by Robert Amerie, an ex-sheriff of the town, and consisted of a horse-race on the Roodeye, after a procession in which the bearers of the bells that served as prizes were accompanied by St. George and his dragon pursuing a Green man or 'wodwose', while speeches were uttered by Fame, Mercury, Chester, Britain, Cambria, Rumour and Peace, and Joy composed a débat between Love and Envy.[1]
Even in the absence of the sovereign, London had pageantry for its own delight; folk-pageantry in the May-games, morrises and lords of misrule, which sometimes made their way to Court;[2] municipalized folk-pageantry in the Midsummer and St. Peter's Eve 'watches', which barely survived into Elizabeth's reign;[3] municipal pageantry fully established in the ceremony which has come down to our own day of the Lord Mayor's show. The Mayor was installed on St. Simon and St. Jude's Day, 28 October, and on 29 October he went by water to Westminster Hall to be admitted before the barons of the Exchequer in the Exchequer chamber. On his return he was met by his guildsmen and other citizens at the waterside, and escorted to dinner in the Guildhall, and after dinner to service in St. Paul's and back to his own house. There had been pageants on this occasion in the fifteenth century, but these were suppressed in 1481, and during the earlier part of the sixteenth century the spectacular element was limited to a 'foyst or wafter' upon the river, such as that with a device of a crowned falcon on a mount environed with white and red roses, which the City provided by royal command for the coronation of Anne Boleyn in 1533.[4] But shortly after, and perhaps as a result of, the discontinuance of the 'watches' in 1538, the installation pageant makes its appearance again. It can be traced in 1540, and then, with the accompaniment of speeches, fireworks, devils, and wodwoses', in the pages of Machyn's diary during most years from
- ↑ Cf. ch. xxiv.
- ↑ Machyn, 191, 196, 201, 261, 273; cf. App. A (1559-1561).
- ↑ Cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 165, 382. Machyn, 287, records a watch with a 'castylle' at the Tower on 28 June 1562. There was another on 28 June 1564, which Elizabeth saw privately from Baynard's Castle (Sp. P. i. 366; cf. App. A). Puttenham, 165, speaks of 'these midsommer pageants in London, where to make the people wonder are set forth great and vglie Gyants marching as if they were aliue, and armed at all points, but within they are stuffed full of browne paper and tow, which the shrewd boys vnderpeering, do guilefully discouer and turne to a great derision'.
- ↑ Sharpe, Letter Book, L. 187, prints an order of 23 Oct. 1481 forbidding from thenceforth any 'disguysyng nor pageoun', when the Mayor went from his house to the water or the water to his house, 'as it hath been used nowe of late afore this time'. Halle, ii. 232, describes the reception of Anne Boleyn.
