Old and New London Part 57

In 1189, Richard I. elected Henry Fitz Ailwyn, a draper of London, to be first mayor of London, and he served twenty-four years. He is supposed to have been a descendant of Aylwyn Child, who founded the priory at Bermondsey in 1082. He was buried, according to Strype, at St. Mary Bothaw, Walbrook, a church destroyed in the Great Fire; but according to Stow, in the Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate. There is a doubtful half-length oil-portrait or panel of the venerable Fitz Alwyn over the master's chair in Drapers' Hall, but it has no historical value. But the first formal mayor was Richard Renger (1223), King John granting the right of choosing a mayor to the citizens, provided he was first presented to the king or his justice for approval. Henry III. afterwards allowed the presentation to take place in the king's absence before the Barons of the Exchequer at Westminster, to prevent expense and delay, as the citizens could not be expected to search for the king all over England and France.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIR RICHARD WHITTINGTON. (_From an old Portrait._)]

The presentation to the king, even when he was in England, long remained a great vexation with the London mayors. For instance, in 1240, Gerard Bat, chosen a second time, went to Woodstock Palace to be presented to King Henry III., who refused to appoint him till he (the king) came to London.

Henry III., indeed, seems to have been chronically troubled by the London mayors, for in 1264, on the mayor and aldermen doing fealty to the king in St. Paul's, the mayor, with blunt honesty, dared to say to the weak monarch, "My lord, so long as you unto us will be a good lord and king, we will be faithful and duteous unto you."

These were bold words in a reign when the heading block was always kept ready near a throne. In 1265, the same monarch seized and imprisoned the mayor and chief aldermen for fortifying the City in favour of the barons, and for four years the tyrannical king appointed custodes. The City again recovered its liberties and retained them till 1285 (Edward I.), when Sir Gregory Rokesley refusing to go out of the City to appear before the king's justices at the Tower, the mayoralty was again suspended and custodes appointed till the year 1298, when Henry Wallein was elected mayor. Edward II. also held a tight hand on the mayoralty till he appointed the great goldsmith, Sir Nicholas Farindon, mayor "as long as it pleased him." Farindon gave the t.i.tle to Farringdon Ward, which had been in his family eighty-two years, the consideration being twenty marks as a fine, and one clove or a slip of gillyflower at the feast of Easter. He was a warden of the Goldsmiths, and was buried at St. Peter-le-Chepe, a church that before the Great Fire stood where the plane-tree now waves at the corner of Wood Street. He left money for a light to burn before our Lady the Virgin in St. Peter-le-Chepe for ever.

The mayoralty of Andrew Aubrey, Grocer (1339), was rather warlike; for the mayor and two of his officers being a.s.saulted in a tumult, two of the ringleaders were beheaded at once in Chepe. In 1356, Henry Picard, mayor of London, was an honoured man, for he had the glory of feasting Edward III. of England, the Black Prince, John King of Austria, the King of Cyprus, and David of Scotland, and afterwards opened his hall to all comers at cards and dice, his wife inviting the court ladies.

Sir William Walworth, a fishmonger, who was mayor in 1374 (Edward III.) and 1380 (Richard II.), was that prompt and choleric man who somewhat basely slew the Kentish rebel, Wat Tyler, when he was invited to a parley by the young king. It was long supposed that the dagger in the City arms was added in commemoration of this foul blow, but Stow has clearly shown that it was intended to represent the sword of St. Paul, the patron saint of the Corporation of London. The manor of Walworth belonged to the family of this mayor, who was buried in the Church of St. Michael, Crooked Lane, the parish where he had resided. Some antiquaries, says Mr. Timbs, think the prefix of "Lord" is traceable to 1378 (1st Richard II.), when there was a general a.s.sessment for a war subsidy. The question was where was the mayor to come. "Have him among the earls," was the suggestion; so the right wors.h.i.+pful had to pay 4, about 100 of our present money.

