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ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS NEITHER history nor archaeology has yet put a term to Roman civiHzation in London. Though official intercourse with Rome ceased about 410, it is more than likely that London retained for a time the institutions and culture imposed upon it during the four preceding centuries, and nothing as yet discovered shows that its citizens were immediately driven from their homes by the invading Teuton. The city walls should for some time have withstood such attacks as that which brought Theodosius in hot haste to the rescue in 368 ; and the disaster of that year offers a starting-point for a brief chronological sketch, to serve as a frame for the picture presented by Anglo-Saxon remains in the heart of London. Ammianus Marcellinus, a contemporary historian, states that in 368 London was taken by the Franks or Saxons, who ambushed the Duke of Britain and slew the Count of the Saxon Shore, these being two of the most prominent officials of the province at that period. The city was soon retaken and forti- fied, but, like nearly every other British town, then suffered a total eclipse, and there is no record till 457, in which year Hengist, and tEsc his son, defeated the Britons at Crayford and drove them in flight to London. Much had happened in the interval that we would gladly know : the Saxon had evidently got a firm footing in this country, but it may be inferred that London was still an effective city of refuge, and had not yet succumbed to the invader. Just a century later Gildas, the British Jeremiah, was lamenting the fall of Verulam, a city that in Roman times had ranked above London ; and it is possible that the latter had met its fate in the same period. Such indeed is the view that has commended itself to more than one historian of the city, and may be mentioned here as according with most of the archaeo- logical evidence brought to light. Chester, another great Roman centre, was a desert as late as 894, and London may well have become a ' waste-chester ' (as the English called the deserted military stations of the Romans), untenable by its citizens and tem- porarily unattractive to its enemies. The city that had checked Hengist's pursuit of the flying Britons in 457 seems to have been powerless to prevent the movements of Jute or Saxon along the south bank of the river, and the battle of Wimbledon in 568 may have decided whether one or another Teu- tonic tribe was to dominate the lower Thames. If London had still been a power to reckon with, its capture would have become a necessity at this time ; but the chronicles are silent, and it is under the sovereignty, not of the 147