On Friday after the Epiphany, 1382, the Mayor, aldermen and Commons rode to meet the new Queen, Anne of Bohemia, and conducted her through the city. All the crafts were charged to wear nothing but red and black.
In 1392 Richard II. wanted to borrow £1000 from the Londoners. However, they not only refused, but killed a certain Lombard who would have lent the sum. The King was very angry and deposed the Mayor, imprisoning him in Windsor Castle, and the sheriffs and various prominent citizens in other prisons. Finding that they were in a bad case, the citizens repented and offered the King £10,000. Richard, learning that the Londoners were ‘in heaviness and dismayed,’ said to his men, as Stow tells us: ‘I will go to London and comfort the citizens, and will not that they any longer despaire of my favour.’ On leaving Shene he was met on Wandsworth Common by four hundred of the citizens on horseback, clad in one livery, who in the most humble manner, craving pardon for their past offences, besought him by their recorder to take his way to his palace at Westminster through the city of London. The request having been granted, the King pursued his journey to Southwark, where at St. George’s Church he was met by a procession of the Bishop of London, and all the religions of every degree, and above five hundred boys in surplices. At London Bridge a white steed and milk-white palfrey, both saddled, bridled and caparisoned in cloth of gold, were presented to the King and Queen. The citizens received them standing in their liveries on each side of the street, crying: ‘King Richard, King Richard.’ Handsome presents were made to the King and Queen, who proceeded to St. Paul’s; after the offerings had been made there the Mayor accompanied the King to Westminster. On the following day the citizens again went to the palace with presents, and received a new confirmation of their liberties. They had, however, to present a golden tablet of the story of Edward the Confessor for the shrine of that royal saint, and were further mulcted in a heavy tax.
Seven years after this the principal actors were changed, and Henry, Duke of Lancaster, approached London with Richard as a captive. He was received in great pomp by the Mayor, aldermen and sheriffs, and all the several companies in their formalities, with the people incessantly crying: ‘Long live the good Duke of Lancaster, our deliverer!’
On the 13th of October, in the same year (1399), Henry went in great pomp from the Tower to Westminster, and there was crowned.
In 1413 Henry V. passed in procession from the Tower through London to Westminster, where he was crowned. But though there was a brave show on this occasion it was as nothing to what was provided to do honour to the King’s return from the glorious field of Agincourt in 1415. The Mayor and aldermen, apparelled in Orient-grained scarlet, and four hundred Commoners in murrey, well mounted, with rich collars and chains, met the King at Blackheath; and the clergy of London, in solemn procession, with rich crosses, sumptuous copes and many censers, received him at St. Thomas of Waterings, a place on the Old Kent Road, which Chaucer’s pilgrims passed when they had gone about two miles from the Tabard. At the entrance of London Bridge, on the top of the tower, stood a gigantic figure, bearing in his right hand an axe, and in his left the keys of the city hanging to a staff, as if he had been the porter. By his side stood a woman of scarcely less stature, intended for his wife. Around them were a band of trumpets and other wind instruments. The towers were adorned with banners of the royal arms, and in the front of them was inscribed—Civitas Regis Justicie.
Henry V. made another triumphant entry into London with his bride Katharine of France, who was crowned at Westminster Abbey on the 14th of February 1421. On the 31st of August following the King died in France. On the 14th of November 1422 the infant, Henry VI., was carried through the city to the Parliament at Westminster on the lap of his mother, who sat in an open chair.
On the 6th of November 1429 the young King was crowned in Westminster Abbey. The coronation was a very imposing ceremony. At the commencement of the proceedings the Archbishop of Canterbury made proclamation at the four corners of the scaffold on which the King sat. He spoke as follows: ‘Syrys, here comythe Harry, Kyng Harry the V. ys sone, humylyche to God and Hooly Chyrche, askynge the crowne of thys realme by ryght and discent of herytage. Yf ye holde you welle plesyd with alle and wylle be plesyd with hym, say you nowe, ye! and holde uppe youre hondys.’ Then all the people with one voice cried, ‘Yea, yea.’[113]
Henry VI. was crowned in France on the 7th of December 1431 by Cardinal Beaufort his uncle (Bishop of Winchester), and on his return to England he was met at Blackheath by the Mayor and citizens on the 21st of February 1431-1432. The Mayor and aldermen were dressed in scarlet, and the members of the gilds in white, with the cognisances of their crafts on their sleeves. The figure of a mighty giant, with a drawn sword, stood at the entrance of the bridge. When the King had passed the first gate and was arrived at the drawbridge, he found a goodly tower, hung with silk and cloth of arras, out of which suddenly appeared three ladies, clad in gold and silk, with coronets upon their head; of which the first was Dame Nature, the second Dame Grace, and the third Dame Fortune. On each side of these dames were seven virgins, all clothed in white; those on the right presented the King with the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost—sapience, intelligence, good counsel, strength, cunning, pity, and dread of God; those on the left with the seven gifts of grace—the crown of glory, the sceptre of clemency and pity, the sword of might and victory, the mantle of prudence, the shield of faith, the helmet of health, and the girdle of love and perfect peace.
On Cornhill was a tabernacle of curious work, in which stood Dame Sapience, and around her the seven liberal arts—Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy.