?? Ml'" " iiti'f „/"T> 1 r I t.\ ^v< 1 v--? n re ur .-,-¦* I#I^»H -'"'fe - . 'v-lJi? ^iM fw •A>ft i^ m-iir YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY From the Library of SAMUEL W. LAMBERT, Yale '80 The Gift ofhis Children Mrs. Gillet Lefferts Mrs. J. Ogden Bulkley Samuel "W. Lambert, Jr., Yale '19 LOKDON AND WESTMINSTEE: €xlt) mrb Siiburlj. STRANGE EVENTS, CHARACTEEISTICS, AND CHANGES, OF METROPOLITAN LIFE. By JOHN TBIBS, F.S.A. ATITHOB OP "A CESTUEY OF AHEODOTE," " OLUB-LIFE OF LONDON," ETC. IN TWO VOLUMES.— VOL. I. LONDON: EICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STRt^ET, ^Mm^a in ©rbittarj to i«t: gtsjtsig. LONDON : EOBSON AND SON, OEEAT NOBTHEEN PRINTING WORKS, PANCRAS KOAD, K.W, TO THE READER. How different a place London is to different people may, it is hoped, be gathered from these two volumes of records of its chequered life, roving in subject from the age of its early civilisation to our o-wn times. The changeful life of a great city may not inaptly be compared to those countless forms which are presented to us by the turns of that wonderful toy of science, the kaleidoscope. Every phase of human action may be studied by the thoughtful visitor to our vast metropolis as well as by its indweller; whether he takes his stand at that " full-tide of human affairs," Charing-cross, or in the Golden Gallery of St. Paul's Cathedral ; in the broad course of Regent-street, or in the narrow gorge of the Poultry, through which rushes a stream of busy Ufe unmatched in the world's existence — " AVhere, -with like haste, through several -ways they run, Some to undo, and some to be undone." By casting our net in Court and City, we have taken a draught of " the peculiar ways of life and IV TO THE READER. conversation," their respective customs, manners, and interests, and thus insured variety. By glanc ing at London at various periods,- we obtain a sort of moral topography ofthe City, and in these re trospective gleanings sometimes pick up incidents of the past which had been overlooked in the grand scramble of the present. To show how London was victualled in the Plantagenet times may not be unprofitable to those who have their being in the Victorian era. And to trace the ladder of life in the golden fortunes of London's Lord Mayors — from the Norman magnate who chopped off the head of a noisy rogue whom he was otherwise unable to reduce to silence — ^may convey many a useful lesson in contrast with the milder measures of the Mayors of our time, who are soundly rated for riding in a " gingerbread coach," though it is painted with moral lessons as thickly as the engravings in an illustrated chronicle of our time. There is, too, in each round of this civic ladder that sort of teaching by example which, in the phrase of our day, is the most profitable kind of " self-help." In contrast with these bright pictures, we have here some of the darker scenes of the great Town, in the lives of its dangerous classes — as in Tuttle-fields of other days; the Trials by Battle; the " Hea-vy Hill," and Hangings ; the Rogueries of old Clerkenwell, and its loose population, and TO THE READER. V nesting-places of cruelty and crime; in barbarous punishment ; and that " most celebrated place. Where angry Justice sho-ws her a-wful face." We miss the " Golden Globe, the gilded pill," — would that all were blank " before the Debtors' door" ! How many public buildings of our metropolis are landmarks in its history, ^ — as Guildhall and Crosby-place; St. James's Palace and old Savile House ; Temple Bar and our Inns of Court ; to say nothing of the historic Inns of Southwark ; and the abodes of many persons of note, swept away for the site of a new Palace of Justice ! And here we may notice that of the clearances for the great metro politan improvements now in progress, especial note is taken in these volumes, so as to invest the locali ties with an interest beyond that of the dry bones of history. Meanwhile, topics of lighter anecdotic variety have not been overlooked in these volumes, so as to make them cared for beyond the moment, more especially if the reader who is thoughtful in tho roughfares turns his philosophy to such account as did the graceful and polished Bishop Berkeley. "When I walk the streets," said Berkeley, "I use the following natural maxim (viz. that he is the true possessor of a thing who enjoys it, and not he TO THE READER. that owns it without the enjoyment of it), to con vince myself that I have a property in the gay part of all the gilt chariots that I meet, which I regard as amusements designed to delight my eyes, and the imagination of those kind people who sit in them gaUy attired only to please me. I have a real, and they only an imaginary, pleasure from their exterior embellishments. Upon the same principle I have discovered that I am the natural proprietor of all the diamond necklaces, the crosses, stars, brocades, and embroidered clothes which I see at a play or birth-night, as giving more natural delight to the spectator than to those that wear them. And I look upon the beaux and ladies as so many paro quets in an aviary or tulips in a garden, designed purely for my diversion. A gallery of pictures, a cabinet, or a library, that I have free access to, I think my o-wn. In a word, all that I desire is the use of things ; let them who wiU have the keeping of them. By which maxim I am grown one of the richest men in Great Britain; and with this dif ference, that I am not a prey to my own cares, or the envy of others." Fine philosophy this wherewith to walk through London, and to enjoy the Sights and Shows bf our province covered with houses ! CONTENTS OF VOL. I. PAGE Lord Mayors and memorable Mayoralties . . . i The Lord Mayor at the Accession of Queen Victoria . 68 The Lord Mayor's State- Coach 74 Civic Curiosities 77 s-wan-upping on the thames 79 Memorials of the Danes in London 84 Victualling Plantagenet London 86 London in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries , 91 London in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth . . . . loa London IN THE Ebign OF Charles 1 119 The Great Fire op London 124 Historic Inns of Southwark 129 Tothill-fields in former Days 142 Sa-vllb House AND Leicester-square 154 Cblbbbatbd Residents on the nb-w Courts-of-Justice Site 172 INNS-OF- Court Dinners 183 Living IN Chambers 189 Cowper in the Temple 227 " The Flock of Slaughter" 231 Members expelled the House of Commons . . .235 Trials by Battle 238 Vlll CONTENTS OF VOL I. PAGE Degradation of a Knight 246 The Sanctuary of St. Mabtin's-le- Grand . . . .247 Old Tavben Sharping 251 Burnings in Smithfield 254 The Eevolution Plot in Bloomsbury 263 Black Spots IN Clerkenwell 266 Up " THE Heavy Hill" 284 The St. Giles's and Tyburn Gallows 294 Some Account of Jack Ketch 296 Resuscitation after Hanging 307 A School for Thieves 310 Jack Sheppard — from the Pulpit 312 Jonathan Wild the Great 315 Hogarth's " London Apprentices," or " Industry and Idleness" 319 ¦ **¦* Page 62. Since this page was printed, the honour of Knight hood has been conferred upon Alderman Eose. LONDON AND WESTMINSTER: CITT AND SUBURB, LORD MAYORS AND MEMOEABLE MAYORALTIES. flHERE is no portion of English history that possesses such popular interest as the muni cipal records of the chief city of the Idng- dom, which for nearly eight centuries has been recognised as a subsisting community, -with a chief magistrate dignified as the portgerefa, portgrave, or sheriff of the port, provost or bailiff, mayor, and lord mayor. The word grave, in Saxon, signifies earl or count ; " and thence," says Stow, " is the reason of the sword being carried before him;" and according to a paper in the Edinburgh Revieio, " the common-law portreeve was anciently a member of parliament by ¦virtue of his ofiice, and without any special election." Lists of these officers, -with marginal notes of events and woodcuts, may be seen in the Oorporation library at Guildhall ; and here is kept the charter granted to the City by William the Conqueror in 1067. It is beautifully -written in Saxon characters, in about four VOL. I. B 2 LORD MAYORS AND lines, upon a slip of parchment six inches long and one broad. The title Maire (Norman) soon became Englished as Mayor. The prefix of Lord is referred to the same period ; but this is a mere courtesy, for in his o-wn acts he designates himself ofS ciaily as Mayor. The style of " Eight Honourable" is also a com'tesy, and not a right from his being a Privy Councillor. Godfrey Fielding, mercer. Lord Mayor 1452, was made a privy councillor by Henry VI. This is the earliest instance of a person of his rank being advanced to such an honour. Though the ofiice of Mayor is only elective, yet its authority ceases neither on the demise nor abdication ofthe sovereign, as does that of other commissions when this happens ; but the Lord Mayor is then the principal ofiicer in the kingdom, and takes his place in the Pri-vy Council until the new sovereign is proclaimed. Thus, when James I. was invited to take possession of the throne, Robert Lee, then Lord Mayor, signed the in- "vitation before all the great ofiicers of state and the nobility.* In early times, the power of the Mayor was tremen dous. The Eoman prefect and the SaXon portreeve hequeathed a portion of their power as well as duties to the Norman Mayor of London. We have an in stance of this in the circumstance of a city riot in the very olden time. The Mayor was engaged in what vsrould be tantamount in these days to reading the Eiot Act, in which occupation he was opposed by a violent fellow, whom his worship was unable to reduce to silence, * Upon the aooession of Queen Victoria, in 1837, her Majesty's first Council, at Kensington-palace, was attended by the then Lord Mayor, Kelly, whose portrait is in the picture of the CouncU painted by Sir David Wilkie. MEMORABLE MAYORALTIES. 8 till he resorted to a very summary process, that of order ing the noisy rogue to be dragged mto a neighbouring street, where he had his head chopped off'! In 1189 (1st Eichard I.), Henry Fitz-Ailwyn, the draper of London Stone, was elected the first Mayor; he was probably descended from Aylwyn Child, a native of London, who founded the priory of Bermondsey in 1082. But the mayoralty was first given in terms to the citizens by Kmg John in 1214-15, on condition that the Mayor should be presented to the king or his justice for approval. This condition occasioning great expense and inconvenience, the citizens obtained from Henry HI. in 1266-67 a new charter, empowering them to present their Mayor to the " Barons ofthe Exchequer at Westminster," -when the Idng should not be there. Hence the presenta tions to the Lord Chancellor, as representative of the sovereign, on Nov. 2 ; and to the Barons of the Exche quer on Nov. 9, the first day of the mayoralty. The ofiice at this time was held for life. Thus, Fitz-Ail-wyn served twenty-five years, and his successor, Eichard Eenger, four years. Of Fitz-Aihvyn there is a half-length portrait, or panel, over the Master's chair in Drapers' Hall: it is painted in oil, and therefore not contemporary. " This," says Pennant, " I need not say is a fictitious likeness. In his days I doubt whether the artists equalled in any degree the worst of our mo dern sign-painters." 1240. The presentation of the Mayor to the king appears to have been sometimes a troublesome affair. Thus, in this year Gerard Bat was chosen Mayor a second time, and with him certain of the citizens pro ceeded to the palace of Woodstock (the site of which is now denoted by a few trees in the park at Blenheim), for the purpose of presenting him, " And," says the 4 LOED MAYOES AND Chronicles of the Mayors and Sheriffs of London, " his lordship the king [Henry IIL] declined to admit him [to the mayoralty] there, or before he had come to London. And qn the third day after, upon the Idng's arrival there, he admitted him ; and after the oath had been administered to him, that he would restore every thing that had before been taken and received, and would not receive the forty pounds which the Mayors had pre-wously been wont to receive from thc City, the Mayor said, when taking his departure, ' Alas, my lord, out of all this I might have found a marriage-portion to give my daughter !' For this reason the king was moved to anger, and forthwith swore upon the altar of Saint Stephen, by Saint Edward, and by the oath which he that day took upon that altar, and sai-d, ' Thou shalt not be Mayor this year ; and for a very little I would say never. Go, now,' he said. Gerard hereupon, not car ing to have the king's ill-will, resigned the mayoralty, and Eeginald de Bunge^ was appointed Mayor of Lon don." Considering the distance of Woodstock from London, and the slow travelling of six centuries since, this must, have been a long journey, and a sad disap pointment to Gerard Bat. 1264. Upon the Mayor and Aldermen doing fealty to the king (Henry III.) in the church of St. Paul, we find, in the Chronicles of Magyars and Sheriffs, this mar ginal note : " Then those who were present might see a thing wondrous and unheard of in this age ; for this most -wretched Mayor, when taking the oath, dared to utter words so rash as these, saying unto his lordship the king, in presence of the people, ' My lord, so long as you unto us will be a good lord and king, we will be faithful and duteous unto you.' " This we take to be pretty strong for the thirteenth century ! MEMOEABLE MAYORALTIES. 5 1275-1282. Gregory Rokesley, Mayor in tliese years, lived in Milk-street, in a house belonging to the priory of Lewes, in Sussex. He was tenant-at-will, and paid an annual rent of twenty shilhngs, without being liable to reparations and other charges. " Such," observes Stow^, " were the events of those times." These were, however, troubled times; for in 1265 Henry III. seized and imprisoned the Mayor and prin cipal citizens for fortifying the City in favour of the barons ; and for four years the king appointed custodes. But the City recovered their liberties, and again elected their Mayors until 1285, when Sir Gregory Eokesley, the then Mayor, refusing to appear at the Tower be fore the king's justices, conceiving himself not bound to go out of the City, the mayoralty and liberties were again seized into the king's hands ; and after the City had been some months without a Mayor, two custodes were appointed, and held ofiice until 1298, when Henry Walleis was elected and served the mayoralty. The custos had extraordinary powers over the City, to chastise it, and to amerce and chastise the aldermen and sheriff's and their servants, when disobedient. Thence the office of Mayor has continued in constant succession, only the election appears to have been sometimes guided by the king's nomination. An exception, however, occurred in 1391 (15 Eic. n.), when the Mayor of London, incur ring the king's displeasure, was sent a prisoner to Wind sor Castle, and a custos appointed. The mayoralty was also " in the Idng's hands" in the reign of Edward IL, •when he appointed Sir Nicholas Farindon Mayor " as long as it pleased him." And the Aldermanry having become the personal property of William de Farndon, and it ha-ving been retained in the family for fourscore and two years, they called the lands after their own 6 ' LOED MAYORS AND name. The consideration named in 1277 was, besides twenty marks as a fine, one clove or shp of gillifiower at the feast of Easter, as the warranty against all people for ever. The gillifiower was a fiower of great rarity. The custom of the time was the payment of a particular fiower for tenements or lands ; for we find on March 20, the eighteenth year of the reign of Elizabeth, there -was paid a red rose for the gatehouse and garden of Ely Pa lace, Holborn, and the liberty of the Bishop of Ely, who granted the same, of gathering twenty bushels of roses yearly in the same. At the present time no other Ward in the City is known by the name of an indi-vidual, probably because the Farndons were owners, and other persons were only residents and representatives ; but at one time Vintry was called the Ward of Henry de Coventrie, and the Ward of Candlewick-street was the Ward of Thomas de Bayling. In process of time Farndon's Ward became Faryngdon Ward, and then Farringdon. Farindon lived to a great age, as he witnessed several deeds in the year 1363. His -will is dated 1361, fifty- three years after his first being Mayor. He first occurs as Warden ofthe Goldsmiths' Company in 1338, and for the last time in 1352. He wag buried in St. Peter-le- Chepe, then standing at the corner of Wood - street, Cheapside, but being burnt in the Great Fire 1666, was never rebuilt. A noble plane-tree, often tenanted by rooks, and a graveyard beneath, tells ns the site of the ancient church. An entry in the Goldsmiths' books, 10 Henry VIII. (1519) shows that "Nicholas Farring ton gave out of his lands in the parish of St. Peter-le- Chepe towards maintaining a light, to be burning before our Lady there for ever, 45." The mayoralty of 1339, Andrew Aubrey, had a tur- MEMORABLE MAYORALTIES. 7 bulent incident; for his worship was assaulted in a tumult, the ringleaders of which were tried and con victed, and beheaded in Cheapside. Henry Picard, Mayor in 1356, had a briUiant event,, for he feasted in one day the Idngs Edward III. of England, John King of Austria, the King of Cyprus, and David King of Scotland, besides Edward the Black Prince. Sir WnUam. Walworth, M.P., who was Mayor in 1374 and 1380, m his second year slew Wat Tyler in Smithfield. Walworth was a brave fishmonger, and at the Company's Hall, London Bridge, are preserved some memorials of him ; as a statue, carved in wood by E. Pierce, of Sir William, who carries a dagger. In his hand was formerly said to be the identical weapon with which he stabbed Wat Tyler, though in 1731 a pubhcan of Islington pretended to possess the actual poniard. Beneath the statue is the inscription : " Brave Walworth, knight, lord mayor, y' slew Rebellious Tyler in his alarmes ; The King, therefore, did give in liew The dagger to the City armes. In the 4th year of Richard II. anno Domini 1381." A common but erroneous belief was thus propagated; for the dagger was in the City arms long before the time of Sir William Walworth, and was intended to represent the sword of St. Paul, the patron saint of the Corporation. The reputed dagger of Walworth, -which has lost its guard, is preserved by the Company; the workmanship is of Walworth's period. The weapon now in the hand of the statue (wliich is somewhat pic turesque, and in our recollection was coloured en cos tume), is modern.. Here, too, is Walworth's funeral paU, The will of Walworth sho-ws, in the catalogue of hia books, the sort of reading usual with the great citi- 8 LORD MAYORS AND zeiis of the metropolis in the fourteenth century. The Walworths held the manor of that name in the four teenth and fifteenth centuries ; and we remember a sign in the Walworth-road of Sir William Walworth des patching Wat Tyler. This tragical event has, however, waned in the historic distance; it appearing that Wat had destroyed several of the stew-houses on the Bank- side, and had thus seriously injured the property of Walworth, which is thought to have had some weight with Sir William when he gave the rebel the deadly blow. On his monimient in St. Michael's Church were the following lines, which Weever has preserved : " Here under lyeth a man of fame, -William Walworth called by name ; Fishmonger he was in lifetime here, And lived Lord Mayor, as in books appear ; Who with courage stout and manly might Slew Wat Tyler in King Richard's sight ; For which act done and true intent The King made him Knight incontinent ; And gave him arms, as here you see. To declare his fact and chivalry. He left this life the year of our Lord Thirteen hundred fourscore three and odd." In a pageant in 1740 was a personation of Wal worth, dagger in hand, and the head of Wat Tyler carried on a pole. Here, too, is an original drawing of a portion of the pageant exhibited by the Company when Sir John Leman, a fishmonger, entered on the oflace of Lord Mayor, said to be the earliest representa tion of a mayoralty show in existence. The groups and objects, grotesque as weU as picturesque, in this pro cession show oiu? present realisation of a lord mayor's show to be but a very frigid and formal business. Beneath the picture . hangs a drawing of the Com- MEMOEABLE MAYORALTIES. 9 pany's state barge, whose "golden glister" on the fish- ful river now exists but in memory. Curious it is to look back at the empty enactment of five hundred years since, " that no fishmonger be Lord Mayor of this city," and contrast it with the records which show that more than fifty of the Company have been Lord Mayors. Stow tells us of " these Fishmongers having been jolly citizens, and six Mayors of then- Company in the space of twenty-four years;" and in our time Sir Matthew Wood and Mr. WiUiam Cubitt, fishmongers, each fiUed the civic chair twice. The prefix of lord to mayor is traced to Walworth's time. A subsidy was needed for a war in 1378, when there was a general assessment according to the rank of the individual. A question arose as to the proper posi tion of the Mayor of London in the table of precedency. " Have him among the earls" was a suggestion readily adopted ; and in consequence of the honour, my lord was assessed at four pounds, which in present value caused him to contribute little less than 1001. to the exigencies of the war. There is an old Philpot-lane m Fenchurch-street, where dwelt Sir John Philpot, its owner ; he was Lord Mayor in 1378, in which year, by the way, he captured Mercer, a Scottish sea-rover, a red-letter boast for his mayoralty. In the previous year Philpot, with William Walworth, held the funds to support the war against France; and old FuUer calls Philpot "the scourge of the Scots, the fright of the French, the delight of the Commons, the darling of the merchants." 1401. Sir John Chadworth, or Shadworth, Mayor, is buried in the Church of St. Mildred, Bread-street, and has this "obite consecrated to his happye memo- riall: W LOED MAYOES Al^TD " Here lyeth a man that faith ahd works did even. Like fiery chariots, mount him up to heaven ; He did adorn this church ; when words are weak, And men forget, the living stones will speak. He left us land,— this little earth him keeps ; These black words mourners, and the marble weeps." 1426. Sir John Eainwell, Mayor, is buried in St. Botolph's Church, BiUingsgate, beneath a tomb bearing this epitaph : " Citizens of London, call to remembrance The famous John Eainwell, sometime your Mayor, Of the staple of Calice, so was his chance. Here lies now his corpse ; his soul bright and f air Is taken to heaven's bliss, thereof is no despair ; His acts bear witness, by matters of accord, How charitable he was, and of what record : No man hath been so beneficial as he Unto the City in giving liberally," &o. He was a samianaw. Mayor; for having received in formation that the Lombard merchants were guilty of adulterating their wines, and finding the charge to be true, he ordered the vile compound, to the quantity of 150 butts, to be emptied into the kennel. 1445. Sir Simon Eyre, Mayor, left 3000 marks (3000Z. sterling) to the Company of Drapers, for prayers to be performed by a priest in his chapel at GuildliaJl,. to the market-people. In a small pamphlet, entitled^ Singular History of Sir Simon .Eyre, Shoemaker,. Lord Mayor of London, and Founder of Leadenhall, it is re lated that when it was proposed to him at GuUdhall that. he should stand for sheriif, he would fain have excused himself, as he did not think his income sufficient ; but he was soon, silenced, by one of the aldermen obsei-ving, " that nO' citizen could be more capable than, the man. who had. openly asserted that he broke his fast every day on a table for which he would not take a thousand. MEMORABLE MAYORALTIES. II pounds.' This assertion excited the cm'iosity of the then Lord Mayor and all present, in consequence of wliich his lordship and two of the aldermen — ha-ving imited themselves — accompanied him home to dinner. On their arrival, T\Ir. Eyre desired his wife to ' prepare the little table and set some refreshments before his guests.' This she would fain have refused, but finding he would take no excuse, she seated herself on a low stool, and spread ing a damask napkin over her lap, with a venison pasty thereon, Simon exclaimed to the astonished Mayor and his bretliren, ' Behold the table which I would not take a thousand pounds for !'"