“This Company was called the _Black Waggon_; and the Day whereon this Riot and Insurrection happened, bears the Name of _Evil May-Day_ to these our present Times. And thus have you heard how the Citizens escaped the King’s Displeasure, and were again received into Favour; though, as it is thought, not without paying a considerable Sum of Money to the Cardinal to stand their Friend, for at that Time he was in such Power, that he did all with the King. “These great _Mayings_ and _May-Games_, with the triumphant Setting-up the great Shaft, a principal May-pole in _Leadenhall-Street_ before the Parish Church of St. _Andrew_, thence called _Undershaft_, were not so commonly used after this Insurrection on _May-Day_, 1517, as before.” The story must be finished, though this part of it does not belong to Westminster, by showing the end of the shaft. After the Evil May-Day it was never raised again. This proves the growing dread, in the minds of the officials, of the mob when they came together. The after history of London is full of this dread, which experience fully justifies. The famous May-pole hung upon its hooks from the year 1517 to the year 1549, the third of Edward VI. There flourished at that time a certain person named Sir Stephen, a curate of St. Katharine Cree, a fanatic of the most abominable kind. He wanted to turn the Reformation into a Revolution; all the ancient ways were to be abandoned or turned upside down. He wanted the names of churches to be altered; the names of the days of the week to be altered--“Saturday” is sheer pagan, and so is Friday, for we all know who Freya was; he wanted fishdays to be any days except Friday and Saturday; and Lent to be observed at any time of the year except the time between Shrove Tuesday and Easter Sunday. “I have often,” says Stow, “seen this man forsaking the pulpit of his said parish church, preach out of a high elm tree in the midst of the churchyard, and then entering the church, forsaking the altar, to have sung his high mass in English upon a tomb of the dead towards the north.” Now on one occasion Sir Stephen preached at Paul’s Cross, and he told the people that by naming the church St. Andrew Undershaft they made an idol of a May-pole. “I heard his sermon,” says Stow, “and I saw the effect that followed, for in the afternoon of that present Sunday, the neighbours and tenants to the said bridge over whose doors the said shaft then leaned, after they had well dined, to make themselves strong, gathered more help and with great labour rending the shaft from the hooks, whereon it had rested two and thirty years, they sawed it in pieces, every man taking for his share so much as had lain over his door and stall, the length of his house: and they of the alley divided among them so much as had lain over their alley gate. Thus was this idol, as he, poor man, termed it, mangled and after burned.”