(23) In his new volume London (London, 1914) Sir L. Gomme continues his efforts to prove that English London can trace direct and uninterrupted descent from Roman Londinium. Though, he says (p. 9), 'Roman civilization certainly ceased in Britain with the Anglo-Saxon conquest, ... amidst the wreckage London was able to continue its use of the Roman city constitution in its new position as an English city'. I can only record my conviction that not all his generous enthusiasm provides proof that Roman London survived the coming of the English. The root-error in his arguments is perhaps a failure to realize the Roman side of the argument. He says, for instance, that, though not a 'colonia', Londinium had the rank of 'municipium civium Romanorum'. There is not the least reason to think that it was a 'municipium'. So again, his references to a 'botontinus' on Hampstead Heath (p. 86), to the 'jurisdictional terminus' of Roman London at Mile End (p. 95), to its 'pomerium' (p. 98), its right of forming commercial alliances with other cities, which 'lasted into the Middle Ages and is a direct survival of the system adopted in Roman towns' (p. 101), its position as a 'city-state' and its relation to the choice of Emperors (pp. 105, 130)?all this has nothing to do with the real Londinium; these things did not exist in the Roman town. When Sir Laurence goes on to assert that 'the ritual of St. Paul's down to the seventeenth century preserved the actual rites of the worship of Diana', he again falls short of proof. What part of the ritual and what rites of Diana?10
(24) In the December number of the Journal of the British Archaeological Association (xx. 307) Mr. F. Lambert, of the Guildhall Museum, prints pertinent criticisms of Sir L. Gomme's volume, much in the direction of my preceding paragraphs. He also makes useful observations on Roman London. In particular, he attacks the difficult problem of the date when its town-walls were built. Here he agrees with those who ascribe them to the second century, and for two main reasons. First, he thinks that the occurrence of early Roman potsherds at certain points near the walls proves the town to have grown to its full extent by about A.D. 100. Secondly, he points to the foundations of the Roman gate at Newgate; as they are shallower than those of the adjacent town-walls, he dates the gate after the walls and thus obtains (as he hopes) an early date for the walls. Both points were worth raising, but I doubt if either proves Mr. Lambert's case. For (a) the potsherds come mostly from groups of rubbish-pits?such as those which Mr. Lambert himself has lately done good work in helping to explore?and rubbish-pits, especially in groups, lie rather outside the inhabited areas of towns. Those of London itself suggest to me that the place had not reached its full area by A.D. 100 (see above, p. 23). (b) The Newgate foundations are harder to unravel. As a rule, Roman town-gates had large super-structures and needed stronger foundations than the town-walls. At Newgate, where the superstructure must have been comparatively slender, the published plans show that under a part, at least, of the gate-towers the undisturbed subsoil rises higher than beneath the adjacent town-walls. According to the elevation published by Dr. Norman and Mr. F. W. Reader in Archaeologia lxiii, plate lvii, the wall-builders at this point stopped their deep foundation trenches for the full width of the gateway (98 feet), or at least dug them shallower there. No motive for such action could be conceived except the wish to leave a passage for a gate. There would seem, therefore, to have been an entrance into Roman London at Newgate as early as the building of the walls, and there may have been such an entrance even before the erection of these walls. Dr. Norman has, however, warned me that plate lvii goes much beyond the actual evidence (see plate lvi); practically, we do not know enough to form conjectures of any value on this point.
