what -fraction of the shipping of the whole world. - -There is one last point to be considered in connection with London -river as a port. It has been well made by Mr. Lyde in one of his short -but remarkable geographical studies. The estuary of the Thames exactly -faces that great and permanent frontier line between two parts of our -European culture, upon either side of which lie contrasting speeches, -traditions, and even religions. - -That frontier roughly divides such areas of Western Europe as have -continuously preserved the traditions of the Roman Empire from outer -regions to the east and to the north, which only received the Christian -religion and the Roman civilisation after the breakdown of central -authority exercised from the Imperial city. - -The estuary of the Thames opens like a funnel just opposite the point -where this frontier between what some would call the “Teutonic” and -“Latin” areas, reaches the sea. - -It may not be at first sight apparent why a position of this kind is -of capital commercial importance. The reason is rather moral than -material, though it has its material element in the cheapness and -expedition of carriage by sea. - -Areas which differ in the type of their culture tend to become -polarised one towards the other for the purposes of exchange. Each -will tend to produce something that the other lacks. Now the exchange -between two such areas will, of course, proceed actively enough across -innumerable points lying upon the frontier between them, but it will -not penetrate very far inland, if there is in competition with the -inland routes a water route. Thus Arras will exchange easily enough -with, say, Aix-la-Chapelle, Metz with Trèves or Frankfort, but what -of Rouen and the Baltic, Bordeaux and the Frisian Lowlands, Brittany -and Vendée and the German Plain? It is evident that if no friction -existed a direct sea-borne commerce along the north-western coasts of -Europe would effect these exchanges; but there does exist a friction, -especially in early times, consisting in the ignorance and, as it were, -the credulity, separating places so far distant in mileage and, what -is more important, in culture. If, then, a half-way house is found -sufficiently familiar to either party, that half-way house will tend -to become in this new aspect out of so many, a centre of exchange--and -this is precisely what happened to London. The North Sea and the -Baltic were familiar with London--but then so was the Channel and the -Bay of Biscay. London river attracted in this fashion a sheaf of trade -routes, drawn from the north and east, another from the south and -west. And so true is this that to the present day, and in one curious -slight but emphatic modern instance, you can see the process at work. -Travellers intent upon no purpose of commerce but merely upon an -excursion will leave London river for Boulogne and Calais, sometimes -for Dieppe and Havre; other travellers will leave the same facility -of egress for the Scheldt and the Rhine and the Dutch ports and the -Elbe. But, unless I am mistaken, the more obvious track of a passenger -steamer route between the French ports and the Belgian, Dutch, and -German ones does not exist save in the case of the great liners which -touch at Cherbourg. A man desiring to go from Boulogne to Flushing by -sea or from some lower French port to, say, Amsterdam, would very -probably find his cheapest road to lie by way of going into the Thames -and out of it. We must not exaggerate this element in the present -position of London, where it is but a survival and that a small one: -but in the past, and particularly in the establishment of the port at -the end of the Dark Ages and the beginning of the Middle Ages, this -‘facing’ of London River towards the great political frontier line of -Europe, was of capital importance. Scandinavia, the Baltic, Frisia, and -the Dutch ports had all known their way to London for centuries when -the Norman Conquest, and still more the succeeding Angevin monarchy, -brought round into London River a new wealth of trade from the Seine, -the Loire, and the Garonne. - -[Illustration: TWICKENHAM FERRY] - -In all that has preceded we have been considering London as the -creation of the river in its civil aspect alone; it remains to consider -the town and the stream in their effect upon the military history of -the country, and to that I shall now turn. - -FOOTNOTE: - -[4] The reader may see quoted in full in Sir Laurence Gomme’s _The -Governance of London_ (p. 346) the precedents upon which Coke founded -his opinion in 1597, including the verdict of 29 Ed. I., concerning in -particular the portage of salt upon the Thames. - -“Quod nullus mensuarius sit de London usque Lachenlade nisi dicti -mensuarii et bushelli de Ripa Reginae.” - - - - -V - -LONDON AND THE LOWER THAMES IN WARFARE - - -The last historical aspect in which we must consider the River of -London is the military aspect; and this aspect has three clearly marked -divisions. We have first to consider the Lower Thames as an avenue of -invasion; next as an obstacle to invasion of the northern part of the -island, or to the passage of the troops from the north to the south. -Thirdly, we must estimate what effect upon the military history of -the country London itself has had, commanding as it does the lowest -crossing of the Thames, always forming a vast base of supply, and for -centuries by its stores and munitions forming an ally or an enemy of -capital importance to whichever party it supported so long as warfare -was waged in England. - -The first two of these considerations are very sharply defined not -only in their nature, but also in the historical periods over which -each one predominated. The Thames as an avenue of ingress or invasion -belongs to the earlier part of English history. The importance of the -lower river in this category ends very nearly with the close of the -Dark Ages. Its second character, that of an obstacle to the invader -who would go northward or to troops marching from the north southward, -in the main is discoverable of course throughout history, but chiefly -belongs to the Middle Ages and the seventeenth century. I will take -these three points, therefore, in their order and deal first with the -invasions of England which the Lower Thames has served. These invasions -from the first recorded case of the almost to the last may be grouped -together under one description. They were the raids of the pirates. -It is true that these raids became, as the Dark Ages developed and -the true Middle Ages approached, better and better organised, more -definitely political and dynastic in plan, until at last they took on -the character of regular warfare. But from the beginning to the end -of the process we have little or no use of the Thames on the part -of regular forces proceeding from the ancient civilisation of the -Continent, from Gaul, or from the mouths of the Rhine. The whole story -is a story of invasion from the outer and barbarian limits of Europe, -that is, from the North Sea and the confines of the Baltic. - -The early pirate raids upon this island, which were first called Saxon, -hundreds of years later Dane, but which had through the whole of the -Dark Ages much of one character of purposeless devastation, used the -Thames for one of their chief entries. The earlier and less powerful -raids seem to have made nothing of London. It was too much for them. -But the later and worse tempest of the eighth and ninth and tenth -centuries had London for their main object when they forced the river, -and since it is a piece of history very little explored, it is worth a -moment’s digression here. - -What were the conditions under which the pirates conducted their raids -upon the waterway? - -First let us establish a little list of what was certainly known with -regard to these attempts. - -Of the first Saxon raids in connection with the Thames we know nothing. -Even the distorted legends set down hundreds of years afterwards only -preserve a recollection of a landing in Kent, in Thames, and the -fighting that follows them is upon land and south of the river. Of -what raids were made upon the Essex shore, or whether any were made, -or whether (which is improbable) any attempt were made by these sparse -destroyers against the walls and bridge of London, all the part, small -or null or whatever it was, which the Thames played in the first pirate -raids of the fifth and sixth centuries escapes us. - -[Illustration: HAMPTON] - -This is not the place in which to insist upon the unreliable character -of that vast mass of popular history erected upon sheer guess-work and -describing the early raids of the Saxon pirates as effecting in some -way a reconstruction of England. The wilder sort of fiction dealing -with that remote and almost unknown period talks of these first pirate -raids as “the coming of the English.” We must, of course, neglect -rhetoric of that kind. But it is worth while admitting a moment’s -digression to impress on the reader upon what an absence of any thing -approaching evidence all this academic guess-work has been raised. -The one definite fact and the only one connected with the pirate -raids which descended upon the eastern and southern river mouths and -beaches of Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries, is the fact that -these raids cut off southern and eastern Britain from the rest of -civilisation. Of contemporary evidence there is nothing for more than -150 years, save one very vague denunciatory or apocalyptical document -more in the nature of a sermon than a record, which testifies to the -violent impression produced upon the civilised inhabitants of the -island by these raids, and a couple of fragmentary sentences written -perhaps by contemporaries, certainly not by eye-witnesses, and -probably at a great distance from the scene of the trouble. - -We do not know when the raids of the pirates began, nor whether they -were already severe before Britain was cut off. - -We do not know whether Southern and Eastern Britain was already -occupied by kinsmen of the pirates serving as Auxiliary Troops within -the Empire or no. - -We do not know whether the maritime belts of Suffolk, Essex, Kent, and -Sussex spoke a Teutonic language before the pirate raids or no. - -We do not know whether a Christian Church was sufficiently established -in those belts for the raids to have had an opportunity of “destroying” -such a Church. - -We do not know in what numbers the pirates came nor with what object -nor what the towns (which were the nucleus of that society) suffered or -did not suffer from the invasions. - -We have, as almost the sole instrument of historical analysis for a -full 150 years, nothing but inference and the consideration of what is -physically possible and physically impossible in the various theories -that have been put forward. - -Thus it is physically impossible that any very considerable number of -men can have come over seas at any one moment in the small and shallow -boats of the time, but for all the rest we have nothing but legend -and our varying estimate of how the society attacked would probably -have behaved and what the internal reactions within it under the -strain of such an anxiety would probably have been. We can be fairly -certain that an attack of this sort could not deal with a defended -Roman town, though here and there a garrison on the coast may have -been overwhelmed. We can be morally certain from all that we know of -that society that men coming for loot would not kill slaves. On the -other hand, we do not know how far the anarchy may have been increased -by the presence of numerous escaped slaves in the welter. We have a -right to exclude the fantastic--such as the astonishing idea that a -great Roman town like London could be wiped out _and then resettled -by a totally new population_, and we have a right to exclude as very -nearly worthless odd stories cropping up hundreds of years later in -the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_. On the other hand, we are bound to pay -more respect to such a remark as that of the Venerable Bede when he -testifies to the migration of a whole body of pirate population from -the capital of Schleswig to that of Britain. - -If we could discover what happened between the first generation of the -fifth century and the first generation of the seventh, the discovery -would be the most important and interesting that could be made in -connection with our history. For in Britain as in every other province -of Europe the process by which civilisation entered into the Dark Ages -is the explanation of all that followed. But the discovery has not yet -been granted to us, and in all human probability never will be. - -We know that the avenue of approach from the Continent to Britain, that -is, the coasts of the south and east, were so far ruined or occupied -or degraded, the communication with the rest of the island was cut -off; we know that when civilisation came back with St. Augustine it -had to work through the medium of little courts scattered up and down -these shores, and we can presume that writing and record and government -thus filtering through the south and east to the rest of the island -gradually spread the speech and certain of the customs of that south -and east eastward throughout the succeeding centuries. - -Of more than that we are ignorant. - -The Lower Thames, therefore, and the part that it played in that first -capital piece of fighting lies, unfortunately, outside the field of -positive history. We do not begin to get any true record of the Thames -as an avenue of invasion until the second raids begin, three centuries -after the first: those second raids which are collectively known in -this country under the title of “Danish.” - -At the end of the eighth century the pirate raids from the north struck -England again. A few boats’ crews would land, especially in the north, -and raid a monastery or loot the outer barns of a steading, only to be -beaten off. - -But a lifetime later, in the middle of the ninth century, the raids -increased in pressure. As early as 832 you get them in the mouth of -the Thames. It is a small matter. They land in Sheppey and raid that -sparsely inhabited, isolated island, but their raid was successful and -it taught them the way back. The next year they meet Egbert down in the -south-west in some considerable conflict, killing two of his leaders -and holding the battlefield. Two years later again they were in the -Irish Sea and were caught and beaten in an island raid in the west. -In 837 they were beaten off Southampton, to which they had come with -thirty-three ships--and perhaps at the most five thousand fighting men. -But again that same year a raid of theirs in Dorsetshire succeeded, and -the next year between Kent and Sussex they struck again, and before -winter in the hollow land of the Fens and in the Broads and in Kent. - -It is with the year 839 that you get the first hint at an attack upon -London. It is not certain that that attack was Danish, but it is -almost certain that the mention in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle refers to -a great simultaneous series of raids upon the French and the English -coasts which struck Picardy and Rochester in Kent as well as London. -Something we shall never know is what was pushing them. They had some -more adventurous man with his companions to rouse them in the Baltic -and off the Norwegian inlets, or there was passing over that unknown -pagan society of the north one of those spirits which pass over human -societies and lead them out to peril. They would risk the Bay of -Biscay, but their ships were caught by the Christians in the Asturias. -They even dared for the first time to winter without going home, and to -pass the time between one fighting season and the next upon an island -in the mouth of the Noir Moutier. They pushed as far as Seville and -the Moors ate them up. They ran up the Elbe to Hamburg in a force far -larger than anything that has been seen in the west. They ran up the -Seine to Rouen and further. They pushed through a gate of Paris and -were turned out. - -[Illustration: TEDDINGTON] - -They first charged at and then carried Bordeaux, and all this while -they raided Ireland. It was in the year 851 that there came at last -a great fleet of these purposeless destroyers to the Thames mouth, -three hundred and fifty ships so came, and Canterbury and London were -stormed. But their host, which so considerable a fleet must have -brought for the first time in numbers really threatening, was beaten as -it marched down the Stane Street to the raiding of the south. They were -met at Ockley[5] by the host of the English King Ethelwulf and were cut -to pieces. He had probably come up by that old way from Winchester -which leads through Alton into the Dorking Gap, and so had come up with -the raiders. Four years later these pirates, who had already learnt to -winter upon Christian land in Gaul, wintered in Sheppey. That they went -up the river next year we have no record, but ten years later, in 865, -they had been wintering in England, this time in Thanet. The Kentish -men paid them ransom, but the pagan kept no faith. He took the ransom -and harried the land. Thenceforward it is perpetual raiding up and down -England north of Thames. In ’71 they are in Reading, but not, it would -seem, by river, and Alfred beat them on Ashdown, but they were in no -way driven off. They held London all that winter, and year after year -they still marched up and down England. - - -The pirates, keeping more or less together in one horde, marched and -ravaged without strategical purpose and with no power of conquest, -organisation, or government, ruining as they went, and you have in -the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle such phrases as: “Here the host travelled -over the mouth of Humber to York.” “Here the host went to Mercia and -to Nottingham.” “Here the host went again to York.” “Here the army -rode across Mercia into East Anglia and took up their winter quarters -in Thetford.” “Here the host went into Northumbria, and took up their -winter quarters at Torksey.” “Here the host went to Repton”--and so -forth, to Cambridge, to Wareham, to Exeter--a perpetual raid until in -878 Alfred came out from behind Selwood and his hiding in the crisis -of his kingdom, and beat them for good on the bare chalk Down above -Eddington. Thenceforward the pressure is against the pirates. - -More than twenty years later they raided from Boulogne into Kent, and -it was in that same raid in 893 that again the Thames was violated. -Haesten, whom we call Hasting, came up so far as Milton, that is the -first good landing-place upon the southern shore of the inland Thames -just opposite Tilbury.[6] He was working with another force to the -south in the Rother, but nothing came of this double attack. There was -no sailing up river. The station at Milton was broken up and Hasting -went down river, crossed to the northern shore, and established himself -at Benfleet. The men of London, with a reinforcement of the national -army, took his fort and broke all that part of the Danish force, and -his ships were either destroyed or brought up river to London, or some -up the Medway to Rochester, but Hasting himself who had been raiding -was not captured. He came back with that part of his force which had -been with him, summoned sundry parties of the raiding Danes from other -parts of England, made a new base not far from the old one, and started -upon a new raid right across England to the Western Sea. When he had -returned he brought such ships as remained to him up river into the -Lea, built yet another fort upon that stream twenty miles from London. -Once more that base was destroyed. The river Lea was blocked below -their settling place, such ships as they had, destroyed or taken to -London again. And meanwhile the astonishing Danish host survived, -raiding out again across England in a final effort. But their sea -power was gone. They wintered at Bridgenorth in the west. Their few -remaining ships, six in number, attempted the Isle of Wight and Devon. -Alfred beat them off, also catching three aground, but of the remaining -three two were left upon the Sussex coast and their crews hanged in -Winchester. The last one left, full of wounded men, made East Anglia. -In 901 Alfred died, but though he had prevented the raiding of the -Danes from destroying Christian England, the plundering went on year -after year, but for many years the Thames was free. Seventeen years -later they fell upon Severn mouth and were beaten off, and the story -goes on with a gradual reconquest of the posts which the pagans had -established in the Midlands. It was not until 980 that they touched -again at Thames mouth in Thanet, harrying it, and two years later they -seem to have come up river and attacked London once more, but there is -a bare mention of it, and nothing further. But with that end of the -century you come to a very different set of wars--a political attempt -of the northern raiders, now organised in regular fashion, and almost -a kingdom by themselves, upon the verge of accepting Christianity and -of entering into the European Commonwealth. These new fights were -fought not for plunder but for conquest. They ended in success, and the -critical moment of the campaign was decided in the Thames. - -All the fighting of the thirty odd years which established the Danish -dynasty in England and led up to the great reign of Canute, has for its -pivot or centre the estuary of the Thames and in successive attacks -upon the defence of, or in the alliance of London. - -Ethelred the Unready, when he forms his first plans against Olaf, -gathers his fleet in the Pool of London--though he does nothing with -that fleet (992). When, two years later (994), Olaf makes his alliance -with Sweyn, it is again up the estuary of the Thames that he sails to -make his great attack upon the City--but London beat him off. Though -London is attacked again from the _land_ in 1009 and with very great -vigour in 1013, Edmund Ironside, a boy who all but saved his house, -fought alternately north and south of the estuary against the armies -landed from the invading fleet. - -That campaign (the campaign of 1016) is as excellent an example of the -part the Lower Thames played in the warfare of this island before the -Norman Conquest as one could choose. In the month of May Canute makes -his attempt to reduce the capital. He cut a canal through the alluvium -of Suffolk to get his ships round the Bridge head, so that he held -London from the River side both above bridge and below, and he dug his -trench all round the north, east, and west over against the walls. But -he did not reduce the town. Edmund