The provision of corn commenced as early as 1521, and continued until the period of the Great Fire in 1666, when, the Companies’ mills and granaries being destroyed, the custom ceased, and was not afterwards renewed. In 1579 eight ironmongers were deputed to go to all the City markets and “set the price of meale”; in 1608 the Company was assessed at 88l. towards erecting the granaries at Bridewell, and another 88l. the following year. Yearly provisioning the markets at Leadenhall, at Queenhithe, and elsewhere continued until 1649, when the Company pleaded that, through being “disabled in their estate,” they really were unable to meet the Lord Mayor’s demand. A complete summary of this City corn custom will be found in Herbert’s “History of the Companies,” vol. i., pp. 132-150.
We will mention a few of the “Miscellaneous” precepts which the company were favoured with from time to time. In 1565-66 they subscribed among themselves 100l. towards “the building of the new Burse”—the first Royal Exchange. They made loans to Yarmouth (1577), Bury St. Edmunds (1637), and Gloucester (1643) to help those places in their difficulties. They made a benevolence in 1604 of 40s. to Messrs. Chandler & Parkhurst, for having procured the passing in Parliament of the Bankruptcy Act, “a matter verie beneficiall to yᵉ comonwealth.” In 1631 they agreed to subscribe 20l. a year for five years towards the repairing of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and again on the rebuilding, after the fire of London, in 1666, they, as individual members, were benefactors. In 1694 they gave 40s. to a Greek presbyter of Larissa to help him to get back to his country; in fact, such donations frequently occur in the books. Mr. Nicholl remarks: “Not only are the City Companies called upon to relieve the necessities of private indigence, but there is scarcely any public charity whatever whose petitions for aid are not laid before them.”
In the beginning of the reign of James I. (1608-14) the Company, with others, adventured in the New Virginia Plantation Scheme, “to ease the Cittie and suburbs of a swarme of unnecessarie inmates as a continuall cause of dearth and famine, and the verie origenall of all plagues.” In 1609 the King offered to the City of London the waste lands in Ulster as another plantation scheme. This, the wisest act of His Majesty, was accepted, and the Ironmongers (among other City Companies) became thus possessed by actual purchase (as shall be shown hereafter) of their Irish estate—the Manor of Lizard. In 1625-27 the Company lent, or advanced, money to the East India Company, and in 1633 to the Greenland Company. It must be mentioned here that, having subscribed to the Virginia Lottery, Captain John Smith subsequently presented to the Company copies of four of his books, all of which, unfortunately, are now missing. As the copies contained dedications (in MS.?) the loss is to be much deplored.
We now turn to more joyful matters—pageantry. The Ironmongers were not behind in any of these. So long ago as 1483 ten of the Company (with proportions from other companies), dressed in murrey-coloured coats, rode to meet the King on his entering the City, and at the subsequent coronation, when the Lord Mayor (Sir Edmund Shaa, goldsmith, and Alderman of Cheap Ward, the same ward over which the present Lord Mayor in 1889 presides) acted as chief butler at the feast, and received from the King and Queen the wine-cups used by them as his fee, Alderman Thomas Breten, Ironmonger, assisted his lordship in his duties. At most of the Royal visits and coronations, and such like festivities, the Company, with others, always had their “standing” and precedency, and in this respect the “place” was much contested. A proof occurs in the history of the dispute between the Skinners and Merchant Taylors in 1484. Upon appeal to the Lord Mayor “for norishing of peas and love,” he decreed that from henceforth the Skinners should dine with the Merchant Taylors at their hall one year, and the Merchant Taylors at Skinners’ Hall the next year, and so yearly alternately for ever should each company have precedence. And for 400 years has this most excellent decree been celebrated yearly, each Company toasting in the other’s hall their “root and branch,” and wishing them “to flourish for ever.”
In 1541, when Queen Anne Bullen came from Greenwich by water to Westminster, the Company of Ironmongers spent no less than 9l. on the festivity. Their barge cost 26s. 8d., and their provisions included gurnets, fresh salmon, eels, bread and cheese, wine, claret, and a kilderkin of ale. A reference to Nichols’s “London Pageants,” or his “Progresses” of Queen Elizabeth and James I., will tell in full the interesting character of these City shows, and the gorgeous displays made by the citizens, who then, as now, never were niggardly in their tokens of welcome. One of the most curious of these outdoor scenes was “the setting of the marching watch,” when 2,000 persons, apparelled in holiday costume, with 700 lighted cressets, borne aloft, paraded the City. A description of a visit by Henry VIII., dressed in the costume of one of his own guards, will be found in the first volume of Knight’s “London.” The last entry in the Ironmongers’ books is dated 1567, but an account of expenses a quarter of a century earlier shows that 800 cresset lights cost 2s. 4d. per 100; a dozen straw hats, 12d.; armourer, 6s. The Company’s banquet cost 36s. Among the items of the feast were: A peece of beef, 4d.; a breast of veel, 7d.; a neck and breast of mutton, 6d.; a goose, 9d.; four rabbits, 1s.; bread, 6d.; butter, 1½d.; water, 1d. The cook and two assistants, 7d.; six gallons of wine, 7s.; and a gallon of ale, 2d.
