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PeiGIn OF THE CITY 27
evidence will be found in Dr. Guest's Celtic Researches (vol. ii. p. 405).
This fort may well have been on the Southwark side of the Thames,
until a bridge had been built, when a second fort would protect the
northern end. We may be
fairly certain, (1) if any king eee
answering to Brutus builta ; pet os
city here, it was of no great
size; (2) Billingsgate is a
name of Saxon, not, like
London, of Celtic origin, for
Billing was more likely an
English alderman than a
British king; (3) in any case,
the British city cannot have
extended all the way from
Billingsgate to Ludgate ;
nor (4) can Ludgate have
been built by King Lud, nor
yet the walls, for London
century later, and, more¬
over, Ludgate is a good old
English word for a postern ;
(5) the Empress Helena is
by no means a mythical
personage, but it is nearly
certain that she was the
daughter, not of a British king, but of an innkeeper in Nicomedia, as
Gibbon has observed, and, except the very ambiguous evidence of some
coins struck in London in her name, there is no proof known to exist