"'But stay, bold tongue! I stand at giddy gaze!
Be dim, mine eyes! What gallant train are here,
That strikes minds mute, puts good wits in a maze?
Oh! 'tis our King, royal King James, I say!
Pass on in peace, and happy be thy way;
Live long on earth, and England's sceptre sway,'" &c.
Henrietta Maria, that pretty, wilful queen of Charles I., accompanied by the Duke of Buckingham and Bassompierre, the French ambassador, went to what the latter calls Shipside, to view the Lord Mayor's procession. She also came to a masquerade at the Temple, in the costume of a City lady. Mistress Bassett, the great lace-woman of Cheapside, went foremost of the Court party at the Temple carnival, and led the Queen by the hand.
But what are royal processions to the Lord Mayor's Show?
The earliest civic show on record, writes Mr. Fairholt, who made a specialty of this subject, took place in 1236, on the passage of Henry III. and Eleanor of Provence through the City to Westminster. They were escorted by the mayor, aldermen, and 360 mounted citizens, apparelled in robes of embroidered silk, and each carrying in their hands a cup of gold or silver, in token of the privilege claimed by the City for the lord mayor to officiate as chief butler at the king's coronation. On the return of Edward I. from the Holy Land the citizens, in the wildness of their loyalty, threw, it is said, handfuls of gold and silver out of window to the crowd. It was on the return of the same king from his Scotch victories that the earliest known City pageant took place. Each guild had its show. The Fishmongers had gilt salmon and sturgeon, drawn by eight horses, and six-and-forty knights riding seahorses, followed by St. Magnus (it was St. Magnus' day), with 1,000 horsemen.
Mr. Fairholt proved from papers still preserved by the Grocers' Company that water processions took place at least nineteen years earlier than the usual date (1453) set down for their commencement. Sir John Norman is mentioned by the City poet as the first Lord Mayor that rowed to Westminster. He had silver oars, and so delighted the London watermen that they wrote a ballad about him, of which two lines only still exist—
"Row thy boat, Norman,
Row to thy leman."
In the troublous reign of Henry VI. the Goldsmiths made a special stand for their privileges on Lord Mayor's day. They complained loudly that they had always ridden with the mayor to Westminster and back, and that on their return to Chepe they sit on horseback "above the Cross afore the Goldsmiths' Row; but that on the morrow of the Apostles Simon and Jude, when they came to their stations, they found the Butchers had forestalled them, who would not budge for all the prayers of the wardens of the Goldsmiths, and hence had arisen great variance and strife." The two guilds submitted to the Lord Mayor's arbitration, whereupon the Mayor ruled that the Goldsmiths should retain possession of their ancient stand.
The first Lord Mayor's pageant described by the old chroniclers is that when Anne Boleyn "came from Greenwich to Westminster on her coronation day, and the Mayor went to serve her as chief butler, according to ancient custom." Hall expressly says that the water procession on that occasion resembled that of Lord Mayor's Day. The Mayor's barge, covered with red cloth (blue except at royal ceremonies), was garnished with goodly banners and streamers, and the sides hung with emblazoned targets. In the barge were "shalms, shagbushes, and divers other instruments, which continually made goodly harmony." Fifty barges, filled with the various companies, followed, marshalled and kept in order by three light wherries with officers. Before the Mayor's barge came another barge, full of ordnance and containing a huge dragon (emblematic of the Rouge Dragon in the Tudor arms), which vomited wild fire; and round about it stood terrible monsters and savages, also vomiting fire, discharging squibs, and making "hideous noises." By the side of the Mayor's barge was the bachelors' barge, in which were trumpeters and other musicians. The decks of the Mayor's barge, and the sail-yards, and top-castles were hung with flags and rich cloth of gold and silver. At the head and stern were two great banners, with the royal arms in beaten gold. The sides of the barge were hung with flags and banners of the Haberdashers' and Merchant Adventurers' Companies (the Lord Mayor, Sir Stephen Peacock, was a haberdasher). On the outside of the barge shone three dozen illuminated royal escutcheons. On the left hand of this barge came another boat, in which was a pageant. A white falcon, crowned, stood upon a mount, on a golden rock, environed with white and red roses (Anne Boleyn's device), and about the mount sat virgins, "singing and playing sweetly." The Mayor's company, the Haberdashers, came first, then the Mercers, then the Grocers, and so on, the barges being garnished with banners and hung with arras and rich carpets. In 1566-7 the water procession was very costly, and seven hundred pounds of gunpowder were burned. This is the first show of which a detailed account exists, and it is to be found recorded in the books of the Ironmongers' Company.
