Some significancy is to be attached to a little display at the south door of St. Paul's Cathedral, where "the quire in their surplices, with sackbuts, and cornets, sung an anthem of praise to God, with prayers for their Majesties' long lives, that his Majesty was extremely pleased with it, and gave them very particular thanks."[235] For unobjectionable as this kind of music might now-a-days appear even to a staunch nonconformist, it had a look, at that period, of stern, jealous, and watchful controversy, very obvious and very annoying to presbyterians and "sectaries;" so that, altogether, this City affair became a decided success for the King and the Church party, and as such, Royalists and Anglicans greatly rejoiced in it. [Sidenote: 1641, December.] "Londoners are a set of disaffected schismatics, bent upon upsetting the godly order of things which they received from their fathers," was the opinion of many a country knight and yeoman, as he turned his attention to the metropolis, and thought of the current stories of the day. "No," said one, who sympathized with the Court, in a letter he wrote to a friend just at that time, "you much mistake, if you think that those insolent and seditious meetings of sectaries, and others ill affected, who have lately been at the Parliament House, to cry for justice against the delinquent bishops, are the representative body of the city. They are not. The representative body of the city is the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, who gave the entertainment to the King, and will stick to him to live and die in his service. As for the rest, when the House of Commons please to give laws to suppress them, we shall quickly see an end of these distractions both in Church and Commonwealth, and, therefore, I pray give no ill interpretation to our actions."[236] These words show what capital the clique, to which the writer belonged, was determined to make out of the grand pageant which had just come off with so much _éclat_. The King himself, who was disposed to construe the conduct of the citizens as having a political and ecclesiastical signification, had on the occasion of his entry, knighted the Lord Mayor and Recorder, doubtless with a feeling which made it more than a formal ceremony. He had also conferred a like honour, a few days afterwards, at Hampton Court, upon certain Aldermen, who had come to thank him for accepting their entertainment. The reception of these civic dignitaries in the old palace of Cardinal Wolsey occurred on the 3rd of December.[237] A very different kind of audience had been held within the same walls two days before. [Sidenote: _The Remonstrance._]