Civil authority and even State control could, in days gone by, only be sustained by plenty of pomp and show. The populace were awed by giant insignia and much parade of power to enforce the authority held. In days before there were newspapers to make announcements, and no printing presses to print posters and proclamations, the calling of a public meeting at which declarations could be made or decisions arrived at, was a matter of no small importance. The sounding horn had been used from primitive times to call together the people, and the gatherings of the folk mote were heralded in and assembled by a loud blast on the "moot horn." The moot or meeting of the people of a village or hamlet began in Anglo-Saxon times, when such assemblies were held in the open air. Later came the moot hall, which preceded the guildhall of days when traders and merchants were incorporated into fraternal guilds. The horn was the signal for calling such assemblies commonly in use in old towns, and such relics of the past are now preserved with care—emblems of altered times to those who are familiar with them. In Fig. 55 is shown the moot horn of Winchester, a beautiful example of ancient metal-work. There is a similar horn at Dover, which is sounded still according to custom at the election of the mayor.
FIG. 54.—AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FLAGSTAFF HEAD OF BRASS, ORIGINALLY GILT.
FIG. 55.—THE WINCHESTER MOOT HORN.
(In the Guildhall Museum, Winchester.)
The moot horn is not quite lost in modern procedure, for the heralds march in Royal processions and precede the proclamation of regal and civic state as of yore, on those rare occasions calling a halt from everyday occupations by the trumpet's blast.