This was merely the confirmation of an older custom, for we have a set of sergeants’ maces of older date than this charter, as well as a set of about this date. The charter also authorises us to have a sword-bearer, “Portator gladii nostri coram Mayore,” a bearer of our sword (the King’s sword) before the Mayor. Thus, we have special authority by charter for our sword of honour, and our sergeants’ maces, but none of our charters mention our great mace or authorise us to have an official to bear it. But our great mace was given us by Colonel James Graham, Privy Purse to King James II., and I presume that no one will now object to our using it, and to our having an official to carry it. For robes and a chain I fancy no special authority at all is necessary; they are part of the idea of a mayor, and he may assume them or not as his corporation or he please to do. And, further, he may appear in them outside of his jurisdiction, as at the Mansion House. But his maces and sword (if he has one) he cannot with propriety display outside of his jurisdiction, and I should, as Mayor of Carlisle, resent bitterly the intrusion into that ancient city of a strange mayor with mace and sword, even of my Lord Mayor of London, unless he should prove his right from charter to carry them in Carlisle. The Templars never allowed the Lord Mayor to appear in state within their precincts. Different views have been held as to the origin of the mace. Some have supposed that the regal sceptre, the ecclesiastical virgo or verge, and the civic mace, all had their origin in the simple emblem of straightness and integrity of rule, consisting of a plain slender rod anciently borne before kings and high public functionaries, and retained to the present day as an official badge by sheriffs and attendants in courts of justice. The other, and I venture to think the better idea, is that the civic mace is derived from the military weapon of that name, which itself is derived from a simple club or stick. The civic mace is nothing but the military one turned upside down. At one end of an early mace you have the flanged blades of the military weapon, at the other on a small bowl-like head the royal arms, the emblem of authority. In a mace of later date the military part, the flanges, survive only as a small button, while the bowl, on which are the royal arms, swells, until the peaceful end is itself capable of dealing a heavy blow. In support, however, of the rod idea, I may mention that the Mayor of Carlisle always on state occasions carries a white rod, an ordinary white stick of deal. This is a very ancient custom. A Captain, a Lieutenant, and an Ancient, all of Norwich, who visited Carlisle in 1634, say of that place:-- “It makes shifte to maintain a Mayor, distinguished by his white staff, and twelve Aldermen his brethren, _sans_ cap of maintenance, but their blew bonnets which they are as proud in as our southerne citizens in their beavers.”