supplied it. Their occupation is one of the oldest, but has now almost disappeared from this country. In the New Forest, however, the charcoal-burners are not even yet extinct. Traces of them exist around London in such place-names as Collier’s Wood, near Merton. The smiths in Saxon London must have been numerous, and, as the evidence points to settlements in and near the city of Northern Goths, who at that time were the greatest metal-workers in Northern Europe, they were probably also skilful.
The Romans finally left Britain about A.D. 430, and, although the settlement of Kent took place before the end of the fifth century, we have no records until the coming of Augustine, and no historical account until the time of Bede, who died in A.D. 735, or three centures after the Roman withdrawal. This early Anglo-Saxon age is the darkest period of our history, and yet it was this period that saw the beginning of the English race, and as such must always be a time of much interest to the people of the Anglo-Saxon stock. As history tells us nothing of this period on the evidence of contemporary writers, we may take what Bede and the writers of the various manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle wrote to be the traditional knowledge of this early Saxon period. We may supplement these accounts by information concerning the various tribes and races which are known to have taken part in the English settlement—or may reasonably be inferred to have participated—their customs, dialects, arts, weapons, race characteristics, and the relics which have been found.
In the Saxon records we first read of London in the year A.D. 457, in which year Bede and the Chronicle tell us the great Battle of Crayford in Kent was fought, and the British fugitives took refuge within the old Roman walls of London of which small parts may still be seen. There are no records of what happened in the city after this battle until the year 604, a century and a half later, when we are told that Augustine hallowed Mellitus as the first Bishop
