The Remembrancer or State Amanuensis is appointed by the Common Council. The office was held from 1571 to 1584 by a distinguished man, Thomas Norton, M.P., who was joint author with Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset, of the tragedy of _Gorbaduc_. He left a manuscript on the ancient duties of the Lord Mayor and Corporation, an account of which was published by J. Payne Collier in _Archæologia_ (vol. xxxvi. p. 97). The Common Hunt was an official mentioned in the _Liber Albus_, where we learn that John Courtenay was appointed to the office in 1417.[282] The office was abolished in the year 1807. Of officers in immediate attendance on the Mayor may be mentioned the sword-bearer and the sergeant-at-mace. The first notice of the office of sword-bearer occurs in the _Liber Albus_ (1419), and the first record in the minute books of the appointment of a sword-bearer is in 4 Hen. VI., 1426. Mr. Hope remarks that 'the absence of earlier notices is most probably due to the [Illustration: THE CRYPT OF THE GUILDHALL.] fact that the sword-bearer was appointed, according to the entry in the _Liber Allus... as propres costages du Mair_, and not at the cost of the city.' The sword-bearer is remarkable on account of the distinctive head-covering or 'cap of maintenance' which is appropriated to his office.[283] It is not known when the City of London first possessed a mace or maces, but Mr. Hope refers to the _Liber Custumarum_ to prove that as early as 1252 there were sergeants who carried staves of some kind as emblems of authority. 'We know this from the claim put forth on the occasion of the _Iter_ of the pleas of the Crown held at the Tower in 1321, that the Mayor and citizens of London should have their own porter and usher, and their own sergeants with their staves. As it was shown that the same claim had been successfully made in 1276-1277, and in 1252 it was allowed' Mr. Hope quotes from Letter Book F a record of the appointment of Robert Flambard as mace-bearer in 1338, and from this it is clear that the office was not then a newly created one.'[284] For the due carrying on of the business of the Corporation several new offices have at various times been established, but the foregoing are the officials who carried on the work of the city during the Middle Ages. Much of interest might have been added of these men, but it is only necessary here to refer to them generally as those to whom so much of the history of London was due.