The passages relating to this custom are Ram Alley, O. Pl., 2d ed., 5. 486:
By Dis, I will be knight, Wear a blue coat on great St. George’s day, And with my fellows drive you all from Paul’s For this attempt.
Runne and a great Cast, Epigr. 33:
With’s coram nomine keeping greater sway Than a court blew-coat on St. George’s day.
From these passages Nares concludes ‘that some festive ceremony was carried on at St. Paul’s on St. George’s day annually; that the court attended; that the blue-coats, or attendants, of the courtiers, were employed and authorised to keep order, and drive out refractory persons; and that on this occasion it was proper for a knight to officiate as blue coat to some personage of higher rank’.
In the Conversations with Drummond, Jonson’s Wks. 9. 393, we read: ‘Northampton was his mortal enimie for beating, on a St. George’s day, one of his attenders.’ Pepys speaks of there being bonfires in honor of St. George’s Day as late as Apr. 23, 1666.
3. 3. 166 chaines? PLV. Of gold, and pearle. The gold chain was formerly a mark of rank and dignity, and a century before this it had been forbidden for any one under the degree of a gentleman of two hundred marks a year to wear one (Statutes of the Realm, 7 Henry VIII. c. 6). They were worn by the Lord Mayors (Dekker, Shomaker’s Holiday, Wks. 1. 42), rich merchants and aldermen (Glapthorne, Wit for a Constable, Wks., ed. 1874, 1. 201-3), and later became the distinctive mark of the upper servant in a great family, especially the steward (see Nares and Ev. Man out, Wks. 2. 31). Massinger (City Madam, Wks., p. 334) speaks of wearing a chain of gold ‘on solemn days.’ With the present passage cf. Underwoods 62, Wks. 8. 410:
If they stay here but till St. George’s day. All ensigns of a war are not yet dead, Nor marks of wealth so from a nation fled, But they may see gold chains and pearl worn then, Lent by the London dames to the Lords’ men.
3. 3. 170 take in Pimlico. ‘Near Hoxton, a great summer resort in the early part of the 17th century and famed for its cakes, custards, and Derby ale. The references to the Hoxton Pimlico are numerous in our old dramatists.’—Wh—C. It is mentioned among other places in Greene’s Tu Quoque, The City Match, fol. 1639, News from Hogsdon, 1598, and Dekker, Roaring Girle, Wks. 3. 219, where it is spoken of as ‘that nappy land of spice-cakes.’ In 1609 a tract was published, called Pimlyco or Runne Red-Cap, ’tis a Mad World at Hogsdon.
Jonson refers to it repeatedly. Cf. Alch., Wks. 4. 155: