The city could scarcely have recovered its wonted appearance after the ravages of the pestilence before its streets were enlivened with one of those magnificent displays for which London became justly famous, the occasion being an embassy from the French king sent to negotiate a marriage treaty between Henry’s daughter Mary, a child but two years of age, and the still younger Dauphin of France. The City Records, strange to say, appear to be altogether silent on this subject, and yet the embassy, for magnificent display, was such as had never been seen within its walls before. We can understand that the embassy was not acceptable to the thrifty middle-class trading burgess, when we read that it was accompanied by a swarm of pedlars and petty hucksters who showed an unbecoming anxiety to do business in hats, caps and other merchandise, which under colour of the embassy had been smuggled into the country duty free.(1081) The foreign retail trader was at the best of times an abomination to the free burgess, and this sharp practice on the part of the Frenchmen, coming so soon after the recent outburst against strangers on Evil May-day, only served to accentuate his animosity—"At this dooing mannie an Englishman grudged, but it availed not."(1082) The ambassadors were lodged at the Merchant Taylors’ Hall, which, owing to the ill-timed action of the French pedlars, had the look of a mart. On Sunday, the 3rd October, the king, with a train of 1,000 mounted gentlemen richly dressed, attended by the legates and foreign ambassadors, went in procession to St. Paul’s to hear mass; after which the king took his oath—a ceremonial which the French admiral declared to be "too magnificent for description." On the following Tuesday (5 Oct.) the marriage ceremony—so far as it could be carried out between such infants—was celebrated at Greenwich, and a tiny gold ring, in which was a valuable diamond, placed upon Mary’s finger.(1083) (M573)