And now we come to a mayor greater even in City story and legend than even Walworth himself, even the renowned Richard Whittington, the hero of our nursery days. He was the son of a Gloucesters.h.i.+re knight, who had fallen into poverty. The industrious son, born in 1350 (Edward III.), on coming to London, was apprenticed to Hugh Fitzwarren, a mercer. Disgusted with the drudgery, he ran away; but while resting by a stone cross at the foot of Highgate Hill, he is said to have heard in the sound of Bow Bells the voice of his good angel, "Turn again, Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London." What a charm there is still in the old story! As for the cat that made his fortune by catching all the mice in Barbary, we fear we must throw him overboard, even though Stow tells a true story of a man and a cat that greatly resembles that told of Whittington. Whittington married his master's daughter, and became a wealthy merchant. He supplied the wedding trousseau of the Princess Blanche, eldest daughter of Henry IV., when she married the son of the King of the Romans, and also the pearls and cloth of gold for the marriage of the Princess Philippa. He became the court banker, and lent large sums of money to our lavish monarchs, especially to the chivalrous Henry V. for carrying on the siege of Harfleur, a siege celebrated by Shakespeare. It is said that in his last mayoralty King Henry V. and Queen Catherine dined with him in the City, when Whittington caused a fire to be lighted of precious woods, mixed with cinnamon and other spices; and then taking all the bonds given him by the king for money lent, amounting to no less than 60,000, he threw them into the fire and burnt them, thereby freeing his sovereign from his debts. The king, astonished at such a proceeding, exclaimed, "Surely, never had king such a subject;" to which Whittington, with court gallantry, replied, "Surely, sire, never had subject such a king."

Whittington was really four times mayor--twice in Richard II.'s reign, once in that of Henry IV., and once in that of Henry V. As a mayor Whittington was popular, and his justice and patriotism became proverbial. He vigorously opposed the admission of foreigners into the freedom of the City, and he fined the Brewers' Company 20 for selling bad ale and forestalling the market. His generosity was like a well-spring; and being childless, he spent his life in deeds of charity and generosity. He erected conduits at Cripplegate and Billingsgate; he founded a library at the Grey Friars' Monastery in Newgate Street (now Christ's Hospital); he procured the completion of the "Liber Albus," a book of City customs; and he gave largely towards the Guildhall library.

He paved the Guildhall, restored the hospital of St. Bartholomew, and by his will left money to rebuild Newgate, and erect almshouses on College Hill (now removed to Highgate). He died in 1427 (Henry VI.). Nor should we forget that Whittington was also a great architect, and enlarged the nave of Westminster Abbey for his knightly master, Henry V. This large-minded and munificent man resided in a grand mansion in Hart Street, up a gateway a few doors from Mark Lane. A very curious old house in Sweedon's Pa.s.sage, Grub Street, with an external winding staircase, used to be pointed out as Whittington's; and the splendid old mansion in Hart Street, Crutched Friars, pulled down in 1861, and replaced by offices and warehouses, was said to have cats'-heads for knockers, and cats'-heads (whose eyes seemed always turned on you) carved in the ceilings. The doorways, and the brackets of the long lines of projecting Tudor windows, were beautifully carved with grotesque figures.

In 1418 (Henry V.) Sir William de Sevenoke was mayor. This rich merchant had risen to the top of the tree by cleverness and diligence equal to that of Whittington, but we hear less of his charity. He was a foundling, brought up by charitable persons, and apprenticed to a grocer. He was knighted by Henry VI., and represented the City in Parliament. Dying in 1432, he was buried at St. Martin's, Ludgate.

In 1426 (Henry VI.) Sir John Rainewell, mayor, with a praiseworthy disgust at all dishonesty in trade, detecting Lombard merchants adulterating their wines, ordered 150 b.u.t.ts to be stove in and swilled down the kennels. How he might wash down London now with cheap sherry!

In 1445 (Henry VI.), Sir Simon Eyre. This very worthy mayor left 3,000 marks to the Company of Drapers, for prayers to be read to the market people by a priest in the chapel at Guildhall.

It is related that when it was proposed to Eyre at Guildhall that he should stand for sheriff, he would fain have excused himself, as he did not think his income was sufficient; but he was soon silenced by one of the aldermen observing "that no citizen could be more capable than the man who had openly a.s.serted that he broke his fast every day on a table for which he would not take a thousand pounds." This a.s.sertion excited the curiosity of the then Lord Mayor and all present, in consequence of which his lords.h.i.+p and two of the aldermen, having invited themselves, accompanied him home to dinner. On their arrival Mr. Eyre desired his wife to "prepare the little table, and set some refreshment before the guests." This she would fain have refused, but finding he would take no excuse, she seated herself on a low stool, and, spreading a damask napkin over her lap, with a venison pasty thereon, Simon exclaimed to the astonished mayor and his brethren, "Behold the table which I would not take a thousand pounds for!" Soon after this Sir Simon was chosen Lord Mayor, on which occasion, remembering his former promise "at the conduit," he, on the following Shrove Tuesday, gave a pancake feast to all 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.