Ironside coming up from the west, -re-entered it. The invader retired to an entrenched camp at Greenwich. -When later the whole invading fleet had dropped down the Thames and -sailed out of the estuary, you get a strategical playing north and -south of that obstacle which is most illuminating. Canute attacks the -Suffolk shore. Edmund marches thither, having the estuary to the south -of him. Canute then sails across the mouth of the Thames and attacks -Kent shore. Edmund counter-marches, _is compelled to take the long -route crossing the Thames at London_, and finds the Danish advance at -Otford to the south of the estuary. He defeats it. Canute thereupon -once more crosses the mouth of the Thames and attacks the Essex shore, -and once more Edmund goes back by the long land route, crosses at -London, gets to the north of the estuary, and fights and loses (by -treachery) his great action on the Crouch at Ashington, near Rochford. - -You could not have within a shorter space of time a clearer view both -of what the Lower Thames meant as an avenue of approach to invasion -during the Dark Ages that were coming to a close, and what it was to -mean as an obstacle to a passage of armies during the centuries of -the Middle Ages which were about to open. The Lower Thames played -no great part between this date, 1016, and the invasion of William -the Conqueror. A fleet seems to have stood on it perpetually for the -defence of the kingdom under Canute, but did not serve as an avenue of -invasion, nor was that fleet brought to action. - -[Illustration: PANGBOURNE] - -The Lower Thames last appears before the Conquest as an element in -warfare when Godwin and his sons enter the mouth of the River in -1052, the fifty ships of the King not daring to offer battle. London -favoured this particular advance, allowed Godwin to pass under the -Bridge without obstacle (which shows how the masts were stepped), and -with that successful but hardly challenged expedition ends the first -chapter of the Lower Thames in English warfare: the chapter of its use -in the Dark Ages as an avenue of invasion into the heart of the country -and against London and, already by the early eleventh century, its -strategical value as an obstacle to the movement of troops from north -to south. - -The Lower Thames in the warfare of the Middle Ages, and indeed up to -that of the seventeenth century and the Civil Wars--that is, throughout -a space of six hundred years (from 1066 to 1644), appears in English -warfare only in the character of the main obstacle of crossing South -England. - -It is impossible to develop a negative aspect of this kind at any -great length, nor is it even possible to affirm it as an universal -negative. I can indeed call to mind no case of the transport of troops -in any considerable numbers from the north to the south of the Lower -Thames, or vice versa, during the period in question. But even if some -considerable exception be discovered, it does not affect the general -thesis that the great groups of civil war which marked the history -of England in the Middle Ages and during the seventeenth century were -powerfully affected in their strategy by the interruption to eastern -communications to north and south, which was caused by the Lower Thames -and its estuary. - -Thus the whole plan of the Wars of the Roses, infinitely confused -though it is in detail, involves a striking up from or down to London -with perpetual action west of London, but there is never any attempt -to turn a southern or a northern position by the crossing of the Lower -Thames in force--at least that I can call to mind. You have the same -thing earlier in the Barons’ Wars. When Henry III. wishes to make a -base for himself in South England and begins by advancing on Rochester, -Simon makes no attempt to cut across anywhere below London. On the -contrary, he marches south from that lowest crossing, making sure of -intercepting the King on his march round parallel with the coast. In -the succeeding campaign the line of the Severn determines everything, -and here again the Upper Thames is crossed and recrossed as well, the -Lower Thames not at all; and when we come to the great Civil Wars of -the seventeenth century or, as our forefathers called them, “the Great -Rebellion,” you have perhaps the clearest instance since the campaign -of Edmund Ironside of how the estuary of the Lower Thames determined -by its obstacle the strategy of the east of England. Speaking in very -general terms and from the point of view of strategy alone as distinct -from the great moral and social forces at work, the Parliament won -because it continuously held not only London but a great triangle of -the Eastern English land; Kent in the main, and all East Anglia, and -after the second year of the war Lincolnshire as well. - -Now imagine in the place of the estuary of the Thames continuous land -communication and you will see what a difference that change would have -made. Charles at the very beginning of the campaign, though he could -not have besieged a town as large as London, could very probably have -marched past it and chastised East Anglia, broken up its recruiting -centres, etc., confident that there was open to him an alternative -retreat to the west upon either side of London. Nay, he could, had he -been successful in this early part of the war, in an East Anglian raid -have continued that success in the south-east. He might, I imagine, -have isolated London, though he could not have besieged it. As it -was, the two halves of his enemy’s country divided for _his_ purposes -by the Lower Thames were for _their_ purposes united by common radii -converging at London and by the control of all the Lower River as a -continuous avenue of transport and supply. - -What was still heartily Royalist in Sussex (and I believe I may -count here many of the castles) was, through the action of that same -obstacle, a hopelessly isolated patch which Parliament had later little -difficulty in reducing. But suppress the Lower Thames and it would have -given Charles a solid base for advance. - -We must not exaggerate the point, for the strategy of the time was very -confused, and sometimes at first almost purposeless; but none the less -in any campaign, however muddled, the main natural strategy imposed by -topography invariably appears, and for what it is worth I cite it in -this case of the Lower Thames and of the Civil Wars. - -The third point, of course, in this connection of the Lower Thames with -the Civil Wars waged in this island is the position of London: and that -position is twofold. London has one great strategical character as the -lowest crossing place of the Thames; it has another great strategical -character as the chief natural base in the island. - -The first of these two characters is obvious, and as obviously recurs -throughout the whole history of battle between the Norman Conquest and -the Parliamentary Wars. Whoever has possession of London has possession -of the secure crossing place nearest the sea which gives immediate -interior communication between one section of the east of the island -and the other, and as a rule to have possession of London is to have -command sooner or later of the whole of the south and east upon that -account. - -But the second character, London as a base, is of even more importance. -You had here a town so great that after the Dark Ages it need never -stand a siege. It is further a town the supplies of which under -primitive conditions lay almost always uncut. Unless a man had so -considerable a fleet that he could cut off supplies by River, so well -organised a transport that he could keep both banks of that broad -stream perpetually in touch, and finally so very large a command that -he could hold the whole circuit of the walls securely and the Bridge -end on the Southwark side as well, London could not be, strictly -speaking, besieged, and, from the Danish Wars onwards, London never was. - -Not only was this great centre of supply nourished by the Thames immune -from such isolation, but it could also furnish stores of provision, -remounts, and all that was necessary for a medieval army in quantities -more than sufficient for the restoration or recruitment of such a -force; hence we find London perpetually turning the scale during six -centuries of fighting, and it is almost true to say that he who has -London ultimately wins the war. It was the size of London, and in -particular its value as a recruiting centre, which checked Charles I. -after Edgehill. London made the fortune of Simon de Montfort; London -appears to have remounted the Barons in the most critical moment of -the campaign of Magna Charta; and London was the necessary pivot upon -which William the Conqueror was compelled to hinge all his work of -pacification after Hastings. Indeed, the position of London could not -be better illustrated than in this early example, where the Norman -found it impossible or inadvisable to attempt a direct attack upon -it, was compelled to isolate it temporarily by sweeping a line of -devastation around it, and made it his first care to recognise its -customs and pre-eminence in the kingdom. - -With the conclusion of this brief survey of the part which the Lower -Thames and London as the creation of the Lower Thames has played in the -history of warfare I must close this Essay. - -I would close it, as I began it, by the qualification that all those -material causes which are the delight of one who traces out the effects -of historical geography are but half the story. Of the spirit of place -and of the human motive without which such mere topography would be -meaningless, I have said little or nothing in this consideration of the -River of London building up London through two thousand years; but that -is because this business of the soul in any historical matter must be -separately treated, and that in a spirit always alien, and sometimes -antagonistic, to the chain of material cause and effect. - -Nevertheless, it is the soul of London and of London River which has -driven forward the story of both of them together, much more than any -material limits within which that soul was compelled to act. And that -is why to-day overlying the vestiges--often now completely hidden--of -the original material framework, London and the River rather control -that framework and what were once the necessary condition of port and -market and crossing place than are controlled by them. - -FOOTNOTES: - -[5] The reader should be warned that this famous action has been -ascribed by modern pedantry to all manner of other places and sites. -For my part I will trust our ancestors, the tradition of the place, and -the obvious strategies of the Roman Road. - -[6] Or Milton Creek out of the Swale. So Professor Oman will have it -in his book upon _England Before the Conquest_. But he gives no proof. -Milton on the Thames itself would have seemed a much safer and more -accessible base. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIVER OF LONDON *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following -the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use -of the Project Gutenberg trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: <span lang='' xml:lang=''>The River of London</span></p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Hilaire Belloc</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Illustrator: John Muirhead</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February 3, 2022 [eBook #67308]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Tim Lindell, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK <span lang='' xml:lang=''>THE RIVER OF LONDON</span> ***</div> - -<div class="center"><img src="images/front.jpg" alt="front" /></div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="center"><a name="frontispiece.jpg" id="frontispiece.jpg"></a><img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" alt="ST. PAULS FROM BLACKFRIARS" /></div> - -<p class="bold">ST. PAUL’S FROM BLACKFRIARS</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="center"><img src="images/title.jpg" alt="title page" /></div> - -<hr /> - -<h1>THE RIVER OF<br /> LONDON</h1> - -<p class="bold2">BY HILAIRE BELLOC</p> - -<p class="bold"><i>AUTHOR OF ‘THE PATH TO ROME’</i></p> - -<p class="bold space-above">T. N. FOULIS<br />LONDON & EDINBURGH</p> - -<hr /> - -<p class="center"><i>Published<br />December 1912</i></p> - -<p class="center space-above"><i>Printed by</i> <span class="smcap">Morrison & Gibb Limited</span>, <i>Edinburgh</i></p> - -<hr /> - -<h2>THE LIST OF CHAPTERS</h2> - -<table summary="LIST OF CHAPTERS"> - <tr> - <td>I. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Introduction</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_3"><i>page</i> 3</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>II. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">The Approach Up River</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>III. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">London, The First Crossing of the Thames</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>IV. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">London, the Port of the Thames</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>V. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">London and the Lower Thames in Warfare</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_117">117</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<hr /> - -<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> - -<p class="bold"><i>reproduced from Oil Paintings by</i><br />JOHN MUIRHEAD, R.B.A., R.S.W.</p> - -<table summary="LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS"> - <tr> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">St. Paul’s from Blackfriars</span></td> - <td><a href="#frontispiece.jpg"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Erith</span></td> - <td><a href="#i008fp.jpg"><i>page</i> 8</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Richmond Bridge</span></td> - <td><a href="#i032fp.jpg">32</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Houses of Parliament from Vauxhall</span></td> - <td><a href="#i040fp.jpg">40</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Limehouse</span></td> - <td><a href="#i048fp.jpg">48</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Greenwich</span></td> - <td><a href="#i056fpt.jpg">56</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Greenhithe</span></td> - <td><a href="#i064fp.jpg">64</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Strand on the Green</span></td> - <td><a href="#i072fp.jpg">72</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">The Thames from Greenwich Park</span></td> - <td><a href="#i080fp.jpg">80</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Gravesend</span></td> - <td><a href="#i088fp.jpg">88</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Kingston Bridge</span></td> - <td><a href="#i096fp.jpg">96</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Sunbury</span></td> - <td><a href="#i104fp.jpg">104</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Twickenham Ferry</span></td> - <td><a href="#i112fp.jpg">112</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Hampton</span></td> - <td><a href="#i120fp.jpg">120</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Teddington</span></td> - <td><a href="#i128fp.jpg">128</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Pangbourne</span></td> - <td><a href="#i136fp.jpg">136</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> - -<h2>INTRODUCTION </h2> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p> - -<p class="bold2">INTRODUCTION</p> - -<p>Through the flats that bound the North Sea and shelve into it -imperceptibly, merging at last with the shallow flood, and re-emerging -in distant sandbanks and less conspicuous shoals, run facing each other -two waterways far inland, which are funnels and entries, as it were, -scoured by the tide.</p> - -<p>Each has at the end of the tideway a narrow, placid, inland stream, -from whence the broader, noisier sea part also takes its name. Each -has been and will always be famous in the arms and in the commerce of -Europe. Each forms a sort of long great street of ships crowded in a -traffic to and fro. For each has its great port. The one Antwerp, the -other London. The Scheldt is the name of the first, which leads to -Antwerp, and makes the opportunity for that great market of the world. -But the second is the River of London, much older in its destinies, and -probably more destined to endure in its functions of commerce.</p> - -<p>I know not how to convey that picture in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> the mind, which the eyes -do not see, and yet by which a man is haunted if he has read enough -of books and seen the maps, when he comes up through the Narrows of -Dover Straits from the wide, empty seas three days behind and knows -that there lies before his owner a choice between the eastern and the -western gate. That choice is in the case of every ship determined long -before. She has the dull duty to do of turning to the right or to the -left, and her orders bind her to the river of the Netherlands or of -England as it may be. But if you will consider many centuries and the -changing adventures of business you will still—as you pass northward -between the two shores of Flanders and of Britain, and as you see their -recession upon either side of the northern way which opens before -you—understand that doubt upon the future and the rivalry of the two -rivers which is soon to be so deeply impressed upon the politics of our -time.</p> - -<p>I could think of the Scheldt and of the Thames as two antagonists -facing each<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> other before conflict across a marked arena, which is that -of the shallow, tumbling, and yellow water of the North Sea; or as two -forces pitted one against the other, streams each of which would force -the other back if it could find the strength; or as two Courts in a -perpetual jealousy one of the other, intriguing and making and losing -point after point in a game of polity.</p> - -<p>When the statisticians have done their talk—and very brainless it -is—of resources and of metals, two opposing <i>lives</i> are left standing -behind either of the great towns, and either of the great sea rivers. -The one is the experiment of the modern Germanies; the other is the -founded tradition of England; and the more closely a man considers each -of these the greater contrast does he discover between the causes of -either’s energy of come and go.</p> - -<p>A third great tidal river is also concerned with these seas, also helps -to determine their commerce, also supports its great inland town. That -river is the Seine, and I shall, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> the pages which follow, use the -Seine also for the example it affords in the analogies and contrasts -and parallels which I propose to draw. But it is the Scheldt and the -Thames which still remain the greater opponents. The united political -life of Gaul, which was inherited and transformed by the French -Monarchy, forbade the growth of a great commerce to the north. Paris -became not only the political centre of France but its main market as -well, and to-day the water carriage of Paris—that is, the traffic of -its port—is greater than that of any maritime town in the country. -Only if Normandy had developed as an independent state would Rouen have -become what Antwerp and London have become. Rouen would then have been, -without doubt, the point of transhipment between the inland and the -maritime waterways, and the distance of the town from coal would hardly -have affected it more than does the distance of London. Its situation -as a political junction would have determined its greatness. As it is -the Lower Seine may be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> set beside the Scheldt and the Thames for an -illustration in their topography and in the origins of their human -settlements, but it does not afford a true commercial parallel to-day, -and Rouen is no third rival to the two great ports which are before our -eyes and in this generation struggling for primacy.</p> - -<p class="space-above">It is the custom of sailors to speak of that water by which they -approach a great town under the name of the town. Men coming up from -Yarmouth Roads inland do not speak of the Yare, but of Norwich River. -For, to the sailor the river is but a continuation of, or an access -to, his port, and the Lower Thames is thus universally known from the -sea as London River. The term is an accidental one, but it contains -the true history of the connection between the stream and the town. -The Thames made London. London is a function of the Thames, and it is -in such a connection that I propose to regard it in this essay: London -as the great crossing place of the Thames, and as the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>custodian and -fruit of what early may have been the chief ferry, but has for nearly -two thousand years been the chief bridge; London as the market of which -the Thames is the approach and the port; London as a habitation of -which the great street is the Thames, a street for centuries the main -highway of its people, lost for a time and now recovering its ancient -use; London as the civil and religious head of revenues which were -drawn from the Thames Valley; and London as the determinant, through -its position upon the Thames, of English military history.</p> - -<div class="center"><a name="i008fp.jpg" id="i008fp.jpg"></a><img src="images/i008fp.jpg" alt="ERITH" /></div> - -<p class="bold">ERITH</p> - -<p>This intimate connection between the city and the river we all -instinctively feel, and the two are connected together as no other -waterway with its capital can be connected throughout Europe. For -the Thames is all that every other river is to every other capital, -wherever some great stream is connected with a chief city. But whereas -in every other case it is but one or another of the functions of such -a stream that history can remark, in the case of London it can remark -them all.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> Little sea-borne traffic reaches Paris by the Seine; the -Tiber could never be a street for Rome; Vienna neglects the Danube; -Antwerp protects no great crossing, nor has ever been the nucleus of a -State; Rouen—the nearest parallel—was not the strategical pivot of -Normandy, nor ever formed, as London forms, a chief fraction in the -economic power of its province. The two rivers which are sacred to -Lyons never fed that town; the Rhone watered but did not lead to Arles. -The towns of Lombardy depend upon the fertility of the Po Valley, but -the stream is nothing to their commerce or to their political eminence, -and Milan, and Venice, and Turin are independent of it. Saragossa was -the mistress of Arragon,but the Ebro did not make Saragossa, and as -for Madrid, the trickle which runs below Madrid is best described in -the story of the Spanish patriot who was dying of thirst after battle, -but upon being offered a cup of water, said, “Give it to the poor -Manzanares.” Lisbon and Cadiz are maritime, not fluvial, and look where -you will throughout the civilisation of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> Europe you will not find, save -in the case of London, this complete interdependence between a great -town and its river.</p> - -<p class="space-above">In tracing or establishing this intimate bond between London and the -Thames one must guard against an error which the modern reader rightly -suspects and is justly ready to criticise or to deny when it appears in -any piece of historical writing. That error is the error of materialism.</p> - -<p>A generation ago it was universal, and there was no phenomenon in the -story of England or of Europe from the emplacement of a city to the -growth of the Church which was not traced to inanimate causes superior -to, and independent of, any action of the Will. This philosophy -narrowed, distorted, and dried up every department of knowledge, and -while the area of learning increased with a rapidity hitherto unknown, -the spirit inhabiting that conquest was starved. It was as though -the time could not contain at once<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> the energy to discover and the -energy to know, and as though the covering of so vast a field in so -short a period was achieved inevitably at a cost of profundity. That -a bias towards the mechanical and the necessary should be present in -the physical sciences—in chemistry for instance—is to be expected, -that it should have invaded biology was less excusable, but that it -should have been permitted to affect (as it did) the business native to -man—his building, his institutions, his very dreams—was an excessive -blunder, and the spirit of all the younger men to-day is running if -anything too strongly in reaction against that ebb-tide of the soul. -They reject the dogmas of their fathers which would bend everything -man has done to material circumstance, which would talk of man as -the slave rather than the master of his instruments, and which, in -an argument absurdly circular, “interpreted history in the terms of -Economics”:—and they are right.</p> - -<p>Even in the sphere of topography, where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> the physical limitations -of human action are the main subject of the writer, they expect a -full admission of the soul of man and even—which is very wise—some -recognition of that mysterious genius which inhabits every place and is -perhaps its vital part.</p> - -<p>They are right. No one can see the marriage between London and its -river without wondering in what degree things other than ponderable -and measurable things may enter into the habitation of man. There is -nothing man does, of course, which has not in it the soul. But it may -be also true that there is nothing done to man wherein some soul is not -also. Now the homes of man and the air and the water and the wind and -the earth, against which in part and with which in part those homes -arise, are so woven in with his fate—which is a spiritual fate—that -we must properly lend to these insensate things some controlling -motive; and we may rightly say, though only by the use of metaphor, -that all these things have a spirit within them. I cannot get away<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> -from it that the Thames may be alive, and London most certainly is.</p> - -<p>But all these things, though one may put them in the form of -statements, are really questions; and questions to which no sort of -answer has yet been discovered. </p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p> - -<h2>II</h2> - -<p class="bold2">THE APPROACH UP RIVER </p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p> - -<p>There is perhaps no journey in the world in which the past and what now -is and the links between them stand out more clearly stratified than a -journey up the Thames upon the tide from the Sea-reach to the Pool.</p> - -<p>I will describe it; for it is upon a physical experience of this kind -(I mean the seeing of history through the eye to the north and to the -south of the narrowing river and the feel of the stream under one) that -any historical essay upon the River of London must be built.</p> - -<p>I have heard it said that the experience is a common one, seeing that -so many thousand men of the articulate, travelled, and experienced -class (who can relate their experience to some purpose) have entered -London by river. Any one (I am told) who comes in from the East or from -Holland to the docks will know what I mean. But I do not think this -is so. I do not think that the thing seen rapidly from the decks of a -liner, perhaps cut short at Tilbury, perhaps missed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> because the voyage -is at night, is quite what I intend to emphasise. Nor am I certain that -the proportion of those fifty miles is accurately seized when they are -experienced from the height of some great steamer whence the strength -and nature of the stream, its ebb and flow, its local life, are missed.</p> - -<p>It is so with all other great ports. The myriads that come in nowadays -to England by the Mersey have no opportunity for judging the estuary, -the meaning of the opposing shores, nor that character of south -Lancashire which lies before their eyes in the mist and is so singular -a factor in the makeup of England.</p> - -<p>I think that to know the River of London the journey must be made from -the sea upwards, in something not larger than a barge, in a motor boat, -or in a fishing vessel, or little half-rater, and taken upon one tide -with an easterly wind, as all the men of the past took it, making the -great port upstream under the weather they had chosen. In this way, -with little freeboard between one’s feet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> and the changing level of -the broad water, and with not too rapid a passage of the stations upon -either bank, and with some true measure wherewith to gauge in detail -what one sees, one can understand the river. It was in a progress such -as this that the painters came to understand the Lower Thames, and -nothing has nourished a more national art than this valley, though its -interpreters have been rare.</p> - -<p>You see five successive stages clearly marked in such a voyage.</p> - -<p>You see, in the first place, that everything up to the very gates of -London must have been, at the beginning of our history, as desolate -as any province in Europe. The rare places at which high and firm -land comes down to the modern stream are, as it were, isolated, and -live a life upon the defensive. Nowhere (as we shall see when we come -to examine London as a crossing place) does some good habitable site -stretch down to either opposing bank. There is no natural gateway -upon the Lower Thames; no twin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> villages defending a gap; nor the -projection from the north as from the south of tongues of high land or -even good arable land, the proximity of which, one to the other upon -either shore, would give humanity to the river. All the miles of it are -desolate marshes, either to the one side or to the other, most commonly -upon both, and the few spots where an exceptional formation has given -firm building ground and fertile fields as well close to the river -have something about them exceptional and, as it were, beleaguered. -It is a gross and an unhistorical exaggeration to say (as many of our -academic people are saying) that all that valley was a flooded lagoon -until historic times. It was not that. But it was a long succession of -very wide, watery marshes, with knolls of slightly higher land standing -up therein. Consider, for instance, the view to the northward, from -the height just above and east of Dartford. There you have two good -miles of what was marsh and still is largely marsh to the main stream, -and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>beyond, upon the farther shore, another three or four miles of -the same flats, with odd, exceptional rises at Rainham, at Aveney, or -upon the edge of the flat of Upminster. It is the same from the Abbey -Wood, east of Woolwich. Plumstead Marshes and Barking Level made one -morass, four miles wide at least, or nearer five, drowned twice a day -into a great level sheet of water, until some civilisation came to -dyke up the tidal stream and confine it to the central bed, which it -had scoured in its windings through such a desolation. Now of all that -primitive effect of waste, abandoned places very much remains in such a -journey as I have suggested. It is true that a wall of earth everywhere -controls the flood to-day, and that the traveller in his boat does not -see, as he would have seen two thousand years ago, the glint of water -to the north and south at high tide over tufted grass and drowned banks -of mud for miles upon either side of his going. But he still sees in -so many places as to make them the chief note of the lower reaches, at -least,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> great Flats without a soul upon them, unbroken by tree or house -or hedge, and plainly saved by artifice alone from flooding. This run -up the Lower Thames is, save for the exceptional approach of high land -in one place or another (as at Gravesend or Erith) like a sail through -the Fenland, and this character of desertion, silence, and morass, the -oldest foundation of all, is still quite plainly the background of what -one sees and remembers when one comes up the River of London to London -from the sea.</p> - -<p>So much, then, for the first layer.</p> - -<p>The second should by right be Roman: but nothing Roman remains; no, -nor anything of the Dark Ages. Unless we believe what is probable -enough, but not proved in any way, that the great containing walls of -earth (notably that round the Isle of Dogs) were Roman work, we can -distinguish nothing in such a journey to mark the first thousand years -of Christendom. Far out beyond the Sea-reach, Reculvers was a Roman -station in the estuary, but the ways<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> have eaten it away. No great -monastic nucleus of the Dark Ages could be founded in that inhospitable -land. There was no palace of the kings standing near the central stream -until the neighbourhood of London was approached. There was not even a -fortress. Indeed it is odd to think how empty all that approach from -the sea to the greatest of the western Roman towns was and remained. It -was not until the Middle Ages began to flower that the Lower Thames put -forth any human signs—at least of such a sort as have come down to us. -The remains of them are very few, but they are distinctive.</p> - -<p>Of all that life of the Middle Ages which the English countrysides -preserve in so many visible relics—and especially in a host of parish -churches surpassing all of the kind in Europe—the Lower Thames has -but one clear instance remaining to the eye; and that is the little -isolated church of St. Clement’s. Rainham is too far from the water, -the legends and associations surrounding<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> the well of St. Chad are -also too distant to count in the picture. The endowed foundations of -religion either stood remote from the river-bank or have disappeared. -London, but for the Great Fire, would have supplied in this the -emptiness of the lower river.</p> - -<p>But for that capital accident in the history of the city, which renders -London so different in outward aspect from all other great European -towns, the Middle Ages would still break upon one in a sheaf of spires -showing over the flats from Woolwich Reach, at least, and perhaps -from farther down the stream. But that accident—the Great Fire of -the seventeenth century—has left London stripped of the Gothic and, -alone of the great capitals of Europe, no impress of our four hundred -years of Gothic remains with the traveller as he comes upstream. -When we consider the two parallels to London upon the Continent—the -parallels I have chosen as ports upon the two great tidal rivers of the -north-west—Antwerp and Rouen, the loss will be apparent. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p> - -<p>For miles and miles over the flats of the Scheldt the sailor making for -Antwerp sees the high steeple upon his horizon fixed against the sky, -and, late as was its building, this watch-tower of Antwerp is of the -true Middle Ages; Europe was still Europe and one when its last stone -was laid.</p> - -<p>Still more does the sailor making for Rouen have the Middle Ages before -him as he rounds the Ferry Reach and comes up northward into the -sweep of the river before the town. In spite of the extraordinary and -meaningless gate which the new travelling bridge makes for the city, -its cathedral still dominates the whole view; surrounding it, the high -pitch of St. Vincent, the belfry of St. Maclou, the rebuilt towers of -St. Ouen, give their character to all the smoky basin of houses between -the Seine and the hills.</p> - -<p>A far more splendid sight was the Gothic group of London as one came -upon it up river before the Great Fire. A score of spires stood -in varying height and perspective before the master spire of the -cathedral.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> Old St. Paul’s upon its hill carried the loftiest cross in -Christendom—far higher in the air than Strasburg; and old St. Paul’s -had been built, as had nearly every great monument of the Middle Ages, -with a special eye to the landscape whence it should be seen and which, -in a sense, it should control. The huge and somewhat ill-proportioned -pyramid of St. Dunstan’s by the very excess of its bulk made a landmark -which is the first thing to strike us when we look at a sketch of -the river made at any time before 1665. We are fortunate, moreover, -in our retention of such memorials. No other northern town, I think, -possesses a complete panorama of its appearance in the first half of -the sixteenth century such as London possesses in the great work of -Wyngaerde in the Bodleian. And though the seventeenth century, with -its triumph of engraving, produced a great number of such documents -throughout Europe, Visscher’s drawing is unique in its importance, -while we have at the end of the series Hollar’s <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>careful delineation of -the square mile of ruins after the Great Fire.</p> - -<p>This is perhaps the most remarkable piece of pictorial evidence open -to English history, and any one who will look at that long string of -churches burnt out to shells, and of private houses reduced to a few -feet of black and crumbling wall, will see what a revolution in the -outward aspect of the river and of its port, and what a breach in the -outward continuity of London the Great Fire means. The Conservative -temper into which the English fell (with regard to their externals, -at least), after the sixteenth century, would have preserved the -architectural past of London (and that to our own day) much more -perfectly than the past of any great city of the Continent has been -preserved. It seems due to the national spirit that a view more ancient -even than that of Rouen should greet the traveller coming in by Thames; -but the accident of the Great Fire has forbidden it.</p> - -<p>On the contrary, the note of the approach<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> to London nowadays from -the Lower Thames is a note peculiarly and strongly modern. It is as -though the abnormal expansion of our perilous Industrialism in the last -hundred and fifty years had not only conquered but obliterated the -eighteen centuries from which it suddenly arose. Here and there an odd -survival left remaining of deliberate purpose serves but to emphasise -the capture of the Lower Thames by that crazy mechanical giant so -recently born and already so blind and old. You have the noble front -of Greenwich, you have the charming little “mail” opposite, you have, -most distinctive, perhaps, of all the survivals upon the river, the -Fort of Tilbury. Save for these a huge and hardly national commerce, -plainly suffering the domination of a few, has eaten up the scene -of Thames-side and marks it more and more as one comes in through -the outlying miles until one is relieved by older, dingier, and more -gracious things near the heart of the whole business in the Pool. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p> - -<p>It seems unjust to pass, with no more than a mention, that lovely -little isolated relic at Tilbury. Here was for centuries the natural -gate, the military defence of the port. When the range of ordnance -was not much more than hailing distance, no defences could be thought -of upon the broadening water of the Hope, still less in the funnel of -the Sea-reach. But Tilbury, standing over against Gravesend, defended -the first point at which the river had narrowed sufficiently to be -commanded by batteries from the shore.</p> - -<p>In the earliest map of this point (which is preserved in the Admiralty) -one may trace the way in which the river was closed. There ran out from -the northern bank, pointing somewhat downstream, a sort of barrier. -We have no indication of its structure. A few piles would have been -sufficient to prevent a passage and to canalise traffic into the open -space that was left in the midst of the stream; for this space was not -left free, as we might have supposed, just under the guns of the fort, -but at a range which seems<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> upon the drawing to be about 250 yards. -Whether a corresponding permanent work existed upon the Gravesend shore -I am ignorant, but it was obviously easy to emplace guns there when -they might be needed. Meanwhile Tilbury, with its continual preparation -for arms and as continual innocence of them, with its one chief -historic memory of the Armada, remains the most perfect relic of the -past upon all the stretch of the river. The swamped land round about -has defended it and isolated it, and that great regard for the old -things of the nation which is a virtue to be proud of has saved it from -decay.</p> - -<p>For the rest, as I say, and with the exception of those rare survivals -of which Tilbury is the most striking, modern industrialism, down to -its last manifestations, has captured the Lower Thames and stands in a -bleak contrast against the windy emptiness of the flats. Nowhere is one -more oddly struck by this than opposite the great tanks which have been -put up for the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>storage of petrol—the last of our necessities. From -Tilbury upwards, wherever there is available space or good ground, it -is the haste, the necessity, and the carelessness of modern exchange -directed for the immediate profit of men who perpetually change their -methods of acquirement (and even their homes) that marks the river. It -is a new sort of desolation, the obverse (and not a pleasant one) of -that more natural desolation which Nature made by stretching out her -marshes and lagoons upon either side of the tideway.</p> - -<p>And I say “exchange,” not production. Thames-side used to do many -things, but in particular to tan leather and to build ships. The -tanneries have nearly gone; the shipyards are in process of death. -In the last journey which I made up the tide some months ago to see -London once more from the river I passed what may be the last of the -men-of-war built upon Thames-side. It lay completing upon the northern -shore. It was the ship round which had turned the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> discussion whether -or no the Thames could still successfully build against the north, and -if the official answer is to be that it cannot, then this decision will -mark the end of the oldest trade of the river and that most native to -its life. But we live in a time when most things are dying.</p> - -<p>For all this lamentable cloak of purposeless industrialism, chaotic and -already murmuring with the sounds of its own dissolution, the gradual -envelopment of a man who comes up river, his reception by the hugeness -of modern London is a thing which no one who has experienced it can -forget.</p> - -<p>Indeed, the utter ruin of order and of plan, which is but the outward -manifestation of the ruin of religion, has destroyed the sense of -approach everywhere around that great helpless, apathetic nation which -we call London, save where it could not be wholly destroyed, and that -is along the water which was its most ancient highway.</p> - -<div class="center"><a name="i032fp.jpg" id="i032fp.jpg"></a><img src="images/i032fp.jpg" alt="RICHMOND BRIDGE" /></div> - -<p class="bold">RICHMOND BRIDGE</p> - -<p>Come in from what direction you will, save by the Thames, and the -approach to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> London is a waste of eyesight. No one has imagined for two -hundred years such a thing as a gate or a limit. There is no kind of -salutation offered or of barrier presented or of definition laid down. -Draggle-tail financial experiments of no interest or purpose to those -responsible for them, save abstract wealth, stand isolated in fields -as often as not given up to weeds and rubbish, and new roads half made -end everywhere in dust-heaps or in mud. Then for one mile after another -you pass the thousands of little houses all shamelessly similar, for in -none does a man intend to make his being, to possess his soul, or to -live and die there. There is not even a city wall remaining from the -past, nor so much as a broad outer street, delimiting what may still be -noble and permanent from these hopeless suburbs. Little scraps of what -were once happy and united villages still stand like islands in this -flood of mean brick. For the most part they are to be distinguished no -longer save by the narrowness and crookedness of their streets,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> and -when at last one comes to the inner part, where there is something of -history and of meaning and of an inherited culture, one comes upon it -without introduction and without grace. Of all cities that ever were, -modern London least deserves a wall, gates, and a senate.