ditch on the south side, and dragged their ships to the west side of the Bridge. Afterwards they trenched the city about, so that no man could go in nor out, and often fought against it, but the citizens bravely withstood them."*

Maitland, in his "History of London, p. 26, edit. 1739, states, from "his own observations and enquiries," that the trench, dug by Canute, had its outfall" at the great wet dock below Rotherhithe, and was carried across the Deptford Road, near the bottom of Kent-street, towards Newington Butts, and thence by Kennington, "through the SpringGarden at Vauxhall," to its influx with the Thames "at the lower end of Chelsea Reach." To this it has been objected, by the Rev. J. Entick, editor of the last edition of Maitland, vol. i. p. 35, that the time, expense, and needless labour, attending the excavation of a channel so very circuitous as that described, must be great obstacles to the opinion of its having been made by Canute; and that the greater probability is, that the real direction of Canute's trench was "from Dock head, in a much smaller semicircle, [than the one described,] by St. Margaret's Hill, in Southwark, to St. Saviour's Dock above bridge."

In a letter from Dr. Wallis, dated 24th October, 1669, to Mr. Pepys, is the following passage relating to this ancient trench :-" I had one Sunday preached for Mr. Gataker, at Redriff, and lodged there that night. Next morning, I walked with him over the fields to Lambeth, meaning there to cross the Thames to Westminster. He shewed me, in the passage, diverse remains of the old channel, which had heretofore been made from Redriff to Lambeth, for diverting the Thames whilst London Bridge was building, all in a straight line, or near it, but with great intervals, which had been long since filled up: those remains, which then appeared

In the final division of the kingdom between Edmund and Canute (after several severe battles, in which victory was repeatedly chased from the English standard by the base treachery of Edric Streon, Edmund's foster-father), London was retained by the former, and very soon after, it became the scene of his deplorable assassination, to which Edric had been excited by Canute.* In the following year, the traitorous assassin was himself put to death by order of Canute; but there is a remarkable discrepancy in our old chronicles, as to the manner of his execution. He is said to have been hanged, to have been strangled, to have been beheaded, and to have been struck down by a battle-axe in the royal palace, and his body thrown from the window into the River Thames: the last account appears to be regarded as the most correct.†

very visible, are, I suspect, all, or most of them, filled up before this time, for it is more than fifty years ago, and people in those marshes would be more fond of so much meadow grounds, than to let those lakes remain unfilled; and he told me of many other such remains which had been within his memory, but were then filled up." Vide" Memoirs of Samuel Pepys ;" Correspondence, vol. v. p. 302, 8vo. edit.

* See Turner's "History of the Anglo-Saxons,” vol. i. p. 428, 4to.

+ Ibid. pp. 433 and 434. Stow, in his " Annals," p. 115, referring to Marianus as his authority, speaks thus of Edric: "Some say, hee was tormented to death wyth fire-brandes and linkes. Some say one way, some another; but dispatched he was; for the King feared, through his treason, to

On the death of Edmund the entire sovereignty was claimed by Canute, and eventually awarded to him in a general Council, assembled at London in 1017, and he retained the crown till his decease, in November, 1035. After that event, a Wittenagemot was held at Oxford, to determine on the succession, in which the Lithsmen of London were assembled with the Thanes.*

During the reign of Edward the Confessor, (who had been chosen to succeed his half-brother, Hardicanute, at a general council held in this city, in 1041,) the importance of London was much advanced, and from the circumstance of Edward's erecting a new and splendid Palace at Westminster, and re-building the Abbey Church there, it gradually acquired such high importance as to be thenceforth universally considered as the metropolis of the kingdom.

In the year 1066, after the defeat and death of Harold, Earl Godwin's son, who, by the influence of his father, had been raised to the crown on the decease of Edward, the victorious William the Norman advanced towards London, but a majority of the in

be circumvented of his kingdome, as his predecessors had been before. His bodie hee caused to be layde foorth on the wall of the Citie, there to remayne unburyed to bee seene of all men." See also," Londiniana," vol. iv., p. 35.

Bishop Gibson, in his translation of the Saxon Chronicle, has rendered the appellation Lithsmen by the word Nautæ, or seamen; yet the probability is, that they were rather a superior rank of municipal officers.

habitants having declared for the Saxon, Edgar Atheling (in right of his hereditary descent), through the spirited efforts of the Earls of Mercia and Northumberland, he was opposed, in Southwark, by a detachment which sallied from the City. The assailants were repulsed, with considerable slaughter, by the Norman horse, and Southwark was laid in ashes. But the Londoners still refusing to open their gates, Duke William proceeded along the banks of the Thames, and took post at Wallingford, from which fortress he directed different bodies of his troops to ravage the adjoining counties, and prevent the capital from obtaining supplies.

The Earls Morcar and Edwin still laboured to animate the English people to a determined resistance; but all their endeavours were counteracted by the base counsels of the Clergy, who, with the Archbishops of Canterbury and York at their head, wrought such an effectual opposition, that the frustrated chieftains quitted the City, and retired into the north. Immediately afterwards, the leading prelates repaired to Berkhampstead, and swore fealty to the Duke, as though he had already been their sovereign; and this degrading example having been quickly imitated by many persons of rank and consequence, and, at length, even by Edgar Atheling himself, the Londoners were, at last, drawn into the vortex. A deputation of the Magistracy was appointed to meet the Duke, and to present him with the keys of the City, which he soon afterwards entered. Fearing a sudden reverse, he had a fortress constructed in

haste, and garrisoned it with Norman soldiers.* On the Christmas day following, he was solemnly crowned king of England, at the tomb of Edward the Confessor, in Westminster Abbey; the magistrates of London, conjointly with the prelates and nobility, having, according to Ingulphus, William of Malmesbury, Matthew Paris, and other historians, “invited him" to accept that title.

CHARTER GRANTED TO THE CITY BY WILLIAM THE

CONQUEROR.

This successful Chief, whom the unwary yet valiant conduct of King Harold had been a leading cause of his elevation to the throne, affected, at the commencement of his reign, to govern the kingdom by the principles of justice and clemency. This was done with a view to the consolidation of his power whilst his new subjects were yet unsettled, and unaccustomed to the feudal yoke. One of his earliest measures to conciliate the Londoners was, to grant them a new charter to secure their privileges, which he did in the following terms, in the year 1067, at the solicitation of Geoffrey, Bishop of London, who

* On the re-building of St. Paul's Cathedral, by Maurice, Bishop of London, after its destruction by fire, with great part of the City, in the year 1088, "King William," says Stow," 'gave toward the building of the east end of this church, the choyce stones of his castell, standing neare to the banke of the River Thames, at the west ende of the Citie,"