In 1453 Sir John Norman was the first mayor who rowed to Westminster.

The mayors had hitherto generally accompanied the presentation show on horseback. The Thames watermen, delighted with the innovation so profitable to them, wrote a song in praise of Norman, two lines of which are quoted by Fabyan in his "Chronicles;" and Dr. Rimbault, an eminent musical antiquary, thinks he has found the original tune in John Hilton's "Catch That, Catch Can" (1658).

The deeds of Sir Stephen Forster, Fishmonger, and mayor 1454 (Henry VI.), who by his will left money to rebuild Newgate, we have mentioned elsewhere (p. 224). Sir G.o.dfrey Boleine, Lord Mayor, 1457 (Henry VI.), was grandfather to Thomas, Earl of Wilts.h.i.+re, the grandfather of Queen Elizabeth. He was a mercer in the Old Jewry, and left by his will 1,000 to the poor householders of London, and 2,000 to the poor householders in Norfolk (his native county), besides large legacies to the London prisons, lazar-houses, and hospitals. Such were the citizens, from whom half our aristocracy has sprung. Sir G.o.dfrey Fielding, a mercer in Milk Street, Lord Mayor in 1452 (Henry VI.), was the ancestor of the Earls of Denbigh, and a privy councillor of the king.

In Edward IV.'s reign, when the Lancastrians, under the b.a.s.t.a.r.d Falconbridge, stormed the City in two places, but were eventually bravely repulsed by the citizens, Edward, in grat.i.tude, knighted the mayor, Sir John Stockton, and twelve of the aldermen. In 1479 (the same reign) Bartholomew James (Draper) had Sheriff Bayfield fined 50 (about 1,000 of our money) for kneeling too close to him while at prayers in St. Paul's, and for reviling him when complained of. There was a pestilence raging at the time, and the mayor was afraid of contagion.

The money went, we presume, to build ten City conduits, then much wanted. The Lord Mayor in 1462, Sir Thomas c.o.ke (Draper), ancestor of Lord Bacon, Earl Fitzwilliam, the Marquis of Salisbury, and Viscount Cranbourne, being a Lancastrian, suffered much from the rapacious tyranny of Edward IV. The very year he was made Knight of the Bath, c.o.ke was sent to the Bread Street Compter, afterwards to the Bench, and illegally fined 8,000 to the king and 800 to the queen. Two aldermen also had their goods seized, and were fined 4,000 marks. In 1473 this greedy king sent to Sir William Hampton, Lord Mayor, to extort benevolences, or subsidies. The mayor gave 30, the aldermen twenty marks, the poorer persons 10 each. In 1481, King Edward sent the mayor, William Herriot (Draper), for the good he had done to trade, two harts, six bucks, and a tun of wine, for a banquet to the lady mayoress and the aldermen's wives at Drapers' Hall.

At Richard III.'s coronation (1483), the Lord Mayor, Sir Edmund Shaw, attended as cup-bearer with great pomp, and the mayor's claim to this honour was formally allowed and put on record. Shaw was a goldsmith, and supplied the usurper with most of his plate. Sir William Horn, Lord Mayor in 1487, had been knighted on Bosworth field by Henry VII., for whom he fought against the "ravening Richard." This mayor's real name was Littlesbury (we are told), but Edward IV. had nicknamed him Horn, from his peculiar skill on that instrument. The year Henry VII. landed at Milford Haven two London mayors died. In 1486 (Henry VII.), Sir Henry Colet, father of good Dean Colet, who founded St. Paul's School, was mayor.

Colet chose John Percival (Merchant Taylor), his carver, sheriff, by drinking to him in a cup of wine, according to custom, and Perceval forthwith sat down at the mayor's table. Percival was afterwards mayor in 1498. Henry VII. was remorseless in squeezing money out of the City by every sort of expedient. He fined Alderman Capel 2,700; he made the City buy a confirmation of their charter for 5,000; in 1505 he threw Thomas Knesworth, who had been mayor the year before, and his sheriff, into the Marshalsea, and fined them 1,400; and the year after, he imprisoned Sir Lawrence Aylmer, mayor in the previous year, and extorted money from him. He again amerced Alderman Capel (ancestor of the Earls of Ess.e.x) 2,000, and on his bold resistance, threw him into the Tower for life. In 1490 (Henry VII.) John Matthew earned the distinction of being the first, but probably not the last, bachelor Lord Mayor; and a cheerless mayoralty it must have been. In 1502 Sir John Shaw held the Lord Mayor's feast for the first time in the Guildhall; and the same hospitable mayor built the Guildhall kitchen at his own expense.

Henry VIII.'s mayors were wors.h.i.+pful men, and men of renown. To Walworth and Whittington was now to be added the ill.u.s.trious name of Gresham. Sir Richard Gresham, who was mayor in the year 1537, was the father of the ill.u.s.trious founder of the Royal Exchange. He was of a Norfolk family, and with his three brothers carried on trade as mercers. He became a Gentleman Usher Extraordinary to Henry VIII., and at the tearing to pieces of the monasteries by that monarch, he obtained, by judicious courtliness, no less than five successive grants of Church lands. He advocated the construction of an Exchange, encouraged freedom of trade, and is said to have invented bills of exchange. In 1525 he was nearly expelled the Common Council for trying, at Wolsey's instigation, to obtain a benevolence from the citizens. It is greatly to Gresham's credit that he helped Wolsey after his fall, and Henry, who with all his faults was magnanimous, liked Gresham none the worse for that. In the interesting "Paston Letters" (Henry VI.), there are eleven letters of one of Gresham's Norfolk ancestors, dated from London, and the seal a gra.s.shopper. Sir Richard Gresham died 1548 (Edward VI.), at Bethnal Green, and was buried in the church of St. Lawrence Jewry. Gresham's daughter married an ancestor of the Marquis of Bath, and the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Braybrooke are said to be descendants of his brother John, so much has good City blood enriched our proud Norman aristocracy, and so often has the full City purse gone to fill again the exhausted treasury of the old knighthood. In 1545, Sir Martin Bowes (Goldsmith) was mayor, and lent Henry VIII., whose purse was a cullender, the sum of 300. Sir Martin was butler at Elizabeth's coronation, and left the Goldsmiths' Company his gold fee cup, out of which the Queen drank. In our history of the Goldsmiths' Company we have mentioned his portrait in Goldsmiths' Hall. Alderman William Fitzwilliam, in this reign, also n.o.bly stood by his patron, Wolsey, after his fall; for which the King, saying he had too few such servants, knighted him and made him a Privy Councillor. When he died, in the year 1542, he was Knight of the Garter, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

He left 100 to dower poor maidens, and his best "standing cup" to his brethren, the Merchant Taylors. In 1536 the King invited the Lord Mayor, Sir Raphe Warren (an ancestor of Cromwell and Hampden, says Mr.

Orridge), the aldermen, and forty of the princ.i.p.al citizens, to the christening of the Princess Elizabeth, at Greenwich; and at the ceremony the scarlet gowns and gold chains made a gallant show.

In Edward VI.'s reign, the Greshams again came to the front. In 1547, Sir John Gresham, brother of the Sir Richard before mentioned, obtained from Henry VIII. the hospital of St. Mary Bethlehem as an asylum for lunatics.

In this reign the City Corporation lands (as being given by Papists for superst.i.tious uses) were all claimed for the King's use, to the amount of 1,000 per annum. The London Corporation, unable to resist this tyranny, had to retrieve them at the rate of twenty years' purchase. Sir Andrew Judd (Skinner), mayor in 1550, was ancestor of Lord Teynham, Viscount Strangford, Chief Baron Smythe, &c. Among the bequests in his will were "the sandhills at the back side of Holborn," then let for a few pounds a year, now worth nearly 20,000 per annum. In 1553, Sir Thomas White (Merchant Taylor) kept the citizens loyal to Queen Mary during Wyatt's rebellion, the brave Queen coming to Guildhall and personally re-a.s.suring the citizens. White was the son of a poor clothier; at the age of twelve he was apprenticed to a London tailor, who left him 100 to begin the world with, and by thrift and industry he rose to wealth. He was the generous founder of St. John's College, Oxford. According to Webster, the poet, he had been directed in a dream to found a college upon a spot where he should find two bodies of an elm springing from one root. Discovering no such tree at Cambridge, he went to Oxford, and finding a likely tree in Gloucester Hall garden, began at once to enlarge and widen that college; but soon after he found the real tree of his dream, outside the north gate of Oxford, and on that spot he founded St. John's College.

