About this time it is evident the Show was in a very prosperous condition. Puritanism had not taken any real hold on the country, and the Church was restored, and old ways of thinking and acting brought back, without any disturbance or opposition[203]. Even in the companies the religious element which was so strong in the earlier Gilds was not entirely wanting: the day’s proceedings included a sermon in the Church[204]. In the morning the Wardens and members met in the open space before the castle, whence they passed in a merry procession through the gaily decked streets to Kingsland. There each Gild had its arbour surrounded by trees and supplied with tables and benches. The mayor and corporation used to attend, and were accustomed to visit each arbour in succession. The remainder of the day passed in festivity and merriment, and the craftsmen with their friends returned home in the evening “much invigorated with the essence of barley-corn,” as a writer of fifty years ago expresses it.
Degeneracy.
But the degeneracy of the revived Show was very apparent. The dropping off of the sermons deprived the companies of the last trace of that strong religious element which had characterised their mediæval ancestors. A private letter of 1811 says, “Shrewsbury Show was on the 19th [of June] but I did not go to it. That, like other things, is getting much worse.” The Drapers and Mercers had never gone to Kingsland, and gradually the other companies began to withdraw from the Show. The formal procession became confined practically to apprentices[205], while the masters contented themselves with a dinner at one of the inns of the town[206]. Everything was significant of the approaching end of the pageant.
Reform agitation tends to check degeneracy, but Reform Acts fatal to the Show.
When the Reform agitation threatened to deprive the companies of their trading privileges at no distant period, and later, when it had succeeded in doing so, attempts seem to have been made to bring into prominence their social aspect[207], and the procession was again reinvigorated. The pomp which signalised George the Fourth’s coronation may also have given a stimulus to pageantry. The arbours were repaired and rebuilt, and the year 1849 witnessed a grand revival of the procession. Attempts in this direction were now not infrequent, but were necessarily spasmodic. Yet the time-honoured Show was found to be possessed of wonderful vitality. When the Municipal Corporations Act destroyed the exclusive privileges of trading which the companies possessed they clung to their annual feast and to the yearly procession, for which they retained the arbours at some expense and self-denial. Gradually however as the successive freemen died the arbours reverted one by one to the corporation of the town; the other Gild property, which was not already divided, was shared among surviving members, or fell through debt or similar causes into other hands. Kingsland itself was to revert to the town at the decease of the last of the members of the companies, according to an arrangement concluded in 1862.
Even still the old Show was hard to kill. In spite of much that was saddening, and much degradation, the procession lingered on till some twelve or fourteen years ago, when it died a natural death. So another link with the past was broken, and another spot of colour wiped away from these duller days of uniformity and routine.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE END OF THE COMPANIES.