</p> - -<p>But the entry by the river cannot be wholly destroyed. The river is too -strong. And therefore a man does here receive a physical impression -almost worthy of the magnitude of the things he seeks. He does get some -idea of London and some introduction to it. The houses and the places -of change, and the great stores and the abrupt street-ends with their -water steps, cluster in groups with narrower and narrower gaps between -them, until at last they come up all together in rank and enclose -one avenue of flood, banked everywhere by brick and crowded with the -interlacing of vessels. It is a thing which, if a man could draw it -properly, would make the best record of our time for the curiosity of -those who are to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> come after us. Accustomed as we are to an eternal -noise drowning thought and human life wherever the haphazard and -violent activity of our time is at work, there is an odd broken silence -in this waterway of sails and chains and alarms, guarded and hemmed in -by the leagues of houses. The mainspring of the moving road is silent, -the power of that one thing in the view which is not made by man, the -rushing upward of the water; between all these new and artificial -things the strength of the Thames survives with no more sound in its -going than when it went through other silences before men found it. </p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p> - -<h2>III</h2> - -<p class="bold2">LONDON<span class="s3"> </span>THE FIRST CROSSING OF THE THAMES </p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p> - -<p class="bold2">LONDON<span class="s3"> </span>THE FIRST CROSSING OF THE THAMES </p> - -<p>It is a commonplace which must be repeated whenever the connection of -the Thames with London is referred to, that the capital matter in that -connection is London’s position as <i>the lowest crossing point upon the -Thames</i>. That affirmation, standing alone, is of no use to history -unless one also explains why it was so important to find a crossing -place as low as possible down the river, and the many causes which -combine to make that lowest crossing place the neighbourhood of London -Bridge. These last especially require a full explanation because, of -the many converging reasons for selecting that site, the chief were, -until quite recently, imperfectly studied.</p> - -<p>Why was it of such great importance for man, from the beginnings of a -settled occupation in this island, to discover a convenient crossing -place as low down as possible upon the course of the Thames? And why, -when once this crossing place had been established, would it become the -principal meeting-place in the country? </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p> - -<p>The answer to these questions is to be found, not only in the shape of -the island, but in the position of its best soil and in its relation to -the Continent.</p> - -<div class="center"><a name="i040fp.jpg" id="i040fp.jpg"></a><img src="images/i040fp.jpg" alt="HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT FROM VAUXHALL" /></div> - -<p class="bold">HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT FROM VAUXHALL</p> - -<p>It is obvious that the main connection between Great Britain and the -Continent must be by the Straits of Dover. It is not only the shortness -of the trajectory from the mainland to the island which makes the -Straits of Dover the necessary and permanent entry into this country, -it is a number of other things as well: as, that communication is -very easy from the opposing shore inland; that that opposing shore -was provided for ages with a harbour peculiarly suitable to early -traffic—the Portus Itius (now the silted-up plain between the hills -behind Boulogne); the conformation of the high land upon either side -at Grinez and at Dover Cliffs which, in the centuries when the thing -was important, gave an uninterrupted sight of land during the crossing; -and the choice of entry which the various inlets (now filled up) afford -from the Portus <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>Lemanis behind Folkstone, the old inlet at Dover, -and the old Mouth of the Stour to what was once the sheltered channel -between Thanet and the mainland behind the island of Richborough. -So powerful has been the topographical effect of the Straits that -no revolution in travel has dispossessed them of their original -importance. The great expansion in our means of communication has only -emphasised the bond which is established by the Straits between this -island and the Continent of Europe, and so throughout the whole of the -old world. When, a few years hence, a man sets out to travel by land -to India or to China, he will cross from Dover and will take his train -at Calais. Were communication inland as uninterrupted throughout this -island as it is throughout the opposing portion of the Continent, a -system of roads would naturally have established itself, radiating -from some depôt common to the various ports of Kent, just as a system -of roads grew up upon the Continent, radiating from Calais and from -Boulogne,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> and forming a network inland with such central points as -Bavai, Amiens, Cassel, etc., to form pivots for the whole.</p> - -<p>But communication within the island of Britain was not thus -uninterrupted in all directions. One great obstacle lay across it -from east to west, and that obstacle was the Thames. How complete an -interruption the Thames formed, especially in its lower course, I will -describe in a moment; it must suffice to notice here that for one who -would reach all the fertile land of East Anglia and of what is now -Hertfordshire, for one who would reach from the landing-place in Kent -the wheat lands of what is now Essex, and the centres of population -in what is now Norfolk (both of them originally capital sites of -population before the growth of modern industry), the profound wedge -driven into the land by the estuary of the Thames and its continuation -in the tidal river formed an almost insurmountable obstacle. There was -no straight line from say Canterbury to the Midlands and to the central -east of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>island with its great mass of arable soil. More than this: -if one looks at a map of England on which moorland and waste country is -distinguished from the arable soil, it will be apparent that north of -the Wash the latter takes the form of a long and somewhat narrow strip -corresponding at first to the lower valley of the Trent and farther -north again to the Vale of York. A direct line to this arable northern -strip from any principal Kentish centre (and Canterbury was such) would -take one across the Thames estuary and was therefore impossible. The -farther up river a practicable crossing was found the longer the detour -it involved. The only considerable population in Britain that was early -accessible to a road-system proceeding directly from Kent was the -population of what later came to be called Wessex, that is, the central -southern districts of which Winchester was the capital. As a matter -of fact we find a road of immemorial antiquity proceeding directly -east and west from Canterbury to Winchester along the ridge of the -Chalk, but a similar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> road northward was blocked by the obstacle of the -Thames. We shall see in a moment that the discovery of a good crossing -place fairly low down in the course of the river not only saved a long -detour by the upper valley for travel proceeding from the Straits of -Dover to the eastern Midlands, and ultimately to the plain of York, -but also afforded a fairly direct line in another direction which was -essential to travel, namely, the direction of the north-west and the -main ports which establish communication with Ireland.</p> - -<p>We may take it, then, as established, that there existed from the -earliest times a necessity, or a necessary tendency, to found and keep -up a permanent crossing place at the lowest practicable point in the -Thames valley.</p> - -<p>Once that crossing was founded and continuously maintained it was -equally necessary that it should grow into the chief meeting place of -the island; that is, the chief market and therefore the chief town. -Indeed the various advantages such a crossing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> would have form so rare -a combination that we should be perfectly justified, even if we had not -the evidence we have, in making certain of the existence of a great and -important London early in history.</p> - -<p>All the causes which we have seen to feed the commercial growth of the -site from the sea were reinforced by the inland communications which -met at this crossing place. The bridge (as I have shown elsewhere) made -a terminal not only to sea-borne traffic, but to all the inland traffic -from down the upper valley. It became the place of transhipment. It -was further the terminal, and the necessary terminal, of the three -great roads from north-west, from the north, and from the east, which -combined at this point to seek the Straits of Dover to the south; and -once this nexus was woven, once the market and place of meeting was -fixed, it must further become the goal of other roads against which -the Thames did not originally provide an obstacle. Thus it was that -a road would necessarily be established from this <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>crossing place -to the west and to the south-west. Though the main traffic from the -fertile Lower Severn valley would more naturally make for the Straits -by way of the Chalk ridges, yet, when once London with its market -supplies and depôts was established, a main road would necessarily aim -at the Straits <i>through</i> London rather than south of the Thames. And -though the secondary entries into the island from the Continent by -Southampton Water, and by the ports to the west of it, would naturally -send out arteries of communication northward and westward, yet their -communication north-eastward through London would soon acquire the -chief place. That London would have become what it did through no more -than these domestic causes may well be denied. The main factor in -its growth was throughout the centuries what it remains to-day—the -commerce of the tidal Thames. But standing at the head of that commerce -London also gathered to itself, as the main crossing point of the -Thames, the communications of the whole island. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p> - -<p>The peculiar and determining effect this had upon the military history -of England I have mentioned in another study,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1">[1]</a> and shall expand -in this. Parallel effects could be found in every other department -of activity, not only in commerce but in the political machinery of -England, of English feudalism, and of the English monarchy, and later -of English aristocratic government. London once so formed upon its -river was the centre or support of each in turn supreme in the island.</p> - -<p>Having established this, let us consider why the crossing place came -just here upon the line of the river, and to solve that problem we -must recollect what it is that acts as a barrier to communication, -especially in early times. This barrier is certainly not to be found -in hills of such a gentle sort as diversify south England. The breadth -of a stream, up to half a mile or so, and apart from broken water, -though of considerable importance in the problem, is again not the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> -chief difficulty, for man has always been able to cross water if -his approach to it was unimpeded. The true obstacle was marsh—bad -going. It is still the chief impediment to modern engineering, and the -difficulty which men found during earlier centuries in negotiating any -considerable breadth of marsh translates itself to-day into the expense -which a similar undertaking now involves. Belts of marsh impeding or -actually forbidding travel across them have been formed upon one, the -other, or both banks in so unbroken a chain down the Lower Thames -valley as to make that valley the obstacle it was and is to transverse -travel. The first factor in the formation of such marsh is the tide. -If you have a considerable difference between high and low water, and -if that difference is further complicated by great variations between -the neap and the spring tides, the difficulty of the barrier of marsh -affected by such a tide will be correspondingly increased.</p> - -<div class="center"><a name="i048fp.jpg" id="i048fp.jpg"></a><img src="images/i048fp.jpg" alt="LIMEHOUSE" /></div> - -<p class="bold">LIMEHOUSE</p> - -<p>This consideration is often missed, and it will therefore be worth -while to explain it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> A fairly regular height of tide covering daily -the same expanse lends itself to the establishment of a regular -crossing place, and though that crossing place may not be in continuous -use from the difficulty of using it at low tide, it can be regularly -counted upon to serve twice in the twenty-four hours. But if there is -any very considerable difference in the state of the tides throughout -each fortnight, then the opportunities for using the crossing are very -much reduced, unless, indeed, one has a steep shore to deal with. Under -such conditions one might find a spot where crossing was easy enough at -the springs, and yet impossible at the neaps; and instead of a ferry -regularly in use twice in the twenty-four hours, you would have one -which could only be depended upon a few times in a month.</p> - -<p>Now the Thames is a river in which this difference is considerable, -and it has greatly strengthened the power of the waterway to act as an -obstacle to travel from north to south. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p> - -<p>This, then, is the first of the factors which have combined to make -the Lower Thames the obstacle it was and is to travel. If we compare -the Thames in this respect with the other great rivers which we have -seen to be its parallels upon the Continent, we shall be struck by the -greater effect of the tide in its waters.</p> - -<p class="space-above">The second factor in the establishment of such an obstacle is the type -of soil over which the water works. It is evident that a tidal river -and estuary in which sand and gravel or even chalk form the riparian -soils will less produce marsh than clays will. A river which washes -the silt of clays up and down with its tides will be defended by -worse belts of bad land than one which runs through the other types -of rock. Now in this respect also the Thames has a bad pre-eminence -over its rivals. Chalk only comes near the stream once or twice, and -for a very short distance, in its lower course, and though gravel and -sand, as we shall see, approach<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> the banks in more than one place (and -ultimately determine the site of London), this kind of soil is nowhere -that which the mass of the stream churns up or carries down in its -course. The Thames deals for many miles of its upper tidal waters with -clays, bringing them down towards the mouth, and has settled them for -centuries upon either side of its channel in the shape of deep alluvial -marshes.</p> - -<p>But there is more than this.</p> - -<p class="space-above">The third factor in the problem depends upon the contours of the land -upon either side of the river. A river with steep banks, fairly narrow, -bounded by hills, even though it be a highly varying tidal stream, and -even though it scour through a great part of its tidal course a soil of -clays, cannot form wide belts of marsh upon either bank.</p> - -<p>It so happens that the Lower Thames—until the site of London is -reached—nowhere enjoys even a short stretch of steep-on shore upon -both banks at once. The few spots<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> where higher land comes down to -the water’s edge upon the southern or right bank are faced in every -case by great level stretches opposite which, until modern works were -undertaken, were regularly flooded with every return of the tide and -were impassable; while the lower and smaller patches of land on the -north bank (as at Purfleet or Grays) have marsh opposite them also to -the south.</p> - -<p>In this respect the Scheldt appears under primitive conditions even -worse off than the Thames; but the Seine continually enjoys steep -banks after the first twenty miles or so up from its estuary, and in -at least half a dozen places from Caudebec (which roughly corresponds -to Gravesend) and Rouen, the first bridge (which we have seen to -correspond to London), there are opportunities for crossing the tidal -Seine, even under primitive conditions, with no considerable obstacle -of marsh upon either bank.</p> - -<p class="space-above">Now if we combine all this and consider the total effect of all three -factors in the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>Lower Thames valley we shall understand why no great -road ever attempted to cross it, and why no line of travel runs -transverse to it to-day. A mere examination of the contours would be -almost sufficient, presenting, as they do, great flats in most places, -stretching for miles from the main stream of the river. But beyond this -you have the great variation of the tide and the type of <i>surface</i> soil -with which the stream deals.</p> - -<p>Civilisation has so considerably changed the aspect of all our streams, -it has so embanked them and drained their neighbourhood, that in order -to appreciate the original conditions which made it impossible to find -a crossing place below London one must consult the new sheets of the -Ordnance Geological Survey. They give us the drift or top-soil—which -alone of course concerns travel. In this new survey the area covered -by alluvium and the line where that alluvium impinges upon the older -and harder soils to the north and the south are very clearly marked. -That area with its boundary line gives one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> the original area and -the original boundary line of the Thames’ marshes, and it is very -instructive.</p> - -<p class="space-above">The problem is one of approach from the south. From the north there is -no firm soil at all within the neighbourhood of the riverbed from the -sea upwards until one reaches the slight eminence of the City, unless -one counts the isolated patches at Purfleet and Grays, the approach to -which from the north was not only originally difficult but connected -with no reasonable line of travel. One has but to look at the map to -see that Purfleet could have been approached from the north by no -considerable road. It might have formed some sort of terminal for an -eastern road but only that at the expense of a long detour such as is -made by the main road to-day through Ockendon or by the railway, for -immediately behind lies a belt of what was originally marsh. Moreover, -even if primitive travel had drifted by this somewhat circuitous route -to the hard patch at Purfleet, it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> would have found no crossing there; -immediately opposite lay the very wide belt of marshy land which flanks -either side of the Darent. That river comes in almost exactly opposite -the small belt of natural hard on which Purfleet stands.</p> - -<p>Primitive travel, then (and for that matter modern travel too, unless -it is at a great expense of engineering), could not approach the -northern bank of the Thames between the sea reaches and the City of -London save, and that with difficulty, by the very small exceptional -patches of Purfleet and Grays, and at Purfleet would have discovered no -opportunities for a crossing: the bank opposite being a particularly -wide and impossible stretch of marsh at this point.</p> - -<p>Now as to Grays: That very pleasant place does give some approach both -in soil and contour to the water from the north. It is just on the edge -of the chalk, just above the old limit of high water, and its original -nucleus, though not actually on the stream, would require but a short -causeway to reach it. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p> - -<p>But Grays is in the same bad topographical case as Purfleet, only -rather worse. It is still less of a terminal for any road from the -north. It connects with the east only through Stanford and the Horndon -roads. To the north of it lay, completely cutting it off from any -communication, the belt of marsh of which Mordyke is now the drainage -line, and of which Orsett Fenn is the principal survival.</p> - -<p class="space-above">We have, then, on the north, only Purfleet and Grays; and both must -be rejected. On the south, however, there is a series of isolated -natural wharves which approach the main tidal stream, and not only -stand fairly steep-on to its rise and fall, but are further of a soil -upon their surface which permitted travel and an easy approach to the -river in early times. These are, counting from the sea-reaches upward: -Gravesend, where the chalk comes right down to the Thames; Greenhithe, -where a tongue of the chalk juts out and touches the water; Erith, the -point where the gravels, which some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> mighty stream laid down when the -rivers of Northern Europe were discharging ten, twenty, or a hundred -times the flood they have to-day, first approach the existing stream. -At Woolwich sand and gravel closely approach the river and line it for -so considerable a distance as to afford the platform for a fairly large -town. Next up-river the same formation of gravels gives at Greenwich -a hard along the stream, and immediately above another spit of the -same actually touches the river at the point where used to stand the -isolated village of Deptford.</p> - -<div class="center"><a name="i056fpt.jpg" id="i056fpt.jpg"></a><img src="images/i056fpt.jpg" alt="GREENWICH" /></div> - -<p class="bold">GREENWICH</p> - -<p>Now any one of these natural hards along the south bank of the Thames -between London and the sea would have afforded an excellent platform -for the crossing of the river. It is true that the Thames is somewhat -wider in its lower reaches than at the pool, but the difference was -not so considerable as to balk those who first instituted the ferry -and later the bridge of London. If one could cross the half-mile of -water which lay before one at extreme high tides under the earliest -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>conditions at Southwark, or bridge (as was done so long ago) the four -hundred yards of the mainstream, there would have been no difficulty in -dealing with the quarter of a mile at Deptford or at Greenhithe, nor -even with the rather broader stream opposite Woolwich.