Lord Mayor’s Day and the Lord Mayor’s Show was another City festival red letter day from early times. Until the year 1752, when the Act for altering the calendar came into force, the presentation of the Lord Mayor took place on October 29, but since that year it has been November 9. Sir John Norman, “Draper,” in 1452, was the first chief magistrate to go to Westminster by water; Lord Mayor Finnis, in 1856, the last. Most of the Lord Mayors have had their shows, the pageantry at which has been most elaborate, especially during the seventeenth century. The following is a complete list of the “Ironmonger” Lord Mayors:—
| 1409-10 | } | Sir Richard Marlow |
| 1417-18 | ||
| 1442-43 | Sir John Hatherley | |
| 1566-67 | Sir Christopher Draper | |
| 1569-70 | Sir Alexander Avenon | |
| 1581-82 | Sir James Harvey | |
| 1592-93 | Sir William Rowe | |
| 1609-10 | Sir Thomas Cambell | |
| 1618-19 | Sir Sebastian Harvey | |
| 1629-30 | Sir James Cambell | |
| 1635-36 | Sir Christopher Cletherow | |
| 1685-86 | Sir Robert Geffery | |
| 1714-15 | Sir William Humfreys, Bart. | |
| 1719-20 | Sir George Thorold, Bart. | |
| 1741-42 | Sir Robert Godschall (who died in his mayoralty on June 26, 1742) | |
| 1749-50 | Sir Samuel Pennant (who died in his mayoralty on May 20, 1750) | |
| 1751-52 | Robert Alsop (elected upon the death of Thomas Winterbottom, June 4, 1751) | |
| 1762-63 | } | William Beckford (died June 21, 1770; see his monument in Guildhall) |
| 1769-70 | ||
| 1802-03 | Sir Charles Price, Bart. | |
| 1810-11 | J. J. Smith, Esq. (Lord Nelson’s executor) | |
| 1828-29 | William Thompson, Esq. |
As we have already stated, some of the early Lord Mayor’s Shows were elaborate, and illustrative of the Company’s trade name. They will be found chronicled in Nichols’s “Pageants” and in Fairholt’s “Lord Mayor’s Day Pageants” (Percy Society, 1843-45). The Guildhall Banquet tickets during the past 100 years have been exceedingly interesting as specimens of design and printing, the early ones being by Bartolozzi and his school. A nearly complete set is in our own collection, those at Guildhall, strangely enough, only dating back some fifty years, the reason being that the show and banquet has always been the private and personal festival of the Lord Mayor and two Sheriffs, the former paying a moiety of the expenses, the total generally ranging from 2,000l. to 3,000l. It is, therefore, a vulgar error to suppose that the Citizens and ratepayers are taxed a penny.
The earliest notice of the Pageantry in the Ironmongers’ books is 1566, but the most complete account is that at the inauguration of Sir James Cambell, 1629, which was compiled by Thomas Dekker, and entitled “London’s Tempe.” It cost the Company 180l. There were six elaborately “got up” pageants representing: for the water a sea lion and two sea horses, and for the land an estridge, Lemnion’s Forge, Tempe or the Field of Hapines, and Apollo’s Palace representing the seven liberal sciences. The fourth or trade pageant is worth quoting. It is described as “The Lemnion Forge.” In it are Vulcan the Smith of Lemnos, with his servants (the Cyclopes), whose names are Pyracmon, Brontes, and Sceropes, working at the anvile. “Their habite are wastcoates and leather aprons, their hair black and shaggy, in knotted curles. A fire is seene in the forge, bellowes blowing, some filing, some at other workes; thunder and lightning on occasion. As the smithes are at worke they singe in praise of iron, the anvile, and hammer, by the concordant stroakes and soundes of which Tuball Cayne became the first inventor of musicke.”
Brave iron! brave hammer! from your sound