...." Soon after this, Sir Simon was chosen Lord Mayor, on which occasion, re membering his former promise ' at the conduit,' he, on the following Shrove Tuesday, gave a pancake feast to aU the 'prentices in London; on which occasion they went in procession to the Mansion House, where they" met -with a cordial reception from Sir Simon and his lady, who did the honours of the table on this memorable day, allowing their guests to want for neither ale_ nor ¦wine." Sir Eichard Whittington, the most reno-wned name in ci-vic annals, was "thrice Lord Mayor" — 1397, 1406, 1419.* He was the son of Sir WiUiam Whittington, Knight, and his early destitution rests but upon the nursery tale. His prosperity is referred to the coal- carrying cat of Newcastle ; but a scarce print by El- strucke, of Whittington in his mayoralty robes, has a. cat beside the figure, showing the version of J;he nursery tale to have been then popular : in the early impressions^ of this plate a skull appears in place of the cat, which ''' He is sometimes said to have been four times Mayor, his pre decessor dying in his year of office 1396, when Whittington succeeded him. 12 LORD MAYORS AND has rendered the original print a rarity of great price among collectors. Whittington's wealth rebuilt Ne-SN'- gate, and St. Michael's Church, Paternoster Eoyal; part of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, the library of Christ's Hospital, and added to the Guildhall. He also bequeathed his house at " College-hill" for a college and almshouse, which have been taken down, and the insti tution removed to a handsome collegiate building near Highgate-archway, not far from the stone marking the spot whereon tradition states Wliittington to have rested when a poor boy and listened to the bells of Bow ; the original stone (removed in 1821) is said to have been set up by desire of Whittington, to assist horsemen to mount at the foot of the hill ; but it is thought to have been the base of a wayside cross, and to have been appropriated for the story. Whittington was buried in St. Michael's Church, beneath a costly marble tomb ; but his remains were twice disturbed before the church was destroyed by fire, and now there is no olden me morial of Whittington to be traced. Whittington was of the Mercers' Company ; his will, preserved at Mer cers' Hall, bears a curious illumination of Whittington on his death-bed, his three executors, a priest, &c. Eecently, a painted-glass window, a memorial to Whittington, has been set up in St. Michael's Church. 1418. Sir William de Sevenoake, Mayor this year, rose from poverty to opulence. According to Lambarde, in his Perambulation of Kent, De Sevenoake was deserted by his parents when a boy, and found lying in the streets. By some charitable persons he was brought up, and ap prenticed to a grocer in London. " He arose by degrees to be maior and chief majistrate of that citie." Pie was Imighted by Henry VT., and represented that city in ParUament. After accumulating immense wealth, he MEMOEABLE MAYORALTIES. l.S died in 1432, and was buried in St. Martin's Church, Ludgate Hill. 1453. Sir John Norman, Mayor, "rowed to West minster, with silver oars, at his own cost and charges." In the Show, which had originated in the presentation, the jNIayor had hitherto ridden on horseback. There is a di-awing of the Show on the river in the Pepysian library. Fabyan, inthe second volume ofhis Chronicles, ed. 1559, alludes to a " roundell or songe" made by the watermen in praise of Sir John Norman, who, instead of riding to Westminster, lUie his predecessors, "was rowed thither by water." All that the chronicler gives of the song are the well-known Unes : " Eowe the bote, Norman, Eowe to thy lemman;" but Dr. Eimbault believes that he has found the omginal music to whicll it was sung : it is in John Hilton's Catch that catch can, printed in 1673. 1455. Sir Stephen Foster, of the Fishmongers' Com pany, Mayor; he rebuilt Ludgate prison. His early poverty may be as traditional as Whittington's. Eow- ley's comedy of A Woman never vext, or the Widow of Cornhill, is founded upon the tradition of the handsome Stephen Foster, 1454, begging at the grate of Ludgate, and attractmg the sympathy of a rich -widow, who paid the debt for which he was confined, and afterwards mar ried him. " Mrs. 8. Foster. But why remove the prisoners from Ludgate? Stephen Foster. To take the prison down and build it new. With leads to walk on, chambers large and fair ; For when myself lay there, the noxious air Choked up my spirits. None but captives, wife. Can know what captives feel." Act v. sc. I. Between 1454 and 1463 the prison was much enlarged. 14 LOED MAYOES AND and a chapel built by Dame Agnes Foster and the executors of Stephen her husband, as thus recorded on a copper-plate upon the walls : " Deout soules that passe this way, for Stephen Foster, late Maior, heartily pray. And Dame Agnes, his spouse, to God consecrate, that of pitie this house made of Londoners in Ludgate, So that for lodging and roater prisoners here nought pay, as their keepers shall all answere at dreiadful doomes day." At the rebmlding of Ludgate in 1566, "the verse being unhappily turned inward to the wall," Stow tells ns he had the like " graven outward in prose, declaring him (Foster) to be a fishmonger, because some upon a light occasion (as a maiden's head in a glass window) had fabled him to be a mercer, and to have begged there at Ludgate," &c. 1457. Sir GeofFry BuUen, Lord Mayor, was grand father to Thomas Earl of Wiltshire, father to Anne BuUen, and grandfather to Queen Elizabeth ; the highest genealogical honour the City can boast of. Thomas Moule, the genealogist, says : " The ennobled families of CornwaUis, Capel, Coventry, Legge, Cowper, Thynne, Ward, Craven, Marsham, Pulteney, Hill, Holies, Os borne, Cavendish, Bennet, and others, have sprung either directly or collaterally from those who have been either Mayors, sheriffs, or aldermen, of London ; and a very large portion of the peerage of the United Eang- dom is related, either by descent or intermarriage, to the citizens of the metropolis." 1479. When England was ravaged by a pestilence, and Bartholomew James was Mayor, Sheriff Byfield, kneeUng too closely to the chief magistrate, at prayer, before one of the shrines in St. Paul's, was fined 501., now equal to lOOOZ. This has been set down to the MEMOEABLE MAYOEALTIES. 15 Mayor's grandeur ; but " the plague was about, and the Mayor might have caught it ; and the City lacked con duits : and so the fine was le-ded, and therewith new conduits -were built, or old ones repaired." 1482. Sir Eichard Spaa, Mayor, King Eichard the Third's merchant, to whom he sold much of his plate. A few Lord Mayors were brave men : Sir Walter Horne, Mayor in 1487, was knighted on Bosworth Field by Henry VH. 1485. There were three Mayors, the first two ha-ving died of the sweating sickness, which made its first ap pearance in this country in the army of the Earl of Eichmond, on his landing at Milford Haven: on Sep tember 21, same year, it reached London, where it raged till the latter end of October. 1486 and 1495. Sir Henry Colet, father of Dean Colet, who founded St. Paul's School. In the first mayoralty, 1486, John Percival, the Mayor's carver, while waiting at his table, was chosen one of the sheriff's by Sir Llenry Colet, the Mayor, drinking to him in a cup of wine (as the custom was to drink to hitn whom he list to serve sheriff) ; and forthwith the said Percival sat down at the Mayor's table, and was afterwards mayor himself, in 1498. 1490. Sir John Matthew, stated to have been the first bachelor Lord Mayor. 1502. Sir John Shaw, who gave, in the GuUdhall, the first Mayor's feast, . hitherto kept in the Merchant Tailors' and Grocers' Halls. The great kitchen at Guildhall was built at his expense. 1520. Sir John Brugges (Brydges), Mayor, of a family as old as the Conquest ; his ancestor. Sir John Brydges, fought at Agincourt. 1537. -Sir Eichard Gresham, Mayor, father ofthe ]G LOED MAYOES AND celebrated Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Eoyal Exchange. Eleven letters of his ancestor, James Gres ham, lord of the manor of East Beckham, -written be tween the years 1443 and 1464, have been published among those of the Paston family. They are dated from London, and sealed -with a grasshopper ; a sufiicient refutation, by the way, of an idle tradition accounting for the adoption of that heraldic symbol by Sir Thomas Gresham, which ]\Ir. Lodge, in his Portraits of Illus trious Personages, has not thought undeserving of notice (Burgon's Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham, vol. i. p. 7). There are known to exist four letters of Sir Eichard, three of which were written during his mayor alty ; each being, in its way, highly interesting, impor tant, and characteristic. With Sir Eichard Gresham rests the honour of having originally projected the " goodely burse," which his son, thirty years later, con structed. 1546. Sir Martin Bowes, Mayor, the wealthy gold smith who lent Llenry VIII. the sum of 300L He -was butler at the coronation of Elizabeth, and left to the Goldsmiths' Company his gold fee-cup, out of which the Queen drank. In the portrait of Sir Martin attri buted to Holbein, at Goldsmiths' Hall, this cup is in troduced. 1547. Sir John Gresham, Mayor, brother of Sir Eichard Gresham, and uncle to the founder of the Eoyal Exchange. Sir John succeeded in obtaining from Henry VIH. the hospital of St. Mary Bethlem, which has continued ever since in the hands of the Corporation of London, as an asylum for lunatics. In his mayoralty Sir John Gresham revived the splendid pageant of the Marching Watch, on the eves of St. John and St. Peter ; and what rendered it particularly attractive on this oc- MEMORABLE MAYOEALTIES. IT casion was an accession of " more than 300 demi-launces and light horsemen, that were prepared by the citizens to be sent into Scotland." In proof of the interest this pageant excited. Stow relates that Henry VIII. and his Queen, Jane Seymour, "stood in Mercers' Hall, and saw the Watch of the City most bravely set out," during the mayoralty of his privy-counsellor. Sir John Aleyn. 1551. Sir Andrew Judde, a native of Tunbridge, was advanced to the mayoralty : he bequeathed part of his wealth to found a public school in his birth-place. Among his bequests were "the sandhills on the back side of Holborn," v/hich then let for a few pounds a year, but are now covered with houses. In about thirty-five years the rental of this estate alone will ex ceed 20,000/. a year. Sir Andrew is buried in the church of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, beneath a marble monument, which bears this inscription : " To Russia and Muscovia, To Spayne, Germany, without fable, Travelled he by land and sea, Both Mayre of London and Staple. The commonwealth he nourished So worthelie in all his dayes. That eoh state full well him lov'd. To his perpetual prayse. Three wives he had, — one was Mary, Fower sunnes, one mayde he had by her ; Anny had none by him truly ; By dame Mary he'd only one daughter. Thus in the month of September, A thousande fyve hundred fiftey And eyght, dyed this worthy stapler, Worshipyinge his posterytye." 1553. Sir Thomas White, Mayor, founder of St. VOL. L 0 18 LOED MAYOES AND John's College, Oxford. He was the son of a retired clothier, and his education did not exceed writing and arithmetic. At the age of twelve he was apprenticed to a London tradesman, who bequeathed to him lOOZ., then a handsome legacy, to begin the world with. In a few years he rose to great wealth and honour. He so dis tinguished himself in his mayoralty by preserving the peace of the City during Sir Thomas Wyat's rebeUion, that Queen Mary conferred on him knighthood. He was t-wice married, his second wife being Joan, the widow of Sir Ealph Warren, t-wice Lord Mayor. Sir Thomas White's Show was a very splendid pageant. He went to take his oath at Westminster, and proceeded by water, attended by aU the aldermen in scarlet, and the crafts of London in their best liveries, with trumpets blowing, and the waits playing. A goodly foist, trimmed with banners and guns, waited on my Lord Mayor's barge, and all the crafts' barges -with streamers, and the banners of every craft. So to the Exchequer, and then homewards. They landed at Bay- nard's Castle; and in St. Paul's Churchyard the pro cession was set in array. " First went two tall men bearing two great standards of the Merchant Taylors' arms ; then came a drum and a fiute playing, and an other with a great [fifel], all in blue silk; then two wild men of the wood, all in green, -with great beards, great clubs, and burning squibs, and two targets on their backs ; then came sixteen trumpeters, blowing ; and then seventy men ia [blue] gowns, caps, and hose, and blue-silk sleeves, every man ha-ving a target and a javelin ; then came a devil ; next the bachelors, all in a livery and scarlet hoods ; and then the pageant of St. John the Baptist (the patron saint of the Merchant Taylors, Sir Thomas's Company), gorgeously arrayed, with goodly MEMOEABLE MAYOEALTIES. 19 speeches ; then all the Idng's trumpeters blo-wing, each having scarlet caps ; then the waits of the City playuig, -with caps and goodly banners ; then the crafts ; then my Lord Mayor's officers ; and then my Lord Mayor, and two good henchmen (since supplied by the sword- bearer and the common crier, the latter carrying the mace) ; and then all the aldermen and the sheriffs. So they went to dinner. After dinner, they repaired to St. Paul's, where aU they that before bare targets carried staff'-torches ; and with all the trumpets and waits, passed round about the quire and the body of the church blo-wing, and so home to the Lord Mayor's house." In one of the pageants of Sir John Gore's mayoralty, 1624, by Webster, the munificence of Sir T. White was thus commemorated : " The fourth eminent pageant, the Monument of Charity and Learning, is fashioned like a beautiful garden, with all kinds of flowers ; at the four corners, four artificial bird-cages, with variety of birds in them." In the midst of this garden, under an elm-tree, sits Sir Thomas White, Mayor, who founded St. John's College, Oxford, upon a spot "where two bodies of an elm sprang from one root," according to a dream that so directed him, and which occasioned him to visit Cambridge, where he could find no such tree ; and make a mistake at Oxford, where he thought he found it in Gloster Llall Garden, and immediately set to work to enlarge and endow that college ; but discover ing the very Jree " out at the north gate at Oxford," as he rode there one day, on that spot he founded St. John's CoUege. " This I have heard," says Webster, " fellows of the house, of approved credit, and no way superstitiously given, affirm to have been delivered from man to man, since the first building of it;" and "to this day the elm grows in the garden carefully preserved." On one side 20 LOED MAYOES AND of Sir Thomas sits Charity, with a peUcan on her head ; on the other. Learning, with a book in one hand and a laurel wreath in the other ; behind is a model of St. John's College, " and round about the pageant sit twelve of the four-and-twenty cities to which this worthy gen tleman hath been a benefactor." Two cornets play, and Learning addresses the Mayor. 1559. Sir WUham Hewet, clothworker. Mayor, was a merchant, possessed of a great estate of 6000Z. per annum, and was said to have had three sons and one daughter, Anne, to which daughter this mischance hap pened, the father then living upon London Bridge. The maid, playing with her out of a window over the river Thames, by chance dropped her in, almost beyond expectation of her being saved. A young gentleman named Osborne, then apprentice to Sir WiUiam the father, which Osborne was one of the ancestors of the Duke of Leeds in a direct line, at this calamitous acci dent leaped in .and saved the child. In memory of this deUverance, and in gratitude, her father afterwards be stowed her on the said Mr. Osborne, with a very great dowry. Several persons of quality courted the young lady, and particularly the Earl of Shrewsbury ; but Sir Wil liam Hewet said, " Osborne saved her, and Osborne should enjoy her." The Leeds family preserve the portrait of Sir William, in his costume as Lord Mayor, at Kiveton House, in Yorkshire. It is a fine picture, valued at 300Z. It is a half-length, in panel : his dress is a black go-wn, furred, and red vest and sleeves; a gold chain, and a bonnet. There is also an engraved portrait of Osborne himself, said to be unique, in a series of woodcuts in the possession of Sir John St. Aubyn, Bart. They con sist of portraits of forty-three Lord Mayors in the time of Queen Ehzabeth. The gallant action of Osborne has MEMOEABLE MAYORALTIES. 21 likewise been engraved for some ephemeral publication : he is leaping from a window. The artist, Samuel Wale, died in 1786, so that the print is of Uttle authority as a representation of the fact ; but it is nevertheless inte resting as a portraiture of the dwelhngs on London Bridge in his time. There is also a print drawn by Wale, and engraved by Grignon, of the first Duke of Leeds pointing to a portrait of Hewet's daughter, and relating the anecdote to King Charles II. 1570 and 1590. Sir Eowland Haywood, Mayor in these years, was proud of his family numerically. He was bm-ied in the church of St. Alphage, London Wall, where his monument represented his eflfigy^, carved in a kneeling posture, with his first -wife and eight children. in a similar position at his right hand, and his second -wife and eight children at his left. 1583. Sir Edward Osborne, the aforesaid. Mayor, " dwelled," says a Ms. in the Heralds' College, " in Philpot-lane, in Sir WiUiam Hewet's house, whose da. and heire he married, and was buried," in 1591, "at St. Dennis, in fanchurch Streete." 1586. Sir Wolston Dixie, whose mayoralty pageant was the first ever printed.* * The Pageant or Show of the Lord Mayor has been illustrated with a vast amount of research. The late Mr. Fair holt, P.S. A., left the Lord Mayor's Pageant (tenth volume of the Percy Society's pub lications, completed by Tlie Oii;ic 6farland, or a Collection of Songs from London Pageants ; also an account of Oog and Magog, 1859). Mr. Pairholt had been for many years engaged in amassing a collec tion of works in illustration of pageants in all parts of the world ; and this collection, comprising nearly two hundred volumes, he most generously bequeathed to the Society of Antiquaries. " I am sure," said Earl Stanhope, the president, in his anniversary address, 1867, " you will agree with me that among the benefactors to this Society the name of Frederick William Fairholt must henceforth hold a dis tinguished place. The Council, as at present advised, design to make 22 LOED MAYOES AND 1594. Sh- John Spencer, "rich Spencer." He kept his mayoralty at Crosby-place, Bishopsgate. Ehzabeth, his only daughter and heiress, married William, second Lord Compton, Lord President of Wales, who is tradi tionally said to have contrived her elopement from her father's house at Canonbui'y, Islington, in a baker's basket. This was the lady that, about the year 1617, wrote the remarkable letter to her husband in which, after requiring an annuity of 2,200Z., the like sum for her privy purse, and 10,000/. for jewels, her debts to be paid, and horses, coaches, male and female attendants, &c., to be provided for her, she concludes by praying him, when he becomes an earl, "to allow her 1,000/. more than she now desires, with double attendance." In August 1618 Lord Compton was created Earl of Northampton, and from him the present o-wner of Canonbury, the Marquess of Northampton, is lineally descended. At Sir John Spencer's funeral one thou sand persons followed in mourning-cloaks and go-vms. Sir John Spencer died worth 800,000/. according to the value of property in the year 1609. The year of his mayoralty was a time of famine, and at his per suasion the City Companies bought a quantity of corn in foreign parts, and laid up the same at the Bridge House, for the use of the people. 1609. Sir Thomas Campbell. The mayoralty show revived by the Idng's (James I.) order. 1611. Sir William Craven, son of the gallant soldier Sir William Craven, who married the -widowed Queen of Bohemia. Thus the son of a Wharfdale peasant' these volumes— some of them of the greatest rarity and value— the nucleus of a special collection of works of pageantry. They have for this purpose, been placed in a separate case in the ante-room" (at Somerset House.). MEMOEABLE MAYORALTIES. 23 matched with the sister of Charles I., and founded the present noble family of Craven. Tradition tells that, terrified at an outbreak of plague, he took horse, rode a-way westward, and never stopped tiU he reached those wUd Berkshire downs, where he found reftige in a farm house, and subsequently built Ashdown House on the spot now occupied by a more recently built mansion. The old local story-teller informs us that four avenues led to the house from the four cardinal points of the compass, and that in each wall of every room there was a window, in order that if the plague entered on one side, it might find issue by the other ! " This tradition," says the Athenceum, " is still rife, and though probably exag gerated, it doubtless rests upon some substratum of fact." 1612. Sir John Swinnerton, Mayor, at his banquet entertained Frederick, Count Palatme of the Ehine, then lately arrived to marry EUzabeth, the Ejng's only daughter. " The Palsgrave dyned in the Guildhall," as Howes's Chronicle uiforms us, "accompanied with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Bishop of London, and divers earls and barons; and during the whole dinner the PalsgTave and the Lord Ai-chbishop enter tained the -time with sundry discourses in Latine." After dinner, the Lord Mayor and his brethren pre sented the Palsgrave with a very large basin and ewer of silver richly gUded and curiously wrought, and two great gilded livery pots ; the basin and ewer weighing 234 ounces 3 grains. The Merchant Adventurers had sent him a present of -wine to the value of one hundred' marks. In very good fashion at the feast, he would needs go and salute the Lady Mayoress and her train, where she sat. The Show had four or five pageants and other de-vices, and the pageant is one of Dekker's rarest works. 24 LORD MAYORS AND 1613. Sur Thomas Myddelton, brother of Hugh Myddelton, then Lord Mayor elect, and Sir John Swinnerton, Lord Mayor, attended by many of the aldermen, witnessed the water admitted into the basin caUed the New Eiver Head, at Islington. " The flood gates flew open, the stream ran gallantly into the cis- terne, drummes and trumpets sounding in triumphall manner, and a brave peal of chambers gave fuU issue to the interested entertainment." 1618. Sir Sebastian Harvey, ironmonger, sworn Mayor; but no printed account of his pageantry has been discovered. On this Lord Mayor's Day was exe cuted Sir Walter Ealeigh. "The time," observes Aubrey, " was contrived to be on my Lord Mayor's Day, that the pageants and fine shows might avocate and draw away the people from beholding the tragedie of the gallantest worthie that England ever bred" (Aubrey's Ms. in the Ashmolean Museum). 1641. Sir Eichard Gurney, Mayor; Charles I. was feasted at Guildhall with a political object, which failed. In the midst of the most factious and turbulent times, when every engine was set to work to annihilate the regal power, the City, under its Lord Mayor, Sir William Acton, made a feast unparalleled in history for its magnificence. All external respect was paid to his Majesty, the last he ever experienced in the inflamed City. Of the entertainment we know no more than that it consisted of five hundred dishes. The " sotelties," or the subtilities, as they were called, were the orna mental part of the dessert, and were extremely different from those in present use. 1644. January, the City gave a splendid entertain ment, at Merchant Taylors' Hall, to both Houses of Parhament, the Earls of Essex, Warwick, and Man- MEMOEABLE MAYOEALTIES. 