The room was also used for municipal purposes, particularly when the town rulers found it necessary to convoke a large assembly of their fellow-citizens. Many a stormy scene has this beautiful room witnessed. Here it was--or in an earlier hall--that the common folk, enraged at the bad quality of bread, threw loaves at the mayor's head when he neglected to punish the frauds of the victuallers. Here Laurence Saunders defied or submitted to the dictates of the corporation, and the citizens met together promising to uphold the mayor and council in their attack on William Bristowe, who had encroached upon the Lammas lands. Here the mayor was elected and courts held. But when the council met, they chose a smaller room communicating with the Great Hall, for privacy's sake. The armour is a most interesting collection. A great many pieces are Elizabethan, but the "Black Prince's helmet" is a unique sallet of the period of the Wars of the Roses. The right way to study the Hall is to mount the little flight of steps at the southern end, and, sitting in the Minstrel Gallery, behind the array of civic armour, examine the glorious fifteenth-century window at your leisure. A few years back the glass was in utter confusion, having been carelessly replaced after re-leading, and the respective heads, bodies and legs of the magnanimous conquerors and kings therein commemorated were sadly astray, their anatomy being rendered thereby most perplexing. This has, however, been judiciously remedied, and we can now clearly see in the nine compartments--as the artist, possibly William Thornton, or a pupil of his, designed--the figures of the Emperor Constantine, King Arthur, William I., Richard I., Henry III., Edward III., Henry IV., Henry V., and Henry VI., the last occupying the place of honour in the central light. Above are the arms of various nobles and cities, among others the "elephant and castle" of this city, the three "garbs," wheat-sheaves of Chester, and the sable eagle of Earl Leofric, the city's earliest benefactor. The dark oak roof belongs also to the fifteenth century, and is worth, even at the cost of some strain to the muscles of the neck, a careful study. At the centre of each beam are whole-length figures of angels, ten in number, of whom eight are playing on various instruments. The first, close to the great north window, has a violin-like instrument, the second a harp, the third a flute, the fourth a flute, but of a peculiarly flat shape, the fifth a violin, the sixth a curved tube, the seventh a tabor, the eighth a curved tube, while the ninth and tenth have no wings or instruments at all; possibly they represent the "morning stars singing for joy."