Stranica 49 [49]
OCR
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, moreover, 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
