Taubman devised this “London’s Annual Triumph,” as he called it, in four pageants. The first exhibited a pyramid, on which was placed the Company’s founder, King Edward the Fourth, with Victory associated with Vigilance, Courage, and Conduct, and those four beautiful virgins, Triumph, Honour, Peace, and Plenty; the second pageant was a sea chariot; the third, a triumphal arch of loyalty, upon which was exalted Fame, supported by Truth, Union, and Concord; the fourth (or trade) pageant represented the Mountain of Ætna casting forth its sulphurous matter, with Vulcan, hammer in hand, at his anvil, attended by three Cyclops, also at anvils, answering Brontes, Steropes, and Pyracmon, who were forging thunderbolts for Jove and heads of arrows for Cupid. Amidst all the din of music and noise of the smiths were to be seen attendants throwing up ore from an ironmine, at the entrance to which stood Polypheme, a great giant, with only one eye, and that in the middle of his forehead, who, with a huge iron bar in one hand and a sword in the other, kept guard “to prevent all others but the Right Worshipful the Company of Ironmongers (whose peculiar prerogative it is) to enter.” Every figure in the pageant acted well his part, and Vulcan and Apollo probably took the lead, for Vulcan, addressing the Lord Mayor, sang:— Here, sir, in iron mines of sulphurous earth, Where smoak and fiery vapours take their birth, We forge out thunderbolts for incenced Jove, And heads of arrows for the God of Love. Victory declaring:— Against cold ir’n no armour can prevail; There’s no resistance in a coat of male. At the subsequent Guildhall banquet was sung the Company’s song in praise of iron, and this was followed by another specially prepared to greet the King (James the Second), who was present. It was nothing out of the way in those times for Royalty to dine with the citizens, with whom both kings and queens were “hale fellows well met.” The State papers and the Royal letters prove to the hilt that in a great many instances the citizens would have preferred their room to their company. The best anecdote belongs to the “merry monarch” Charles II., who, dining at Guildhall, so “hobnob’d” with the Lord Mayor that they did not know “the other from which.” The King, however, managed to leave without ceremony, and was just getting into his coach in Guildhall Yard when my Lord Mayor, discovering his loss, overtook him, and begged “Mr. King” to return and “take t’other bottle,” which, no doubt, he did, not forgetting a few days later to send to my lord his little bill for the usual loan!