By the Corporation Act, everyone holding a municipal office was required to receive the Lord’s Supper in the Church of England. Sir John Shorter, a Presbyterian, had by such conformity qualified himself to act as Lord Mayor of the city of London in the reign of James II., and two distinguished Dissenters in the following reign occupied the same civic post and adopted the same policy. Sir Humphrey Edwin was Lord Mayor in 1697, and, dressed in a gown of crimson velvet, carried the city sword before William, as, on his return from the Continent, he passed through London with the customary pomp of a public procession. He not only conformed at certain times during his mayoralty, but he also, on one occasion when he attended Divine Service at Pinners’ Hall Meeting-house, caused the civic paraphernalia to be carried before him. I am not aware whether any other Lord Mayor did this. Sir Humphrey Edwin might be said to bring the State over to Nonconformity, as at other times, when he knelt at the altars of the Establishment, he brought Nonconformity over to the State. At all events, his conduct subjected him to annoying criticism. He was attacked by a clergyman who preached before the Corporation in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Ballads and lampoons, caricaturing what he had done, were hawked about the streets, and Swift, in his _Tale of the Tub_, satirized Sir Humphrey in his well-known reference to Jack’s tatters coming into fashion, and his getting upon a great horse and eating custard. Tragical exclamations were uttered in High Church circles, and in a publication of later date it is declared, that “to the great reproach of the laws, and of the city magistracy,” the Mayor “carried the sword with him to a nasty conventicle, that was kept in one of the City Halls, which horrid crime one of his own party defended by giving this arrogant reason for it, that by the Act of Parliament by which they have their liberty, their religion was as much established as ours.”[515] The Lord Mayor’s proceeding did not meet with the approbation of his co-religionists. They felt the injustice of the attacks which it had occasioned; it seemed to them inconsistent and arrogant for Churchmen to speak in the way they did of a religion which had the same object of worship, the same rule of faith and life, and the same end and aim as their own; yet they saw that Sir Humphrey’s conduct had been such as naturally to lead to misapprehension and to produce annoyance. Calamy lamented that “this measure drew unhappy consequences after it, both in this reign and in that which succeeded.”[516] [Sidenote: NONCONFORMISTS.] Sir Thomas Abney, a Presbyterian, became Lord Mayor of London in the year 1701. Prior to that date he had favoured occasional Conformity. When in office he attended church. This occasioned a controversy between two Nonconformists, who regarded the conduct of Abney and Edwin from different points of view.