In the reign of Elizabeth, many great-hearted citizens served the office of mayor. Again we shall see how little even the best monarchs of these days understood the word "liberty," and how the constant attacks upon their purses taught the London citizens to appreciate and to defend their rights. In 1559, Sir William Hewet (Clothworker) was mayor, whose income is estimated at 6,000 per annum. Hewet lived on London Bridge, and one day a nurse playing with his little daughter Anne, at one of the broad lattice windows overlooking the Thames, by accident let the child fall. A young apprentice, named Osborne seeing the accident, leaped from a window into the fierce current below the arches, and saved the infant.

Years after, many great courtiers, including the Earl of Shrewsbury, came courting fair Mistress Anne, the rich citizen's heiress. Sir William, her father, said to one and all, "No; Osborne saved her, and Osborne shall have her." And so Osborne did, and became a rich citizen and Lord Mayor in 1583. He is the direct ancestor of the first Duke of Leeds. There is a portrait of the brave apprentice at Kiveton House, in Yorks.h.i.+re. He dwelt in Philpot Lane, in his father-in-law's house, and was buried at St. Dionis Backchurch, Fenchurch Street.

In 1563 Lord Mayor Lodge got into a terrible sc.r.a.pe with Queen Elizabeth, who brooked no opposition, just or unjust. One of the Queen's insolent purveyors, to insult the mayor, seized twelve capons out of twenty-four destined for the mayor's table. The indignant mayor took six of the twelve fowls, called the purveyor a scurvy knave, and threatened him with the biggest pair of irons in Newgate. In spite of the intercession of Lord Robert Dudley (Leicester) and Secretary Cecil, Lodge was fined and compelled to resign his gown. Lodge was the father of the poet, and engaged in the negro trade. Lodge's successor, Sir Thomas Ramsay, died childless, and his widow left large sums to Christ's Hospital and other charities, and 1,200 to each of five City Companies; also sums for the relief of poor maimed soldiers, poor Cambridge scholars, and for poor maids' marriages.

Sir Rowland Heyward (Clothworker), mayor in 1570. He was an ancestor of the Marquis of Bath, and the father of sixteen children, all of whom are displayed on his monument in St. Alphege, London Wall.

Sir Wolston Dixie, 1585 (Skinner) was the first mayor whose pageant was published. It forms the first chapter of the many volumes relating to pageants collected by that eminent antiquary, the late Mr. Fairholt, and bequeathed by him to the Society of Antiquaries. Dixie a.s.sisted in building Peterhouse College, Cambridge. In 1594, Sir John Spencer (Clothworker)--"rich Spencer," as he was called--kept his mayoralty at Crosby Place, Bishopsgate. His only daughter married Lord Compton, who, tradition says, smuggled her away from her father's house in a large flap-topped baker's basket. A curious letter from this imperious lady is extant, in which she only requests an annuity of 2,200, a like sum for her privy purse, 10,000 for jewels, her debts to be paid, horses, coach, and female attendants, and closes by praying her husband, when he becomes an earl, to allow her 1,000 more with double attendance. These young citizen ladies were somewhat exacting. From this lady's husband the Marquis of Northampton is descended. At the funeral of "rich Spencer," 1,000 persons followed in mourning cloaks and gowns. He died worth, Mr. Timbs calculates, above 800,000 in the year of his mayoralty. There was a famine in England in his time, and at his persuasion the City Companies bought corn abroad, and stored it in the Bridge House for the poor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHITTINGTON'S ALMSHOUSES, COLLEGE HILL (_see page 398_).]

In 1609, Sir Thomas Campbell (Ironmonger), mayor, the City show was revived by the king's order. In 1611, Sir William Craven (Draper) was mayor. As a poor Yorks.h.i.+re boy from Wharfedale, he came up to London in a carrier's cart to seek his fortune. He was the father of that brave soldier of Gustavus Adolphus who is supposed to have privately married the widowed Queen of Bohemia, James I.'s daughter. There is a tradition that during an outbreak of the plague in London, Craven took horse and galloped westward till he reached a lonely farmhouse on the Berks.h.i.+re downs, and there built Ashdown House. The local legend is that four avenues led to the house from the four points of the compa.s.s, and that in each of the four walls there was a window, so that if the plague got in at one side it might go out at the other. In 1612, Sir John Swinnerton (Merchant Taylor), mayor, entertained the Count Palatine, who had come over to marry King James's daughter. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and many earls and barons were present. The Lord Mayor and his brethren presented the Palsgrave with a large basin and ewer, weighing 234 ounces, and two great gilt loving pots. The bridegroom elect gained great popularity by saluting the Lady Mayoress and her train. The pageant was written by the poet Dekker.