25 Chester, with other lords, the Scotch Commissioners, and the principal officers ofthe army. The company assembled at "sermon, in Christ Church, Newgate- street, and thence went on foot to the HaU." The Lord Mayor and aldermen led the procession; and, as they went through Cheapside, on a scaffold many popish pictures, crucifixes, and superstitious relics were burnt before them. This entertainment was given in conse quence of the discovery of a design to read a letter from the 'king at a Common Hall, the obvious tendency of which was to destroy the prevailing unanimity of the citizens in favour of the Parliament. 1645. June 12th, both Houses of Parliament were magnificently entertained by the citizens, in Grocers' Hall, on occasion of the decisive victory obtained by Fairfax and Cromwell over the king's army at Naseby, "and after dinner they sang the 46th Psalm, and so parted." 1646. Sir John Gayer, Mayor, and a merchant of opulence, had nearly been cut off before he reached the civic chair this year. He was returning from a trading voyage, when he was cast away on the coast of Africa; in his distress, he saw a lion making towards him, and falling on his knees, he declared that " if the Almighty would please to direct him out of his perilous situation, he would, on his return to England, e-dnce his gratitude, and endeavour, to the end ofhis hfe, to inculcate reliance on Providence in the worst extremes of human -wretchedness." The lion passed on without molesting him ; and the next day having got on board a vessel. Gayer soon arrived in his native country. He im mediately placed in trust the sum of 200/., the interest of which was to supply bread for the poor of the parish for ever; he also left 20s. to be paid annually to a 26 LOED MAYOES AND minister for preaching a sermon on every succeeding 16th of October, the day ofthe miraculous escape. The sermon is preached in the church of St. Catharine Cree. 1649. Sir Abraham Eeynardson, committed to the Tower and put out of his mayoralty for not proclaiming the Act against kingly government, whicli seven Aveeks after his successor. Alderman Andrews, proclaimed. On January 7th, the Lord Mayor and Common Council gave a splendid entertainment to the House of Commons and principal ofiicers of the army, at Grocers' Hall, in com memoration of the late suppression of the LeveUers. 1653. Cromwell dined with the Corporation at Gro cers' Hall, when he knighted the Mayor, John Fowkes. 1660. (Eestoration of Charles H.) Sir Thomas Alleyne, Mayor. All the aldermen who had served during the usurpation were displaced. 1661. Sir John Frederick, Mayor, of wdiom Pepys records : " It seems this Lord Mayor begins again an old custom, that upon the three first days of Bartholo mew's fayre — the first, there is a match of wrestling, which was done, and the Lord Mayor there and the aldermen inMoorfields yesterday; second day, shooting; and to-morrow, hunting. And this ofificer performs the ceremony of riding tlirough the City, to proclaim or challenge any to shoote. It seems the people of the fayre cry out upon it as a great hindrance to them. "Sept. -2. To duiner with my Lord Mayor; a very great duiner and most excellent venison ; but it almost made me sick by not daring to drink wine. After din ner we talked of the Lord Mayor's sword. They say it is a hundred or two hmidred years old ; and he hath an other which is called the black sword, — which he wears when he mournes, but properly is their Tenten sword to MEMOEABLE MAYOEALTIES. 27 wear upon Good Friday and other Lent days, — is older than that. The Lord Mayor observed that this City is as -n'ell watered as any city in the world ; and that the bringing of water had cost, first and last, above 300,000/." ' 1663. Sir Anthony Bateman, Mayor. His banquet is thus described by Pepys : " To Guildhall and up and do-wn to see the tables; where under every salt there was a bill of fare, and at the end of the table the persons proper for the table. Many were the tables, but none in the hall but the Mayor's and the Lords of the Privy Council that had napldns or knives, which was very strange. I sat at the Merchant Strangers' table, where ten good dishes to a mess, with plenty of -wine of all sorts ; but it was very unpleasing that we had no napldns nor change of trenchers, and drank out of earthen pitchers and wooden dishes" ! This is believed to be the earliest account of a Lord Mayor's inauguration dinner. Pepys caUs Bateman "a buffie- headed fellow." 1664. Sir John Lawrence, Mayor; celebrated for a splendid banquet given by him to their Majesties, and for his judicious conduct during the "visitation of the Plague, which took place in his mayoralty. He did not desert the City at this time, but continued at his resi dence, in St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, enforced the -wisest regulations then known respecting the prevention of the pestilent contagion, and saw them executed himself. He supported on this occasion forty thousand discharged servants. " London's generous Mayor, -Who, 'when contagion with mephitic breath And withered famine urged the work of death, With food and faith, with medicine and prayer. Raised the weak head, and stayed the parting sigh, Or with new life relumed the swimming eye." — Darmn. 28 LOED MAYOES AND 1671. Sir George Waterman, Mayor, who had for his guest Charles 11. at the inauguration dinner. The pageant was very grand. There was "a forest pro perly accommodated with several animals, sylvans, satyrs, and -wood-nymphs, sitting and stirring in very good order ; the nymphs attired in various-coloured robes ; and in the front were two negroes, richly adorned with Oriental pearls and jewels, mounted upon two pan thers. Near to the presence of the King, Queen, Duke, and other members of the royal family, near Milk-street end, was erected a stage, where the much-magnified Jacob Hall and his company expressed the height of their activity in tumbling and the like." And a notice occm-s in a poem, " Upon the stately Structure of Bow Church and Steeple," printed in the Collection of Poems onAfi^airs of State, which -would seem to prove that Llall was frequently seen in the mayoralty shows : " When Jacob Hall on his high rope shows tricks. The dragon* flutters, the Lord Mayor's horse kicks ; The Cheapside crowds and pageants scarcely know Whioh most t' admire — Hall, hobby-horse; or Bow." 1674. Sir Eobert Viner, Mayor. Charles II. was nine times entertained by the City. He dined with the citizens this year, when the Mayor, getting elated -with continually toasting the royal family, grew a little fond of his Majesty. " The King understood very well how to extricate himself in all kinds of difiiculties, and, with an hint to the company to avoid ceremony, stole off, and made towards his coach, which stood waiting for him in Guildhall-yard. But the Mayor liked his company so well, and was grown so intimate, that he pursued him hastily, and catching him fast by the hand, cried out * Alluding to the dragon whioh forms the weathercock of Bow Church. MEMORABLE MAYORALTIES. 29 with a vehement oath and accent, ' Sir, you shall stay and take t'other bottle !' The airy monarch looked Idndly at him over his shoulder, and with a smile and graceful air (for Isaw him at the time, and do now) repeated this line of the old song, ' He that is drunk is as great as a king,' and immediately turned back and complied with his ¦ landlord." — Spectator, No. 462. 1679. Sir Eobert Clayton, Mayor : he was the friend of Algernon Sidney and William Lord Eussell ; sat in seven ParUaments the representative of the City; more than thirty years Alderman of Cheap Ward, and ultimately Father of the City; the mover of the celebrated Exclusion BUl (seconded by William Lord Eussell), and eminent aUke as a patriot, a statesman, and a citizen. He was President of St. Thomas's Hos pital, and the liberal benefactor of Christ's Hospital ; he was the munificent patron of art ; and, in the words of Macaulay, " Sir Eobert Clayton was the wealthiest mer chant of London, whose palace, in the Old Jewry, sur passed in splendour the aristocratical mansions of Lin coln' s-Inn-fields and Covent-garden, whose banqueting- room was wainscoted -wdth cedar and adorned -with battles of gods and giants in fresco, whose villa among the Surrey hills was described as a Garden of Eden, whose banquets vied -with those of kings, and whose judicious munificence, still attested by numerous public monuments, ' had obtained for him in the annals of the City a place second only to that of Gresham." The portrait of Sir Eobert Clayton is in the library at Guild hall, with exquisite wood-car-dng by Grinling Gibbons. Charles IL and the Duke of York supped with Sir Eobert Clayton, during his mayoralty, at his house in Old Jewry ; the balconies of the houses in the streets 30 LOED MAYORS AND were illuminated with flambeaux; and the King and the Duke had a passage made for them by the Trained Bands upon the guard from Cheapside. Sfr Eobert had the house built for keeping his shrievalty ; it was taken down in the year 1864. 1688. Sir John Shorter, appointed Mayor by King James II. : he was maternal grandfather of Horace Walpole, and of his cousins the Conway Seymours. He met with his death in this manner : Bartholomew Fair ¦was opened by the Lord Mayor, and the proclamation for the purpose read before the entrance to Cloth-fair in Smithfield. On these occasions it was the custom for the Lord Mayor to call upon the keeper of New gate, and partake of " a cool tankard of wine, nutmeg, and sugar." This custom (which ceased in the second mayoralty of Sir Matthew Wood) occasioned the death of Sir John Shorter : in holding the tankard, he let the lid flap down with so much force, that his horse started, and he was thrown to the ground with great -violence. He died the next day. 1688-1691. Sir Thomas Pilldngton, whose mayoral ties are satirised in a poem published anonymously in 1691, and entitled The To'iennial Mayor, or the New Raparees. This little piece was written in commenda tion of Pilldngton, and in condemnation of the Tory party in the Common Council, petitioning against him. The " new Eaparees" are the " Church party," the ultra- supporters of " That Church whioh they, when maudlin, vow'd to serve, And, in their cups, swore, D — n 'em, they'd preserve !" For this party in the Council, the satirist has small respect and much less fear. They are more likely to suffer, he thinks, from the consequences of thefr own ignorant zeal : MEMORABLE MAYORALTIES. 81 " And, as I once a hieroglyphick saw, ¦Where the feign'd artist did a monarch draw. Driving a nail, the point towards him full. Into a wainscot, with his unarm'd skull ; The motto being, ' Tliovgli my hra'iii lies here, And pate be masli'd, yet st'iU it sliall go there ;' So they, though ne'er so difficult it seem. Resolve to drive the tenter through the beam." Of the heads of these parties there are some sharp sketches, valuable as pictures of Tory aspirants to City honours of that day, and, in some respects, of the times to which they belong. Sir William Dodson, under the name of Woolus, is described as " Busy in sects, in self -opinion strong. And in at all things, whether right or wrong ; No plot without him can be called entire. As without my Lord Craven's horse, no fire." The magistrate, Sfr Ealph Box, is presented to us under the pseudonym of Sylvanus ; and this relic of the gay Stuart days is thus Umned : " A pigmy body with a waxen soul, Which by close palming always would receive Any impression the Com-t Seal would give ;" and Sfr Ealph's Tory friend, Alie, appears to have been as -wicked as he was factious ; for, says the City satfrist : " As I often, upon Hampstead Heath, Have seen a felon, long since put to death. Hang, crackling in the sun his parchment skin, ¦Which to his ear had shrivelled up his chin ; With such a look, so ghastly and so tall, I've noted fierce Drugestus at Guild-hall." It was to the great disgust of the " Eaparees" that Pilkington was elected the third time to fill the Lord Mayor's chair, in 1691. The satfrist gives him the noblest of characters, and accuses a preceding chief magistrate of conspiring to oust the people's friend : 32 LORD MAYORS AND " Our late Raparee Now, with his obstinate, tho' subtle rout. Invades the chair, to thrust Pratorius out." " Praitorius," of course, is Pilkington, whose triumph is perfect, and rendered the more so by this rough lay- ing-in of his two cliief opponents, ex -sheriffs of the year 1678, Sfr Jonathan Eaymond, the brewer, and Sir Simon Le-wis, whose calling is named rather than indicated : '' 'Mongst whom Brew-alius has the first degree, With Symon of the Linen laity ; Of different kidneys, tho' they own a truce, One sly and sleepy ; t'other proud and spruce. One tame and soft-like, never fond of chat. But still and deep as any brewing vat ; The other brisk and bant'ring like a play'r, A better SherifE than he can be Mayor. These two the Raparees, in clustered swarms. Resolve to dignify by force of arms." - In this, however, they were unsuccessful, for these names are not to be found upon the roll of Mayors. — We find this amusing ^r(lm in the Athenaum, No. 1723. 1697. Sir Llumphry Edwin, Mayor. He omitted the show, from his puritanical principles in rehgion : but he rode to a conventicle in his formalities, with the insignia of ofifice, as described by Swift in his Tale of a Tub ; and his procession on that occasion is the subject of a print in Swift's works, of which there are two ver sions, the second being somewhat modernised from the- first by J. S. MuUer, and it occurs in the first volume of Dr. Hawkesworth's edition. Sir Humphry rides on horseback, eating a custard, which, we are told in a note, " is a famous dish at a Lord Mayor's feast." He is preceded by the sword-bearer, with all the insignia of his ofiice, who walks before him ; and the aldermen follow, also on foot. The scene is Ludgate Hill, show- MEMORABLE MAYORALTIES. 33 ing the Gate, with St. Paul's in the background. Pen- kethman, in his comedy of Love luithout Interest, 1699, alludes to his partiality to the Nonconformists in these words : "If you'll compound for a catch, I'll sing you one of my Lord Mayor's going to Pin-makers' Hall, to hear a snivelling non-separatist divine divide and subdi vide into the two-and-thirty points of the compass.'' The same play contains an allusion to " my Lord Mayor's musick," who are styled " gentlemen fiddlers," and play a sonata for the entertainment of the company assembled at the house of a citizen. Their consort lessons were composed for six instruments, " the treble-lute, the pan dora, the citterne, the base - vioU, the fiute, and the treble--violl," which formed a complete band, as used by the City waits. 1700. Sfr Thomas Abney, Mayor, the pious friend of Dr. Isaac Watts, who found an asylum for more than thirty-six years in his mansion, Abney Park, Stoke Newington. This knight was not more distinguished by his hospitality than his piety. Neither business nor pleasure interrupted his observance of public and pri vate domestic worship. Upon the evening of the day that he entered on the ofifice of Lord Mayor, without any notice he withdrew from the public assembly at Guildhall after supper, went to his house, there per formed worship, and then returned to the company. Sir Thomas Abney was a Fishmonger, and his pa geant was very costly. . Mr. J. G. Nichols has printed the expenses this day incurred, from the ledger of the Fishmongers' Company, by which it appears that the usual merman and mermaid formed part of the shows. " George Holmes, pageant-maker," received 195/. for the construction of the pageants. Mr. Walker and the other trumpeters, 9/. The City musick, 21, There wa.s VOL. I. D 34 LORD MAYORS AND also " paid for the armour had out of the Tower, and for horses, and to the riders thereon, to represent the valour of Sir WUUam Walworth in suppressing a rebel Hon, the summe of 61. 6s." " Mr. Johnson, herauld painter, for painting shields and for divers escutcheons, had 46/. 10s. There was paid to Mr. Settle, the poet, for composing the Show on that day, the summe of 10/.," a less sum than was paid for " two gownes for the staff'e men to goe before this company," which cost 13/. 19s. ! — the entfre cost of the day's display being 737/. 2s. 1702. Sir Samuel Dashwood, Mayor, entertained Queen Anne at his inauguration dinner in Guildhall; and the Vintners' Company, of which Sir Samuel was a member, exhibited a magnificent and characteristic pa geant, the only printed pageant known of the Vintners. On his lordship's return from being sworn, he was saluted by the Artillery Company, before whom stepped the Vintners' patron saint, St. Martin, "on a stately white steed, richly plumed and caparisoned; himself splendidly armed cap-k-pie, having a large mantle or scarf of scarlet ; who, followed by several cripples and beggars supplicating for his charity, attended by twenty satyrs dancing before him with tambers, two persons in rich liveries walking by his horse-side, ten haberters with rural music before them, and ten old Eoman lictors in silver head-pieces, with axes and fusees, all march before the company to St. Paul's Churchyard, and there making a stand, to prevent the cries of the mendicants the Saint severs his scarf with his sword, and delivers to them a part." A Vineyard, Triumph of Bacchus, and other appropriate subjects, concluded this pageant, which the author tells the company in his address, speaking of the ancient splendour and magnificence which formerly shined forth on this solemn City festival, MEMOEABLE MAYORALTIES. 35 now almost dropt into obli-don, had " taken its second resurrection amongst them." The song here printed occurs at the end of the descriptive pamphlet, and was sung in the Hall. No other pageant was ever publicly performed : that written for 1708 was not exhibited, owing to the death of Prince George of Denmark the day before. For that pageant no songs were written, so that this is the last song of the last City poet, and a better specimen than usual of his powers : " Come, come, let us drink the Vintners' good health, — 'Tis the cask, not the coffer, that holds the true wealth ; If to founders of blessings we pyramids raise, The bowl, next the sceptre, deserves the best praise. Then, next to the Queen, let the Vintners' fame shine ; She gives us good laws, and they fill us good wine. Columbus and Cortez their sails they unfurl'd. To discover the mines of an Indian world. To find beds of gold so far they could roam : Fools I fools ! — when the wealth of the world lay at home. The grape, the true treasure, much nearer it grew, — One Isle of Canary's worth all the Peru. Let misers in garrets hide up their gay store. And heap their rich bags to live wretchedly poor ; 'Tis the cellar alone with true fame is renown'dj-p Her treasure's diffusive, and cheers all around : The gold and the gem's but the eye's gaudy toy, But the Vintners' rich juice gives health, life, and joy." 1704. Sfr John Parsons, Mayor. He gave up his official fees towards the payment of the City debts. 1709. Sfr Charles Duncomb, Mayor, rose from humble life, of which the gUt bracket-clock of the church of St. Magnus, at London Bridge, is an interest ing memorial. It was presented by him when Sheriff, and cost 485/. 5s. Ad. Sir Charles, it is related, when a poor boy, had once to wait upon London Bridge a considerable time for his master, whom he missed 36 LOED MAYORS AND through not knowing the hour ; he then vowed that if ever he became successful in the world, he would give to St. Magnus' a pubhc' clock, that passengers might see the time ; and this dial proves the fulfilment of his vow. It was originally ornamented with several richly-gUded fio-ures : on a small metal shield inside the clock are en- graven the donor's arms, with this inscription : " The gift of Sir Charles Duncomb, Knight, Lord Maior, and Alderman of this ward. Langley Bradley fecit, 1709." Sir Charles also presented the large organ in St. Mag nus' Church. It was built by Jordan, in 1712, as an nounced in the Spectator. Among the Mayors of the Goldsmiths' Company were Gregory de Eokesley (six times Mayor) ; Nicholas de Faringdon, appointed Mayor in 1308 by Edward IL, " as long as it pleased him ;" Sir John Chace, M.P., and Bartholomew Eede ; Sir Martin Bowes, Sir Eobert Vyner, Sir John Shorter, Sir Francis Child (banker), and Sir Charles Diuicomb. In the Livery tea-room is a conversation-picture by Hudson (Eeynolds's master), containing portraits of six Lord Mayors, all Goldsmiths : Sir H. Marshall, 1745 ; W. Benn, 1747; J. Blachford, 1750; E. Allsop, 1752; Edmund Ironside and Sir Thomas Eawlinson, both in 1754, the former ha-ving died during his mayoralty. The second Goldsmiths' Hall was built by Sfr Drew Barentyne, Goldsmith, and Mayor in 1398. It was hung with Flemish tapestry, representing the his tory of St. Dunstan, whose silver-gilt statue stood on the reredos, or screen. Sir B. Eede, when Mayor, gave in this hall a feast, with " a paled park, fm'iiished -with fruitful trees and beasts of venery." In the accoimts of the Company's pageant is the tri umphant chariot of gold, first described in Munday's pa- MEMORABLE MAYOEALTIES. 37 geant for 1611, and also in Jordan's Goldsmiths' Jubilee, 1674. Again, in 1687, we find the same gUt chariot described. " The Orfery," a goldsmith's forge, &c., pre sided over by St. Dunstan, was the usual " trade-pa geant" of the Company. It figured in Munday's pageant for 1611, and was always exhibited among the pageants when a Goldsmith happened to be Mayor. The first pageant, in 1674, was a Temple of Apollo; in 1687 this same "property" was formed into a Temple of Janus; in 1698 it was a Temple of Honom-; and in 1708 it again figiu'ed as a Temple of Apollo. 1710. Sir Samuel Gerrard. Three of this name and family were Lord Mayors in three Queen's reigns, — Mary, Elizabeth, and Anne. 1711. Sir Gilbert Heathcote was the last Lord Mayor who rode in his mayoralty procession on horse back; since which the ci-vic sovereign has always ap peared by land in a coach drawn by four horses, at tended by his chaplain, sword-bearer, and mace-bearer. 1715. Sfr Thomas Humphreys, Mayor, was like wise Father of the City, and Alderman of Cheap for twenty-six years. Of his Lady Mayoress an odd story is told relative to the custom of the sovereign Idssing the Lady Mayoress upon visiting Guildhall. Queen Anne broke down this observance ; but upon the accession of George I., on his first "risit to the City, from his known character for gallantry, it was expected that once again a Lady Mayoress was to be kissed by the King on the steps of the Guildhall. But he had no feeling of ad miration for English beauty. "It was only," says a writer in the Athenaeum, " after repeated assurance that saluting a lady, on her appointment to a confidential post near some person of the royal family, was the seal ing, as it were, of her appointment, that he expressed his 38 LOED MAYOES AND readuiess to kiss Lady Co-wper on her nomination as Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess of Wales. At his first appearance at GuildhaU, the admirer of Madame Kielmansegge respected the new observance established by Queen Anne ; yet poor Lady Humphreys,, the Ma yoress, hoped, at all events, to receive the usual tribute from royalty from the hps of the Princess of Wales. But that strong-minded woman, Caroline Dorothea Wil- helmina, steadily looked away from the Mayor's consort. She would not do what Queen Anne had not thought worth the .doing ; and Lady Humphreys, we are sorry to say, stood upon her unstable rights, and displayed a considerable amomit of bad temper and worse beha-viour. She wore a train of black velvet, — then considered one of the privileges of the City royalty, and being wronged of one, she resolved to make the best of that which she possessed, — bawling, as ladies, mayoresses, and women generally, should never do, — bawling to her page to hold up her train, and sweeping away therewith before the presence of the amused Princess herself. The inci dent altogether seems to have been too much for the good but irate lady's nerves ; and unable, or unwilling, when dinner was announced, to carry her stupendous bouquet, emblem of joy and welcome, she fiung it to a second page who. attended on her state, with a scream of 'Boy, take my bucket f In her -view of things, the sun had set on the glory of mayoralty for ever. "The King was as much amazed as the Princess had been amused; and a well-inspired wag of the court whispered an assurance which increased his per plexity. It was to the effect that the angry lady was only a mock Lady Mayoress, whom the mimarried Mayor had hfred for the occasion, borrowing her for that day only. The assurance was credited for a time, MEMOEABLE MAYOEALTIES. 