I have before me a certain book of the year 1590, called _The Nine Worthies of London_. You would expect to find Thomas à Becket, Whittington, Chichele, Caxton, Gresham, among these worthies. You would expect to find that stout old radical, William Longbeard, among them. You would be quite wrong. Not one of these worthies was remembered. Thomas à Becket, the protecting saint of London—their own saint—a member, almost, of the Mercers’ Company, was completely forgotten. None of the others did the people care to remember. They remembered, as I have said, only those who had gone out to fight. One London ’prentice had the honour of fighting for a whole hour with the Dauphin of France; another was knighted on the field by Edward the Black Prince, and came home to marry his master’s daughter—her name was Doll; a third slew a wild boar in Poland; and so on. There is additional proof that the greater number—by far the greater number—of the citizens constituting the principal companies, together with many of those representing the former kind of apprentice, were gentlefolk—_armigeri_—belonging to what we should call county families. [Illustration: THE KNIGHT From the Ellesmere M.S. of Chaucer’s _Canterbury Tales_.] In the Edition, or the Continuator, of Stow, published by “A. M.—H. D., and others,” in the year 1633, the arms of all the Mayors of London from Henry Fitz Aylwin to that year are given. With the arms is added a note of the origin and parentage of the Mayors, one by one. Let me take the latter first. What do we find when we analyse these returns? I divide the analysis into three heads. First, that of the Mayors whose parents lived in the country, where they were born; next, those who were born in London; thirdly, those who were born in other towns. There are 203 Mayors thus accounted for in 210 years. Re-elections and obscurity of birth account for the missing seven years:— 1. Of those who were born in the country there are 156 2. Of those who were born in London there are 34 3. Of those who came from other towns there are 13.