</p> - -<p>Save perhaps by a bridge of boats, a permanent crossing could not have -been attempted at Erith or at Greenhithe, though the narrowing of the -stream at Gravesend might well have allowed a more stable structure to -be established. At any rate, a crossing even so broad as that opposite -Erith has nowhere in Europe interfered with the passage of commerce, -or of arms where both sides of a great stream lent themselves to such -a passage. But it is here that each one of the points I have mentioned -is at fault. Opposite Gravesend as opposite Greenhithe, opposite Erith -as opposite Woolwich, Greenwich, and Deptford, there lies upon the -northern bank a belt of marsh which forbids traffic. Tilbury Fort, -opposite Gravesend, stands upon a tiny circle of harder land, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> -all around it are the Chadwell and the Tilbury marshes. Greenhithe -has right against it the projecting expanse of West Thurrock Marsh, -Erith the whole breadth of Wellington and Rainham marshes; and, as one -approaches London, and the river narrows, matters seem only to get -worse. Woolwich faces the expanse of originally flooded soil between -the Lea and the Roding, with the most of which even the economic forces -making for the expansion of London have been able to do nothing, and -of which so unpleasant a relic of its original condition is left in -Plaistow Marshes to-day; while opposite Greenwich and Deptford lay that -perfectly impossible morass, which, though turned into water meadows by -a river wall many centuries ago, is still perhaps the worst building -ground within the London area. We call it the Isle of Dogs.</p> - -<p>The reader must not imagine this lack of any two opposing hards upon -London River below the City to be due to some coincidence. It has a -fairly obvious geographical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> cause. Those points where the gravels and -the chalk were touched by the scouring of the stream were naturally the -outer cusp of its curves. The river having first determined a bend to -the south or to the north, would eat away more and more on the outer -edge of those bends (which the stream always follows both in flood and -in ebb), and scour away the bank until it struck harder soils and was -there checked. Deptford and Greenwich lie on the outer edge of the -first great southern bend; Woolwich on that of the second; Erith on -that of the third; Greenhithe the fourth; Gravesend the fifth; while -both Grays and Purfleet represent similar checks to the bends towards -the north.</p> - -<p>Now it is evident that the same process which makes a river extend -its curves outward more and more by the scouring the stream along the -exterior edge leaves on the inside of the curve an increasing tongue -or wedge of alluvial deposit. What we have, therefore, on the Lower -Thames, the continual opposition of marsh to the rare hards,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> is only -what we should expect from the geological history of the river, and the -crossing place which was at last found is much more of a coincidence -and accident than the absence of a crossing place below.</p> - -<p>That crossing place was, of course, finally discovered opposite the -steep gravel bank upon which the oldest part of the City of London is -built.</p> - -<p>The land has been so often turned and returned in at least twenty -centuries of building that it is not easy to-day to reconstruct the -original conditions of that crossing; and, unless we look at all the -evidence, slight as it is, it is easy to fall into errors upon it. -Thus several writers upon this subject have often spoken as though the -gravel-topped knoll upon which the original London stood was the sole -factor in establishing the crossing, and I have myself fallen into the -error of believing that the approach from the south could only be made -over a long artificial causeway.</p> - -<p>A further consideration of the evidence,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> and especially of that -concerning surface soils to the south of the crossing, has convinced me -(subject to yet further evidence which may appear) that the opportunity -for a crossing near the site of London Bridge was almost as tempting -from the south side as it was from the north. It is true that no -considerable rise of land is to be discovered on the Southwark side -until we have gone some distance from the river, and the contour lines -do not, therefore, suggest an easy crossing at this spot. But much more -important than the lie of the land was the nature of the surface over -which travel must proceed. The rocks across which a road is driven are -not of the first importance in primitive times, though they become -important, of course, when the road is expected to bear very great -loads, or when it is so thoroughly metalled that the presence of good -stone in its neighbourhood has to be considered. What is important to -a primitive track is the immediate soil under foot, and if that be -fairly hard and dry it can be quite<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> shallow and yet sufficient for the -purposes of travel.</p> - -<p>Thus, one can point out to many a path across the clay of the weald -which picks its way from one shallow patch of sand, gravel, or stone -to another, over country the main base of which is clay, and there is -a similar example (with which I have dealt in another volume)<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2">[2]</a> in -the upper valley of the river Wey. There, once the primitive track has -left the chalk and come to the marshy alluvials of the lower levels, it -picks its way in this fashion from one long strip of gravel to another; -and though these strips of gravel are shallow—mere casual drifts in -many cases—they are sufficient for the purposes of the road. Now in -the case of the crossing of the Thames at London, the new Geological -Ordnance Survey, as it gives the drift as well as the rocks, shows us -that a spit of sandy gravel projected into the alluvial mud of the -Thames valley just opposite the “bluff” upon which the oldest part of -London stands, and indeed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> projected so far towards the stream that -the last traces of it are not lost until beyond Guy’s Hospital—that -is, until within little more than a furlong of the present high-water -mark. The causeway which might therefore be necessary to approach the -stream from the south in all states of the tide need only have been -such a hardening of the track over the mud as is necessary between the -high- and low-water mark of any tidal river where a ferry is to be -established, and we must believe that the river at high water washed -the gravel spit.</p> - -<p>Upon the farther or northern bank traces of artificial embankment -(indicating the original limit of alluvial mud upon that side) have -been found upon the line of Thames Street, and the Roman wall ran just -to the north of it. The total width, then, which had to be negotiated -at this point was one at the very most of seven hundred yards, and -perhaps much less than that, and it was one which at high water was -flanked to the south, as to the north, by a hard surface across which -the river could be approached.</p> - -<div class="center"><a name="i064fp.jpg" id="i064fp.jpg"></a><img src="images/i064fp.jpg" alt="GREENHITHE" /></div> - -<p class="bold">GREENHITHE</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p> - -<p>No such conditions were to be discovered between this point and the -sea, and, far inland as this point was, it was therefore the lowest -practicable crossing of the Thames. Thus it was that the Thames -established London.</p> - -<p>It has also been maintained that this crossing formed not only the -first practicable way to one coming up from the sea and seeking the -<i>lowest</i> passage of the Thames,but also that no practicable passage -could be found for some considerable way <i>up</i> the river either; in -other words, that the opportunity for going over the Thames near the -site of London Bridge was an isolated and all the more valuable one -from the absence of similar opportunities <i>above</i> as well as <i>below</i> it.</p> - -<p>We must be very careful before we accept such an argument. It is as -certain as inference can make it that an original crossing, perhaps -older than that of London, passed the Thames in the neighbourhood of -Lambeth Bridge. The road which the Romans made or straightened from the -south-east,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> that is, the first great main road from the Straits of -Dover to the north, the Watling Street, points directly to this spot, -and the presence of good going on the south bank at least strengthens -the conjecture, coupled as it is with the antiquity of Westminster -as an inhabited site, and the long-established ferry which plied for -centuries from the neighbourhood of Lambeth Palace to the opposing -“Horseferry” Road.</p> - -<p>The formation of the surface-soil in this neighbourhood is well worthy -of study.</p> - -<p>Immediately in the bounds of Lambeth Church and Palace the superficial -hard gravels (which have been approaching the river for two miles and -leaving a belt of marsh to their right or north) touch the stream. -Not quite opposite, but nearly so—quite nearly enough for the -establishment of a ferry—the large isolated patch of gravel which -lay between the two mouths of the old brooks and which supported the -nucleus of Westminster affords a good landing-place. It is true that -there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> is (or was) a patch of bad ground immediately to the north of -this gravel, but very soon the rising ground which is now marked by -Constitution Hill and Grosvenor Gardens gave good going and led the -track up, nearly coincident with Park Lane, to “Tyburn,” whence the -Watling Street makes straight for the north and west along the line of -the modern Edgware Road.</p> - -<p>For a mile or two farther up, until the gravel in Chelsea was reached, -opposite the steep land of Battersea crossing may have been difficult, -but between Battersea and Chelsea it was certainly as easy in early -times, or easier than at London Bridge, and after that, of course, as -one goes westward the passage of the river becomes easier and easier -until on the present western limits of London, at Brentford, you have -what is almost certainly an original ford across the river, at low tide -at least, and one which some authorities have regarded as the crossing -place of Julius Cæsar.</p> - -<p>It is not, therefore, because the crossing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> at London is unique—it -is, on the contrary, but the last of a long series of crossings—it is -because it is the <i>lowest</i> crossing of the Thames that it came to be of -such capital importance in the history of this island. Upon it converge -the great military road from Chichester and the Great Port, the still -more important road from the Kentish ports, and in particular from the -Straits of Dover, the road from Shoreham going directly northward, of -which such slight but such conclusive evidence has been discovered. -These from the south—while from the north the great eastern road -from Colchester and the corn-lands of Essex, the northern road with -its branches to the ports and to the corn-lands of East Anglia, the -north-western road from the garrison at Chester with its branch to the -arable lands of Lancashire, past the fortress of Manchester, and even -the western road from Bath and from the mines of the Mendip and from -the garrison of Caerleon, all converge.</p> - -<p>Once this scheme of ways had been <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>established (and they were certainly -all complete before the end of the fourth century), once London had -thus become the hub of a wheel of such spokes and the centre of such -a web, the Thames which had made it, making also its commerce from -the sea and its value as a point of transhipment between inland and -sea-borne traffic, assured its eminence over all the other towns of the -island.</p> - -<p>I will not here repeat the arguments which I have dealt with in other -studies, and which are advanced in defence of various hypothetical -dates for the first building of the bridge. Its establishment across -the river marked, of course, the completion of the process whereby -London was produced. For once the bridge was there it was a necessary -terminal to sea-borne traffic, and a convenient one to inland traffic; -it was the military communication between north and south, and the -commercial one as well. I will close by distinguishing between the very -few pieces of actual evidence and the presumption built upon them. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p> - -<p>We have a line of Roman remains pointing to a place upon the northern -bank, somewhat to the east of London Bridge and almost coincident with -the opening of the subway. Opposite it we have the old landing place -near “Stoney Lane” which is supposed to indicate a southern causeway -meeting this identical causeway from the north. Between the two there -may have been in early Roman times a ferry. On the other hand, we have -the Stane Street pointing directly at the southern terminal of old -London Bridge (a trifle to the east of the modern bridge) and we have -the undoubted presence of that bridge through the Dark Ages, which did -not, as a rule, possess any considerable monument which they had not -inherited from Rome. We have, further, the fact that the earliest line -traceable for the Roman town puts London Bridge nearly at its centre; -and again the fact that on the line of the bridge certain Roman relics -have been unearthed or fished up.</p> - -<p>In the absence of more positive evidence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> we may take it as sufficient -for history that in the natural course of things a ferry probably -preceded the bridge, yet the bridge existed, if not when the Romans -came, at any rate shortly after their occupation.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3">[3]</a></p> - -<p>Thus it was, then, that the River of London seems to have made London.</p> - -<p>The Thames was so situated in the island that a crossing place of -a permanent sort had to be established as far down the stream as -possible. This place was found where the stream was still broad, -tidal, and a port. Once bridged the same spot would mark the terminal -of sea-borne traffic and the place of exchange between foreign and -domestic produce, while the roads radiating north and south from such a -crossing would further establish its pre-eminence.</p> - -<p>But that pre-eminence was, from some very early period, <i>commercial</i>. -The first mention of London in recorded history, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> phrase of -Tacitus, speaks of the town particularly as a <i>market</i>. As a market -London has grown, and as a market it is still chiefly eminent. But -London is a market only because it is a port, and it is the port of the -Thames. In that aspect I will next consider the connection between the -town and its river.</p> - -<div class="center"><a name="i072fp.jpg" id="i072fp.jpg"></a><img src="images/i072fp.jpg" alt="STRAND ON THE GREEN" /></div> - -<p class="bold">STRAND ON THE GREEN</p> - -<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1">[1]</a> <i>Warfare in England</i>, Williams & Norgate.</p> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2">[2]</a> <i>The Old Road</i>, Constable & Co.</p> - -<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3">[3]</a> The arguments with regard to the age of the bridge and the -earliest position of the crossing will be found set out in their most -recent form and most fully by Mr. R. A. Smith, F.S.A., in the first -volume of <i>London</i> in the Victoria County Histories.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p> - -<h2>IV</h2> - -<p class="bold2">LONDON<br />THE PORT OF THE THAMES </p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p> - -<p class="bold2">LONDON</p> - -<p class="bold2">THE PORT OF THE THAMES</p> - -<p>That a town would group up on the lowest crossing of the Thames, once -that crossing with its bridge or ferry was definitely established, -is obvious enough. That this town would be important and large if -there were a sufficient development of population and culture in the -island is equally obvious. Both consequences would naturally follow -from the topography of Britain. But that this town should become of -such high importance in the European scheme and of such overwhelming -importance in the national scheme; further, that this town should soon -grow to be the second town in size of Western Europe, and at last -by far the first, is not so immediate a conclusion from the known -topographical conditions which brought it into being. That moral and -material growth of London is due, of course, to the supremacy which -London enjoyed and enjoys as a place of <i>commerce</i>. It is London as a -market, and as a market the port of which was the Thames, which we must -next <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>consider, and we must ask ourselves upon what so considerable -and historical a phenomenon has been based. The matter is usually -dismissed by an affirmation lacking analysis and still more lacking -proof. Our text-books are too often satisfied with telling us that “the -exceptionally favourable position of London as a commercial centre” was -at the root of the town’s greatness. The affirmation is perfectly true, -but it does not provide its own explanation nor satisfy our curiosity -as to <i>why</i> this position should have meant so much.</p> - -<p>I think, indeed, that most observant people in reading this or similar -phrases must, if they had any knowledge of the map, have been struck -with the apparent disadvantages under which a site such as that of -London suffers. It has not behind it a vast hinterland from which it -should be able to gather raw material for export, nor is it a natural -outlet for the various products of several different regions as is, for -instance, the region surrounding the mouths of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> Rhine. It is not -central to the European scheme as Lyons was for so many centuries, and -Paris for so many centuries more. It lies a long way up its stream from -the sea. No system of converging waterways unites in its neighbourhood. -There seems at first sight, therefore, no reason why London should have -obtained more than a local importance.</p> - -<p>When we consider its advantages as a general meeting-place for varied -foreign commercial interests, a first view will profit us little. -London is on no general European highway but lies ex-centric to Europe -far upon the north and west of the general area which European culture -covers; nor does its more central position since the discovery of the -New World avail the argument, for the greatness of London was planted -and its future continuance assured long before Europeans had known and -developed the Western Continent. London, again, does not seem to invite -commerce by lying upon the frontier common to two civilisations; it -does<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> not lie upon any economic boundary line as do the cities of the -Levant and notably the cities of Palestine. It is, if we consider the -economics of commerce during at any rate the first 1500 years of our -era, almost at the edge of the world.</p> - -<p>To explain the supremacy of London as a market more than one thesis is -put forward for general acceptance which must, I think, be condemned. -Thus we have the thesis that London occupies the position it does -<i>because it is almost in the centre of the land hemisphere</i>. As a -matter of fact the actual centre of that hemisphere is not far from -the neighbourhood of Falmouth, and is at any rate within the limits -of Britain. If we trace upon a globe a great circle or “equator” so -as to include the greatest mass of land surface possible, we find -our southern ports, and London amongst them, to lie near the Pole -of such an Equator, and this argument has been of some weight with -those who have not paused to consider what that “land hemisphere” -means. If the climate of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> world were everywhere equal and most -of its soil equally productive, then the fact that the great estuary -of the Thames lay almost central to the greatest mass of land would -have its importance—though the mouths both of the Seine and of the -Scheldt, of the Rhine, and for that matter of the Elbe, would not be -so far distant as to explain the peculiar supremacy of London. But -in the first place the most part of that mass of land did not enter -into the commercial scheme until quite modern times, and secondly, -the variations of its climate and of its productivity destroy the -theory. Not far to the north of our port (relatively to so great a -thing as the planet) lies that vast circle of uninhabited or hardly -habitable frozen land which is not only almost useless for the purposes -of exchange, but which also bars any passage of commerce across it. -Not so very far to the south, again, runs the belt of desert east and -west across Africa and Asia, the worst part of which, the widest, is -also the nearest to us and is called the Sahara. It is of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> little use -to have a central position between, say, Japan upon the one side and -Cape Town upon the other, if the Greek Circle which connects us with -Japan passes, as it does, through the Polar Ice. There are certain -central positions which explain the supremacy of some particular site, -but these positions are nearly always central to limited areas over -which travel is uninterrupted. The great market of Nijni Novgorod in -Russia is an example of this sort. Chicago in the United States of -America is another. But London is no parallel to such cases as these, -so far as the world or even Europe is concerned. It is fairly central -(as we shall see) to what was once the chief wealth of England: it is -ex-centric to all else.