the Saxon word for postern must hold the field, especially as the opposite gate in the east wall was called the Postern up to Stow's time. [Illustration: FIG. 23.--THE COMMON SEAL OF LONDON, 1224.] _Ealdredesgate_ and _Cripelegate_ are both named about the year 1000 in Ethelred's Laws (Thorpe). The first is evidently called after one Ealdred. As we have seen above, in p. 79, an excavation outside Aldersgate exposed a section of the old Roman ditch, and gave evidence of a trestle bridge which crossed it from the ancient gate, which consequently must itself have been Roman.[82] Stow says that Cripplesgate is mentioned in a life of St. Edmund, which tells that the Saint's body was brought through this gate about 1010; but see Aldgate above. It is named the postern of Cripplesgata in the Conqueror's charter to St. Martin's. In a slightly later charter it is called Porta Contractorum (Stow).[83] These six, with the South or Bridge Gate, make up the seven historic gates of London, and the conclusion cannot be resisted that they all date back at least to the time when Alfred repaired the walls of the city, and most, if not all of them, to Roman days. Roach Smith held that the principal gates were then Ludgate, Aldgate, and Bishopsgate. Referring to the finding of inscribed stones near to Ludgate, he says that they doubtless belonged to a cemetery which stood outside the gate. Hatton says that some Roman coins were found at Aldgate on its destruction in 1606. Price says that no evidence of the ancient wall having crossed Bishopsgate Street was found when a deep sewer was carried along the street, and hence we may infer a Roman opening in the wall at this point. Direct evidence has been found of Aldersgate, as just said, and Newgate is implied by the evidence of the Roman road found by Wren at St. Mary le Bow. FitzStephen says the city gates were double, and a rough drawing of the city in the MS. Matthew of Paris represents each gate as having two arches (Fig. 22). Stow also says that Aldgate was double. The Roman gates at Chesters and other important posts on Hadrian's Wall have coupled openings between towers containing guard chambers; the great West Gate at Silchester was similar,[84] and we may take this gate as a type for Roman London. We may thus form a very clear idea of what London must have looked like when the Norman Conqueror came and viewed the city walls from the other side of the river, as described by Guy of Amiens.