4. In Remembrancia (1579-1664) there are notes on 119 Mayors, Aldermen, Sheriffs, and City Officers. Of these the largest number are sons of country gentlemen. Thus we have:
| From the Country | |
| Sons of Gentlemen | 59 |
| Born in London | |
| Sons of City Merchants | 16 |
| From the Country | |
| Apparently of poor parents | 5 |
| Parentage not stated | 39 |
| 119 |
5. Another point is the very significant fact that the admiration of the people was not bestowed, as we might expect, on the rich and successful merchant, but upon the fighting man. The hero of the London apprentice was not the Lord Mayor, nor one of the Aldermen, nor the poor lad who became the rich trader, nor the merchant who owned ships and lent money to kings; his hero was the London youth who went forth to fight, and came home a knight.
I have before me a certain book of the year 1590, called The Nine Worthies of London. You would expect to find Thomas à Becket, Whittington, Chichele, Caxton, Gresham, among these worthies. You would expect to find that stout old radical, William Longbeard, among them. You would be quite wrong. Not one of these worthies was remembered. Thomas à Becket, the protecting saint of London—their own saint—a member, almost, of the Mercers’ Company, was completely forgotten. None of the others did the people care to remember. They remembered, as I have said, only those who had gone out to fight. One London ’prentice had the honour of fighting for a whole hour with the Dauphin of France; another was knighted on the field by Edward the Black Prince, and came home to marry his master’s daughter—her name was Doll; a third slew a wild boar in Poland; and so on.
There is additional proof that the greater number—by far the greater number—of the citizens constituting the principal companies, together with many of those representing the former kind of apprentice, were gentlefolk—armigeri—belonging to what we should call county families.
THE KNIGHT
From the Ellesmere M.S. of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
In the Edition, or the Continuator, of Stow, published by “A. M.—H. D., and others,” in the year 1633, the arms of all the Mayors of London from Henry Fitz Aylwin to that year are given. With the arms is added a note of the origin and parentage of the Mayors, one by one.
Let me take the latter first. What do we find when we analyse these returns? I divide the analysis into three heads. First, that of the Mayors whose parents lived in the country, where they were born; next, those who were born in London; thirdly, those who were born in other towns.