So vanishes the form of Walter Hervey. He takes off his Alderman’s gown; he steps down among the folk, a plain citizen, and I daresay that the craftsmen, next day, had forgotten all that he had tried to do for them. But the memory of those Charters survived. And so they made a political end of this reformer. To him, however, belongs the credit of creating or reviving the spirit of union and incorporation of the trades. I say reviving, because one must not forget the “adulterine” guilds of Henry the Second’s time; and because, wherever there was a guild for religious and charitable purposes, the other trade guild for commercial and practical purposes was not far off. We have seen how, within forty years from this time, the wards ceased to be named after their Aldermen and their proprietors. In this interval there took place a silent revolution, the steps of which it is now difficult, or even impossible, to follow. The nature of the revolution is indicated by the rapid rise of the companies in the next few years. The authority of the aristocratic party was broken, though not yet destroyed; the shadow of their old power in giving their names to the wards vanished also. We shall now find the government of London transferred from the Aldermen to the trades. The memory of the three early reformers, William Longbeard, Thomas FitzThomas, and Walter Hervey, should be better known to those who care about the origin and the history of civic liberties. They appear to me to bear a striking resemblance to each other. All three belonged to the aristocratic class; all three deserted their own people, and were bitterly reviled in consequence; all three surrendered their own interests; all three were filled with that overwhelming passion for justice which makes martyrs and carries on a cause. It is to be hoped that while the first was dragged by the heels to the gallows, while the second was murdered in a dungeon, while the third was put out of office and deprived of the right to speak and the power to act, some vision of the future was vouchsafed to them; some voice whispered in their dying ears that their life’s work was not lost, but would yet bear fruit in the coming freedom of the people for whom they had worked and for whom they suffered. [Illustration: THE CROWN OFFERED TO RICHARD III. AT BAYNARD’S CASTLE Reproduced from the picture in the Royal Exchange by permission of the Artist, Sigismund Goetze, Esq., by whom the copyright is reserved.]