A Brief History of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers, London A.D. 1351-1889: With an Appendix Containing Some Account of the Blacksmiths' Company — John Shaqi
A Brief History of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers, London A.D. 1351-1889: With an Appendix Containing Some Account of the Blacksmiths' CompanyNoble, T. C. (Theophilus Charles)
History
A Brief History of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers, London A.D. 1351-1889: With an Appendix Containing Some Account of the Blacksmiths' Company
Noble, T. C. (Theophilus Charles)
Worshipful Company of Ironmongers (London, England) -- History
These Lord Mayor pageants of the seventeenth century were, as we have
stated, partly a show on the Thames and partly a show in the City
streets. Designed by the City poet of the period, the descriptions were
usually printed in a small volume and circulated among the Lord Mayor’s
friends and the members of the company. Probably the largest volume on
the subject is the reprint of the Fishmongers’ pageant of 1616, edited
by J. G. Nichols in 1844, a large folio with twelve illustrations,
_facsimiles_ of the original drawings. Our own copy of this work belonged
to Mr. Recorder Gurney, and has the plates beautifully hand-painted and
illuminated. And the smallest book upon so great a subject is a 32-paged
duodecimo entitled “The Lord Mayor of London: a Sketch of the Origin,
History, and Antiquity of the Office,” printed in 1860, and containing,
as we believe, every fact to that date worth knowing about the office.
There are two items in connection with the 1629 show which must not be
omitted. That “gentle angler,” Izaak Walton, a City apprentice who had
been admitted a member of the Ironmongers’ Company eleven years before,
on November 12, 1618, was one of the thirty-two members of the yeomanry
who took part in the pageant. The “Sea Lion” and the “Estridge,” after
the day’s ceremony was over, were brought in state to Ironmongers’
Hall, “to be sett upp for the Company’s use.” We do not know how long
the lion remained so proudly exalted, but certainly not so long as the
world-renowned relic still called the “original” dagger with which “brave
Walworth knight Wat Tyler slew” in 1381, and which, after being carried
in many a Fishmongers’ pageant, rests at the present time in a glass case
in Fishmongers’ Hall. The carved-wood ostrich still exists.
[Illustration: THE HEARSE-CLOTH, OR IRONMONGERS’ FUNERAL PALL, 1515—PLATE
I.
“The Blessed Virgin Mary in Glory.”
(See page 55.)]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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