In the _Conquest of England_ Mr. Green stated the view that Saxon London "grew up on ground from which the Roman city had practically disappeared." He inferred this "from the change in the main line of communication" from Newgate to the bridge. According to Mr. Loftie's last word, given in the Memorial volume of 1899, the London recovered by Alfred was a ruined wall enclosing nothing. The bridge stood much farther down stream than now. To protect it the king built a tower at the south-east corner of the walls. The Roman streets did not exist or were useless. He (why he?) made a road diagonally from the bridge to Westgate. The old Bishopsgate was to the east of the present one, and opened on the road to Essex, etc. My view of Alfred's London is that the Roman city to a large degree continued to exist, and the streets were still maintained, by the new population. Here a Roman mansion with its mosaic floors would still be inhabited. There a portico would be patched with gathered bricks and covered with shingles, while by its side stood a house of wattle and daub. Here was a Roman basilican church, while in another place would be found one of timber and thatch. When a church is distinguished by being called a stone church (like St. Magnus), it is evident that others were less substantial. Garden and tillage filled up wide interspaces. In the Assise of Buildings of 1212 it is said that "in ancient times the greater part of the city was built of wood, and the houses were covered with straw and stubble and the like." Daubers and mudwallers were much in request right through the Middle Age.[175] Roach Smith, who had an expert's knowledge of all the data in regard to Roman London, held that the approach was along High Street, Southwark, that the bridge was on the site of that destroyed about 1830, that Bishopsgate represented one of the chief gates, Aldgate and Ludgate being others, and that the crossing of East Cheap with Gracechurch Street was probably the centre of an earlier and smaller city. Quantities of Roman bricks, he says, have been found re-used in the walls of early houses and churches, and obviously taken from Roman buildings which occupied their sites. It is probable indeed that some Roman buildings were still in use in the Middle Age--for instance, the so-called Chamber of Diana near St. Paul's, and "Belliney's Palace" at Billingsgate. * * * * * _Craft Gilds and Schools._--As far back as we have any body of record to go upon we find that important men in the city were craftsmen--goldsmiths, weavers, dyers, tailors, cobblers, tanners. They held offices and owned land, and the only other class at once large numerically and important in position seems to have been the clergy. Early in the twelfth century the St. Paul's documents twice at least make use of the style "mercator," and still earlier in Anglo-Saxon laws we have Ceipman.