a lofty artificial mound, now known as the Dane John—­another form of the familiar donjon.  The Romans called it Durovernum, a name perhaps derived from the British Derwhern, and although their historians are curiously silent in regard to the place there cannot be any doubt that the town rose to great importance in the later years of the four centuries of the Roman occupation of Britain.  A glance at a map of the Roman roads in Kent shows Durovernum as a centre for five great ways leading from the coast towns of Portus Lemanis (Lymne), Portus Dubris (Dover), Portus Ritupis (Richborough, near Sandwich), Regulbium (Reculver), and also the Isle of Thanet, and from this important centre the Watling Street ran straight to Londinium.  These roads all converge upon the spot where the River Stour became a tidal estuary and where it was fordable, and all who arrived or departed from the ports nearest to Gaul would therefore of necessity pass that way.  Another indication of the size of the town is found in the five Roman burial-places discovered close to Canterbury, and if anything else were needed it is only necessary to look at the walls of St. Augustine’s Abbey and many other buildings of the Middle Ages to see the large quantities of Roman material then available.  Wherever any excavation has taken place in the heart of the present city, the foundations of Roman buildings with tesselated pavements and quantities of pottery, small objects of domestic use, and coins have been brought to light.  These remains are all far beneath the present surface, a most significant fact in relation to the transition period between Roman and Saxon Canterbury.

The Romans having finally abandoned Britain early in the fifth century, the invasions of the Anglo-Saxons began to take a permanent form, and the Jutes gained possession of the south-eastern corner of England.  During the period of struggle between the rival groups of invaders Durovernum must have been entirely abandoned by the Britons, and the conquerors, having reduced the city to a shapeless ruin, appear to have allowed it to become over-grown to such an extent that when, after a lapse of perhaps a whole century, the town was rebuilt, no attempt was made to dig down to the former surface.  The new buildings therefore arose with their foundations some feet above the original level of the Romano-British city.  So complete was the gap between the destroyed Durovernum and the Saxon town which eventually grew up that men had had time to forget the old name, and, finding it necessary to invent one, called it Cantwarabyrig, which meant the city of the men of Kent.  This title reveals the fact that the new settlers had by this time fixed their limits in Kent, and that they had found this site at the junction of all the Roman roads the most convenient for their capital.  It was probably not until Ethelbert had begun to reign in 561 that Canterbury became the most important place in Kent, and at that time the site of the Cathedral was outside the town walls.  Ethelbert, it should be mentioned, had extended his power so far beyond the confines of Kent that he had authority as far north as the Humber, and Bede writes of “the city of Canterbury, which was the metropolis of all his dominions.”