</p> - -<div class="center"><a name="i080fp.jpg" id="i080fp.jpg"></a><img src="images/i080fp.jpg" alt="THE THAMES FROM GREENWICH PARK" /></div> - -<p class="bold">THE THAMES FROM GREENWICH PARK</p> - -<p>Still less will the many arguments based upon fairly modern conditions -solve the problem which confronts us. Thus the great export trade of -modern England is mainly based upon coal. But the estuary of the Thames -is not a natural place of export for coal. The political relations -which <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>necessarily bind this country to-day to other countries of the -same speech throughout the New World have a vast effect in continuing -and expanding our oversea exchanges, but all the ports natural to such -ties lie upon our south or west. London does not face the New World. It -looks away from it.</p> - -<p>The truth is that the singular position of the Lower Thames as -a terminal for international commerce, and of its port as an -international market, must be sought in a medley of causes, the chief -of which fall into two clear categories. We have first the causes which -made London what it was before the transformation of commerce through -the discoveries of the Renaissance and the later gigantic expansion -which reposes upon modern facilities of communication. Once London is -thus established as the second great city of the West, we have the -later causes which permit it to continue in the enjoyment of that -position, and to nourish it until the city whose port was the Thames -became not the second but by far the first of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> all the great markets in -wealth, population, and shipping.</p> - -<p>I will take these two sets of causes separately.</p> - -<p>As to the first, what made the greatness of the Thames as a port for -London, and of London, therefore, as a market before the modern era of -geographical discovery?</p> - -<p>A natural market exists only where two natural conditions are present: -ease of approach from without, and what may be called <i>draining power</i> -from within.</p> - -<p>I mean by ease of approach from without a natural facility for the -arrival of goods from areas of production foreign to those of the -market. And I mean by “draining power from within” some topographical -or other condition which makes domestic produce run naturally towards -the one centre of this market.</p> - -<p>To these two natural conditions must be added two further political -ones: first, one must have such a society connected with that market as -gives it security, and, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>secondly, such a society as is organised by -its activity and adventure for production or for exchange, or for both.</p> - -<p>Now all these four conditions London enjoyed from a very early time. I -have pointed out elsewhere, and shall point out again in these pages, -the nature of the political security which London has enjoyed for so -many centuries. It did not lie in any particularly peaceful character -peculiar to the country as a whole, for while London was growing to -greatness England was a continual theatre of domestic war. It lay in -the great size which the city had attained, coupled with the breadth of -its stream, and in its numerical proportion to the general population -of which it was the capital. The fact that London was never besieged -or sacked depended upon these characters, and they in turn, therefore, -guaranteed that local security which is the first political necessity -of a great and continuous market.</p> - -<p>As to the commercial and productive character of the inhabitants of -Britain, it <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>escapes any material analysis. We must postulate it as -a constant fact running through the known and recorded centuries of -our history, and we may ascribe it according as we more love ease or -veracity to whatever cause we feel most flattering or most true. No -proof is possible. We can only say in this respect that certain areas -of Europe have shown these characters for greater or less periods of -time, and that others equally well endowed have not shown them, but -have shown other characters perhaps as valuable.</p> - -<p>The main fact in this connection is that whether the productive areas -of Great Britain were exporting raw material (as during the most -active centuries of the Middle Ages, when wool was our chief export), -or whether (as later became the case) manufactured articles and coal -were the stand-by of our oversea trade; whether we consider the period -before or after the development of our carrying trade; whether we are -concerned with an industrial or an agricultural England; whether we -are observing late<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> centuries in which the English showed a passionate -interest in novelty and foreign adventure, or far more numerous early -centuries in which they were indifferent to distant voyages—throughout -the whole story with all its changes the productive area of the island -has always maintained a high standard of wealth in comparison with its -neighbours and its aptitude for exchange has always been equally high.</p> - -<p>It is a point often neglected that the Norman Conquest, though of -course it introduced a new and much more developed culture than Saxon -England had possessed, did not find an impoverished land which the -newcomers might “develop.” It found an exceedingly wealthy country -according to the standards of the time; and the extent and variety of -that wealth stands out very clearly in the narrative of contemporaries. -Four centuries later, at the end of the Wars of the Roses, foreign -observers make precisely the same comment. It is the packed wealth of -South England filling its <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>comparatively small area which the foreign -envoy notes. We have a striking piece of evidence surviving before our -eyes in the number, decoration and amplitude of our churches to which I -have already alluded.</p> - -<p>To continue the proof after the Tudors would be superfluous. There -was even a phase, the beginning of which is to be found in the -seventeenth century, the close of which we have unhappily seen in our -own generation, when the wealth of England was so superior to that -of any other rival that the material circumstances of life among the -wealthier classes of the country seemed to belong to a different world -from that of neighbouring nations, and when the economic supremacy of -England was translated into a credit, a command of money, and an almost -contemptuous security to which no other European people could pretend.</p> - -<p>London, then, for all these centuries has enjoyed the two political -conditions necessary to the establishment of a chief market, security -and a productive area in the hands of a race by its genius inclined to -exchange. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p> - -<p>There remain the two natural conditions: ease of approach from without -and “draining power” from within.</p> - -<p>Now when we turn to these natural conditions we find that in the matter -of ease of approach the Thames was unrivalled. London was, of course, -far from the sea—a point with which I will deal in a moment—but -there was no haven north of the Mediterranean which called so readily -for commerce upon a large scale. Given the political conditions for -a market—security and active powers of production and exchange—the -Thames was as good a highway to that market as any that could be found. -No vessels until quite modern times had to consider their draught or -fear the entry of the river (at least, through channels which the -pilots commanded), and once within the inland water a swinging tide was -at the service of the ships. There were, within that inland stretch, no -obstacles, no high intervening hills to becalm, no narrows or islands.</p> - -<p>In this ease of access, again, must be <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>reckoned the position of the -Thames relatively to opposing ports. The wide funnel opened at a few -hours’ sail from all that line of ports which begins with the mouth -of the Seine and ends with the northernmost mouths of the Rhine. What -we now call the coasts of Normandy, Picardy, Flanders, Belgium, and -Holland lay, even at their extremes, within one double tide of the -Thames.</p> - -<p>It is true that they also lay equally convenient to any one of the -lesser havens upon the Sussex, the Kent, the Essex, or the Norfolk -coasts, but the ample space afforded by the river, the opportunity for -a crowd of shipping, coupled with opportunities for inland trading, -were to be found nowhere else in the south and east of the island as -they were to be found up London River.</p> - -<div class="center"><a name="i088fp.jpg" id="i088fp.jpg"></a><img src="images/i088fp.jpg" alt="GRAVESEND" /></div> - -<p class="bold">GRAVESEND</p> - -<p>In this connection the use of the tide should be noted. By a -peculiarity which has not been without its effect upon the history of -the river the flood carries a man past the Kentish coast long past -high water and indeed until a moment very close to that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> in which -<i>another</i> tide, that from the North Sea, carries its sweep of water up -the river. Thus, though the tide reach high water shortly after noon -in Dover Harbour, a man outside will carry the stream with him all up -past the Kentish coast until close upon five o’clock. He has but to get -round Longnose and he finds this other tide serving him—a tide that -has been making from three o’clock or thereabouts, coming in from the -North Sea, and that will carry him right up river as long as the wind -or daylight permits him to follow it; a tide that does not reach its -height at Gravesend until eight that evening, or in the Pool of London -until nine. In other words, the River of London afforded to the vessel -coming in from the south a double tide which, clever picked up, gave a -continuous voyage from the Channel right down into the sheltered water -inland.</p> - -<p>At this point it is interesting to consider why the principal harbours -of the Middle Ages, in the north and west of Europe, at least, and upon -tidal seas, so constantly <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>developed not upon the coast itself, but at -some distance up a stream or creek and inland.</p> - -<p>Consider the examples: Havre comes late in the development of the -Seine—the original port is Harfleur; Bristol stands up a tortuous -and narrow channel well inland, and not upon the estuary of the -Severn at all; Liverpool had its first nucleus four miles from the -open sea; Preston quite twelve; Chester more than twenty, of which -the last five or six were a narrow river above the estuary; Nantes is -another striking example—something like one day’s sail from the sea; -Antwerp, Rotterdam—Bruges itself lying those few miles inland upon -its canal—follow the general rule; and so does Norwich, and so does -Colchester, and so does Boston, and so does Glasgow; Bordeaux tells the -same story, and so does the Royal Harbour of Montreuil. And in general, -while a great number of smaller ports rose upon the very coast of the -Atlantic, the North Sea, or the Channel, there seemed to be, until<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> -modern times at least, a tendency for the main depôts of sea-borne -commerce to lie thus inland. Why was it?</p> - -<p>We can only guess, but I would suggest that three factors combined to -establish such a state of things: First, the little boats used for -inland transport and the vehicles dependent upon roads and therefore -upon bridges would seek a place of trans-shipment at some point upon -the river where it had not yet become too broad or too rough, and so -long as this place was accessible from the sea, the higher up river it -was the better for them.</p> - -<p>Next must be counted the security of a perfectly land-locked harbour -for the smaller craft, which formed so much the largest part of -maritime transport. A perfectly land-locked natural harbour upon the -coast was a very rare thing. Let the stretch of water be only of the -size of Southampton Water at its mouth, or of the Solent, and they -would be wrecked in a high wind, but rivers everywhere afforded a -secure <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>protection when once one had entered their narrow channel.</p> - -<p>Thirdly, we must consider the advantage which such sites presented -against the attacks of pirates, and the better opportunities for -defence which a considerable inland town possessed, with its resources -in the surrounding fields and population over the smaller seaports.</p> - -<p class="space-above">In considering the first of these points we must remember that there -was always a tendency for the central depôt or main commercial town -to arise somewhat inland and to be served by subsidiary ports, if -there were no direct access to it by water—and even if there were. -Canterbury is an example of this, so is Winchester, so is Amiens, and -so is Arras, and so is Caen, and so is Rennes, and a host of others.</p> - -<p>In balancing the various advantages offered by various sites for the -establishment of a market, a preponderating advantage must always be -a position lying in the midst<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> of several centres of production, and, -since man is a land animal, these sites would normally lie inland. When -they were served by a river so much the better; when they were served -by a great and secure river, they could not fail to grow as London has -grown.</p> - -<p>As part of this ease of access must be reckoned, the peculiar character -of the Thames, much more open to the wind than the Seine, not blocked -by any island, affording once within the estuary a constant depth amply -sufficient for all vessels until quite recent times.</p> - -<p>But all this would not have given London its place had not a city -established at the lowest crossing of the Thames exercised in a -peculiar degree that “draining power” of which I have spoken.</p> - -<p>We have seen how the system of British roads necessarily converged -upon London, and if we consider one or two other features in English -topography, we shall see why London provides a common depôt for nearly -the whole of English exports in a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>fashion which no other city could -show for any other equally large area of production.</p> - -<p>Before the north of England was industrialised, three things were -mainly required to establish what I have called the “draining” power -of any market in the island. First, that it should be fairly central -to all the south and Midlands; secondly, that it should afford a -convenient centre of demand for various foreign products; thirdly, -that it should be as close as possible to such continental markets as -principally received our export.</p> - -<p>Given those three conditions combined in any one place, and so far as -the great mass of Britain was concerned, a point would be established -to which would flow the main part of the produce which the Continent -desired to purchase by exchange.</p> - -<p>Observe how all these three conditions coincide in the case of London -and of that Lower Thames which was its port.</p> - -<p>When I say with regard to the first condition that the point we are -seeking must be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> “central” to the south and east of the Island and to -the Midlands, I am using a word which needs expansion. I mean that we -must have a point to which the communications of commerce already lead, -and one not too ex-centric to the area tapped.</p> - -<p>Now at the first glance at the map London does give an impression of -ex-centricity, of lying upon one side: and that towards the east and -the south.</p> - -<p>But when we begin to consider certain qualifying conditions, we shall -find that London is fairly central, even geometrically, to the area in -question, and that, when we are considering the economic “weight” of -the various parts of this area, London may by a metaphor be said to be -near the “centre of gravity” of such an area.</p> - -<p>Cut off, in the first place, the Dumnonian Peninsula—that is, Devon -and Cornwall,—the Welsh Highlands, and the Pennines. Consider (that -is) South England, East Anglia, and the Midlands. You have an area -roughly square, and about two hundred miles every way. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p> - -<p>In drawing such a square, take for your extreme points Chester on -the north-west, a point midway between Portland and Exmouth on the -south-west; upon the north-east a point a little north of Cromer, and -upon the south-east a point in the Straits of Dover, a trifle west of -the line between Dungeness and Boulogne. Such a square includes a good -deal that is outside our area, much of the estuary of the Severn, a -strip of the Channel, a wedge of the North Sea and of the Wash, and -a wedge of Pennine land to the north; but it also excludes a certain -amount properly within our area as some of the richest parts of Kent -and of Norfolk and Suffolk. We may therefore take this square for a -fair average, and we shall see that even upon the test of distance -London is not so ex-centric as might be imagined. Draw the two -diagonals of this square, and you will find that London lies upon one -of them at a distance of less than forty miles from the centre.</p> - -<div class="center"><a name="i096fp.jpg" id="i096fp.jpg"></a><img src="images/i096fp.jpg" alt="KINGSTON BRIDGE" /></div> - -<p class="bold">KINGSTON BRIDGE</p> - -<p>When we consider something more than distance and think of London as -the “centre<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> of gravity” of the Midlands, the east and the south, we -find it still more central for the centuries immediately preceding our -own. Their staple export was wool. The pasturage of the chalk ranges -runs right round London in the Chilterns and their extension into East -Anglia, in the north and south Downs and the Uplands of Wiltshire, -Hampshire, and Dorset. London is the obvious centre of all that -triangle of chalk. It is again nearly equi-distant from the principal -markets of Norfolk, of the Upper Trent valley, of Dorset, and of the -Cotswolds. If we treat as exceptions the Lancashire and Yorkshire -Plains (each with their local ports), the Vale Royal and the Lower -Severn (each with its local port at Chester and at Bristol), London is -very near the commercial centre of gravity of what remains. We must not -forget that the Marlborough Downs and Salisbury Plain are but a few -miles more distant from London Bridge than is the extremity of Kent. -From the town of Pewsey to London Bridge as the crow flies is almost -exactly eighty-eight <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>miles. From the South Foreland the distance is -not ten miles less. It needs but a slightly longer radius to include -all the Warwickshire Midlands and very nearly all the county of -Norfolk: all, of course, of Suffolk, of Essex, of Kent, Sussex, Surrey, -and Hampshire.</p> - -<p>London is geographically and commercially central at any rate to the -older England—which was all that was needed for its establishment.</p> - -<p>It was even more central when regarded as a nexus of communications.</p> - -<p>How all the main roads centred there we have already seen. The roads -alone would have given London a pre-eminence as a market above all -other towns in Britain even if the Thames had dried up after their -establishment. But the position was meanwhile further strengthened by -the conditions of water carriage; and it is here that the meaning of -the Thames as a whole appears, and the way in which the upper as well -as the lower river has built up the greatness of London. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p> - -<p>I have no space to show why and how water carriage was of supreme -importance both in primitive times (that is, before the Roman -civilisation came) and during the Dark Ages through which, in spite of -decline, it survived. It should be sufficient to point out that in the -decline of a civilisation, or in its absence, water carriage—suited -to heavy burdens, requiring no repair of ways, and providing a mode of -traction ready-made—is, wherever it is available, the chief economic -factor of commerce.</p> - -<p>Now when we recognise that the bulk of English wealth lay for centuries -south and east of a line drawn from Exmouth to the Wash, and when we -appreciate what the Thames valley is in that triangle, we shall see -how necessarily the main market of the Thames was also the main market -of England. The natural water communications of the south consist in -a number of small streams, only one of which, the Salisbury Avon, may -have been navigable for more than a dozen miles or so inland. East -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>Anglia was better served, and particularly the northern area, which -was drained by the three rivers converging upon Breydon Water. The -northern part of that area was also fairly well served by the three -parallel rivers of the Ouse, the Nen, and the Welland, but their -service as a means of communication was handicapped by the nature of -their entry into the sea through the Fens, and after that through the -perils, sandbanks, and shallows of the Wash; while the good service of -rivers along all the East Anglian coast had this drawback: that, as we -there have nothing but a series of short systems, there was no water -connection between one group of short valleys and another, not even -one thought-out road. A dozen streams will carry produce from the sea -to Worstead, to Norwich, to Beccles, to what was once the considerable -port of Orford, to Ipswich, to Colchester, etc. But each avenue is a -separate avenue. There is no “trunk” connecting the system.</p> - -<p>With the Thames it is otherwise. Glance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> down the valley and see how -one point after another, each the natural market of a whole district -of its own, drains the produce from the north and the south of the -river, to discharge it upon the main stream. From Lechlade (up to which -point ran the “measure and the bushel of London”)<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4">[4]</a> through Oxford, -Abingdon, Wallingford, Reading, Marlow, the Middle Hythe (which we now -call Maidenhead), and Windsor, you have a whole string of such centres, -each gathering its own section’s produce from its scheme of roads, -or of subsidiary streams, and turning the mass down seaward upon the -“trunk” afforded by the Thames.