39 till persons more discreet than the wag convinced the court party that Lady Humphreys was really no coun terfeit. She was no beauty either ; and the same party, when they withdrew from the festive scene, were all of one mind, — that she must needs be what she seemed, for if the Lord Mayor had been under the necessity of borrowing, he would have borrowed altogether another sort of woman." 1727. On Lord Mayor's Day, the royal family, with all the great officers of state, and a numerous train of nobility and foreign ministers, were entertained by the citizens at GuUdhaU, on which occasion his Majesty ordered 1000/. to be paid to the sheriffs, for the relief of insolvent debtors. The whole expense of the feast amounted to about 4890/. 1733. John Barber, Mayor, the patriotic printer, who defeated a scheme of a general Excise. He erected the monument to Butler the poet in Westminster Abbey — who, by the way, had written a very sarcastic " Cha racter of an Alderman." Barber's epitaph on the poet's monument is in high-flown Latin, which drew from Samuel Wesley these lines : " -While Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive, No generous patron would a dinner give ; See him, when stai-v'd to death and turn'd to dust. Presented with a monumental bust. The. poet's fate is here in emblem shown — He asked for bread, and he received a stone." 1739. Alderman Micajah Perry, Mayor. He laid the first stone of the Mansion House. 1740. The coach of Humphrey Parsons, Mayor, was drawn by six horses, "adorned with grand harnesses, ribbons, &c. ; a sight never before seen on this occasion." The concluding plate of Hogarth's " Industry and Idle- us Lord Mayor's Day about 1750: the 40 LOED MAYOES AND Mayor in a carved and gilt coach, attended by tlje City companies, men in armour, banners, &c. In 1757 was buUt the present state-coach, its panels painted with emblematic subjects, — the last relic of the pageants. 1750. Sir Samuel Pennant in his mayoralty died of the gaol-fever. The great bell of St. Paul's is tolled on the death of a Lord Mayor. He was a kinsman of Pen nant who wrote the pleasant Account of London. 1753. Sir Christopher Gascoyne, the first Lord Mayor who resided in the Mansion House. 1761. George III. and his Queen dined with the Lord Mayor on the first Lord Mayor's Day of their reign ; there was a partial revival of ancient pageantry in the show : the Armourers' Company exhibiting an archer in a car, and a man in armour; the Skinners, seven of their Company dressed in fur, their skins painted like Indian princes; and the Fishmongers brought a gilt statue of St. Peter, a dolphin, two mer maids, and two sea-horses.* 1762. Sir Samuel Fludyer, Mayor. He was a very eminent and wealthy citizen, regarding whom we have some reliable information in the life of Sir Samuel Eomilly by his sons. He was the godfather and kins man of that great man, a member of Parliament for many years, and proposed to take the youthful Eomilly under his care, when the death of the alderman pre vented such an arrangement. Sir Samuel Fludyer mar ried into the noble family of Cardigan, and his descend ants have intermarried with the noblest of the land. He was the ground-landlord of Fludyer-street, Westminster, lately cleared for the site of the new Foreign Office. =* The Show was witnessed by the King and Queen and the royal family, from Mr. Barclay's, 108 Cheapside, as pleasantly described in a privately-printed pamphlet, 1864. MEMOEABLE MAYOEALTIES. +1 1770. Brass Crosby, Mayor, imprisoned in the Tower for vindicating the free publication of parliamentary de bates. At his inauguration dinner in Guildhall there was a superabundance of good things ; " notwithstand ing which, a great number of young fellows after the dinner was over, being heated with liquor, got upon the hustings, and because they were not supplied with wine broke all the bottles and glasses within their reach." At this time the Court and Ministry were out of favour in the City; and till the year 1776, when Halifax took as the legend ofhis mayoralty "Justice is the ornament and protection of liberty," no member ofthe government received an in-vitation to dine at Guildhall. 1666-1780. Lord Mayors have, upon certain occa sions, fomid themselves unequal to great emergencies. We have seen how, in time of Plague, the Lord Mayor dreaded the infection. In the year of the Great Fire, 1666, the Mayor, Sir Thomas Blood-worth, showed almost comic helplessness, running about during the conflagra tion, exclaiming, " Lord, what can I do V and whining about lack of rest, and calhng for refreshments for the inner man. To render him true justice, however, Bloodworth was rather wanting in head than in heart. LEis worship was utterly helpless ; but with all that he stood fast among the bm-ning houses, and let his -wits perish among the general confusion. In 1780 Alder man Kennet was Mayor. He began life as a waiter, ahd his manner never rose above his original station. When he was summoned to be examined before Parlia ment on "the Eiots," one of the members observed, " If you ring the bell Kennet will come, of course." On being asked why, on the breaking out of the riot, he did not send for the posse comitatus, he replied he did not know where the fellow lived, else he would. One evening. 42 LOED MAYOES AND at the Aldei-man's Club, he was at a whist-table, and Mr. Alderman Pugh, a dealer in soap, was at his elbow. " Eing the beU, Soap-suds," said Kennet, in his coarse way. "Eing it yom'self. Bar," rephed Pugh; "you've been twice as much used to it as I have." 1762 and 1769. WiUiam Beokford, Alderman of Bil lingsgate Ward, and twice Mayor, was a most auda cious demagogue, with whom the great Lord Chatham maintained a correspondence to keep alive his influence in the City. At the close of his first mayoralty Beclrford enunciated this odd dictum : " Under the Llouse of Hanover alone Englishmen could, but under the House of Hanover Englishmen were determined they would, be free." Beckford's main notoriety, however, dates from near the close of his second mayoralty in 1770, not many days before his death. There had been a false return made at the Middlesex election, at wliich the City was very irate, and got up a remonstrance to the King, which the Lord Mayor presented to his Majesty seated upon the throne. The King censru'ed the citi zens, saying " that he should have been wanting to the public as well as to himself if he had not expressed his dissatisfaction at the late address." Llorace Walpole thus notes the affair : " The City carried a new remon strance, garnished with my lord's own ingredients, but much less hot than the former. The country, however, was put to some confusion by my Lord Mayor, who, contrary to all form and precedent, tacked a volunteer speech to the ' Eemonstrance.' It was wondrous loyal and respectful ; but being an innovation, much discom posed the solemnity. It is always usual to furnish a copy of what is said to the King, that he may be pre pared with his answer. In this case he was reduced to tuck up his train, jump from the throne, and take MEMOEABLE MAYORALTIES. 43 sanctuary in his closet ; or answer extempore, which is not part of the royal trade ; or sit silent, and have no thing to reply. This last was the event, and a position awkward enough in conscience." The citizens were so elated with Beckford's reply that they set up in Guildhall a large monument, with his statue ; and upon the pedestal was cut the speech which he was believed to have delivered to the King. Now, at the end of the alderman's speech, in his copy of the City addresses, Mr. Isaac Eeed has inserted the following note : " It is a curious fact, but a true one, that Beckford did not utter one syllable of this speech (on the monument). It was penned by John Horne Tooke, and by his art put on the records of the City and on Beckford's statue, as he told me, Mr. Braith- waite, Mr. Sayer, &c., at the Athenseum Club. — Isaac Reed." But the worthy commentator and his friends were imposed upon. In the Cliatliam Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 460, a letter from Sheriff Townsend to the earl expressly states that, with the exception of the words " and necessary^' being left out before the word "revolution," the Lord Mayor's speech in the Public Advertiser of the preceding day is verbatim (the one deUvered to the King). Gifford says {Ben Jonson, vol. -vi. 481) that Beckford (" factious and brutal as he was") never uttered before the King one syllable ofthe speech upon his monument; and Gifford's statement is fully confirmed both by Isaac Eeed (as above) and by Maltby, the friend of Eogers and Horne Tooke. Beckford made a "remonstrance speech" to the King; but the speech on Beckford's monument is the after speech ivritten for Beckford by Horne Tooke. (See Mitford, Gray, and Mason's Corre spondence, pp. 438, 439.) Such is the historic worth of 44 LORD MAYORS AND this strange piece of monumental bombast, upon Avhich Pennant made this appropriate comment : " The things themselves are neither scarce nor rare. The wonder's how the devil they got there." 1774. The notorious John Wilkes, Mayor. "Like the hypocrite, his whole public life was a lie" (Lord Brougham). The Obelisk in New Bridge-street was erected in WUkes's mayoralty. Wilkes was born in ClerkenweU, October 17, 1727. His father, grand father, and great-grandfather were all named Israel, and were all distUlers. His father lived in good style, kept a coach drawn by six horses, and his house was resorted to by persons of rank, merchants, philoso phers, and men of letters; to which circumstance, and to the unbounded indulgence of his parents, John Wilkes was much indebted for that literary turn of mind by which he was in early life distinguished. Wilkes was, at his entrance into public life, " a friend of the elder Pitt's ;" and the Chatham Correspondence shows that he continued to profess to be so, and was a candidate for office under him. In 1761 he ad dressed to him a letter, a model of its class, avowing his pride " to have Mr. Pitt his patron and friend," and his desire for a scene of business. " I wish," he writes, " the Board of Trade might be thought a place in which I could be of any ser-vice ;" adding, " among all the chances and changes of a political world, I will never have an obligation in a parliamentary way but to Mr. Pitt and his friends." Wilkes did not succeed ; but contri-ving to mix himself up with the constitutional questions of "general warrants" and "parliamentary privilege," such men as Mr. Pitt, though they dis approved of the -violence and despised the calmnnies of Wilkes, used him as the tool of their ambition. MEMOEABLE MAYORALTIES. 45 Wilkes, encouraged by such support, grew so violent, that in 1763 Mr. Pitt denounced in Parliament the North Briton and its author as " the blasphemer of his God and the libeller of his king," and repudiated all connection with WUkes. Mi-. Malone relates in his Me moirs that Wilkes, about the time when his North Briton began to be much noticed, dined one day with Mr. Eigby, and after dinner honestly confessed that he was a ruined man, not worth a shilling; that his principal object in ^-vriting was to procure himself some place ; and that he should be particularly pleased -with one that should re move him from the clamour and importunity of his cre ditors. At length he got his start ; for in 1768 there was stuck upon the doors and walls of the City churches, one Sunday morning, this printed notice : " The prayers of this congregation are earnestly desired for the restora tion of liberty, depending on the election of Mr. Wilkes." Wilkes was elected alderman of Farringdon Without, Jan. 2, 1769, "while yet," says Walpole, "a criminal of state and a prisoner." Horne Tooke having challenged Wilkes, who was then Sheriff of London and Middlesex, received the following laconic reply : " Sir, I do not think it my business to cut the throat of every desperado that may be tired of his life ; but as I am at present High She riff" of the City of London, it may happen that I shall shortly have an opportunity of attending you in my official capacity, in which case I will answer for it that you shall have no ground to complain of my endeavours to serve you." This is one ofthe bitterest retorts ever uttered. Wilkes's notoriety led to his head being painted as a public-house sign, which, however, did not invariably raise the original in estimation. An old lady, in pass- 46 LORD MAYOES AND ing a pubUc-house distinguished as above, to which her companion had caUed her attention, " Ah !" replied she, " Wilkes s-wings everywhere but where he ought." WUkes's ugliness was proverbial : his squint has been immortalised by Hogarth. Yet even this natural obliquity he tm-ned to humorous account. When WUkes challenged Lord Townshend, he said, "Your lordship is one of the handsomest men in the kingdom, and I am one of the ugliest. Yet, give but half an hour's start, and I will enter the lists against you with any woman you choose to name, because you will omit attentions on account of your fine exterior, which I shall double on account of my plain one." He used to add that it took him just half an hour to talk away his face. He was so exceedingly ugly that a lottery-office keeper is said to have offered him ten guineas not to pass his -window whilst the tickets were dra-wing, for fear of his bringing ill-luck upon the house. Dr. Franldin left this plain-spoken estimate .of Wilkes and '45 : " 'Tis really an extraordinary event to see an outlaw and exile, of bad personal character, not worth a farthing, come over from France, set him self up as a candidate for the capital of the kingdom, miss his election only by being too late in his applica tion, and immediately carrying it for the principal county. The mob, spirited up by numbers of different ballads, sung or roared in every street, requiring gentle men and ladies of all ranks, as they passed in their carriages, to shout for 'Wilkes and Uberty!' marking the same words on all their coaches -with chalk, and No. 45 on every door ; which extends a vast way along the roads into the country. I went last week to Win chester, and observed that for fifteen miles out of town there was scarce a door or window-shutter next the road MEMOEABLE MAYOEALTIES. 47 mimarked : and this continued, here and there, quite to Winchester, which is sixty-four mUes." Wilkes, of course, in his constant tilts, did not escape retaliation. The following is attributed to Sheridan : " Johnny Wilkes, Johnny Wilkes, Thou greatest of bUks, How changed are the notes you now sing I Your famed forty-five Js Prerogative, And your blasphemy, ' God save the King I' " Mr. Eogers thus relates his first impression of Wilkes: "One morning, when I was a lad, Wilkes came into our banking-house to solicit my father's vote. My father happened to be out, and I, as his representative, spoke to Wilkes. At parting, Wilkes shook hands "with me ; and I felt proud of it for a week after. He was quite as ugly, and squinted as much, as his portraits make kim ; but he was very gentlemanly in appearance and manners. I think I see him at this moment, walking through the crowded streets of the City, as Chamberlain, on his way to Guildhall, in a scarlet coat, miUtary boots, and a bag- wig — the hackney- coachman in vain calling out to him, 'A coach, your honour?'" Wilkes resided occasionally at Hamilton Lodge, in Kensington Gore. Sometimes he had high -visitors here : a memorandum of Ms refers to a dinner given here to Counts Woronzow and Nesselrode ; and if we are to set do-wn Sfr Philip Francis as "Junius," here Junius visited, as Mrs. Eough, Wilkes's daughter, said, frequently; and when a child, he once cut off a lock of her hair. WUkes, to the last, walked home to the City, attired in his scarlet-and-buff suit, -with a cocked hat and rosette, and military boots — a di-ess authorised 48 LORD MAYORS AND by his position as colonel of militia. Wilkes kept up a certain fashionable status to the end: he died, 1797, in No. 30 Grosvenor-square, and was buried in Grosvenor Chapel, South Audley-street, where is a tablet, with this inscription from his own pen : " The remains of John Wilkes, a Friend to Liberty." Gibbon says of WUkes : " I scarcely ever met with a better companion : he has inexhaustible spirits, infi nite wit and humour, and a great deal of knowledge." He adds, "A thorough profiigate in principle as in practice ; his life stained with every vice, and his con versation full of blasphemy and indecency. These morals he glories in, for shame is a weakness he has lona; since surmounted." A redeeming incident in the career of Wilkes is his intrepid conduct when the Bank of England was assailed in the riots of 1780. He is said to have rushed out durmg the pauses -VN'hich occm'red , in the attack, and dragged some of the ringleaders from their fellow-rabble. 1776. Alderman Sawbridge, Mayor, fell into a strange mishap. As he was crossing Turnham Green, on his re turn from a state \'isit to Kew, the whole of his illus trious party were stopped by a single highwayman ; even the sword-bearer made no motion, but sat still while his lordship was stripped. When the fellow had thus out raged the City court he rode off to Kew, and meeting the -^-icar on the high road, after making him deliver up his valuables, even carried off his sermon ! 1784. Alderman Clark, Maj^or; in 1798 he suc ceeded John Wilkes in the office of Chamberlain. He died in 1831, having nearly completed his ninety-second year. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and was fond of Uterary society. At the age of fifteen he was introduced by Sfr John Hawkins to Dr. John- MEMORABLE MAYORALTIES. 49 son, whose friendship he enjoyed to the last year of his life. He attended the Doctor's evening-parties at the Mitre Tavern in Fleet-street, where he met Dr. Percy, Dr. Goldsmith, and Dr. Hawkesworth; he was also a member of the Essex Head Club ; and when he was Sheriff, in 1777, he took Dr. Johnson to a "judges' dinner" at the Old Bailey, the judges being Black- stone and Eyre. Mr. Clark died in the Porch House, Chertsey, the last residence of the poet Cowley. Se veral portraits of Chamberlain Clark are extant, and among them is one by Sir Thomas Lawrence, suspended in the Court of Common Council at Guildhall, and for which the Corporation paid the painter 400 guineas. There is also a bust of Mr. Clark, by Sievier, at Guild hall, the cost of which was defrayed by a subscription of the City officers. 1790. Alderman Boydell, Mayor. He was grandson of a Shropshire clergyman, and at man's estate came to London, and articled himself to an engraver. He be came eminent as an engraver and publisher, and boasted that he was the first man who ever became Lord Ma.yor through writing a book. He gave some twenty or thirty large paintings (now in the Guildhall) to the Corpora tion, and his portrait hangs on its walls. Alderman Boydell presided over Cheap Ward for twenty-three years. No. 90 Cheapside, corner of Ironmonger-lane, was Boydell's shop. On the morning after attending a City feast it was his practice to take off his wig, and placing his head beneath the pump in Ironmonger-lane, enjoy its cooling stream. He lived to the age of eighty- six. Nearly opposite, in Cheapside, is No. 73, which before the present Mansion House was built, was used occasionally as the Lord Mayor's mansion-house. 1792, 3. Sir James Saunderson, Mayor, left a minute VOL. I. E 50 LORD MAYORS AND account of the expenses of his jear of office, for the edi fication of his successors. The document is lengthy; but we shall select a few of the more striking items :* Paid butcher for twelve months, 781/. 10s. lOd. One item in this account is for meat given to the prisoners at Ludgate, at a cost of 68/. 10s. 8d. The -wdnes are of course expensive. 1792. Paid, late Lord Mayor's stock, 57/. 7s. lid.; hock, 35 dozen, 82/. 14s.; champagne, 40 ditto, at 43s. per dozen, 85/. 19s. dd. ; claret, 154 ditto, at 34s. 10c/. per dozen, 268/. 12s. Id. ; Burgundy, 30 ditto, 76/. 5s.; port, 8 pipes, 400 dozen, 416/. 4s.; draft ditto, for Lord Mayor's Day, 49/. 4s. ; ditto, ditto, for Easter Monday, 28/. 4s. 3c/.— 493/. 12s. 3c/. ; Madeira,. 32 dozen, 59/. 16s. 4c/. ; sherry, 61 dozen, 67/. Is. ; Lisbon, 1 hogs head, at 34s. dozen, 62/. 12s.; bottles to make good, broke and stole, 97/. 13s. 6c/.; arrack, 8/. 8s. ; brandy, 25 gallons, 18/. lis.; rum, 6i ditto, 3/. 19s. 6d. Total, 1,309/. 12s. 10c/. The citizens of 1795 must have had a decided preference for port, and with no very fasti dious taste, as draft wine was thought good enough for the 9th of November and Easter Monday. The charge for hock and Burgundy is extremely moderate ; but champagne at 43s. per dozen must have been in favour. Madeira is charged nearly 40s. per dozen, while the sherry only costs 25s. per dozen. We scarcely suppose much Lisbon is requfred at a civic dinner now ; yet Sir James Saunderson paid 62/. 12s. for a supply. Porter (Meux and Co.), 137/. 12s. ; small beer (Charrington and Co.), 61/. 14s. 6c/. Who drank the smaU beer? The supply must have been very copious. The desserts appear disproportionally costly. A dinner on October 12, from Birch, cost 428/. 15s., wlnle the dessert on the same occasion was charged 163/. At the Judges' dinner "' Quoted fi'om the Citg Press. MEMORABLE MAYORALTIES. 51 and the Fruiterers' dinner the dessert cost considerably more than the pro-visions. At the aldermen's festivals, the price paid for dessert was only a little under the charge for the actual dinner. Why the fruit should be so costly on these occasions seems to need explana tion. [The Fruiterers' dinner, by the way, originated with the Company yearly presenting the Lord MayOr with twelve baskets of apples, in return for which the Mayor in-^dtes the Company to dinner. For the apples, however, is now substituted the choicest fruit to be ob tained at the early season when the dinner takes place.] ' These items of costume are curious : Lady Mayor ess. Nov. 30. A hoop, 21. 16s. ; point ruffies, 12/. 12s. ; treble blond ditto, 7/. 7s. ; a fan, 3/. 3s. ; a cap and lap pets, 71. 7s. ; a cloak and sundries, 26/. 17s. ; hair orna ments, 34/.; a cap, 7/. 18s. ; sundries, 37/. 9s. Id. 1793, Jan. 26. A sUk, for 9tli November, 3^ guineas per yard, 41/. 6s. ; a petticoat (Madame Beauvais), 35/. 3s. 6c/. ; a gold chain, 57/. 15s. ; sUver silk, 13/. ; clouded satin, 5/. 10s. ; a petticoat for Easter, 29/. Is. ; milhnery for ditto, 27/. 17s. 6c/.; hair-dressing, 13/. 2s. 3d. July 6. A petticoat, 6/. 16s. 8c/. ; millinery, 11. 8s. 8c/. ; mantua- maker, in full, 13/. 14s. 6d. ; milliner, in full, 12/. 6s. 6d. Total, 416/.' 2s. The Lord Mayor's dress: Two wigs, 9/. 9s. ; a velvet suit, 54/. 8s.; other clothes, 117/. 13s. Ad. ; hats and hose, 9/. 6s. 6c^. ; a scarlet robe, 14/. 8s. 6d. ; a -nolet ditto, 12/. Is. 6d. ; a gold chain, 63/. ; steel buckles, 5/. 5s. ; a steel sword, 6/. 16s. 6c/. ; hair-dress ing, 16/. 16s. lie/. — 309/. 2s. M. On the page opposite to that containing this record, under the head of " Ditto returned," we read "Per valuation, 0/. Os. Od." Thus, to dress a Lord Mayor only costs 309/. 2s. ; but her lady ship cannot be duly arrayed at a less cost than 416/. 2s. To dress the servants cost 724/. 5s. 6c/. We give a few 52 LORD MAYORS AND items : hats, gloves, caps, 42/. 2s. 6c/. ; a wig for coach man, 21. 4s. ; state liveries and jackets without lace, 88/. 13s. ; nine second ditto, 64/. 7s. 10c/. ; eleven thfrd ditto, 56/. Os. 5c^. ; greatcoats, 26/. 