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 9_l._ on the festivity. Their barge cost 26_s._ 8_d._, 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 2_s._ 4_d._ per 100; a dozen straw hats, 12_d._; armourer, 6_s._ The Company’s banquet cost 36_s._ Among the items of the feast were: A peece of beef, 4_d._; a breast of veel, 7_d._; a neck and breast of mutton, 6_d._; a goose, 9_d._; four rabbits, 1_s._; bread, 6_d._; butter, 1½_d._; water, 1_d._ The cook and two assistants, 7_d._; six gallons of wine, 7_s._; and a gallon of ale, 2_d._