The Hearse-cloth, or Ironmongers’ Funeral Pall, 1515—Plate I.
“The Blessed Virgin Mary in Glory.”
The same year that Walton was admitted to the freedom (1618) the Ironmongers’ pageant, exhibited a few days previous, and at which, of course, he was unable to be a representative member, was devised by Anthony Munday. There were three special attractions—an ironmine, an ostrich (which eats brass and iron to help its digestion!), and a leopard, the latter a compliment to the Lord Mayor, whose arms bore three leopards’ heads, and whose crest was a leopard. The cost of these was 103l. Some of the payments are curious to read:—Six green (wood) men, with four assistants, who threw up fireworks as they marched along, cost 8l. 10s.; two men-of-war ships cost 30l.; 120 chambers or small cannon, 34l., with “4 lbs. of almond comfits put in the bullets in the cannon,” 4s.; banners and streamers, 36l.; “a new antient staff with faire guilt head,” 6s. 8d.; thirty-two trumpeters, 24l.; taffety sarsnet, cloth, fringe, &c., 45l.; “meat for the children’s breakfast,” 42s.; and marshalling the show, 3l. 6s. 8d. Last, but not least, there was such a gigantic operation performed that it reads like a Chicago event of to-day—“Removing the iron myne to the hall, 2s. 8d.”! The next Ironmongers’ trade pageant (1635) cost 180l.
The last Lord Mayor’s Show of the seventeenth century which the Ironmongers specially connected themselves with was that of Sir Robert Geffery in 1685, and who subsequently proved himself “a worthy benefactor” to the Company and the founder of their almshouses. It was designed by Matthew Taubman, and cost 473l. In his opening speech the author reminds us:—
“Though poets place the Iron Age the last, it had certainly a being and was of use before silver or gold had a value among the ancients. To calculate the original founders we must go further than Tubal Cain; nor is it probable the first Cain built such a vast city without materials and instruments proper for so great a design in opening the quarries and diving into the stony bowels of the earth. As the mystery of iron-working is most ancient, so is it most useful to the State, and most profitable to the merchant and artificer. Iron, for the universality of its use, may be called the efficient matter of all other mysteries, being either an ingredient or necessary instrument in all arts and professions. Take away the use of iron, all trading must cease.”
Taubman devised this “London’s Annual Triumph,” as he called it, in four pageants. The first exhibited a pyramid, on which was placed the Company’s founder, King Edward the Fourth, with Victory associated with Vigilance, Courage, and Conduct, and those four beautiful virgins, Triumph, Honour, Peace, and Plenty; the second pageant was a sea chariot; the third, a triumphal arch of loyalty, upon which was exalted Fame, supported by Truth, Union, and Concord; the fourth (or trade) pageant represented the Mountain of Ætna casting forth its sulphurous matter, with Vulcan, hammer in hand, at his anvil, attended by three Cyclops, also at anvils, answering Brontes, Steropes, and Pyracmon, who were forging thunderbolts for Jove and heads of arrows for Cupid. Amidst all the din of music and noise of the smiths were to be seen attendants throwing up ore from an ironmine, at the entrance to which stood Polypheme, a great giant, with only one eye, and that in the middle of his forehead, who, with a huge iron bar in one hand and a sword in the other, kept guard “to prevent all others but the Right Worshipful the Company of Ironmongers (whose peculiar prerogative it is) to enter.” Every figure in the pageant acted well his part, and Vulcan and Apollo probably took the lead, for Vulcan, addressing the Lord Mayor, sang:—
Here, sir, in iron mines of sulphurous earth,