16s. 9c/.; laces for liveries, hats, and caps, 289/. 17s. 8c/. ; six black liveries, "exclusive of my usual servants," 31/. 16s.; postillion's jacket (black), 3/. 13s. 3c^. ; eleven pairs of leathern breeches, 17/. 13s. Gd.-, fourteen pairs of silk stockings, 8/. 16s. ; twenty-eight pairs of gloves, 3/. 3s.; silk hair- bags, 21. 18s. 6c/. ; umbrellas, 1/. 16s. ; boots, 6/. 4s. ; boots for beadle and gate-porter, 10/. 10s. ; mourning for the maids, exclusive of "my own servants," 40/. lis. 6c/. Then comes a grand summing up, "Dr., the whole state of the account," 12,173/. 4s. 3d. Then foUow the re ceipts per contra : at Chamberlain's Office, 3,572/. 8s. 4c/. ; Cocket Office, 892/. 5s. lid. ; Bridge House, 60/. ; City Ganger, 250/. ; Freedoms, 175/. ; fees on affida-vits, 21/. 16s. Sd. ; seals, 67/. 4s. 9c/. ; hcenses, 13/. 15s. ; Sheriffs' fees, 13/. 6s. 8d. ; corn fees, 15/. 13s. ; venison warrants, 14/. 4s. ; attorneys. Mayor's Court, 26/. 7s. dd. ; City Eemembrancer, 12/. 12s. ; in lieu of baskets, 11. Is.; vote of Common Council, 100/. ; sale of horses and car riages, 450/. ; wine (overplus), removed from Mansion House, 398/. 18s. 7c/. Total received, 6,117/.. 9s. 8c/. Cost of mayoralty as such, and independent of all pri vate expenses, 6,055/. 14s. Id. It was Sir James Saunderson -who sent from the Mansion House a posse of officers to disperse a meet ing holden in that " caldron of sedition," Founders' Hall ; and among the persons so turned out was Eobert Waith- man, in his early debating days — an incident Waith- man often laughed at in his own mayoralty. 1797. Sir Benjamin Hamet, fined 1000/. for refusing to serve as Mayor. MEMOEABLE MAYORALTIES. C3 1799. Alderman Combe, Mayor, the brewer, Ajdiom some saucy citizens nicknamed "JSIash-tub." But he loved gay company. Among the members at Brookes's who indulged in high 'plsij was Combe ; he is said to have made as much money in this way as he did by brewing. One evening, whilst he filled the office of Lord Mayor, he was busy at a full hazard-table at Brookes's, where the wit and the dice-box circulated together with great glee, and -where Beau Brummel was one of the party. " Come, Mash-tub," said Brummel, who was the caster, " what do you set ?" " Twenty-five guineas," answered the alderman. " Well, then," returned the Beau, "have at the mare's pony'' (25 guineas). He continued to throw untU he drove home the brewer's twelve ponies, running; and then, getting up and making him a low bow whUst pocketing the cash, he said, "Thank you, alderman ; for the future, I shall never drink any porter but yours." " I wish, sir," replied the brewer, " that every other blackguard in London would tell me the same." Combe was succeeded in the mayoralty by Sfr WiUiam Staines. They were both smokers, and were seen one night at the Mansion House lighting their pipes at the same taper ; which reminds us of the Two Kings of Brentford smelling at one nosegay. 1800. Sir William Staines, Mayor. He began life as a bricklayer's labourer, and by persevering steadily in the pursint of one object accumulated a large for tune, and rose to the state-coach and the Mansion House. He was Alderman of Cripplegate Ward, where his memory is much respected. In Jacob's Well-passage, in 1786, he built nine houses for the reception of his aged and indigent friends. They are erected on both sides of the court, -without anything to distinguish them from other dwelling-houses, and without ostentatious dis- 64 LORD MAYORS AND play pf stone or other inscription to denote the poverty of the inhabitants. The early tenants were aged work men, tradesmen, &c., several of whom Staines had per sonally esteemed as his neighbours. One, a peruke- maker, had shaved the worthy alderman dm'ing forty years. Staines also built Barbican Chapel, and rebuilt the Jacob's Well public-house, noted for dramatic re citations. The alderman was an ilhterate man, and was a sort of butt among his brethren. At one of the Old Bailey cUnners, after a 'sumptuous repast of turtle and venison, Sir William was eating a great quantity of butter with his cheese. " Why, brother," said WUkes, "you lay it on -with a trowel V A son of Sfr WilUam Staines, who worked at his father's business (a builder), fell from a lofty ladder, and was killed ; when the father, on being fetched to the spot, broke through the crowd, exclaiming, " See that the poor fellow's watch is safe !" 1806. Sir James Shaw, Mayor, afterwards Chamber lain, of whom a marble statue has been erected by sub scription in his native town in Scotland. Shaw was born in 1764, in the humblest circumstances, and edu cated at the grammar-school of Kilmarnock. He settled in London as a merchant, by his own perseverance and integrity amassed a fortune, served as Lord Mayor 1805, sat in three parliaments for the City. He was unosten tatiously charitable, encouraged industrious poor men, and succoured the indigent, because he remembered his own unpromising infancy ; and he was one of the first to assis't the helpless children of Eobert Burns. In com memoration of these estimable qualities, the statue of Sir James Shaw was erected in 1848, as above. 1814. Sir WiUiam DomviUe, Mayor; the great event of whose mayoralty was the grand entertainment given in GuUdhall, on June 18, to the Prince Eegent, MEMORABLE MAYORALTIES. 55 the Emperor of Eussia, the King of Prussia, and other royal and illustrious personages. The dinner, which was as sumptuous as expense or skill could make it, was icholly seined on plate, the value of which was esti mated to exceed 200,000/. The entire expense of this entertainment was nearly 25,000/. On that day year, June 18, 181 5, was fought the battle of Waterloo. 1815. Alderman Birch, Mayor. He was the cele brated cook and confectioner at No. 15 Cornhill, proba bly the oldest shop of its class in the metropoUs. TUis business was estabUshed in the reign of Kjiig George I., by a Mr. Horton, who was succeeded by Mr. Lucas Bfrch, who, in his tum, was succeeded by his son, Mr. Samuel Bfrcli, born in 1757; he was many years a member of the Common Council, and alderman of the ward of Candle-wick. He was also Colonel of the City MiUtia. In his mayoralty, the year of the battle of Waterloo, he laid the first stone of the London Institu tion ; and when Chantrey's marble statue of George IH. was inaugurated in the Council Chamber, GuildhaU, the inscription was written by Lord Mayor Bfrch. He pos sessed considerable literary taste, and -WTote poems and musical dramas, of which Tlie Adopted Child remained a stock-piece to our time. The Alderman used annuaUy to send, as a present, a Twelfth-cake to the Mansion House. The upper portion of the house in Cornhill has been rebuilt; but the ground- floor remains intact, a curious specimen of the decorated shop-front of the last century ; and here are preserved two door-plates, inscribed " Bfrch, successor to Mr. Horton," which are 140 years old. Alderman Bfrch died in 1840, having been suc ceeded in the busmess in Cornhill, in 1836, by Eing and Brymer. 1816, 1817. Sir Matthew Wood, Bart., the most 56 LOED MAYORS AND popular Mayor in the present century, began life as a druggist's traveller, and then settled in London in the ward of Cripplegate, for which he rose to be alder man. He served as Lord Mayor two successive years, and represented the City in nine parliaments ; his baro netcy was the first title conferred by Queen Victoria, shortly after her accession. He gained much popularity as the adviser of the ill-fated Queen Caroline; for which, and his general political conduct, a princely le gacy was bequeathed to him by the Avealthy banker of Gloucester of the same name. He died in his 75th year. His eldest son, the next baronet, was in holy orders ; and his second son. Sir William Page Wood, is a sound equity lawyer and a Vice-ChanceUor. 1821. John Thomas Thorpe, Mayor, officiated as Chief Butler at the coronation feast of George IV. " Dinner being concluded, the Lord Mayor and twelve principal citizens of London, as assistants to the Chief Butler of England (the Duke of Norfolk), accompanied by the King's Cupbearer and assistants, presented to his Majesty wine in a gold cup ; and the King, having drunk thereof, returned the gold cup to the Lord Mayor as his fee." He was not, however, created a baronet, as customary : he was too violent a partisan of the ill- fated Queen Caroline. 1822. Christopher Magnay, Mayor. In 1844 his son, William, also served as Mayor, and received a ba ronetcy at the inauguration ¦ of the new Eoyal Exchange by Queen Victoria. 1823. Eobert Waithman, Mayor, tie was born of parents in humble life in 1764, and when a boy was adopted by his uncle, a linendraper at Bath, and sent to a school where the boys were taught public and extem poraneous speaking. He was taken into his uncle's MEMORABLE MAYORALTIES. 57 business, and after-wards came to London, and opened a shop at the south end of Fleet-market. In 1794 he began to take an active part in City politics, and was next elected into the Common Council, where his speeches, resolutions, petitions, and addresses would fill a large volume, tie subsequently removed to the south east corner of Fleet-street. He sat in five parliaments for the Citj'-, made a popular Sheriff and Lord Mayor, and after his death in 1833, his friends and fellow- citizens erected to his memory a granite obelisk upon the site -whereon he commenced business. A memorial tablet, placed in St. Bride's Church, records that " it was his happiness to see that great cause triumphant of which he had been, the intrepid advocate from youth to age." Curiously enough, this tablet is placed in the vestibrde of the church, directly opposite a similar memorial to Ml'. Blades of Ludgate Hill, who was a fine old Tory, and a stanch opponent to Waithman throughout his stormy political life : as in life, so in death the great leveller has laid them here. We have related his dibut in politics. When Sheriff, in 1821, Waithman, in endea- voui-frig to quell a tumult at Knightsbridge, had a carbine presented at him by a life-guardsman; and at the funeral of Queen Caroline a bullet passed through the Sheriff's carriage, in the procession through Hyde Park. Latterly the alderman grew too moderate for his Farringdon Ward friends, and he was defeated of being elected Chamber lain ; he then withdrew to a farm near Eeigate, and in this bucolic retirement passed away. He was an in trepid, upright man, but had been slenderly educated ; and many of the resolutions on the war with France, by which he gained poUtical notoriety, were -written by his friend and neighbour. Sir Eichard PhiUips. In early life Waithman showed considerable genius for acting; 58 LORD MAYORS AND and we once heard him relate that his success in the character of Macbeth led his friends to press upon him the stage as his profession ; but he chose another sphere. He was uncle to John Eeeve, the clever comic actor. 1825. Alderman Garratt, Mayor, laid the first stone of London Bridge, June 15, accompanied by the Duke of York. The ceremony was performed -with much eclat. In the evening the Lord Mayor celebrated the event at the Mansion House by a banquet to upwards of 360 guests, in the Egyptian Hall, and nearly 200 of the Artillery Comj^any in the saloon. The whole edifice was brilliantly illuminated within and without with gas ; and the Monument was lighted -with portable gas, — a lamp being placed at each of the loopholes ofthe column, and others on the edge of the gallery; and medals were struck in commemoration of the event. 1826. Alderman Venables, Mayor. The account of his "View of the Thames," by the chaplain to the mayoralty, the Eev. Mr. Dillon, a volume of some 160 pages, is now a high-priced bibliographical curiosity. In the sale of the Adolphus collection of books and pamphlets this book brought the large sum of 8/. ! We remember a copy in Paternoster-row for 12s. It is a thin post-octavo volume, nicknamed Lord Wenables' Woyage to discover the Source of the Thames. The book is a piece of simplicity, not sly quizzing. Soon after pubUcation it was " bought up" and suppressed. The account of the Lord Mayor Johnson's View of the Thames in 1846, in the Illustrated London News, No. 224, is the most cfrcumstantial record of such a -visit, which -vnll probably never be repeated. It was a gay succession of feasting, which cost the City many hun dreds of pounds. 1830. Alderman Key, Mayor. Invitation declined MEMOEABLE MAYOEALTIES. 69 by King WiUiam IV., and the show, and inauguration dinner omitted, from apprehension of riot and outrage. — 1831. New London Bridge opened, and Lord Mayor Key created a baronet, and reelected Mayor during the Eeform-BUl agitation. 1837. Alderman Kelly, Lord Mayor at the accession of her Majesty, was born at Chevening, in Kent, and lived, when a youth, with Alexander Hogg, the pub lisher in Paternoster-row, for 10/. a-year wages. He slept under the shop- counter for the security of the premises. He was reported to his master to be "too slow" for the situation. Mr. Hogg, ho-wever, thought him " a bidable boy," and he remained. This incident shows upon what apparently trifling circumstances some times a marHs future prospects depend. Mr. Kelly suc ceeded Ml-. Hogg in the business, became alderman of the ward of Farringdon Within, and served as sheriff and Mayor, the cost of which exceeded the fees and allowances by the sum of 10,000/. He lived upon the same spot sixty years ; and died in his 84th year. He was a man of active benevolence, and reminded one of the pious Lord Mayor Sfr Thomas Abney. He com posed some prayers for his o-wn use, which were sub sequently printed for private distribution. 1838. Sir John Cowan, Mayor, created a baronet by Queen Victoria on her -visit to Guildhall, Nov. 9. 1839. Sfr Chapman Marshall, Mayor. He received knighthood when sheriff in 1831, and at a public dinner of the friends and supporters of the Metropolitan Charity Schools, he addressed the company as follows : " My Lord Mayor and gentlemen, I want words to express the emo tions of my heart. You see before you an humble uidi- vidual who has been educated in a parochial school. I came to London in 1803 without a shilling, -without a 60 LOED MAYOES AND friend. I have not had the advantage of a classical edu cation ; but this I will say, my Lord Mayor and gentle men, that you ¦\vitness in me what may be done by the earnest application of honest industry ; and I trust that my example may induce others to aspire, by the same means, to the distinguished situation which I have now the honour to fill." 1839. Alderman WUson, Mayor, signalised his year of office by giving in the Egyptian Hall a banquet to 117 connections of the Wilson family being above the age of nine years. At this family festival the usual civic state and ceremonial were maintained, the sword and mace borne, &c. But after the loving-cup had been passed round, the attendants were dismissed, in order that the free family intercourse might not be restricted during the remainder of the evening. A large number of the Wilson family, including the Alderman himself, have grown rich in the silk-trade. 1842. Sir Joki^ TifiSj Mayor. Eoyal Exchange com menced. Baronetcy received on the christening of the Prince of Wales. At his inauguration dinner at Guild hall Sir John said : " I little thought forty years ago, when I came to the City of London a poor lad from the banks of the Tweed, that I should ever arrive at so great a distinction." In his mayoralty Show, Pirie, being a shipowner, added to the procession a model of a large East Indiaman, fully rigged and manned, and drawn in a car by six horses. 1849. Alderman Farncomb, Mayor, one of the prime contributors to the success of the Great Exhi bition of 1851. His lordship gave at the Mansion House a grand banquet to Prince Albert, and the Mayors of most of the boroughs of the United King dom, in honour of the projected Exhibition ; when MEMOEABLE MAYORALTIES. 61 Prince Albert declared his views in terms "the most truthful, the most able, the most feeling, the most re ligious, and the most eloquent." 1850. Sir John Musgrove, Mayor, chiefiy upon the suggestion of Mi-. George Godwin, F.S.A., had the Show of this year re-designed as follows : Two pages ; figure of Peace, bearing her olive-branch, and mounted on a white palfrey, followed by Europe, Asia, Africa, and America ; male and female equestrians, in characteristic costume ; t-wo pages ; horse of Europe, bearing a shield of the na tional arms ; two Arabs leading the camel of Asia, sup porting a device ; two pages ; two negroes leading ele phant of Africa, supporting device of palm-trees, birds, and fruits ; two pages ; Indians leading two deer of Ame rica, bearing symbols ; two pages conducting a horse bearing attributes of Industry, the beehive, and agri cultural implements; two pages conducting the horse bearing attributes of Art, Sculpture, and emblems of the Fine Arts ; two pages conducting the horse bear ing attributes of Commerce, a ship in full sail over a globe, anchor, &c. ; two pages conducting the horse bearing attributes of Manufactures, Machinery, &c. ; an allegorical car, drawn by six cream-coloured horses, the car representing a state -barge rowed by tars, tritons, and dolphins at the stem, in the centre bearing a large globe, with Britannia and Happiness personated by females allegorically robed — the former at the foot, and the latter seated on a throne on the summit of the globe, bearing symbols of Peace. 1855, 6. Alderman Salomons, the first Lord Mayor of the Jewish persuasion. This mayoralty was distin guished by the liberal and enlightened views of the chief magistrate, especiaUy in an address temperately reprehendino' the evil-minded attempts to exaggerate 62 LOED MAYOES AND the nuisance of the Guy Fawkes Day absurdities ; and, through the exertions of the City Solicitor, the libellous inscription upon the Monument on Fish-street-hill, at tributing the Fire of London to the Eoman Catholics, was by order of the Common CouncU erased. This is an act of justice worthy ofthe age in which the Je-wish citizen was first admitted to the full enjoyment ofhis municipal rights. 1862, 3. Alderman Eose, Mayor; the most briUiant event in whose mayoralty was the reception of the Prin cess Alexandra of Denmark and the Prince of Wales by the City Corporation in state, March 7, 1863. The mar riage of their Eoyal Highnesses took place at Windsor, March 10; and subsequently they were present at a grand entertainment in Guildhall. The civic festivities and presents (including a diamond necklace, 10,000 guineas) cost the Corporation some 60,000/., yet no distinction was conferred upon the chief magistrate. He is Alderman of Queenhithe, where in the same row have resided three Mayors of our time — Venables, Hooper, and Eose. 1863,4. AldermanWilliamLa-vn-ence, Mayor; yield ing the unprecedented instance of a father and two sons having filled the office of alderman, and having served the office of Sheriff of London and Middlesex. The father was Alderman of Bread-street Ward, who served sheriff in 1849 ; he died in 1855, before he had succeeded to the mayoralty. His son, William Lawrence, succeeded to the vacant gown, and served sheriff in 1857 ; and his brother, James Clarke Lawrence, was elected by the Ward of Walbrook Alderman in 1860, and has served with marked efficiency the office of sheriff, 1862. 1865. Alderman B. S. Phillips, Mayor; the first Jew admitted into the Municipality of London, and the second MEMOEABLE MAYOEALTIES. 63 Lord Mayor of that faith. He is a man of great com mon sense, tact, and judgment, which he displayed in his official duties : he discharged the honom-s of the office most felicitously; his hospitalities were distin guished by splendour and good taste, and he had the honour to entertain at the Mansion House the Prince of Wales and the King and Queen of the Belgians; and at the close of his mayoralty he received knight hood. Lord Mayor's Day, with its glittering show and gorgeous feasts, in the Great HaU, the Companies' halls, and in tavern dining-rooms, is stiU celebrated. The glorious " 9th" is not neglected in the City. Time was -when citizens would not " begin fires" until Lord Mayor's Day, however cold the season might be, and perchance the custom still lingers in a few old houses. Who that has read and does not remember Theodore Hook's humorous sketch of the mayoralty — "the splen did annual" — of some thirty years since f How Scrops could not sleep all night for his greatness; the -wind do-wn the chimney sounded like the shouts of the people ; the cocks crowing in the mews at the back of the house he took for trumpets sounding his approach; and the ordi nary incidental noises in the family he fancied the pop guns at Stangate announcing his disembarkation at West minster. The mayoralty pageant is shorn of its aquatic state : we miss the " golden glister" of the state barges, and the rustling of the silken banners on the river ; the Stationers, in their gilt barge, no longer call at Lam beth Palace for their hot spiced ale, and buns, and cakes, and wine ; nor has the Company to provide new wooden sack-cups, though the Archbishop of Canterbury may receive his annual present of almanacs from Sta tioners' Hall. But the Lord Mayor's inauguration-day 64 LOED MAYOES AND is still long enough for mortal to endure : the breakfast at Guildhall, going to chm-ch at St. Lawrence's, and then the state procession, or show, often extended in its route so as to pass through the new Lord Mayor's ward, moves on through the City, Fleet-street, the Strand, Charing-cross, and Whitehall, still " holding due course to Westminster," notwithstanding Lord Sidmouth, as High Steward, once protested against a similar passage through his civic domain by the greater civic pageant. The Show, with its stray features of mediaeval state and modern anachronism, is still a holiday sight ; and the new life of its Volunteers and Fire Brigade is enjoyed more than "dull fools suppose." We remember the ma,jority of the Show^s of the present century, and many attempts to vary the pageant : how an immense ship, fully rigged and manned, was once the novel nucleus ; how copies of Gog and Magog, in Guildhall, each four teen feet high, — the giants' faces level with first-floor windows, — were carried in the Show ; and how an extra sum of money was expended in getting up a sort of national pageant in Sir John Musgrove's mayoralty, which was picturesque, but scarcely of a civic character. The last ancient feature was the poor men of the Com pany to which the Lord Mayor belonged, wearing their long gowns and close caps ofthe Company's colour, and bearing painted shields, there being as many men as years in the Lord Mayor's age. This was well enough, but "dull fools" laughed at the poor old fellows as so many " Guys'' of four days pre-viously. Those historical personages, the " men in armour," have been spared ; but the state coach, more than a century old, with its gaily- ribboned horses, still bears the new chief magistrate to Westminster for presentation to the Judges in the Ex chequer Court, who are then invited to the banquet. MEMOEABLE MAYOEALTIES. 