Each new Lord Mayor, accompanied by the Council, went in procession to St. Thomas Acon, and from thence to the cathedral. He paid his devotions at the tomb of Bishop William the Norman, in the nave, in gratitude for privileges obtained from the Conqueror, and then at the tomb of his predecessor, the Portreeve Gilbert Becket, father of Thomas, in a little chapel in the churchyard. On Whitsunday and the following Tuesday were great processions in which the Corporation joined, as they did on seven other festivals. At Whitsuntide, according to a sixteenth century account, a huge suspended censer was swung along the nave, and the descent of the Holy Spirit illustrated by the letting loose of a white pigeon. Those who are curious about the shrines, and particularly of St. Erkenwald's, the scene of so many reputed miracles of healing, and of the relics, which included a vase believed to contain some hair, milk, and a garment of the Virgin, are referred to Dugdale and other like works. Passing over _Te Deums_ for victories like Agincourt and Obsequies for the dead--this latter a source of income to the officers--we will close this chapter with the wedding of Arthur, Prince of Wales, a lad of fifteen, to Catherine of Aragon, in November, 1501. The next spring Arthur died, and the king effected the betrothal of the widow of eighteen to his younger son Henry, aged eleven. Seven years later Henry VII. died, and lay in state at the cathedral. FOOTNOTES: [1] Tacitus, "Annals," xiv. 33. [2] Bishop Browne ("The Christian Church in these Islands before the Coming of St. Augustine," 1897, pp. 59-62; S.P.C.K.) in a learned note disposes of this, as he does of the veteran claim of St. Peter's, Cornhill, to take rank as the elder sister of St. Paul's. [3] The list in the south nave transept, compiled with the assistance of Bishops Stubbs and Browne, leaves this period doubtful and uncertain (_vide_ Appendix A). [4] "Eccles. Hist.," book ii., chap. iii. [5] The grant is in Dugdale, p. 288; in Domesday it runs "tenet _semper_ Paulus." [6] Bishop Browne's "Conversion of the Heptarchy," p. 154 (S.P.C.K.). [7] Dugdale, p. 299 _et seq._, quotes the Exchequer Domesday. Also, Hale's "Domesday of St. Paul's" and Leach's "Southwell" (the Introduction); Freeman's "Cathedral Church of Wells," p. 50 _et seq._; and Newcourt's "Repertorium." Hereford is the only other cathedral in Domesday where canons held in this way. Southwell (now a cathedral, though the prebendaries are gone), Bedford, Twyneham, and Stafford were collegiate churches of a like kind. [8] Freeman's "Wells," p. 69. [9] "Diary," Sept. 16, 1666. So far as the pillars are concerned I know of no other time when this "casing" could have been done; and the architecture in Hollar's prints, as reproduced in Dugdale, agrees. [10] Dean Milman says the text was from Ezekiel, i. 5; was it not from Revelation, iv. 6? [11] "Documents Illustrative," p. 175.