</p> - -<p>The Thames, therefore, with London as its port of transhipment between -the inland communications and the sea, tapped the very heart of all -that was wealthiest in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>England for fifteen hundred years, and all that -commerce by river as by road drained upon London because London was -“central” to exchange in the rich south and east of the island.</p> - -<p>But, as we have seen, two further characters were attached to -“draining” power. We must not only seek a point central for -communications, we must also seek a point where there was a ready -demand for import and a ready access to the best foreign markets.</p> - -<p>Let us consider these two characters in their order:</p> - -<p>A ready demand for import must exist either in a port itself or -behind it, if that port is to develop into a great town and to -acquire political importance. You have many instances, especially in -contemporary commerce, of ports which do little more than export, and -of other ports in which there is no demand for import, but which merely -serve to pass the import inland. In the first case the international -exchange is effected<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> through imports at some other point. The clearing -between export and import is a paper clearing, and the ships at the -export point arrive in ballast—a drawback. In the second place, though -a town may grow to some importance as a mere place of transhipment, -it will never acquire the importance of a capital nor even of a great -city—it will never have a great <i>political</i> place unless, round -the handling of its imports destined for the interior, there grows -up a considerable local power of demand for values. In other words, -something of the imports transmitted through the town must “stick on -the way.” Modern Liverpool is a good example of this. The primary -economic function of modern Liverpool is still the transhipment of -cotton to Lancashire just beyond its boundaries, but in the pursuit -of this function Liverpool has claimed its tribute for now three -generations, and so vast an accumulation of other activities connected -with the port has grown up that even the digging of the Manchester Ship -Canal,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> the effect of which was so much feared in Liverpool, seems -to have been, if anything, a benefit to that town. What proportion -the power of demand exercised for imported goods in Liverpool itself -may bear to the total of values entering the port cannot be exactly -calculated, but it is safe to say that the toll levied is not much less -than one-fifth.</p> - -<p>Now when to this power of demand created by the “sticking” at the point -of transhipment or port of import, of goods coming from abroad, there -is added the power of demand caused by the residence of government, of -a court and of wealthy men apart from those who are wealthy through -commerce, you get, of course, a very highly increased power of demand -which makes of the port of import a specially great economic centre. A -ship coming to such a port in order to take on board there the export -in which it deals, can enter loaded with imports which are sure of a -ready market.</p> - -<div class="center"><a name="i104fp.jpg" id="i104fp.jpg"></a><img src="images/i104fp.jpg" alt="SUNBURY" /></div> - -<p class="bold">SUNBURY</p> - -<p>It so happens that London during all the centuries of its growth, and -especially <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>during those four hundred years of the Middle Ages which -chiefly established its great position, was in exactly this position. -Not only was it, as modern Liverpool is, a point of transhipment -round which a vast quantity of subsidiary activities had grown, it -was also close to the more or less permanent residence of the court, -to what became the permanent seat of legislature, and to what was -very early the permanent seat of the central courts of justice. The -process continued uninterruptedly. After the loot of the church land -of the endowments of the poor under the Tudors, the great palaces of -the new aristocracy lined the Strand, and from the early seventeenth -century—when this process was completed—onwards, the power of demand -exercised by London alone and its local call for imports, has never -ceased to grow, until to-day the position of London as an importing -centre is due almost entirely to this character, next to its value -as a clearing house: It is now only in a much less degree a point of -transhipment. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p> - -<p>The type of goods for which this local power of demand existed had also -a very great effect in helping the growth of London through the traffic -of the Thames.</p> - -<p>Perhaps the principal import of the Middle Ages in value was that of -wine. It was a luxurious import for which there was a local demand, -especially where you had the residence of the wealthier people, and, -what was exceedingly important, it was <i>an import large in bulk</i>. -It meant that ships would come either in great numbers or in heavy -tonnage, and this in itself suggested London as a place of export for -their return, made a speculative voyage to London worth taking, and -developed the warehousing space and the wharf space of the port. Later -came coal, later still the tropical products, and last of all the -great passenger traffic. But in every stage of the development London -has exercised a local power of demand for that kind of import which -demanded bulk in storage.</p> - -<p>As to the second point, the easy access<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> to the foreign port whither -export was to be made, London was again especially favoured, in its -point of growth. To-day it is no longer so, as we shall see in a -moment. London is going forward with the momentum of its past. But -until quite modern times London looked more favourably at the points -to which England exported than did the other island ports, its rivals. -It lay in the full focus of that long curve of the Norman, the Picard, -the Flemish and Dutch coasts, which were the principal markets of the -Middle Ages. Right opposite were the Flemish cities that bought English -wool—the staple export—right opposite, also, the mouths of the Rhine -for communication with the interior Germanies and, though a little more -distant than the northern ports, agreeable to all that Baltic and North -Sea trade which grew up with the close of the Middle Ages. The league -of mercantile towns called Hanseatic had its depôt in London from the -middle of the thirteenth century. The northern ports of England that -lie a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> little nearer had no hinterland to feed their commerce, and -London was, moreover, the best clearing-house and centre of general -exchange for them in all the north and west. In this character it -surpassed even Bruges.</p> - -<p>When all these conditions changed—when the discovery of the New World, -and of the Cape route to the Indies, when the growth of north-country -industries and one hundred other factors had taken away from the site -of London its old topographical supremacy, the port was so firmly -established that it provided its own sources of vitality.</p> - -<p>It is always so in the economic affairs of a town or of a nation. -Material causes are discovered to be more powerful in the middle period -of their growth; once the town or nation are rooted they nourish -themselves. The River of London to-day is the capital example of this -truth out of all Europe. A basin far too small for modern commerce, -lying much too distantly up a river too narrow for modern commercial -needs, dangerous of entry for ships of modern draft, and needing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> -perpetual and enormous labour to keep it properly open, none the less -preserves its place at the head of the ports of the world. As a depôt -for commerce its wharves and docks extend to Tilbury, and that system -of clearing which grew up naturally on the low gravel height above -London Bridge, when the pool held all the shipping of the place and was -a large and secure harbour, is still established on that same hill in -the shape of the banks and the exchanges of the City of London, which -cancel the exchanges, not of the pool below, but of I know not what -fraction of the shipping of the whole world.</p> - -<p>There is one last point to be considered in connection with London -river as a port. It has been well made by Mr. Lyde in one of his short -but remarkable geographical studies. The estuary of the Thames exactly -faces that great and permanent frontier line between two parts of our -European culture, upon either side of which lie contrasting speeches, -traditions, and even religions. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p> - -<p>That frontier roughly divides such areas of Western Europe as have -continuously preserved the traditions of the Roman Empire from outer -regions to the east and to the north, which only received the Christian -religion and the Roman civilisation after the breakdown of central -authority exercised from the Imperial city.</p> - -<p>The estuary of the Thames opens like a funnel just opposite the point -where this frontier between what some would call the “Teutonic” and -“Latin” areas, reaches the sea.</p> - -<p>It may not be at first sight apparent why a position of this kind is -of capital commercial importance. The reason is rather moral than -material, though it has its material element in the cheapness and -expedition of carriage by sea.</p> - -<p>Areas which differ in the type of their culture tend to become -polarised one towards the other for the purposes of exchange. Each -will tend to produce something that the other lacks. Now the exchange -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>between two such areas will, of course, proceed actively enough across -innumerable points lying upon the frontier between them, but it will -not penetrate very far inland, if there is in competition with the -inland routes a water route. Thus Arras will exchange easily enough -with, say, Aix-la-Chapelle, Metz with Trèves or Frankfort, but what -of Rouen and the Baltic, Bordeaux and the Frisian Lowlands, Brittany -and Vendée and the German Plain? It is evident that if no friction -existed a direct sea-borne commerce along the north-western coasts of -Europe would effect these exchanges; but there does exist a friction, -especially in early times, consisting in the ignorance and, as it were, -the credulity, separating places so far distant in mileage and, what -is more important, in culture. If, then, a half-way house is found -sufficiently familiar to either party, that half-way house will tend -to become in this new aspect out of so many, a centre of exchange—and -this is precisely what <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>happened to London. The North Sea and the -Baltic were familiar with London—but then so was the Channel and the -Bay of Biscay. London river attracted in this fashion a sheaf of trade -routes, drawn from the north and east, another from the south and -west. And so true is this that to the present day, and in one curious -slight but emphatic modern instance, you can see the process at work. -Travellers intent upon no purpose of commerce but merely upon an -excursion will leave London river for Boulogne and Calais, sometimes -for Dieppe and Havre; other travellers will leave the same facility -of egress for the Scheldt and the Rhine and the Dutch ports and the -Elbe. But, unless I am mistaken, the more obvious track of a passenger -steamer route between the French ports and the Belgian, Dutch, and -German ones does not exist save in the case of the great liners which -touch at Cherbourg. A man desiring to go from Boulogne to Flushing by -sea or from some lower French port to, say, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>Amsterdam, would very -probably find his cheapest road to lie by way of going into the Thames -and out of it. We must not exaggerate this element in the present -position of London, where it is but a survival and that a small one: -but in the past, and particularly in the establishment of the port at -the end of the Dark Ages and the beginning of the Middle Ages, this -‘facing’ of London River towards the great political frontier line of -Europe, was of capital importance. Scandinavia, the Baltic, Frisia, and -the Dutch ports had all known their way to London for centuries when -the Norman Conquest, and still more the succeeding Angevin monarchy, -brought round into London River a new wealth of trade from the Seine, -the Loire, and the Garonne.</p> - -<div class="center"><a name="i112fp.jpg" id="i112fp.jpg"></a><img src="images/i112fp.jpg" alt="TWICKENHAM FERRY" /></div> - -<p class="bold">TWICKENHAM FERRY</p> - -<p>In all that has preceded we have been considering London as the -creation of the river in its civil aspect alone; it remains to consider -the town and the stream in their effect upon the military history of -the country, and to that I shall now turn.</p> - -<h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3> - -<p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4">[4]</a> The reader may see quoted in full in Sir Laurence Gomme’s -<i>The Governance of London</i> (p. 346) the precedents upon which Coke -founded his opinion in 1597, including the verdict of 29 Ed. I., -concerning in particular the portage of salt upon the Thames.</p> - -<p>“Quod nullus mensuarius sit de London usque Lachenlade nisi dicti -mensuarii et bushelli de Ripa Reginae.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p> - -<h2>V</h2> - -<p class="bold2">LONDON AND THE LOWER THAMES IN WARFARE</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p> - -<p class="bold2">LONDON AND THE LOWER THAMES IN WARFARE</p> - -<p>The last historical aspect in which we must consider the River of -London is the military aspect; and this aspect has three clearly marked -divisions. We have first to consider the Lower Thames as an avenue of -invasion; next as an obstacle to invasion of the northern part of the -island, or to the passage of the troops from the north to the south. -Thirdly, we must estimate what effect upon the military history of -the country London itself has had, commanding as it does the lowest -crossing of the Thames, always forming a vast base of supply, and for -centuries by its stores and munitions forming an ally or an enemy of -capital importance to whichever party it supported so long as warfare -was waged in England.</p> - -<p>The first two of these considerations are very sharply defined not -only in their nature, but also in the historical periods over which -each one predominated. The Thames as an avenue of ingress or invasion -belongs<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> to the earlier part of English history. The importance of the -lower river in this category ends very nearly with the close of the -Dark Ages. Its second character, that of an obstacle to the invader -who would go northward or to troops marching from the north southward, -in the main is discoverable of course throughout history, but chiefly -belongs to the Middle Ages and the seventeenth century. I will take -these three points, therefore, in their order and deal first with the -invasions of England which the Lower Thames has served. These invasions -from the first recorded case of the almost to the last may be grouped -together under one description. They were the raids of the pirates. -It is true that these raids became, as the Dark Ages developed and -the true Middle Ages approached, better and better organised, more -definitely political and dynastic in plan, until at last they took on -the character of regular warfare. But from the beginning to the end -of the process we have little or no use of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> Thames on the part -of regular forces proceeding from the ancient civilisation of the -Continent, from Gaul, or from the mouths of the Rhine. The whole story -is a story of invasion from the outer and barbarian limits of Europe, -that is, from the North Sea and the confines of the Baltic.</p> - -<p>The early pirate raids upon this island, which were first called Saxon, -hundreds of years later Dane, but which had through the whole of the -Dark Ages much of one character of purposeless devastation, used the -Thames for one of their chief entries. The earlier and less powerful -raids seem to have made nothing of London. It was too much for them. -But the later and worse tempest of the eighth and ninth and tenth -centuries had London for their main object when they forced the river, -and since it is a piece of history very little explored, it is worth a -moment’s digression here.</p> - -<p>What were the conditions under which the pirates conducted their raids -upon the waterway? </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p> - -<p>First let us establish a little list of what was certainly known with -regard to these attempts.</p> - -<p>Of the first Saxon raids in connection with the Thames we know nothing. -Even the distorted legends set down hundreds of years afterwards only -preserve a recollection of a landing in Kent, in Thames, and the -fighting that follows them is upon land and south of the river. Of -what raids were made upon the Essex shore, or whether any were made, -or whether (which is improbable) any attempt were made by these sparse -destroyers against the walls and bridge of London, all the part, small -or null or whatever it was, which the Thames played in the first pirate -raids of the fifth and sixth centuries escapes us.</p> - -<div class="center"><a name="i120fp.jpg" id="i120fp.jpg"></a><img src="images/i120fp.jpg" alt="HAMPTON" /></div> - -<p class="bold">HAMPTON</p> - -<p>This is not the place in which to insist upon the unreliable character -of that vast mass of popular history erected upon sheer guess-work and -describing the early raids of the Saxon pirates as effecting in some -way a reconstruction of England. The <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>wilder sort of fiction dealing -with that remote and almost unknown period talks of these first pirate -raids as “the coming of the English.” We must, of course, neglect -rhetoric of that kind. But it is worth while admitting a moment’s -digression to impress on the reader upon what an absence of any thing -approaching evidence all this academic guess-work has been raised. -The one definite fact and the only one connected with the pirate -raids which descended upon the eastern and southern river mouths and -beaches of Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries, is the fact that -these raids cut off southern and eastern Britain from the rest of -civilisation. Of contemporary evidence there is nothing for more than -150 years, save one very vague denunciatory or apocalyptical document -more in the nature of a sermon than a record, which testifies to the -violent impression produced upon the civilised inhabitants of the -island by these raids, and a couple of fragmentary sentences written -perhaps by <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>contemporaries, certainly not by eye-witnesses, and -probably at a great distance from the scene of the trouble.</p> - -<p>We do not know when the raids of the pirates began, nor whether they -were already severe before Britain was cut off.</p> - -<p>We do not know whether Southern and Eastern Britain was already -occupied by kinsmen of the pirates serving as Auxiliary Troops within -the Empire or no.</p> - -<p>We do not know whether the maritime belts of Suffolk, Essex, Kent, and -Sussex spoke a Teutonic language before the pirate raids or no.</p> - -<p>We do not know whether a Christian Church was sufficiently established -in those belts for the raids to have had an opportunity of “destroying” -such a Church.</p> - -<p>We do not know in what numbers the pirates came nor with what object -nor what the towns (which were the nucleus of that society) suffered or -did not suffer from the invasions.</p> - -<p>We have, as almost the sole instrument<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> of historical analysis for a -full 150 years, nothing but inference and the consideration of what is -physically possible and physically impossible in the various theories -that have been put forward.</p> - -<p>Thus it is physically impossible that any very considerable number of -men can have come over seas at any one moment in the small and shallow -boats of the time, but for all the rest we have nothing but legend -and our varying estimate of how the society attacked would probably -have behaved and what the internal reactions within it under the -strain of such an anxiety would probably have been. We can be fairly -certain that an attack of this sort could not deal with a defended -Roman town, though here and there a garrison on the coast may have -been overwhelmed. We can be morally certain from all that we know of -that society that men coming for loot would not kill slaves. On the -other hand, we do not know how far the anarchy may have been increased -by the presence of numerous <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>escaped slaves in the welter. We have a -right to exclude the fantastic—such as the astonishing idea that a -great Roman town like London could be wiped out <i>and then resettled -by a totally new population</i>, and we have a right to exclude as very -nearly worthless odd stories cropping up hundreds of years later in -the <i>Anglo-Saxon Chronicle</i>. On the other hand, we are bound to pay -more respect to such a remark as that of the Venerable Bede when he -testifies to the migration of a whole body of pirate population from -the capital of Schleswig to that of Britain.</p> - -<p>If we could discover what happened between the first generation of the -fifth century and the first generation of the seventh, the discovery -would be the most important and interesting that could be made in -connection with our history. For in Britain as in every other province -of Europe the process by which civilisation entered into the Dark Ages -is the explanation of all that followed. But the discovery has not yet -been granted to us, and in all human probability never will be. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p> - -<p>We know that the avenue of approach from the Continent to Britain, that -is, the coasts of the south and east, were so far ruined or occupied -or degraded, the communication with the rest of the island was cut -off; we know that when civilisation came back with St. Augustine it -had to work through the medium of little courts scattered up and down -these shores, and we can presume that writing and record and government -thus filtering through the south and east to the rest of the island -gradually spread the speech and certain of the customs of that south -and east eastward throughout the succeeding centuries.