Winchester was decaying (for England was now quite united, and the north counted in a way), London was becoming more and more--for with intercommunication commerce was arising, and with the harsh efforts of the German against the eastern heathen the Baltic was acquiring a civilisation; with travel the sea was becoming familiar to others than to pirates, and with the sea the port was growing in position--London was becoming more and more, and was already almost the capital of England. Henry II. was perhaps the last king who thought of Winchester as his chief town. London was to overawe his son; his great-grandson was to make Westminster the centre of the constitution. From Southampton to London the road would remain; the roads from London to Canterbury and to the ports of Kent would grow in importance; but our road, the base of that triangle, would necessarily have decayed: there was less traffic than ever before from west to east, from the Mendips and Cornwall to the Straits. The metals of the Devonian peninsula, and of the Severn valley had lost their economic position, the iron of the Sussex Weald had taken their place. The expeditions to Ireland and the new Scottish problem had removed to Chester and to Lancaster the centres of strategical importance; the same commerce which was giving London its hegemony--I mean the commerce of the Baltic and the North Sea--was developing Orford and King's Lynn, and all East Anglia, and, to a lesser degree, the Humber. The Germanic states had spread so eastward as to draw the life of Gaul also eastward, and to bleed its western promontory; the crossing of the sea between the Cornwalls had lost its old political importance: all combined to kill Winchester, and with Winchester the road from that old capital to Canterbury, when an accident came to preserve that way. This accident was the murder of Thomas à Becket.