65 This brings to mind Cobbett's homely illustration of the Show, and the good it does : " Om- Lord Mayor and his golden coach, and his gold-covered footmen and coachman, and his golden chain, and his chaplain, and his great sword of state, please the people, and particu larly the women and girls ; and when they are pleased, the men and boys are pleased ; and many a young fel low has been more industrious and attentive from his hope of one day riding in that golden coach." And so it has proved; for some of the Mayors ofthe present century came to London to seek their fortune — some as "poor boys:" the obeUsk at the south end of Farringdon-street attests a rise of the former kind. But to rejoin the procession. Formerly the horses were occasionaUy taken fi-om the carriage, and the popular inmate drawn up "the hill" by his admirers : we all re member the story of Wilkes's coach- horses. The prac tice was Uable to abuse, as in the instance of a sheriff, a publisher, being thus "cfrawn up" by a set of men from a neighbouring prmting-office, who, provided -vnth ropes, awaited the arrival of Mr. Sheriff. No good came from such purchasable enthusiasm. Onward moves the Show, and great is the rabble-rout behind the state-coach, which rolls down King-street to the porch ofthe Guildhall. The Usts of the old pageants are occasionally tire some to read, but the following account from a manu script of 1575 is unusually picturesque: "The day of St. Simon and St. Jude, the Mayor enters into his state and office. The next day he goes by water to Westminster in most triumphant-like manner, his barge being garnished with the arms of the City ; and near it a ship-boat of the Queen's Majesty, being trimmed up and rigged like a ship-of-war, with divers pieces of VOL. I. F 66 LOED MAYOES AND ordnance, standards, pennons, and targets of the proper arms of the said Mayor, of his Company, and of the Merchants Adventurers, or of the Staple, or of the Company of the New Trades ; next before him goeth the barge of the livery of his o-wn company, decked -wdth their own proper arms ; then the bachelors' barge; and so all the companies in London, in order, every one having their o-wii proper barge, -with the arms of thefr company. And so passing along the Thames, he landeth at Westminster, where he taketh his oath in the Exchequer, before the judge there; which done, he returneth by water as aforesaid, and landeth at Paul's-wharf, where he and the rest ofthe aldermen take thefr horses, and in great pomp pass through Cheapside. And first of all come two great standards, one having the arms of the City, and the other the arms of the Mayor's company ; next them two drums and a fiute, then an ensign of the City, and then about Ixx or Ixxx poore men marching two and two, in blue go-wns, -with red sleeves and caps, every one bearing a pike and a target, whereon is painted the arms of all them that have been Mayors of the same company that this new Mayor is of. Then two banners, one of the King's arms, the other of the Mayor's o-wn proper arms. Then a set of hautboys playing, and after them certain ¦wyfflers,-* in velvet coats and chains of gold, with white staves in their hands; then the Pageant of Triumph richly decked, whereupon, by certain figures and writ- '* Wlhiffler, Mr. Douoe says, in his Illustrations of Sliahespea/i'e, is a term undoubtedly borrowed from whiffle, another name for a, fife or small ilute ; for whifflers were originally those who preceded armies or processions as fifers or pipers. In process of time the term "whiffler," whioh had been always used in the sense of a " fifer," came to signify any person who went before in a procession. MEMOEABLE MAYOEALTIES. 67 ings, some matter touching justice and the office of a magistrate is represented. Then sixteen trumpeters, eight and eight, having banners of the Mayor's com pany. Then certain -wyfflers, in velvet coats and chains, with -white staves as before. Then the bachelors, two and two, in long go-nms, with crimson hoods on their shoulders of satin ; which bachelors are chosen every year of the same company that the Mayor is of (but not of the living), and serve as gentlemen on that and other festival days, to wait on the Mayor, being in number according to the quantity of the company — sometimes sixty or one hundred. After them twelve trumpeters more, with banners of the Mayor's company ; then the drum and flute of the City, and an ensign of the Mayor's company ; and after, the waits of the City in blue gowns, red sleeves and caps, every one having a silver collar about his neck. Then they of the livery in their long go-wns, every one with his hood on his left shoulder, half black and half red, the number of them according to the greatness ofthe company whereof they are. After them foUow sheriffs' officers, and then the Mayor's officers, with other officers of the City, as the Common Serjeant and the Chamberlain; next before the Mayor goeth the sword-bearer, having on his head the cap of honour, and the sword of the City in his right hand in a rich scabbard set -with pearl, and on his left hand goeth the common crier of the City, with his great mace on his shoulder all gilt. The Mayor hath on a long gown of scarlet, and on his left shordder a hood of black velvet, and a rich collar of gold of SS about his neck ; and with him rideth the old Mayor also, in his scarlet gown, hood of velvet, and a chain of gold about his neck. Then aU the aldermen, two and two (among whom is the Eecorder), all in scarlet gowns ; those that 68 THE LOED MAYOE AT THE have been Mayors have chains of gold, the others have black velvet tippets. The two ^sheriffs come last of all, in their scarlet gowns and chains of gold. In this order they pass along through the City to the Guild hall, where they dine that day, to the number of one thousand persons, all at the charge of the Mayor and the two sheriffs. This feast costeth 400/., whereof the Mayor payeth 200/., and each of the sheriffs 100/. Immediately after dinner they go to St. Paul's Church ; every one of the aforesaid poor men bearing staff, torches, and targets, which torches are lighted when it is late before they come from evening prayer." THE LORD MAYOR AT THE ACCESSION OF QUEEN -VICTORIA. We have already recorded that Alderman Kelly was Mayor at the accession of her Majesty in the year 1837. The demise of the Crown has always been an occasion on which the services' of the Lord Mayor have been called into requisition. Indeed, his authority not ceasing on such a contingency, like that of other com mission officers, he is said, in such cases, to be the prin cipal officer in the kingdom. A formal and timely no tice of the event is, therefore, forwarded to him by the Home Secretary, accompanied by a request that he -will give directions for the tolling of the great bell of St. Paul's Cathedral. He also receives a summons to at tend the first Privy Council, when the rightful suc cessor to the throne is acknowledged by the signature of those present, and arrangements are made for the sovereign's proclamation. These are duties which, under the most pacific aspect of public affafrs, invariably de volve upon the chief magistrate on the death of the reigning sovereign ; but occasions have arisen in former ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 69 times when, in conjunction with his fellow- citizens, he has been called upon to assume even higher powers. Stow says : " When James I. was invited to come and take the crown of England, Eobert Lee, then Lord Mayor, subscribed in the first place, before all the great officers of the Crown, and all the nobility" (Strype's Stoiv, vol. ii. p. 155). So, on the abdication of James II., a meeting was called of all the members of the dif ferent parliaments of Charles H., and the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and fifty of the Common Council, which was regarded as the most proper representation of the people in that exigency (PuUing's Treatise, p. 19). Before we describe the First Council it will be mte- resting to detail these antecedents, as recorded in the Diaries of a Lady of Quality: "At Kensington Palace the Princess Victoria received the intelligence of the death of WUliam IV., June 1837. On the 20th, at 2 A.M., the scene closed, and in a very short time the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham, the Chamberlain, set out to announce the event to their young sovereign. They reached Kensington Palace at about five ; they knocked, they rang, they thumped for a considerable time before they could rouse the porter at the gates ; they were again kept waiting in the court yard, then turned into one of the lower rooms, where they seemed forgotten by everybody. They rang the bell, desired that the attendant of the Princess Victoria might be sent to inform li.E.tl. that they requested an audience on business of importance. After another delay, and another ringing to inquire the cause, the attendant was summoned, who stated that the Princess was in such a sweet sleep she could not ventm-e to dis turb her. Then they said, ' We are come to the Queen on business of state, and even her sleep must give way 70 THE LOED MAYOE AT THE to that.' It did: and to prove that she did not keep them waiting, in a few minutes she came into the room in a loose white nightgown and shawl, her nightcap tlirown off, and her hair falling upon her shoulders — her feet in slippers, tears in her eyes, but perfectly col lected and dignified." Lord Mayor Kelly having received a note from one of the clerks of the Privy Council, giving his lordship notice, by desfre ofthe Lords of the Privy CouncU, " that yom- lordship and the Court of Aldermen may give your attendance there if you think proper," the Lord Mayor proceeded with as little delay as possible, and accom panied by such aldermen as were present, in the direc tion of St. James's Palace. On their way thither they were met by a messenger from the Home Office, inform ing them that the Council would be held at Kensington (where the Queen and her mother were then residing), and not at St. James's, as originally announced. On their arrival at the palace at Kensington, the Lord Mayor was introduced to her Majesty the Queen, by the Duke of Sussex, and took his seat as a Privy Coun cillor ; shortly after which, with the members of the royal family, the Archbishops, and other Privy Coun- ciUors present, as well as the members of the City depu tation, he attached his signature to the proclamation of her Majesty's accession" (Life of Alderman Kelly, by the Eev. E. C. Fell, 1856). In the Diaries of a Lady of Quality the First Coun cil is thus described : " The first act of the reign was of course the summoning of the Council, and most of the summonses were not received till after the early hour fixed for its meeting. The Queen was, upon the open ing of the doors, found sitting at the head of the table. She received first the homage of the Duke of Cumber- ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTOEIA.. 71 land, who, I suppose, was not King of Hanover when he knelt to her ; the Duke of Sussex rose to perform the same ceremony, but the Queen, with admfrable grace, stood up, and, preventing him from kneeling, kissed him on the forehead. The crowd was so great, the arrangements were so iU-made, that my brothers told me the scene of swearing allegiance to thefr young sovereign was more like that of the bidding at an auc tion than anything else." [Sir David Wilkie has painted the scene — but with a difference.] The proclamation took place on the day after the accession, when it was the duty of the Chief Magistrate to open the gates of Temple Bar, to admit the proces sion, as had been notified the day pre-viously from the Herald's Office. This was, we believe, the last time the Temple Bar ceremony was performed in its entirety, it ha-ving since been varied, and divested of most of its formality. The details at the accession are thus mi nutely related by the Eev. Mr. Fell : " When the Lord Mayor's carriage arrived near Temple Bar, the gates of which, in accordance with an cient practice and privilege, closed a short time pre- ¦viously, a pursuivant of arms advanced from the West minster side between two trumpeters, preceded by two of the Life-guards, to the gates, and after three loud blasts of the trumpets, a knock was heard. The City Marshal called out from -within the gates, ' Who comes there?' To which was replied, 'The officers of arms, who demand entrance into the City to proclaim her Eoyal Majesty, Alexandrina Victoria, Queen.' Imme diately upon hearing this summons, the City Marshals rode up, with their hats off, to the carriage of the Lord Mayor, -vvhich stood opposite to Chancery-lane, and informed him that the herald was at the gates, and 72 THE LOED MAYOE AT THE desired admission to proclaim the Queen. His lord ship having ordered that the gates should be opened, the heralds and the rest of the procession, who had been reading the proclamation in Westminster, passed through ; and a pursuivant and the York herald-at- arms approached the Lord Mayor, and presented to his lordship the Order in Council, requiring him to pro claim her Majesty. The Lord Mayor, addressing him self to the herald, said : ' I am aware of the contents of this paper, having been apprised of the ceremony ap pointed to take' place yesterday ; and I have attended to perform my duty in accordance with the ancient usages and customs of the City of London.' His lordship then read the Order in Council, requiring the herald to pro claim her Majesty the Queen, Alexandrina Victoria, within the jurisdiction of the City, and returned it to the herald-at-arms, who proceeded to read the proclama tion, immediately after the trumpet was sounded. As soon as the proclamation was read, there was a fiourish of trumpets again ; and the herald having cried aloud, ' God save the Queen !' the people waved their hats, and several persons cried out, ' Long live Queen Victoria !' " As soon as this was done, the Lord Mayor, and the whole of the City authorities, fell into the pro cession, immediately after the officers-at-arms ; and pro ceeded down Fleet-street, up Ludgate-hill, through St. Paul's Churchyard and Cheapside, until they arrived at the end of Wood-street, where they halted, for the pur pose of proclamation being a fourth time made, with the same formalities as before. The procession, at this point, was joined by several of the City Companies, and then moved on to the Eoyal Exchange, where the pro clamation was read for the last time. "It was expected that Alderman Kelly would have ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 73 been honoured with a baronetcy at the close of his mayoralty, dm-ing which he had presented an address of congratulation to the youthful sovereign, on the attain ment of her majority, as heiress-presumptive to the throne ; he had attended her first Council, and had offi cially assisted at her proclamation; and her Majesty became the guest of the Corporation, and dined at the GuUdhall. As Lord Mayor, he had waited in person on her Majesty, at Buckingham Palace, on the 31st of July pre-vious, to convey to her the in-vitation of the Corpora tion, and to ascertain her pleasure respecting the appoint ment of a day for the entertainment. With the view of occasioning as little inconvenience as possible, and of maldng the entertainment serve a dou.ble object, the Queen considerately fixed upon the ensuing Lord Mayor's Day for her visit. This consideration for the convenience of the City was, however, rendered prac tically futile by what followed ; for the incoming Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, who individually bore no part of the expense of the banquet given to the Queen, gave their o-vm entertainment in the Guildhall a -w^eek after wards. The invitation to her Majesty having been given and accepted durmg Kelly's year of office, with the additional fact, that upon him had devolved the duties of the chief magistracy on the occasion of the accession and proclamation, not unnaturally led to a belief that the baronetcy conferred on his successor in office would have been conferred on him. While it was admitted on all hands that he had a prior claim to this mark of consideration, and an intimation, originating, it is said, in a high quarter, was given to him, that had his claim been sooner brought under notice a remedy would have been found for the apparent oversight, in the appoint ment of an earlier day for the entertainment, — it was 74 LOED MAYOE'S STATE-COACH. obvious that, under the circumstances, the honour could only properly be conferred upon the Lord Mayor of the day, and it was accordingly so disposed of. Any pre tentions Alderman Kelly might himself have had to such a mark of royal favour he was prepared, by the very constitution of his mind, cheerfully to forego ; and his most enthusiastic friends need hardly regret that an honour, which, conferred under such cfrcumstances, must have been regarded rather as the accident of office than a reward for public ser-dces, and which, therefore, could have shed no additional lustre upon his fafr name, should have passed into other hands.""* Curiously enough, at the first court of the new mayoralty votes of thanks were presented by the Alder men and Common Council to the ex-Lord Mayor Kelly, in acknowledgment of services for which his successor was rewarded with a barquetcy ; an inconsistency which should have been prevented by the minister explaining to the youthful sovereign the position of the Corpo ration in the matter. Nor was the contretetnps heeded ; for, fourteen years later, the baronetcy was conferred upon Lord Mayor Musgrove, on the 2d August 1851 (the great Exhibition year), although his predecessor. Lord Mayor Farncomb, took the initiative in largely contributing to the success of the Exhibition. THE LOED mayor's STATE-COACH. Subsequently to 1711, when the Lord Mayor last rode on horseback in the Show, the state-coach was used, drawn by four horses ; till, in 1741, the number was increased to six. This coach is represented in one ¦* Life of Alderman Kelly. By the Eev. R. C. Fell. 1866." LOED MAYOR'S STATE-COACH. 75 of Hogarth's prints, date 1 747 ; but it is eclipsed in size and splendour by the coach now used. The Lord Mayor's state-coach is kept at the " Green yard," Wliitecross-street, opposite the Debtors' Prison. This superb carriage was built in 1757, by subscription among the aldermen, but soon became the property of the Corporation, who have since paid the expense of keeping the coach in repair. Even so early as twenty years after its construction the repairs in one year cost 335/., and the average of seven years' repairs in the present century was 115/. The design of the coach is more magnificent than graceful : the carriage consists of a pan- of grotesque marine figures, who support the seat of the driver, with a large escallop-shell as a foot board; at the hind part are two children bearing the City arms, beneath whjch is a large pelican ; the perch is double, and terminates in dolphins' heads; and the four wheels are richly carved and gilt, and resemble those of ancient triumphal chariots. The body is not hung upon springs, but upon four thick red leather straps, fastened wdth gilt brass buckles of spirited de sign, each bearing the City arms. The roof was origin ally ornamented -with eight gilt vases ; in the centre was a leafy crown, bearing the City arms, and from which small gilt flowers trailed over the remainder of the roof, painted red : a group of four boys supporting baskets of fruit and flowers originally occupied the centre, but they were removed about forty years since. The upper intervals of the body, save at the back, are filled with plate-glass, and the several lower panels are painted as follow : Front Panel. — Faith supporting a decrepit figure beside a flaming altar; Hope pointing to St. Paul's Cathedral in the distance. 76 LORD MAYOR'S STATE-COACH. Bach. — Charity: a wrecked sailor; ship in the offing ; two females casting money and fruits into his lap. Upper Back. — The City, attended by Neptune; Commerce introducing the Arab, with his horse, and other traders, with the camel, elephant, &c. Riglit Door. — Fame, -with her -vvTeath, presenting a Lord Mayor to the City, who lays the sword and scep tre, the mace, &c. at her feet. In the very small panel beneath are fruit and fiowers. Side Panels. — Beauty, with her mirror ; female -with bridled horse, &c. Left Door. — The City seated, and Britannia pointing with her spear to a shield, inscribed with " Henri Fitz- Al-fi'in, 1189" (the first Mayor). In the very small panels beneath are the scales of Justice and sword of Mercy, grouped. Side Panels.- — Justice, with her scales and sword. Prudence, &c. In small shields, at the lower angles of each door, and of the back and front panels, are emblazoned the arms of the Lord Mayor for the time being. The framework is richly carved and gilt ; over each door is an escallop-shell, and at the lower angles ofthe body are dwarf figures, emblematic of the four quarters of the globe. The smaller enrichments about the panels, as shells, fruits and flower sj are admirably cars^ed and grouped : over the upper back panel is an exquisite bit — a serpent and dove. The perch and wheels are painted red, picked out with gold, and massive gilt bosses cover the wheel-boxes ; the wheels were renewed in 1828. The coach is Uned with crimson corded siUi and lace ; and in the centre is a seat for the mace- and sword-bearers. The hammer-cloth is crimson cloth; but the original one was of gold lace. CIVIC CURIOSITIES. 77 This coach was repaired, new-lined, and re-gUt in 1812, at an expense of 600/., when also a new seat- cloth was furnished for 90/. ; and in 1821 the re-lining cost 206/. In 1812 Messrs. Houlditch agreed to keep the coach in fair wear and tear for ten years at 48/. per annum. The total weight of the coach is 3 tons 16 cvAt. ; it is drawn by six horses, for whom a superb state harness was made in 1833, and that for each horse weighed 106 lb. It is not positively known by whom this coach was carved, nor by whom the panels were painted. Cipriani is stated by some to be the painter; but others assert that after the present royal state-coach was built in 1762, the old royal state-coach was purchased by the City of London, and the panels repainted by Dance ; such is the statement of Smith, in his Nollehens and his Times ; but in the report of the Municipal Corporation Commissioners the City coach is stated to have been built in 1757. CIVIC CURIOSITIES. Persons in official positions rarely turn their oppor tunities of collecting to such good account as did the late City Eemembrancer, Mr. Tyrell, whose singularly curious library was dispersed by auction in the spring of 1864. The sale occupied five days, and there were some 1500 lots. In so extensive a collection there were, of course, many works of trifling literary worth, especially those illustrating the modern history of Lon don ; nevertheless such works are often ser-viceable in throwing light upon obscure and disputed points of me- tropoUtan manners. The documentary works on laws, customs, and charters were very numerous and valuable. 78 CIVIC CURIOSITIES. from the official status of the collector. The pam phlets that had sprung out of election contests and ward squabbles, tithes and ecclesiastical affairs, trials, peerage claims, and divorce cases, -w-ere Yery curious ; and the pageants, sights, and shows of our ancient city were well represented. Even the pamphlets written against building bridges, and other improvements of the great town, were a goodly crop, — the Holborn -valley and Snow-hill improvements to -wit. It is scarcely half a century since the latter locality was pulled about ; and we find here the " Eepresentation of the Leaseholders and Contractors interested, and the Scheme of the pro posed Lottery," "with plans and plates, in red morocco." Some City Companies' records are very scarce. Here was the Haberdashers' Londini Speculum, ex tremely rare ; and Munday's " Chrysomelia," privately printed for the Fishmongers' Company, illustrated from contemporary drawings by H. Shaw, together -wdth the array ofthe Mayors; and Leman's Pageant in 1616, a work well known to the guests at Fishmongers' Hall. Of the Great Plague and Fire there were many ac counts. Here, too, was an original copy of the first attempt at a London Directory, which settles the actual address of the father of Alexander Pope, without doubt the street in which the poet himself was born; this copy (1677) having attached four leaves of an "Addition of all the Goldsmiths that keep running Cashes" — a very early "List of Bankers." Wilkes's "Sufferings," &c.— The tracts, papers, and letters -were very numerous, includ ing The British Lion roused, portrait inserted, very rare, with the scarce parody, "A new Form of Prayer and Thanksgiving" for Wilkes's deliverance ; besides Wilkes's Speeches in the House of Commons, " Liber valde raris- simus." Among the " Prisons and Trials" were the Old SWAN-UPPINa ON THE THAMES. 