The interior of the hall is decorated with portraits, some interesting trophies of the battle of St. Vincent, presented by Nelson, the city regalia, and the buskins of a famous dancer, who danced from London to Norwich in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. When that Queen visited the city in 1578, there was a magnificent banquet given in the Council Chamber, and a pageant devised for her amusement was exhibited. In one of the cells at the bottom of the building, the martyr Thomas Bilney was confined, and there tested his powers of endurance by holding his finger in the lighted flame of a candle, to prove his willingness to suffer his approaching doom. In 1660, the lower court at the west end, now used as an assize court, was set apart as a cloth hall, and the room above as a place for the sale of yarn. During the present century the hall has been much improved on the south side. New windows should be inserted on the north side. ST. ANDREW’S HALL. St. Andrew’s Hall stands in the centre of the city, in the parish of St. Andrew. It was originally the Church of the Convent of the Blackfriars, the building of which was begun about the year 1415, by Sir Thomas Erpingham, who died in 1428, before it was finished. It was completed by his son, Sir Robert Erpingham, who was rector of Bracon Ash, in Norfolk, a friar of the order of St. Dominic, and a member of this convent. This convent extended from St. Andrew’s Street to the river from south to north, and as far as Elm Hill on the east. The cloister was on the north side of the church, with a burial place in the middle. The convent kitchen was at the north-west corner. Between the nave and choir of the church there was a neat sexangular steeple, which had three large bells in it and a clock. It was built about 1462, and fell down on November 6th, 1712. A turret was afterwards erected in its place, in which a clock bell hung. At the dissolution of the monasteries in 1538, the citizens applied to Henry VIII., through the interest of the Duke of Norfolk, for a grant of the convent for the use of the city, and requested that he would allow them to make the church into “a large hall, for the mayor and his brethren, with all the citizens to repair unto at common assemblies,” to make a chapel of the choir, and to appropriate the rest of the building to other purposes. This was complied with, and the petition is dated June 25th, 1540. After this, the guilds of the several companies in the city, twenty in number, used to hear mass in the choir, and make their offerings in that place; and most of them held their feasts in the hall.