In this reign King James, colonising Ulster with Protestants, granted the province with Londonderry and Coleraine to the Corporation, the twelve great and old Companies taking many of the best. In 1613, Sir Thomas Middleton (Goldsmith), Basinghall Street, brother of Sir Hugh Middleton, went in state to see the water enter the New River Head at Islington, to the sound of drums and trumpets and the roar of guns. In 1618, Sir Sebastian Harvey (Ironmonger) was mayor: during his show Sir Walter Raleigh was executed, the time being specially chosen to draw away the sympathisers "from beholding," as Aubrey says, "the tragedy of the gallantest worthy that England ever bred."

[Ill.u.s.tration: OSBORNE'S LEAP (_see page 401_).]

In 1641 Sir Richard Gurney (Clothworker), and a st.u.r.dy Royalist, entertained that promise-breaking king, Charles I., at the Guildhall.

The entertainment consisted of 500 dishes. Gurney's master, a silk mercer in Cheapside, left him his shop and 6,000. The Parliament ejected him from the mayoralty and sent him to the Tower, where he lingered for seven years till he died, rather than pay a fine of 5,000, for refusing to publish an Act for the abolition of royalty. He was president of Christ's Hospital. His successor, Sir Isaac Pennington (Fishmonger), was one of the king's judges, who died in the Tower; Sir Thomas Atkins (Mercer), mayor in 1645, sat on the trial of Charles I.; Sir Thomas Adams (Draper), mayor in 1646, was also sent to the Tower for refusing to publish the Abolition of Royalty Act. He founded an Arabic lecture at Cambridge, and a grammar-school at Wem, in Shrops.h.i.+re. Sir John Gayer (Fishmonger), mayor in 1647, was committed to the Tower in 1648 as a Royalist, as also was Sir Abraham Reynardson, mayor in 1649.

Sir Thomas Foot (Grocer), mayor in 1650, was knighted by Cromwell; two of his daughters married knights, and two baronets. Earl Onslow is one of his descendants. Sir Christopher Packe (Draper), mayor in 1654, became a member of Cromwell's House of Lords as Lord Packe, and from him Sir Dennis Packe, the Peninsula general, was descended.

Sir Robert Tichborne (Skinner), mayor in 1656, sat on the trial of Charles I., and signed the death warrant. Sir Richard Chiverton (Skinner), mayor in 1657, was the first Cornish mayor of London. He was knighted both by Cromwell and by Charles II., which says something for his political dexterity. Sir John Ireton (Clothworker), mayor in 1658, was brother of General Ireton, Cromwell's son-in-law.

The period of the Commonwealth did not furnish many mayors worth recording here. In 1644, the year of Marston Moor, the City gave a splendid entertainment to both Houses of Parliament, the Earls of Ess.e.x, Warwick, and Manchester, the Scotch Commissioners, Cromwell, and the princ.i.p.al officers of the army. They heard a sermon at Christ Church, Newgate Street, and went on foot to Guildhall. The Lord Mayor and aldermen led the procession, and as they pa.s.sed through Cheapside, some Popish pictures, crucifixes, and relics were burnt on a scaffold. The object of the banquet was to prevent a letter of the king's being read in the Common Hall. On January 7th the Lord Mayor gave a banquet to the House of Commons, Cromwell, and the chief officers, to commemorate the rout of the dangerous Levellers. In 1653, the year Cromwell was chosen Lord Protector, he dined at the Guildhall, and knighted the mayor, John Fowke (Haberdasher).

The reign of Charles II. and the Royalist reaction brought more tyranny and more trouble to the City. The king tried to be as despotic as his father, and resolved to break the Whig love of freedom that prevailed among the citizens. Loyal as some of the citizens seem to have been, King Charles scarcely deserved much favour at their hands. A more reckless tyrant to the City had never sat on the English throne. Because they refused a loan of 100,000 on bad security, the king imprisoned twenty of the princ.i.p.al citizens, and required the City to fit out 100 s.h.i.+ps. For a trifling riot in the City (a mere pretext), the mayor and aldermen were amerced in the sum of 6,000. For the pretended mismanagement of their Irish estates, the City was condemned to the loss of their Irish possessions and fined 50,000. Four aldermen were imprisoned for not disclosing the names of friends who refused to advance money to the king; and, finally, to the contempt of all const.i.tutional law, the citizens were forbidden to pet.i.tion the king for the redress of grievances. Did such a king deserve mercy at the hands of the subjects he had oppressed, and time after time spurned and deceived?

