The blue bonnets would be the ordinary head-gear of the local gentry, and of the Aldermen thus dressed more than one was of knightly rank and of high degree. The Mayor of Berwick had also a staff, and when James I. came to the English throne he sent the Abbot of Holyrood to secure the allegiance of the Mayor of Berwick, by which town he travelled into England. The Mayor’s staff and the keys of the gates were delivered to the Abbot, and immediately returned to the Mayor. At Newark the Mayor carries a black rod with a gold head. At Marazion and at Wigan he carries a staff with a silver head; at Guildford ebony with silver top. Other instances probably exist, while various bailiffs’, head boroughs’, and other staffs are only varieties of the same idea. In the City of London this staff is represented by the Lord Mayor’s jewelled sceptre. The mace with the royal arms thereon (and no civic mace is a proper civic mace unless it has the royal arms thereon) is the symbol of the power of the central government in municipal matters, and when borne before the mayor denotes that to him and to his colleagues is entrusted the government of their community. It is, in fact, the symbol of that which all Englishmen are proud of--local self-government. The committee of the Royal Archæological Institute, who indexed the returns obtained in 1875, divided maces into two classes, great and small, but the proper and better division is into mayors’ maces and sergeants’ maces, though the two nearly correspond. I define as a great mace, or mayor’s mace, one whose _raison d’être_ is to be carried before the mayor in procession, and to be displayed beside him in church or in court. The great mace is the insignia of the mayor. The sergeants’ maces are the insignia of the sergeants-at-mace; these maces are also carried before the mayor, but that is because it is part of the sergeants’ duty to precede and attend him in civic processions.