These banners were displayed only on great public ceremonies, in solemn processions, receptions, marriages, the obsequies of kings, queens, princes, and princesses. Exempted from military service, the goldsmiths, unlike other trade corporations, had not the opportunity of distinguishing themselves in the militia of the communes. They, nevertheless, occupied the first place in the state processions of trades, and frequently filled posts of honour. Thus in Paris they had the custody of the gold and silver plate when the good city entertained some illustrious guest at a banquet; they carried the canopy above the head of the king on his joyful accession; or, crowned with roses, walked bearing on their shoulders the venerated shrine of St. Geneviève (Fig. 123). [Illustration: Fig. 118.] [Illustration: Fig. 119.] [Illustration: Fig. 120.] [Illustration: Fig. 121.] [Illustration: Fig. 122.] In the wealthy cities of Belgium, where the corporations were queens (_reines_), the goldsmiths, by virtue of their privileges, dictated the law and swayed the people. No doubt in France they were far from enjoying the same political influence; nevertheless, one of them was that provost of merchants, Etienne Marcel, who, from 1356 to 1358, played so bold a part during the regency of the Dauphin Charles. But it was especially in periods of peace and prosperity that the goldsmith’s art in Paris shone in all its splendour; then its banners incessantly waved in the breeze for the festivals and processions of its numerous and wealthy brotherhoods to the churches of Notre-Dame, St. Martial, St. Paul, and St. Denis of Montmartre. [Illustration: Fig. 123.--The Corporation of the Goldsmiths of Paris carrying the Shrine of St. Geneviève. (From an engraving of the Seventeenth Century.)] In 1337 the number of the wardens of the goldsmith’s guild in Paris had increased from three to six. They had their names engraved and their marks stamped on tablets of copper, which were preserved as archives in the town-hall. Every French goldsmith, admitted a master after the production of his principal work, left the impression of his sign manual, or private mark, on similar tablets of copper deposited in the office of the guild; while the stamp of the community itself was required to be engraved at the mint to authorise its being used. Every corporation thus had its mark, which the wardens set on the articles after having assayed and weighed the metal. These marks, at least in the later centuries, represented in general the special arms or emblems of the cities; for Lyons, it is a lion; for Melun, an eel; for Chartres, a partridge; for Orleans, the head of Joan of Arc, &c. (Figs. 112 to 115). [Illustration: Fig. 124.--Gold Cross, chased. (A French Work of the Seventeenth Century.)]