In 1661, the year after the Restoration, Sir John Frederick (Grocer), mayor, revived the old customs of Bartholomew's Fair. The first day there was a wrestling match in Moorfields, the mayor and aldermen being present; the second day, archery, after the usual proclamation and challenges through the City; the third day, a hunt. The Fair people considered the three days a great hindrance and loss to them. Pepys, the delightful chronicler of these times, went to this Lord Mayor's dinner, where he found "most excellent venison; but it made me almost sick, not daring to drink wine."

Amidst the factions and the vulgar citizens of this reign, Sir John Lawrence (Grocer), mayor in 1664, stands out a burning and a s.h.i.+ning light. When the dreadful plague was mowing down the terrified people of London in great swathes, this brave man, instead of flying quietly, remained at his house in St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, enforcing wise regulations for the sufferers, and, what is more, himself seeing them executed. He supported during this calamity 40,000 discharged servants.

In 1666 (the Great Fire) the mayor, Sir Thomas Bludworth (Vintner), whose daughter married Judge Jeffries, is described by Pepys as quite losing his head during the great catastrophe, and running about exclaiming, "Lord, what can I do?" and holding his head in an exhausted and helpless way.

In 1671 Sir George Waterman (mayor, son of a Southwark vintner) entertained Charles II. at his inaugural dinner. In the pageant on this occasion, there was a forest, with animals, wood nymphs, &c., and in front two negroes riding on panthers. Near Milk Street end was a platform, on which Jacob Hall, the great rope-dancer of the day, and his company danced and tumbled. There is a mention of Hall, perhaps on this occasion, in the "State Poems:"--

"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 Which most t'admire--Hall, hobby-horse, or Bow."

In 1674 Sir Robert Vyner (Goldsmith) was mayor, and Charles II., who was frequently entertained by the City, dined with him. "The wine pa.s.sed too freely, the guests growing noisy, and the mayor too familiar, the king,"

says a correspondent of Steele's (_Spectator_, 462), "with a hint to the company to disregard ceremonial, stole off to his coach, which was waiting in Guildhall Yard. But the mayor, grown bold with wine, pursued the 'merry monarch,' and, catching him by the hand, cried out, with a vehement oath, 'Sir, you shall stay and take t'other bottle.' The 'merry monarch' looked kindly at him over his shoulder, and with a smile and graceful air (for I saw him at the time, and do now) repeated the line of the old song, 'He that is drunk is as great as a king,' and immediately turned back and complied with his host's request."

Sir Robert Clayton (Draper), mayor in 1679, was one of the most eminent citizens in Charles II.'s reign. The friend of Algernon Sidney and Lord William Russell, he sat in seven Parliaments as representative of the City; was more than thirty years alderman of Cheap Ward, and ultimately father of the City; the mover of the celebrated Exclusion Bill (seconded by Lord William Russell); and eminent alike as a patriot, a statesman, and a citizen. He projected the Mathematical School at Christ's Hospital, built additions there, helped to rebuild the house, and left the sum of 2,300 towards its funds. He was a director of the Bank of England, and governor of the Irish Society. He was mayor during the pretended Popish Plot, and was afterwards marked out for death by King James, but saved by the intercession (of all men in the world!) of Jeffries. This "prince of citizens," as Evelyn calls him, had been apprenticed to a scrivener. He lived in great splendour in Old Jewry, where Charles and the Duke of York supped with him during his mayoralty.

There is a portrait of him, worthy of Kneller, in Drapers' Hall, and another, with carved wood frame by Gibbons, in the Guildhall Library.

In 1681, when the reaction came and the Court party triumphed, gaining a verdict of 100,000 against Alderman Pilkington (Skinner), sheriff, for slandering the Duke of York, Sir Patience Ward (Merchant Taylor), mayor in 1680, was sentenced to the ignominy of the pillory. In 1682 (Sir William Pritchard, Merchant Taylor, mayor), Dudley North, brother of Lord Keeper North, was one of the sheriffs chosen by the Court party to pack juries. He was celebrated for his splendid house in Basinghall Street, and Macaulay tells us "that, in the days of judicial butchery, carts loaded with the legs and arms of quartered Whigs were, to the great discomposure of his lady, 'driven to his door for orders.'"