</p> - -<p>Of more than that we are ignorant.</p> - -<p>The Lower Thames, therefore, and the part that it played in that first -capital piece of fighting lies, unfortunately, outside the field of -positive history. We do not begin to get any true record of the Thames -as an avenue of invasion until the second raids begin, three centuries -after the first: those second raids which are collectively known in -this country under the title of “Danish.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p> - -<p>At the end of the eighth century the pirate raids from the north struck -England again. A few boats’ crews would land, especially in the north, -and raid a monastery or loot the outer barns of a steading, only to be -beaten off.</p> - -<p>But a lifetime later, in the middle of the ninth century, the raids -increased in pressure. As early as 832 you get them in the mouth of -the Thames. It is a small matter. They land in Sheppey and raid that -sparsely inhabited, isolated island, but their raid was successful and -it taught them the way back. The next year they meet Egbert down in the -south-west in some considerable conflict, killing two of his leaders -and holding the battlefield. Two years later again they were in the -Irish Sea and were caught and beaten in an island raid in the west. -In 837 they were beaten off Southampton, to which they had come with -thirty-three ships—and perhaps at the most five thousand fighting men. -But again that same year a raid of theirs in Dorsetshire succeeded, and -the next<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> year between Kent and Sussex they struck again, and before -winter in the hollow land of the Fens and in the Broads and in Kent.</p> - -<p>It is with the year 839 that you get the first hint at an attack upon -London. It is not certain that that attack was Danish, but it is -almost certain that the mention in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle refers to -a great simultaneous series of raids upon the French and the English -coasts which struck Picardy and Rochester in Kent as well as London. -Something we shall never know is what was pushing them. They had some -more adventurous man with his companions to rouse them in the Baltic -and off the Norwegian inlets, or there was passing over that unknown -pagan society of the north one of those spirits which pass over human -societies and lead them out to peril. They would risk the Bay of -Biscay, but their ships were caught by the Christians in the Asturias. -They even dared for the first time to winter without going home, and to -pass the time between one fighting season and the next upon an island<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> -in the mouth of the Noir Moutier. They pushed as far as Seville and -the Moors ate them up. They ran up the Elbe to Hamburg in a force far -larger than anything that has been seen in the west. They ran up the -Seine to Rouen and further. They pushed through a gate of Paris and -were turned out.</p> - -<div class="center"><a name="i128fp.jpg" id="i128fp.jpg"></a><img src="images/i128fp.jpg" alt="TEDDINGTON" /></div> - -<p class="bold">TEDDINGTON</p> - -<p>They first charged at and then carried Bordeaux, and all this while -they raided Ireland. It was in the year 851 that there came at last -a great fleet of these purposeless destroyers to the Thames mouth, -three hundred and fifty ships so came, and Canterbury and London were -stormed. But their host, which so considerable a fleet must have -brought for the first time in numbers really threatening, was beaten as -it marched down the Stane Street to the raiding of the south. They were -met at Ockley<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5">[5]</a> by the host of the English King Ethelwulf and were cut -to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> pieces. He had probably come up by that old way from Winchester -which leads through Alton into the Dorking Gap, and so had come up with -the raiders. Four years later these pirates, who had already learnt to -winter upon Christian land in Gaul, wintered in Sheppey. That they went -up the river next year we have no record, but ten years later, in 865, -they had been wintering in England, this time in Thanet. The Kentish -men paid them ransom, but the pagan kept no faith. He took the ransom -and harried the land. Thenceforward it is perpetual raiding up and down -England north of Thames. In ’71 they are in Reading, but not, it would -seem, by river, and Alfred beat them on Ashdown, but they were in no -way driven off. They held London all that winter, and year after year -they still marched up and down England.</p> - -<p class="space-above">The pirates, keeping more or less together in one horde, marched and -ravaged without strategical purpose and with no power of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> conquest, -organisation, or government, ruining as they went, and you have in -the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle such phrases as: “Here the host travelled -over the mouth of Humber to York.” “Here the host went to Mercia and -to Nottingham.” “Here the host went again to York.” “Here the army -rode across Mercia into East Anglia and took up their winter quarters -in Thetford.” “Here the host went into Northumbria, and took up their -winter quarters at Torksey.” “Here the host went to Repton”—and so -forth, to Cambridge, to Wareham, to Exeter—a perpetual raid until in -878 Alfred came out from behind Selwood and his hiding in the crisis -of his kingdom, and beat them for good on the bare chalk Down above -Eddington. Thenceforward the pressure is against the pirates.</p> - -<p>More than twenty years later they raided from Boulogne into Kent, and -it was in that same raid in 893 that again the Thames was violated. -Haesten, whom we call Hasting, came up so far as Milton, that is the -first good landing-place upon the southern shore<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> of the inland Thames -just opposite Tilbury.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6">[6]</a> He was working with another force to the -south in the Rother, but nothing came of this double attack. There was -no sailing up river. The station at Milton was broken up and Hasting -went down river, crossed to the northern shore, and established himself -at Benfleet. The men of London, with a reinforcement of the national -army, took his fort and broke all that part of the Danish force, and -his ships were either destroyed or brought up river to London, or some -up the Medway to Rochester, but Hasting himself who had been raiding -was not captured. He came back with that part of his force which had -been with him, summoned sundry parties of the raiding Danes from other -parts of England, made a new base not far from the old one, and started -upon a new raid right across England to the Western Sea. When he had -returned he brought such ships as <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>remained to him up river into the -Lea, built yet another fort upon that stream twenty miles from London. -Once more that base was destroyed. The river Lea was blocked below -their settling place, such ships as they had, destroyed or taken to -London again. And meanwhile the astonishing Danish host survived, -raiding out again across England in a final effort. But their sea -power was gone. They wintered at Bridgenorth in the west. Their few -remaining ships, six in number, attempted the Isle of Wight and Devon. -Alfred beat them off, also catching three aground, but of the remaining -three two were left upon the Sussex coast and their crews hanged in -Winchester. The last one left, full of wounded men, made East Anglia. -In 901 Alfred died, but though he had prevented the raiding of the -Danes from destroying Christian England, the plundering went on year -after year, but for many years the Thames was free. Seventeen years -later they fell upon Severn mouth and were beaten off, and the story -goes on with a gradual<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> reconquest of the posts which the pagans had -established in the Midlands. It was not until 980 that they touched -again at Thames mouth in Thanet, harrying it, and two years later they -seem to have come up river and attacked London once more, but there is -a bare mention of it, and nothing further. But with that end of the -century you come to a very different set of wars—a political attempt -of the northern raiders, now organised in regular fashion, and almost -a kingdom by themselves, upon the verge of accepting Christianity and -of entering into the European Commonwealth. These new fights were -fought not for plunder but for conquest. They ended in success, and the -critical moment of the campaign was decided in the Thames.</p> - -<p>All the fighting of the thirty odd years which established the Danish -dynasty in England and led up to the great reign of Canute, has for its -pivot or centre the estuary of the Thames and in successive attacks -upon the defence of, or in the alliance of London. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p> - -<p>Ethelred the Unready, when he forms his first plans against Olaf, -gathers his fleet in the Pool of London—though he does nothing with -that fleet (992). When, two years later (994), Olaf makes his alliance -with Sweyn, it is again up the estuary of the Thames that he sails to -make his great attack upon the City—but London beat him off. Though -London is attacked again from the <i>land</i> in 1009 and with very great -vigour in 1013, Edmund Ironside, a boy who all but saved his house, -fought alternately north and south of the estuary against the armies -landed from the invading fleet.</p> - -<p>That campaign (the campaign of 1016) is as excellent an example of the -part the Lower Thames played in the warfare of this island before the -Norman Conquest as one could choose. In the month of May Canute makes -his attempt to reduce the capital. He cut a canal through the alluvium -of Suffolk to get his ships round the Bridge head, so that he held -London from the River side both above bridge and below, and he dug his -trench all round the north, east, and west over <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>against the walls. But -he did not reduce the town. Edmund Ironside coming up from the west, -re-entered it. The invader retired to an entrenched camp at Greenwich. -When later the whole invading fleet had dropped down the Thames and -sailed out of the estuary, you get a strategical playing north and -south of that obstacle which is most illuminating. Canute attacks the -Suffolk shore. Edmund marches thither, having the estuary to the south -of him. Canute then sails across the mouth of the Thames and attacks -Kent shore. Edmund counter-marches, <i>is compelled to take the long -route crossing the Thames at London</i>, and finds the Danish advance at -Otford to the south of the estuary. He defeats it. Canute thereupon -once more crosses the mouth of the Thames and attacks the Essex shore, -and once more Edmund goes back by the long land route, crosses at -London, gets to the north of the estuary, and fights and loses (by -treachery) his great action on the Crouch at Ashington, near Rochford.</p> - -<p>You could not have within a shorter space<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> of time a clearer view both -of what the Lower Thames meant as an avenue of approach to invasion -during the Dark Ages that were coming to a close, and what it was to -mean as an obstacle to a passage of armies during the centuries of -the Middle Ages which were about to open. The Lower Thames played -no great part between this date, 1016, and the invasion of William -the Conqueror. A fleet seems to have stood on it perpetually for the -defence of the kingdom under Canute, but did not serve as an avenue of -invasion, nor was that fleet brought to action.</p> - -<div class="center"><a name="i136fp.jpg" id="i136fp.jpg"></a><img src="images/i136fp.jpg" alt="PANGBOURNE" /></div> - -<p class="bold">PANGBOURNE</p> - -<p>The Lower Thames last appears before the Conquest as an element in -warfare when Godwin and his sons enter the mouth of the River in -1052, the fifty ships of the King not daring to offer battle. London -favoured this particular advance, allowed Godwin to pass under the -Bridge without obstacle (which shows how the masts were stepped), and -with that successful but hardly challenged expedition ends the first -chapter of the Lower<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> Thames in English warfare: the chapter of its use -in the Dark Ages as an avenue of invasion into the heart of the country -and against London and, already by the early eleventh century, its -strategical value as an obstacle to the movement of troops from north -to south.</p> - -<p>The Lower Thames in the warfare of the Middle Ages, and indeed up to -that of the seventeenth century and the Civil Wars—that is, throughout -a space of six hundred years (from 1066 to 1644), appears in English -warfare only in the character of the main obstacle of crossing South -England.</p> - -<p>It is impossible to develop a negative aspect of this kind at any -great length, nor is it even possible to affirm it as an universal -negative. I can indeed call to mind no case of the transport of troops -in any considerable numbers from the north to the south of the Lower -Thames, or vice versa, during the period in question. But even if some -considerable exception be discovered, it does not affect the general -thesis that the great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> groups of civil war which marked the history -of England in the Middle Ages and during the seventeenth century were -powerfully affected in their strategy by the interruption to eastern -communications to north and south, which was caused by the Lower Thames -and its estuary.</p> - -<p>Thus the whole plan of the Wars of the Roses, infinitely confused -though it is in detail, involves a striking up from or down to London -with perpetual action west of London, but there is never any attempt -to turn a southern or a northern position by the crossing of the Lower -Thames in force—at least that I can call to mind. You have the same -thing earlier in the Barons’ Wars. When Henry <span class="smaller">III.</span> wishes to -make a base for himself in South England and begins by advancing on -Rochester, Simon makes no attempt to cut across anywhere below London. -On the contrary, he marches south from that lowest crossing, making -sure of intercepting the King on his march round parallel with the -coast. In the succeeding campaign the line<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> of the Severn determines -everything, and here again the Upper Thames is crossed and recrossed -as well, the Lower Thames not at all; and when we come to the great -Civil Wars of the seventeenth century or, as our forefathers called -them, “the Great Rebellion,” you have perhaps the clearest instance -since the campaign of Edmund Ironside of how the estuary of the Lower -Thames determined by its obstacle the strategy of the east of England. -Speaking in very general terms and from the point of view of strategy -alone as distinct from the great moral and social forces at work, the -Parliament won because it continuously held not only London but a great -triangle of the Eastern English land; Kent in the main, and all East -Anglia, and after the second year of the war Lincolnshire as well.</p> - -<p>Now imagine in the place of the estuary of the Thames continuous land -communication and you will see what a difference that change would have -made. Charles at the very beginning of the campaign, though he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> could -not have besieged a town as large as London, could very probably have -marched past it and chastised East Anglia, broken up its recruiting -centres, etc., confident that there was open to him an alternative -retreat to the west upon either side of London. Nay, he could, had he -been successful in this early part of the war, in an East Anglian raid -have continued that success in the south-east. He might, I imagine, -have isolated London, though he could not have besieged it. As it -was, the two halves of his enemy’s country divided for <i>his</i> purposes -by the Lower Thames were for <i>their</i> purposes united by common radii -converging at London and by the control of all the Lower River as a -continuous avenue of transport and supply.</p> - -<p>What was still heartily Royalist in Sussex (and I believe I may -count here many of the castles) was, through the action of that same -obstacle, a hopelessly isolated patch which Parliament had later little -difficulty in reducing. But suppress the Lower Thames and it would have -given Charles a solid base for advance. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p> - -<p>We must not exaggerate the point, for the strategy of the time was very -confused, and sometimes at first almost purposeless; but none the less -in any campaign, however muddled, the main natural strategy imposed by -topography invariably appears, and for what it is worth I cite it in -this case of the Lower Thames and of the Civil Wars.</p> - -<p>The third point, of course, in this connection of the Lower Thames with -the Civil Wars waged in this island is the position of London: and that -position is twofold. London has one great strategical character as the -lowest crossing place of the Thames; it has another great strategical -character as the chief natural base in the island.</p> - -<p>The first of these two characters is obvious, and as obviously recurs -throughout the whole history of battle between the Norman Conquest and -the Parliamentary Wars. Whoever has possession of London has possession -of the secure crossing place nearest the sea which gives immediate -interior communication between one section of the east of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> island -and the other, and as a rule to have possession of London is to have -command sooner or later of the whole of the south and east upon that -account.</p> - -<p>But the second character, London as a base, is of even more importance. -You had here a town so great that after the Dark Ages it need never -stand a siege. It is further a town the supplies of which under -primitive conditions lay almost always uncut. Unless a man had so -considerable a fleet that he could cut off supplies by River, so well -organised a transport that he could keep both banks of that broad -stream perpetually in touch, and finally so very large a command that -he could hold the whole circuit of the walls securely and the Bridge -end on the Southwark side as well, London could not be, strictly -speaking, besieged, and, from the Danish Wars onwards, London never was.</p> - -<p>Not only was this great centre of supply nourished by the Thames immune -from such isolation, but it could also furnish stores of provision, -remounts, and all that was <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>necessary for a medieval army in quantities -more than sufficient for the restoration or recruitment of such a -force; hence we find London perpetually turning the scale during six -centuries of fighting, and it is almost true to say that he who has -London ultimately wins the war. It was the size of London, and in -particular its value as a recruiting centre, which checked Charles I. -after Edgehill. London made the fortune of Simon de Montfort; London -appears to have remounted the Barons in the most critical moment of -the campaign of Magna Charta; and London was the necessary pivot upon -which William the Conqueror was compelled to hinge all his work of -pacification after Hastings. Indeed, the position of London could not -be better illustrated than in this early example, where the Norman -found it impossible or inadvisable to attempt a direct attack upon -it, was compelled to isolate it temporarily by sweeping a line of -devastation around it, and made it his first care to recognise its -customs and pre-eminence in the kingdom. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p> - -<p>With the conclusion of this brief survey of the part which the Lower -Thames and London as the creation of the Lower Thames has played in the -history of warfare I must close this Essay.</p> - -<p>I would close it, as I began it, by the qualification that all those -material causes which are the delight of one who traces out the effects -of historical geography are but half the story. Of the spirit of place -and of the human motive without which such mere topography would be -meaningless, I have said little or nothing in this consideration of the -River of London building up London through two thousand years; but that -is because this business of the soul in any historical matter must be -separately treated, and that in a spirit always alien, and sometimes -antagonistic, to the chain of material cause and effect.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, it is the soul of London and of London River which has -driven forward the story of both of them together, much more than any -material limits within which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> that soul was compelled to act. And that -is why to-day overlying the vestiges—often now completely hidden—of -the original material framework, London and the River rather control -that framework and what were once the necessary condition of port and -market and crossing place than are controlled by them.</p> - -<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> - -<p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5">[5]</a> The reader should be warned that this famous action has -been ascribed by modern pedantry to all manner of other places and -sites. For my part I will trust our ancestors, the tradition of the -place, and the obvious strategies of the Roman Road.</p> - -<p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6">[6]</a> Or Milton Creek out of the Swale. So Professor Oman will -have it in his book upon <i>England Before the Conquest</i>. But he gives no -proof. Milton on the Thames itself would have seemed a much safer and -more accessible base.</p> - -<div lang='en' xml:lang='en'> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK <span lang='' xml:lang=''>THE RIVER OF LONDON</span> ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ -concept and trademark. 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