“After this I meet with but little to notice in our Bridge Annals, for several years, excepting, that in 1583, Sir Edward Osborne, being then Lord Mayor, is said to have introduced the custom of drinking to the new Sheriffs, although there is a ludicrous instance of such a ceremony in 1487; and that Stow’s ‘_Annals_’ inform us, at page 698, that on the conclusion of the Irish rebellion, James, Earl of Desmond, a principal leader, ‘secretly wandering without any succour, being taken in his cabine by one of the Irish, his head was cut off and sent into England, where the same,--as the head of an arch-rebell,--was set on London-Bridge on the thirteene of December.’ “It was on December the 4th, 1586, that the Commissioners appointed to try the unfortunate Mary, Queen of Scots, issued their sentence against her from Richmond; which, on the 6th, was openly read in London, by William Sebright, the Town-Clerk. This proclamation, as Stow relates in his ‘_Annals_,’ page 741, was made with the Serjeants at Arms, and by sound of trumpets, about ten o’clock in the morning, at four places in the City; namely, at the end of Chancery lane; at the Cross in Cheapside; at the corner of Leadenhall; and also at St. Magnus, London Bridge. It was witnessed by several of the Nobility; the Lord Mayor, and Aldermen, in their scarlet dresses; the City Officers; the principal part of the gentry of London, and the most eminent Citizens habited in velvet with gold chains; all mounted on horseback. The tidings which were thus made known, were received by the people with every kind of rejoicing; ‘as manifestly appeared,’--says Stow,--‘by ringing of bells, making of bonfires, and singing of psalmes in euery of the streetes and lanes of the Citie.’