In 1688 Sir John Shorter (Goldsmith), appointed mayor by James II., met his death in a singular manner. He was on his way to open Bartholomew Fair, by reading the proclamation at the entrance to Cloth Fair, Smithfield. It was the custom for the mayors to call by the way on the Keeper of Newgate, and there partake on horseback of a "cool tankard" of wine, spiced with nutmeg and sweetened with sugar. In receiving the tankard Sir John let the lid flop down, his horse started, he was thrown violently, and died the next day. This custom ceased in the second mayoralty of Sir Matthew Wood, 1817. Sir John was maternal grandfather of Horace Walpole. Sir John Houblon (Grocer), mayor in 1695 (William III.), is supposed by Mr. Orridge to have been a brother of Abraham Houblon, first Governor of the Bank of England, and Lord of the Admiralty, and great-grandfather of the late Viscount Palmerston. Sir Humphrey Edwin (Skinner), mayor in 1697, enraged the Tories by omitting the show on religious grounds, and riding to a conventicle with all the insignia of office, an event ridiculed by Swift in his "Tale of a Tub,"

and Pinkethman in his comedy of _Love without Interest_ (1699), where he talks of "my lord mayor going to Pinmakers' Hall, to hear a snivelling and separatist divine divide and subdivide into the two-and-thirty points of the compa.s.s." In 1700 the Mayor was Sir Thomas Abney (Fishmonger), one of the first Directors of the Bank of England, best known as a pious and consistent man, who for thirty-six years kept Dr.

Watts, as his guest and friend, in his mansion at Stoke Newington. "No business or festivity," remarks Mr. Timbs, "was allowed to interrupt Sir Thomas's religious observances. The very day he became Lord Mayor he withdrew from the Guildhall after supper, read prayers at home, and then returned to his guests."

In 1702, Sir Samuel Dashwood (Vintner) entertained Queen Anne at the Guildhall, and his was the last pageant ever publicly performed, one for the show of 1708 being stopped by the death of Prince George of Denmark the day before. "The show," says Mr. J.G. Nicholls, "cost 737 2s., poor Settle receiving 10 for his crambo verses." A daughter of this Dashwood became the wife of the fifth Lord Brooke, and an ancestor of the present Earl of Warwick. Sir John Parsons, mayor in 1704, was a remarkable person; for he gave up his official fees towards the payment of the City debts. It was remarked of Sir Samuel Gerrard, mayor in 1710, that three of his name and family were Lord Mayors in three queens' reigns--Mary, Elizabeth, and Anne. Sir Gilbert Heathcote (mayor in 1711), ancestor of Lord Aveland and Viscount Donne, was the last mayor who rode in his procession on horseback; for after this time, the mayors, abandoning the n.o.ble career of horsemans.h.i.+p, retired into their gilt gingerbread coach.

Sir William Humphreys, mayor in 1715 (George I.), was father of the City, and alderman of Cheap for twenty-six years. Of his Lady Mayoress an old story is told relative to the custom of the sovereign kissing the Lady Mayoress upon visiting Guildhall. Queen Anne broke down this observance; but upon the accession of George I., on his first visit 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 admiration for English beauty.

"It was only," says a writer in the _Athenaeum_, "after repeated a.s.surance that saluting a lady, on her appointment to a confidential post near some persons of the Royal Family, was the sealing, as it were, of her appointment, that he expressed his readiness to kiss Lady Cowper on her nomination as lady of the bed-chamber to the Princess of Wales.

At his first appearance at Guildhall, the admirer of Madame Kielmansegge respected the new observance established by Queen Anne; yet poor Lady Humphreys, the mayoress, hoped, at all events, to receive the usual tribute from royalty from the lips of the Princess of Wales. But that strong-minded woman, Caroline Dorothea Wilhelmina, 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 amount of bad temper and worse behaviour. She wore a train of black velvet, then considered one of the privileges of 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 incident 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 flung it to a second page who attended on her state, with a scream of 'Boy, take my _bucket_!' In _her_ view of things, the sun had set on the glory of mayoralty for ever.