For upwards of three-quarters of a century after the last visit of Henry VII. Shrewsbury received no royal attentions. After the lapse of eighty-five years, however, a representative of royalty in the person of Sir Henry Sidney favoured the town with a visit. Sir Henry Sydney, who had been educated at Shrewsbury School, was Lord President of the Welsh Marches; and in that character he kept St. George’s feast in Shrewsbury, on the 24th of April, 1581. Dr. Taylor’s account of his reception, and of the manner of the feast, is most amusing. Sir Henry “most honourably came from the Counsell House there, in hys knightly robes, most valiant, wyth hys gentilmen before hym, and hys knights followyng hym, in brave order.” In the rear of the knights were the bailiffs, aldermen, and “companyes of all occupations in the sayde towne, evrie company followinge in good and seemely order, towards St. Chadd’s Churche,” in Princess Street. At the church Sir Henry was seated, or “stallid,” as the manuscript reads, in the chancel, where the knights of the garter passed and repassed, “dyng as much honour as thoughe the Queen’s Majestic had been present.” By command of the Lord President, divine service was performed “to the gloryfying of God.” Connected with “the gloryfying of God,” at least in the narrative of Dr. Taylor, was the feast, which Dr. Taylor records supplemented the religious gloryfying. The procession was so long that when Sir Henry entered the church, “the last end of the trayne was at my Lord’s place, the Councill House.” A week later there was more feasting. The masters of the Grammar School, “the free scoole,” Dr. Taylor significantly calls the institution, provided it. Their names were Thomas Lorrance, John Barker, Richard Atkys, and Roger Kent. They were feeders unquestionably, for they made “a brave and costly bancket after supper, on the first daye of Maye.” The “dyshes” numbered forty, and “every scoole presented ten dyshes, with a shewer before every scoole.” The following day, in a spirit of elation, the scholars of the school, who numbered 360, “marched braveley in battell order” to the Gey in the Abbey Foregate, where they met the Lord President. The general and captains renewed their allegiance to the sovereign and valiantly declared that they “would feight and defend the countrey.” Sir Henry paid them the necessary compliment for their eloquence. He appears to have won the affection of the students. His departure was mourned as if it were an irreparable loss. He left the town on the 13th of May in a barge, and at a certain point along the shore of the river were stationed a number of melancholy scholars “apparelyd in greene, and greene wyllows upon theire heads,” for the purpose of making lachrymose appeals to him to remain, of reciting doleful ditties upon his departure, of lamenting the end of the halcyon days of “brave and costly bankets” and of delivering eloquent orations on their eternal fidelity to the