79 Bailey Sessions' Papers, 1679-1729, many very scarce ; and a batch of the multitude of Elizabeth Canning pamphlets. Among the mayoralty books we should not omit the Chaplain DiUon's " Visit to Oxford in 1826," "rigidly suppressed." One most rare and singularly curious lot was, " Vade Mecum for Malt Worms ; or, a Guide to Good Fellows : being a description of the manners and customs of the most eminent publick houses in and about the Cities of London and Westmin ster; with a hint on the props (or principal customers) of each house ; in a method so- plain that any thirsty person (of the meanest capacity) may easily find the nearest way from one house to another." This merry production is in verse. The copy belonged to the famous collector Narcissus Luttrell, who placed the time of his purchase as September 1720, and the price as fivepence, paid by him for each part. There are upwards of one hundred leaves, each with a woodcut of the sign of some well - kno-wn tippling establishment ; underneath the quahties of the liquors are rehearsed, the names of the guzzlers given, and thefr drinldng capabiUties recorded in verse. SWAN-UPPING ON THE THAMES. Although Gresham -street and the raUways, some twenty years since, swallowed up Lad -lane and the old coaching inn, the Swan with Two Necks, and cygnets no longer appear in the civic bills of fare on Lord Mayor's day, the swan itself has been spared to grace our noble metropolitan river, " roj^al - towered Thame ;" and the custom of swan-upping (-vulgarly called swan-hopping), or taking up the young swans to 80 SWAN-UPPINa ON THE THAMES. mark them, is still observed, and is commemorated with high civic festi-vities. Two of the London Companies — the Dyers' and the Vintners' Companies — are, with the Crown, the prin cipal owners of swans in the Thames. These two Com panies have long enjoyed the privilege of keeping swans on the river from the metropolis to a considerable dis tance above Windsor. We shall first speak ofthe royal swans, and the state with which they -were attended. The king had formerly a swan-herd, not only on the Thames but in several other parts of the kingdom ; and we find persons exercising the office of " Master of the King's Swans," sometimes called the swanship. The laws relating to swans are very severe. Steal ing swans marked and pinioned, or unmarked, if kept in a water, pond, or private river (by Hale's Pleas ofthe Crown) is felony. Stealing swans not so marked, or not so kept and pinioned, is merely a trespass or misdemean our. The law is said to have formerly been, that when a swan, la-wfuUy marked, is stolen in an open and com mon river, "the same swan (if it may be), or another swan, shall be hung in a house by the beak, and he who stole it shall, in recompense thereof, be obliged to give the owner so much wheat that may cover all the swan, until the head of the swan be covered mth the w-heat." Stealing the eggs of swans out of their nests was punished by imprisonment for a year, and a fine at the Idng's pleasure, under the 11 Henry VH. ; but this was superseded by the 1st of James I., which declares that every person taking eggs of swans out of their nests, or vnlfuUy breaking or spoiling them, may, upon con-nc- tion before two justices, be committed to gaol for three months, unless he pay to the churchwardens for the use SWAN-UPPING ON THE THAMES. 81 of the poor 20s. for every egg ; or after one month of his commitment become bound, with two sm-eties in 20/. apiece, never to offend again in like manner. The same officer who marked the swans for the Dyers' and Vintners' Companies marked them also, at a stipulated payment, for the Sovereign. The expenses were about 300/. per annum, and the office had its nu merous perquisites. The swan-upping — that is, the catching and taking up of the swans to place marks on the cygnets and re new those on the old birds, if obliterated — took place before the royal swan-herdsman ; and the swan-herds wore swan-feathers in their caps. The struggles of the swans when caught by thefr pursuers, and the duckings which the latter received in the contest, made this a diversion -with our ancestors of no ordinary interest. The Swan-upping Day was fixed, by the Swan Law of 1570, on the Monday after St. Peter's Day (June 29) ; but in our time the festival on the occasion has been held in July, and the business ofthe marking in August. The swan-herds have a sort of dialect. Thus, they call a male swan a cob, and a female a pen; and certain small swans, which feed and range, and retm-n home again, are caUed hoppers. The uppmg is caUed a " swan voyage." The swans in the Thames are far less numerous than they used to be. At the upping of August 1841 the following number of old and young swans belonged to her Majesty and the two civic Companies : Old Swans. The Queen 185 . The Vintners' Company . . 79 . The Dyers' Company ... 91 . 355 VOL. I. Cygnets. Total. 47 . . 232 . 21 . . 100 14 . . 105 82 437 G 82 SWAN-UPPING ON THE THAMES. At one period, however, the Vintners' Company alone possessed 500 bfrds. On the first Monday in August in every year the swan-marker of the Crown and the two City Companies go up the Thames for the purpose of inspecting and tak ing an account ofthe swans belonging to thefr respective employers, and marking the young birds. They pro ceed to the different parts of the river frequented by the swans for breeding, and other places where these birds are kept. They pay half-a-crown for each young bird to the fishermen who have made nests for the old birds, and two shillings per week to any person who during the winter has taken care of the swans by shel tering them in ponds, or otherwise protecting them from the severity of the weather. When, as it sometimes hap pens, the cob bird (male) of one owner mates with a pen bird (female) belonging to another, the brood are divided between the owners of the parent birds, the odd cygnet (except in Buckinghamshire) being allotted to the owner of the cob. The marks are made upon the upper mandible, with a knife or other sharp instrument. The forms and de- -vices greatly differ. Thus, the swan-mark of Eton Col lege, which has the pri-vilege of keeping swans on the Thames, is the armed point and feathered end of an arrow, and is represented by nail-heads on the door of one ofthe inner rooms ofthe college. The Dyers' and Vintners' marks date from the reign of Elizabeth, and anciently consisted of circles or amulets on the beak ; but the cutting of these being considered to inflict more severe pain on the bfrds than straight lines, the rings are now omitted, and the Imes are doubled. The two nicks are probably intended for two half lozenges, or a demi- lozenge on each side; the V. is perhaps a SWAN-UPPING ON THE THAMES. 83 chevron reversed, the arms of the company being sable, a chevron between three tuns argent ; for the true chev ron could scarcely be cut on the beak of the bird -with out each lateral brai^ch crossing its elongated and tender nostril ; and this, from a feeling of humanity, the marker would be disposed to avoid. That many of these swan- marks, besides being heraldic, have the additional adap tation of the initial letter of the word " Vintner," and form also the Eoman numeral V., is supported by a custom at the feasts of the Vintners' Company, where one of the regular stand-up toasts of the day is, " The Worshipftil Company of Vintners, with Five." The royal swan-mark has been unchanged since the com mencement of the reign of George IH.* Formerly large flocks of swans ventured unmolested below London Bridge. Paulus Jo-vius, describing the Thames in 1552, says: "This river abounds in swans swimming in fiocks, the sight of which, and their noise, are very agreeable to the fleets that meet them in their course." Shakspeare may have seen this sight when he made York compare the struggle of his followers at the battle of Wakefield to a swan encountering a tidal stream : " As I have seen a swan With bootless labour swim against the tide. And spend her strength with overmatching wave." Henry YI. Part iii. Leland the antiquary, in one of his rarest works, Cignea Cantio, a Swan's Song, imagines a Thames swan sailing down the river from Oxford to Greenwich, de scribing as she passes along all the towns, castles, and other places of note within her view. ¦* Abridged from CasseU's Family Paper, with additions. 84 liIEMOEIALS OF THE DANES IN LONDON. Mr. Worsaae,-* who, by desire of King Christian VIH. of Denmark, in 1846 made an archaeological ex ploration of Scotland and the British Isles, observes that the Dane who wanders through London will be re minded by Denmark-court, Denmark-street, and Copen hagen-street, of the connection between England and Denmark in modern times; whUe memorials of the earlier occupation of London by the Danes and North men are numerous. At St. Clement's Danes in the Strand, called in the middle ages Ecclesia Sancti de mentis Danorum, " the Danes in London had their o-wn burial-place, in which reposed the remains of Canute the Great's son and next successor, Harald Harefoot. When, in 1040, Hardicanute ascended the tlrrone after his brother Harald, he caused Harald's corpse to be dis interred from its tomb in Westminster Abbey, and thrown into the Thames, where it was found by a fisherman, and afterwards buried, it is said, 'in the Danes' churchyard in London.' From the chm-6hyard it was subsequently removed into a round tower which ornamented the chm-ch before it was rebuilt at the close of the seventeenth century." The author considers the church to have been named not because so many Danes were bm-ied in it, but, as it is situated close by the Thames, and must have originally lain outside the City walls, the Danish merchants and mariners who for the sake of trade M'ere then estabUshed in London had here a place of their own, in which they dwelt together as fellow-countrymen. This church too, — like others in * An Account of the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scot land, and Ireland. By J. J. A. Worsaae, For.P.S.A. 1852. THE DANES IN LONDON. 85 commercial towns, as at Aarhus in Jutland, at Trond- jem in Norway, and even in the City of London (in Eastcheap), — was consecrated to St. Clement, who was especially the seaman's patron saint. The Danes natu rally preferred to bury thefr dead in this church, which was thefr proper parish church. The present chm-ch bears in various parts the emblem of St. Clement's mar- tjTdom, the anchor, with which about his neck he is said to have been thrown into the sea. Mr. Worsaae then refers to the possession by the Danes and Norwegians of Southwark, the very name of which is unmistakably of Danish or Norwegian origin : " The Sagas relate that, in the time of King Svend Tveskjaag, the Danes fortified this trading place ; which, e-vidently on account of its situation to the south of the Thames and London, was called Sydvirke (Sudvirki), or the southern fortification. From Sudvirki, which in Anglo-Saxon was called Sud-geweorc, but which in the middle ages obtained the name of Suthwerk or Swerk, arose the present form — Southwark. The Northmen had a church m Sud-virke, dedicated to the Norwegian king Olaf the Saint." Mr. Worsaae next mentions Tooley- street, a corruption of St. Olave's-street; and St. Olave's Church, which is mentioned by that name as early as the close of the thirteenth century. Within the City, or ancient London, are three churches consecrated to St. Olave : namely, in Silver- street ; at the north-west corner of Seethmg-lane, Tower- street ; and in the Old Jewry (St. Olave's Upwell). "In the same neighbourhood, near London Bridge, there is also a chm-ch dedicated to St. Magnus the Martyr, which like-wise undoubtedly owes its origin to the North men, either the Norwegians or Danes. St. Magnus was a Norwegian jarl, who was killed in the twelfth century 86 VICTUALLING PLANTAGENET LONDON. in Orkney, where the cathedral in Kfrkwall is also con secrated to him." Mr. Worsaae also mentions Lambeth (formerly Lan- bythe), which in the Danish time was a -village adjacent to the capital ; and relates how, in 1042, a Danish jarl celebrated his marriage at a country house here, and how King Hardicanute, with a number of his foUow^ers, was present at the banquet ; but just as he was drinking to the bride, he suddenly fell to the ground in a fit of apoplexy, and shortly afterwards died in his twenty- sixth year. We have confined ourselves to points relating to the great metropohs ; but the researches of Mr. Worsaae are equally careful and fruitful over the rest of the empire. -VICTUALLING PLANTAGENET LONDON. The oldest trades in our ancient metropolis were the tavern-keeper, the victualler, and the cook — an antiquity which it needs no great ingenuity to explain. In pro portion to the necessities which these trades provided for, was the importance of controlling them. Keepers of wine-taverns and ale-taverns, -victuallers (sellers of pro- -visions), and the public cooks, were not allowed to lodge guests, though the last-named seem frequently to have -violated the prohibition. The privilege of keeping these places was generally confined to freemen; but in the reign of Edward IH. non-freemen are mentioned under the title of common hostelers. They were made respon sible for the conduct of their guests if they lodged with them more than a day and a night. This was a rem nant of the old Saxon frankpledge, doubtless modified VICTUALLING PLANTAGENET LONDON. 87 by some common-sense understanding. The hostelers were at one time empowered to take away any arms which their guests brought with them, and to keep them till thefr departure; though afterwards, it would seem, they were only required to warn their guests against carrying arms at night, and against being out of doors at a late hour. The charge for a night's lodging in the time of Henry IV. seems to have been a penny per night. But as -victuallers and cooks were prohibited from letting lodgings, so hostelers were forbidden to sell drink and victuals to any but thefr guests ; nor were they allowed to make ale or bread themselves; for the latter they were enjoined to resort to the baker, and for the former to the ale-wives. The ale-taverns were distinct from the wine-taverns, and were generally brew-houses as weU ; this double business of makuig and selling the ale being almost entfrely in the hands of women, and held in low estimation. So late as the close of the fifteenth century Fleet-street was tenanted almost whoUy by breweresses, or ale--wives, and makers of felt caps. The price of the ale was regulated by the ale-conner of the ward, to whom it was sent by the breweress as soon as it was brewed. The ale-measures had to be authorised by the seal of the alderman of the- ward. The ale--wives needed sharply to be looked after, for we trace thefr deUnquen- cies by a string of penalties — fine, imprisonment, and the pillory. No breweress or other retailer of ale was to keep her doors open after curfew, under heavy penalties. There is another very significant regulation : brewers, as well as hostelers, were ordered to retaU their ale by full and lawful measure, and not to sell it by the hanap, or metal drinking-mug of the establishment. The wine- taverners were looked after closely in a similar manner. 88 VICTUALLING PLANTAGENET LONDON. They had also to close at curfew. Unsound wine was not allowed to be mixed with good ; and after the ar rival of new -wine at a tavern, none of it was to be sold before the old was disposed of. There is no mention of wine bottles, or flasks; the wine and ale were sold in sealed measures only, and not in the earthenware -wine- cup. Each wine-tavern had its pole, limited in length to seven feet, so as not to interfere with the horsemen on the roadway,' " projecting from the gable of the house, and supporting a sign or a bunch of leaves at the end ;" this gave rise to the old proverb, " Good wine needs no bush," and to the Bush taverns and inns which we still meet with. The mob, in riotous times, are notoriously hostile to the bakers ; and it is not to be supposed that they es caped in these rude times. Bread was made for the Londoners partly within the walls (and sometimes this was the only lawful bread for citizens), or at other locali ties — such as Stratford in Essex; Bremble, near Strat ford (the present Bromley, no doubt, which still has its corn-mills) ; Stephenhithe (now Stepney) ; and St. Al ban's, from which place it was brought on horses or in carts. This latter, "strange" bread, as it was called, seems to have been prohibited, or stigmatised as " spu rious," — less from any desire to secure a monopoly to the bakers of the City than from the more praiseworthy reason, as expressly alleged in the case of Southwark, that " the bakers of Southwark are not amenable to the justice of the City," which undertook the care of its citizens' digestion. By public enactment in the time of Edward I. loaves were to be made at two and four to the penny. In a pen-and-ink sketch ^^reserved at Guild hall, date about 1320, a baker is represented as being drawn on a hurdle with a deficient loaf of a circular form VICTUALLING PLANTAGENET LONDON. 89 hanging about his neck.* It was formerly forbidden that any loaves should be sold at a higher price than the above ; nevertheless loaves at three or five farthings apiece were smuggled into the market (as in Bread- street, Cheapside), under the arms or beneath a towel. Every loaf had to be impressed with a certain seal, which was inspected from time to time by the alderman of the ward, who kept a counterpart ofthe impression. The servants of the rich had a right to be present when the baker kneaded his dough; and supervision seems to have been needful, for we find that knavish bakers were accustomed to make bread of fine quality on the outside and coarse within. One baker is even mentioned as being pilloried for putting a piece of iron in his bread to increase the weight. The markets were open for the sale of bread, as well as meat, on Sundays. The coun try bakers of Stratford, we find, undersold their London brethren by giving two ounces more in the pennyworth of bread. The bakers' bread, like the breweresses' ale, was subject to inspection ; and early in the reign of Ed ward III. we find that " some bakers in the City, for the purpose of avoiding this affray, follow their business stealthily, and skulk like foxes, so as not to be found by the officers of the City in case their loaves should prove deficient." There were wholesale markets for the sale of corn, malt, and salt, at BUlingsgate and Queenhithe. Stratford was the great repository for corn and fiom- ; whUe the City mills appear to have been possessed by the lords of certain sites or extensive jurisdictions within the City. Each miU was worked, it would seem, by one horse, and the miller paid partly in meal, partly in money. The City millers doubtless fully deserved * Loaves are made in this form at the present day in France, one object being for conveniently carrying the loaf upon the arm. 90 VICTUALLING PLANTAGENET LONDON. the character for gross peculation given them by medi- seval satirists. The church of St. Michael, Queenhithe, has a vane made in the form of a ship in full sail, the body of which is said to be capable of containing a bushel of grain, ha-ving reference to the traffic in corn at the Hithe, which was formerly very great. Fish was a very staple commodity in old London, being consumed to a much greater extent than butcher's meat. The variety of fish included . most nf those familiar to us, except lobsters, crabs, and shrimps, which are never mentioned. Boats with oysters, whelks, mus sels, and soles, were only allowed to stay for the pur poses of sale for two ebbs and a flood, on pain of for feiting the fish. By royal ordinance in the time of Henry IIL, the first boat in the season -with fresh her rings from Yarmouth had to pay double customs, so as to confiscate it to the use of the king's own table ! The fishmongers were sharply looked after by the Argus- eyed police of the City. If they sold fish in any quan tity, it was to be done in baskets of a certain size ; and they were not allowed to mix different sorts of fish in the same basket, or to make the under layers of inferior fish. Citizens of London might buy fish at the boat ; but apprentices were strictly forbidden to do so. Fish mongers were not tq buy fresh fish until after Mass at the chapel at London Bridge, or the church of St. Martin ; and no one was allowed to sell fish on the quay by retail. It is in our day too much the fashion hastily to consider old offices of little value. This trade is no longer fettered by regulations formerly indispensable, but the Fishmongers' statutes have not entirely fallen into desuetude : they had power in early times " to enter and seize bad fish ;" and to this day two inspectors are LONDON IN THE THIETEENTH CENTUEY. 91 employed by the Fishmongers' Company, and report to the com-t the nmiiber of unwholesome fish destroyed. The regulations for the sale of butcher's meat were conceived in a similar spirit. In the reign of Edward IH. the shambles of St. Nicholas, the predecessor of our Newgate-market, were taken in hand ; and it was or dered among; other things that large cattle should in future be slaughtered without the City. The poulterers, who were also under strict regulations as to mode and prices of sale, d.ealt in rabbits, game, eggs and poultry, but not, it would seem, in butter. The only vegetables mentioned are onions, garlic, and leeks. The fruits are apples, pears, and walnuts. Cheese was brought in carts from the neighbouring, -villages, and was also im ported by the Hanse merchants. Butter was little used in London at this period, and was sold in liquid mea sures. LONDON IN THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES. From the close of the eleventh century. Chronicles refer continually to destructive fires which prostrated its steeples ; the natural consequence of the habitations and church-steeples being generally constructed of wood. The streets were unpaved ; and, if we may draw any in ferences from the fact that when the wooden steeple of Bow Church fell into Cheap, in the year 1170, the tallest beams sank out of sight into the earth, they must have been as piuddy and ill-kept as those of Paris when they excited the wrath of Philip Augustus. Before the end of the twelfth century, however, the frequent oc currence of extensive fires compeUed the citizens to adopt some necessary precautions in the construction of their 92 LONDON IN THE THIETEENTH habitations. In the highly curious regulations pub lished on the subject in the year 1189, we are informed that " in ancient times the greater part of the City was built of -u^ood, and the houses covered with thatch, reeds, and the like materials, so that when any house took fire, the greater part of the City was consumed thereby ; as it happened in the first year of King Stephen, when, by a fire which began at London Bridge, the church of St. Paul's was burnt ; and then that fire spread, consuming houses and buildings even unto the church of St. Cle ment Danes. Afterwards, many citizens, to avoid such danger, according as their means, built on the free hold stone houses roofed with thick tiles, and protected against the ravages of fire; whereby it often fell out that when a fire was kindled in the City, and had wasted many edifices, and reached such a house, not being able to injure it, it there became extinguished, so that many neighbours' liouses were wholly saved from fire by that house." It is clear from this simple narrative, which is worth all the chronicles put together, that in the twelfth cen tury there were in London many houses built of stone ; and it maybe presumed that theyhad increased in num ber by the thirteenth. That the majority, however, were wooden structures may be readily believed ; and ancient conveyances seem to make a distinction between build ings of stone and wood, terming the former domus, and the latter edificia. The houses, of whatever material, appear never to have exceeded one story in height. When Henry III. visited St. Louis at Paris, he greatly admired the houses of that city, consisting for the most part of many stories ; from which it may be inferred he had not been accustomed to a similar style of building in his own kingdom. The ground-fioor of the London AND FOUETEENTH CENTUEIES. 