TOURNAMENT OF THE EARL OF WARWICK
From Strutt’s Manners and Customs.
It must have been a wealthy city which could thus furnish for a coronation banquet three hundred and sixty wealthy citizens, who could afford to dress in silk with gold-embroidered mantles, and to ride stately horses richly caparisoned, and to carry every man a gold or silver cup, and to decorate and light up their houses with flags and banners, chaplets and hangings, candles and lamps. The magnificent dress of the citizen at all these pageants strikes one with astonishment. They welcomed Queen Margaret in 1300 to the number of 600 in a livery of red and white, each with the cognisance of his Mystery embroidered on his sleeve. They followed King Henry IV. in 1399 with a train of 6000 horse—all of London and clothed in their proper livery. When Henry V. came home after Agincourt, the Mayor and Aldermen met him clothed in “orient grained scarlet,” with 400 citizens in murrey, well mounted, with collars and chains of gold; with them went a multitude of the city clergy in sumptuous copes with rich crosses and massy censers.
CORONATION OF HENRY IV.
From Froissart’s Chronicles.
The Lord Mayor’s Show began with the presentation of the Mayor elect to the King or his justiciary. The new Mayor had to ride to Westminster; of course he rode in state with the Sheriffs, Aldermen, and officers of the city. It was in 1452 that John Norman, then Mayor, is said to have changed the custom of riding by land to going by barge. For this purpose he presented the City with a beautiful barge; the Companies followed his example, and provided themselves with barges; of course it was no new thing for a wealthy citizen or a nobleman to have his barge; the Thames was always, until quite recent times, the chief highway of the City—witness the line of palaces which lay along its north bank from Baynard’s Castle to the King’s House of Westminster. The innovation of Norman was to present the City with its barge of state: there is reason to believe that before his time some of the journeys to Westminster had been made by water. Some notes of the cost of such a procession have been preserved. For instance, in the year 1401, on the Riding of John Walcote, Mayor, there is the following entry in the books of the Grocers’ Company:—
| £ | s | d | |
| Itm. Meres Averes paie po le chevache duJohn Walcote mayr, po vi mynstrelles po. lo. sabire | XL | ||
| Itm. po. lo. cheprous and po. lo. pessure | VIIj | ||
| It. po. lo. dyner & po vyn po. le chaucer | XXI | ||
| Itm. po. un cluvue po. le bidge | IIIj |