93 houses at this period was, aptly enough, called a cellar, the upper story a solar. Although a considerable quantity of ground cultivated in gardens existed within the walls, and we read from time to time in the coroner's rolls of mortal accidents which befel youths attempting to steal apples in the orchards of Paternoster-row and Ivy-lane, still the necessarily close proximity of dwell ings in the main streets led, at an early period, to the enactment of stringent regulations for the protection of original rights and the settlement of disputed boundaries. The assize of 1189 is entitled to be considered the pro totype of the Act relating to party -walls which was passed in our time : it fixed the thickness of the wall at three feet ; determined the right of property in it ; regulated the construction of gutters ; and even went so far as to establish " that if anyone) should have windows towards the land of his neighbour, and even though he had been seized of the -view of the said windows for a long time, and his ancestors before him, nevertheless his neighbour could block up such view by building opposite those windows, or otherwise obstructing them, unless he who owned them could show any writing to the contrary." The result of a careful examination of the e-vidence relating to the appearance of London houses in the thirteenth century leads unavoidably to the conclusion that they were both small and of low elevation ; and the shops were generally wooden sheds erected in front of the inhabited tenements. At the present time, when the sanitary condition of the metropolis is attracting so much of public attention, it may not be miinteresting to inqufre how far this was provided for in ancient days. We have seen that so early as 1189 the due construction of gutters, and the convenient dispersion of waste water, were objects of 94 LONDON IN THE THIETEENTH consideration : the camerce private of the citizens were not left unregulated ; they were prohibited within the distance of two and a half or three and a half feet from a neighbouring tenement; and the propriety of their construction was liable to the survey of a jury chosen by the authorities. The situation of London, with an easy descent towai-ds the Thames, was favourable to a surface-drainage, aided in a great degree by those natu ral streams which flowed open to the river, — the Wall- brook and the Fleet, — the cleansing and maintenance of which in a proper state were, from an early period, ob jects of solicitude to the magistracy. It may be collected also from ancient evidences that narrow channels ran dowTi the centre of many of those streets which led directly to the river-side : bad as the effect of these uncovered sewers must have been, they were better than no drainage whatever. The greatest source of annoyance, however, was the existence of the public shambles almost in the very heart of the City, clustered round the church of St. Nicholas, the patron of butchers as well as fishermen. From a remote time ordinance succeeded ordinance levelled at this flagrant nuisance. There being no under-drainage, the refuse of the slaughter-houses was thrown by the butchers wher ever they could find a place: into the streets, or the Fleet, or into the river, where, often left on the banks, the putrefying heaps offended the olfactory senses of the Edwards and Henries as they were rowed between Westminster and the Tower, producing impressive mo nitions to the Mayor to repress the intolerable excesses ofthe fieshmongers ; but it was a nuisance that grew with the increase of the metropolis. We seek in vain for traces of any approach to an organised system of police in the metropolis during the AND FOUETEENTH CENTUEIES. 95 times under consideration. When considerable tumults arose, the Mayor or sheriff appears to have summoned the townsfolk to his aid by the great bell of St. Paul's, and as the adult population was in a measure trained to arms, a tolerably efficient force was thus temporarily at his orders. Periodical musters of the citizens under arms were taken, and by the early rolls we perceive that a few individuals came equipped at all points, on che- vaux coux^erts, while the majority were armed -with those misceUaneous weapons of offence common to the times. The rendezvous on these occasions was Mile End, or Cheapside. However inefficient these early "Trained Bands" may have been in the field, they were quite ade quate to the suppression of such disorders as the out break of 1260, among the goldsmiths, tailors, and white- leather-dressers ; who maintained a conflict in the streets for three successive nights, amounting in number to more than five hundred. The riot was at last quelled by the bailiff and the citizens, more than thfrty of the ringleaders being captured, and about thirteen appear to have been hanged. But, excepting on such occasions as the above, there was no active joint exertion on the part of the authori ties. The City swarmed with thieves and bad charac ters, who were fostered and protected by the numerous sanctuaries then recognised, as well as by the facUity with which they could escape from one soke to another, where the baihffs could not pursue them. In the reign of Edward I., the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's ob tained a hcense to enclose thefr church and buildings -with a strong wall, as a protection against the malefac tors that infested it nightly, committing every species of crime, and converting that which should have been the most sacred into the vilest place in the City. If we 90 LONDON IN THE THIETEENTH take the trouble, however, to turn over the legal records of the time, the number of murders and -violent assaults upon the person do not appear so numerous as might have been expected amidst a population of which every man and youth was constantly armed with his anlace or L-ish knife. We may here add that in the famous Liber Albus, compiled in the year 1419, are several precautions which seem to have been used, though -with indifferent success perhaps, for keeping clean the City streets, lanes, and highways. Kennels, it would appear, were pretty generally made on either side of the street (leav ing a space for the footpath), for the purpose of carry ing off the sewage and rain-water. There were two kennels in Cheapside, at a period even when nearly the whole of the north side was a vacant space. The City Conduit (at the east end of Cheapside) is fre quently mentioned in this volume ; and from it, in con j miction with the Thames (the water from which was conveyed in carts), the City derived its main sup ply of water. A fountain is also spoken of as being- situate before the convent of the Friars Minors in New gate ; and some houses were provided with (so-called) fountains of their own. The kennels of Cornhill are often referred to. The highways were directed to be kept clean from rubbish, hay, straw, sawdust, dung, and other refuse. Each householder was to clear away all dirt from his door, and to be equally careful not to place it before that of his neighbours. No one was to throw water or anything else out of the windows, but was to bring the water down and pour it into the street. An exception, however, to this last provision seems to have been made in the case of. fishmongers ; for we find injunctions frequently issued (in contravention of the AND FOUETEENTH CENTUEIES. 97 precautions mostly taken to preserve the purity of the Thames) that they shall on no account throw their dirty water into the streets, but shall have the same carried to the river. The lanes, too, running down to the Thames, and the highways between Castle Baynard and the Tower, were to be kept free from all impediments, so that persons on horseback might experience no diffi culty in going to the Thames. From the introduction to Croniques de London clepuis I' an 44 Hen. Illjusqu'a Van 17 Edw. Ill, published by the Camden Society, we quote the following striking picture of London as it was at the above period : " Proceeding eastward along West Chepe, the grace ful cross of Queen Alianor, at the top of Wood-street, ap peared; then the handsome church of St. Mary-le-Bow; and lower, on the opposite side, the chapel of St. Thomas of Aeons ; and fui-ther on Serne's Tower. On the site of the present Mansion House was the Stocks-market, a smaller and inferior market to that of West Chepe ; and beyond, Cornhill, for centuries the mart for clothing and household furniture, from the convenience of its situation to the braziers of Lothbury, the great manufacturers of kitchen utensils, and the tailors and linen-armourers of Coleman -street and the adjacent parts, the exclusive makers of both hnen and woollen clothing ; and Lom bard-street, then the residenqe of foreign merchants. The Une along Lombard-street and West Chepe was the chief road through the City ; and on account of its width, its noble appearance, and the wealth of its inha bitants, it became the highway along which every pro cession to the tournament, to the coronation, or to- the royal funeral, passed. The second road through the City seems to have been the only way in Saxon times : it led along Old Fish-street, where, until the fourteenth VOL. L H -98 LONDON IN THE THIETEENTH century, the chief fish-market was held ; along Wathe- ling-street, passing Tower Eoyal into Candlewick-street, for so many centuries the residence of the wealthy dra pers, who seem to have been bound by strong, ties to a spot placed beneath the protection of their patroness. Saint Mary Bothaw, and close beside the highly-valued ' Lon don Stone.' Next was Eastcheap, the old Saxon market, ¦celebrated from the time of Fitz-Stephen to the days of Lydgate for the abundance and variety ofthe provisions sold there. This street communicated -with New Fish- street, where at this period a very large market both for fresh and salt fish was held ; and this joined the bridge, -which at this time, and for centuries after, was thickly crowded with houses. The more eastern parts ofthe City never seem to have been remarkable for trade. A large number of foreigners, basket-makers and wire-drawers, were about this time, according to Stow, located in Blanche-Appleton- court, near Leadenhall -street; and we also find that many artisans, employed in the infe rior trades, dwelt round about. At the east end of the City was the Tower, Fitz-Stephen's 'Palatine Tower.' But if the eastern part of London could not be said to Yie in wealth and importance -with West Chepe, in the number and splendour of its conventual establish ments it yielded to none. The priory of the Holy Tri nity, founded by Queen Maud, consort of Henry I., in the year 1108, for canons regular of the order of Saint Augustin, and said to be the wealthiest in England, stood just -within Aldgate. Not far distant was the house of the nuns of St. Clare, brought into England by Blanche, Queen of Navarre, who was wife to Ed mund, Earl of Lancaster, Leicester, and Derby, about A.D. 1293; and near the convent ofthe 'Fratres Sancti Crucis,' which has given its name to Crutched Friars ; AND FOUETEENTH CENTUEIES. 99 and the abbey, founded by King Edward IH., of St. Mary of Grace, near the Tower, after he had encountered a tempest at sea. In Bishopsgate-street was the priory of the nuns of St. Helen ; on the site of Spitalfields church was the great hospital of St. Mary Spital, founded by Walter Brune, citizen of London, and Eosia his wife, in 1234 ; while just -withinside the City wall rose the equally noble foundation of Simmon Fitz-Mary, sheriff of London m 1246, the hospital or priory of St. Mary of Bethlehem, afterwards converted into a house or hospital for the reception of lunatics. Eeturning to the foot of the bridge to the west, close by the water-side, the stock-fishmongers had their dwell ings ; close beside were the large warehouses and stone- hall and tall watch-tower of the merchants of the steel yard ; next, the stately mansion of Cold Harbom- ; and then the great stone houses of the merchants of the Vintry, and their extensive quay, crowded with ship ping ; further on Queenhithe, a large public wharf for salt and corn ; then a series of wharfs ; and at the west angle of the City wall arose two well-fortified castles, Baynard's Castle and the Tower of Montfichet. Be yond were the gardens of the Blackfriars' convent, the mouth of the Fleet, the ancient palace of Bridewell, an occasional royal residence even from the Conquest, and the garden of the Whitefriars and the Temple. The western liberties of the City seem to have been very populous. The space between Fleet-street and Hol born was inhabited chiefiy by smiths and tanners. On each side of the river Fleet were the wharfs ofthe lime- burners and dealers in charcoal and sea -coal. The butchers dwelt nearly on the site of Newgate-market ; and turners of beads and scribes both in the neighbour hood of Chancery-lane and of Paternoster-row. Like the 100 LONDON IN THE THIETEENTH north-eastern, the north-western quarter was crowded -with religious houses. On the spot where Christ's Hos pital now stands w^as the noble and richly-endowed house of the Gray Friars, with its splendid church, inferior in size and grandeur to the metropolitan cathedral alone, beneath whose lofty and fretted roof four queens, and other persons of rank almost innumerable, reposed amid the escutcheoned pomp of departed greatness. Near it was the wealthy priory and hospital of St. Bartholomew, founded by the pious Eahere, and endowed by the -vir tuous Queen Maud; and just beyond, the munificence of Sir Walter Manny, a few years after, founded the Car thusian Priory, which now bears the name ofthe Charter House. To the north, just within the City gate, was the Saxon foundation of St. Martin's, well named 'le Grand,' from its large and abundant privileges. Withoutside the gate -was the mansion of the Duke of Britany, which has given its name to Little Britain ; while from hence to the wide moor of Finsbury the numerous streets and alleys were occupied by the lower orders of artificers — ¦ cm-riers, bowyers, and bowstring-makers. Such was London, the ' lady of the kingdoms,' the modern Tyi-e, during the fourteenth century ; and if it might scarcely be recognised by the inhabitants of the present day, far less would its suburbs. To the west and the north wide tracts of forest-land, coverino- that large space on which, in late years, a complete town has been built ; to the east a succession of moors and green marshes ; while nearer at hand there was the stately palace of Westminster, rising from the water's edge, with the adjoining convent and abbey, standing almost alone. Then the hermitage of Charing, looking towards the noble mansion of the Ai-chbishop of York AND FOUETEENTH CENTUEIES. 101 now Whitehall ; and the Leper House of St. Giles's, lite rally ' in the fields ;' and the simple church of St. Mar tin, with its equally appropriate title ; and the meadow- land and gentle slopes, intersected by the rapid Fleet, which extended from St. Giles' s-in-the-fields to the elm- trees on the western side of Smithfield. Due northward arose the stately mansion of the Knights of St. John, a palace of size and splendour ; and beside it the priory of the nuns of Clerkenwell, founded A.D. 1100 by Jordan Briset, a knight or baron. Beyond, the little viUage of Iseldune (Islington) peeped from the surrounding woods ; nearer, but more to the east, was the village of Hochestone (Hoxton), amid corn fields and windmills ; then the green moorlands of Fins- burie, with the holy well of St. Agnes ; and close adjoin ing the priory of the nuns of Haliwell, founded before 1127 by Eoger Fitz-Gelran. From hence the eye ranged over wide tracts of meadow-land to the gray tower of the distant church of Stibenhede (Stepney) ; while the massive keep of the Tower and the spfres of St. Katha rine closed the -view. Although each successive generation brought altera tions, there -were comparatively few important additions for full two centuries. During the fifteenth the erec tion of Guildhall, which until then was a mean and low building in Aldermanbury (a site known by that name in the year 1189) ; the opening of Moorgate and the planting of Moorfields ; the building of many of the City Companies' halls, and that beautiful row of houses which extended along the upper south side- of West Chepe, between Bread-street and the Cross, called Gold- smith's-row, buUt by Thomas Wood, goldsmith, and sheriff, in 1491, were the chief improvements." 102 LONDON m THE REIGN OF QU-EEN ELIZABETH. The changes in a great metropolis are ever best seen in the comparison of its maps at different periods ; indeed, these maps are the best illustrations of its his tory, since events often fm-nish name to sites and locaU- ties, and thus give a sort of living interest to the past. ' We have afready glanced at London of the thirteenth century, temp. Henry HI. We now propose to take the reader onward three centuries, and -view the Lon don of great EUza's golden reign. In its second year (1560) Ealph Aggas drew a bird's-eye view of London, which has been reproduced in a form accessible to a very large number of readers. This reproduction of Aggas's map was issued -with CasseU's Illustrated Family Paper, accompanied by a description, which, by permis sion, is here reproduced, with additions. It is curious to find that three centuries ago the town had so far increased as to alarm our rural-minded' queen, who issued a proclamation for pulling do-wn newly-built houses in and within three miles of London and Westminster. The number of inhabitants did not then exceed 145,000, or considerably less than those in the present parish of Marylebone. Even the small extent of the old city was so much occupied with gar dens, enclosures, and open spaces, as to bear but remote comparison with the over-crowded metropolis of the present day. The streets were mostly winding and narrow — a state of things best described by the tenant of an overhanging garret being able to shake hands -with his opposite neighbour. Nevertheless the pageants, processions, and stately displays during the reign of Elizabeth were very frequent ; and the multitudes who LONDON IN THE EEIGN OF ELIZABETH. 103 took part in such shows, or were spectators, were very great. Many thousands, doubtless, flocked in from the sm-romiding country ; and the long train gathered won der-struck numbers as it poured through the streets, and dazzled them with its splendour and picturesque appearance. In this plan of Aggas's we see the City seated on a gentle slope, descendiug to the margin of a noble river ; its plain bounded north and south by two beautiful ranges of hUls, afforchng at once easy access and faci lities to cleanUness and ventilation. In the foreground, or Surrey side, on the left we see the palace of the Archbishop of Canterbm-y, and Lambeth Church, with only a single house at a small distance ; more north ward is a road opposite the state landing-place in New Palace-yard. The principal ditch of Lambeth Marsh falls into the Thames opposite the Temple gardens, the ground being unoccupied .except by a solitary dwelling. On the river -bank opposite Whitefriars, a Une of houses, with gardens and groves behind them, com mences, and is continued -vsdth Uttle intermission to the stafrs and the palace of the Bishop of Winchester, on Bankside. One of the most noted places in this hne was Paris garden, the site of which is now occupied by Christ Church, Blaclcfriars-road, and its annexed parish. Farther eastward, but behind the houses, are the circu lar buildings for bull- and bear-baiting — amusements to which Queen EUzabeth was partial. Near the bear- baiting place is a dog-kennel, from which several dogs are seen issuing. From Winchester Palace to the Borough High-street, and along Tooley-street to Battle Bridge, the houses stand thickly; but towards Horse- lydown the ground is open, and the buildings stand in gardens. We see here London Bridge, crowded -with 104 LONDON IN THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH. buildings, among which the celebrated Nonsuch House is conspicuous. Another striking object is the noble cross church of St. Mary Overie, in magnitude and ar chitectural character the third church in the metropolis ; its pinnacled tower is 150 feet high. The poet Gower and his wife, Edmund Shakspeare (the great bard's brother), and Massinger the dramatist, are buried here. The park of the Bishop of Winchester is waUed in : hence Park-street. On the right of the road is St. Olave's Church, built before the Norman Conquest. Eeturning leftward, we see the venerable Abbey of Westminster, on Thorney Island, -with the Chapel of Henry VIL, and beyond it St. Margaret's Church. The adjacent palace of Edward the Confessor covers both the Palace -yards, and extends as far as WhitehaU, where it joins the precincts of York House. On the disgrace of Wolsey, the latter was seized by King Henry VIIL, who from that time kept his court here. In the old palace we see the Parliament House, the fountain, and the clock -tower, not far from Barry's clock-tower of the new palace. King-street was then and long after the only road by which the sovereign proceeded to parliament. This street is guarded by a gate ; and another, of noble dimensions, stands in White hall, and forms the principal entrance to the palace. To the left is the Tilt-yard and the Cockpit ; on the site of the latter is the present Council-office. Beyond the Tilt-yard is a sheet of water, now the Horse- guards Parade. The gardens of Whitehall are shown, with the stairs by which Wolsey quitted the palace in his barge for Esher. Eastward we see St. James' s-park, with the deer, and Spring-gardens, with groves, reaching as far as the present Admiralty. Beyond the north wall of the park are a few houses, about the middle of Pall- LONDON IN THE REIGN OP ELIZABETH. 105 mall ; and beyond them. St. James's Hospital, which in the former reign had been converted into a palace ; the swampy field was also then enclosed as a park, the canal being supphed by the creek surrounding three sides of Thorney Island. At Charing-cross we see a rude sketch of Eleanor's cross, where now is the statue of Charles I. Opposite is the Hospital of St. Mary Eouncival, which gave way to Northumberland House and Gardens. Beyond Cha ring-cross is the Eoyal Mews, where the falcons were kept, upon the site of our National Gallery. Here are tlu'ee i-ural roads leading to the fields : 1. The Hay- market, in which hay was then sold, and so continued until 1830 ; 2. Hedge-lane, now Whitcomb-street ; 3. A large field, crossed by a path to St. Martin' s-lane, and at its lower end St. Martin's Chm-ch, built by Henry VIH., in the fields. The Haymarket leads to " the way to Eedinge," now Piccadilly. Then we have a triangular field, and beyond is " the way to Vxbridge," and Oxford-road, now Oxford-street. In the distance are fields, hedges, and dottmg trees ; but still more rural is the -village of St. Giles, commencing at Drury-lane, its cluster of buildings (Broad-street) and a few houses -within the precincts of St. Giles's Hospital and Chm-ch, partly enclosed and surrounded -with trees. Far away in the fields is the Uttle church of St. Pancras, " all alone, old, and weather-beaten." St. Martin's-lane has scarcely a house beyond the church, which nearly abuts on Convent-garden, belong ing to the abbot and monks of Westminster : it is walled in, and extends to Drm-y-lane, and from the back of the garden in the Strand to the present Long Acre, there being only three or four buildings -within its bounds. Not a house is built in Long Acre or Seven Dials, nor in 106 LONDON IN THE EEIGN OF ELIZABETH. Drury-lane, fi-om near Holborn to Drm-y House. The old Angel Inn, St. Clements, was then in the fields. Nearly the whole of the Strand is a straggUng street of mansions and thefr offices, the residences of noblemen and prelates, those on the south side ha-ving gardens reaching to the Thames ; and they have mostly given names to the streets bnUt on thefr sites. Ffrst of these historical houses is York-place, where Francis Bacon was born in the same year that Aggas Arew his plan : here the Great Seal was taken from Bacon in 1621. Next is Durham-place, where Lady Jane Grey lodged when she assumed the crown ; and she was thence escorted to the Tower. Sfr Walter Ealeigh possessed Dm-ham-place twenty years ; his study was a Uttle tur- T