Guildhall, London

“ Sometimes the keeper, frock-coated and white-spatted and gardeniaed, can be seen conducting a tall, stately woman through the high magnificence of the halls a woman who looks with a smile at many a relic of childhood; and people whisper "The Queen!"
To the Londoner this place holds more of interest than any other museum, not excepting the unfortunately entombed Guildhall Museum.
The whole history of London, dug up out of London clay and peat, is here for inspection. The finest collection of Roman pottery, found among the roofs of London, is on view. ”

“ In the old letter books in the Guildhall—the Black Book, Red Book, and White Book—we see it in storm and calm, observe the vigilant and jealous honesty of the guilds, and become witnesses again to the bloody frays, cruel punishments, and even the petty disputes of the middle-age craftsmen, when Cheapside was one glittering row of goldsmiths' shops, and the very heart of the wealth of London. ”

“ The centre of all this civic activity is the Guildhall. From Oxford Circus a tube to the Bank or any bus along Holborn takes you along Cheapside and past King Street, at the end of which you see the Guildhall. If you start from the neighbourhood of Charing Cross any train to the Mansion House brings you to Queen Victoria Street, out of which Queen Street, a few minutes’ walk to your right, leads through directly to King Street. ”

“ A great fire is a most sublime, as well as appalling spectacle, and generally presents some features of the picturesquely terrible. Guildhall, built of oak, too solid and old to blaze, became so much red-hot charcoal, as if it had been a palace of gold, or a building of burnished brass. ”

“ Guildhall is at the end of a tolerable vista, which shews the building to some advantage, though the Gothic front has nothing very extraordinary in it. The hall within is a fine one, but the entrance would have been better at the lower end than in the middle, for by this means all the beauty of the perspective is lost. The ascent of steps across the hall not being opposite the gate, as it ought to have been, is another material defect. ”

“ Guildhall, the home of civic government and the battle-ground of many a hard-won fight for civil and religious liberty, was built anew by the self-denying efforts of a generation of London citizens just five hundred years ago. ”

“ A sign of more interest, at least from its associations, has lately found a home in the Guildhall Museum. It is in high relief, and was formerly placed between the first and second floor windows of No. 67, Knightrider Street; on the keystones of the three first-floor windows were the initials m t a and the date 1668. The house was swept away three years ago; I know nothing about it, except that it was a fair specimen of the plain brick buildings commonly put up after the Great Fire. There was, however, a hostelry with the same sign hard by, which had a proud distinction. ”

“ If one stands in the Museum of the Guildhall and looks round upon the scanty remains of Roman London there exhibited, one feels a cold doubt as to the alleged wealth and greatness of the ancient city. ”

“ Not being a peer, Surrey was tried before a Common jury at the Guildhall on the 13th January 1547. He made a splendid defence where no defence was necessary, and where no defence, however eloquent, and no career, however blameless, would have saved him. With the axe’s edge turned towards him he left the Guildhall for the Tower, and six days later one of the wisest, noblest, and most gifted heads that England possessed, rolled in the bloody sawdust of the scaffold on Tower Hill. ”

“ After every restoration of order the prosperity of London goes up by leaps and bounds. Many important buildings were erected: the Guildhall was removed to its present site from its former site in Aldermanbury “and of an olde and lytel cottage, made unto a fayre and goodly house”: Leadenhall Market was built: the walls of the City were repaired and strengthened: the City Ditch was drained out and cleaned: a new gate was built: the streets were lit at night, or ordered to be lit, which is not quite the same thing: and, as we have seen, the rich merchants gave large and costly gifts to the City. ”

“ In the Council Chamber there are pictures of the death of Wat Tyler, Siege of Gibraltar, the judges who sat after the Great Fire and settled all differences about rebuilding the City; also a full-length portrait of Queen Anne. We feel disappointed that there are so few relics of old London on the hundreds of feet of bare walls that Guildhall and the courts within it contain—there could hardly be found a more appropriate place for the display of old city antiquities. ”

“ Tom Dashall, laying down the Times newspaper after breakfast, “a fine opportunity is offered to us to day, for a peep at the Citizens of London in their Legislative Assembly, a Court of Common Council is announced for twelve o'clock, and I think I can promise you much of entertaining information, by paying a visit at Guildhall and its vicinity. We have several times passed it with merely taking a view of its exterior, but the interior is equally deserving of attention, particularly at a period when it is graced by the personages and appendages which constitute its state and dignity. ”

“ Guildhall—Its Porch and Crypt—Other Ancient Crypts—Royal Control—Civic Government—Punishment for Trade Offences—The City Prisons—The Mayoralty—“Ridings and Pageants”—The Marching Watch—The Common Council—Office of Sheriff—Historic Scenes at Guildhall—Guildhall Chapel and Library—The Livery Companies.
In the very centre of the old city, and only just removed from the noise and bustle of its great thoroughfare, the Chepe, lay the Guildhall, the seat of civic government. ”

“ Then followed his majesty's arms, carried by two trumpeters, together with the sheriff's men and six hundred members of the companies on horseback, in black velvet coats and gold chains. Kettle-drums and trumpets, twelve ministers at the head of the life-guards, the city marshal, sheriffs, aldermen, all in rich trappings, the lord mayor, and last of all, the king, riding between the Dukes of York and Gloucester. The rear of the procession was composed of military. An entertainment at Guildhall followed, on the 5th of July. Nothing could exceed the rapture of the old royalist party in London. ”

“ A noble front in the situation of Guildhall, would have had an advantage hardly to be met with elsewhere, and give an architect a fine opportunity of displaying his genius. But the present front is full of little parts which have no effect at a distance.
Guildhall alley, Basinghall street, leading to Guildhall.
Guildhall Chapel, situated between 106Blackwell hall, and Guildhall, was founded in the year 1299, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen and All Saints, and called London College. A chantry was founded in this chapel for four chaplains, and lands and tenements left for their support. ”

“ 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.
The chief business of the city has been carried on for many centuries in the Guildhall, which is of unknown antiquity. ”

“ On lord mayor's day the king (following the usual custom of the sovereign attending the first lord mayor's banquet after his accession) came into the city and was entertained at the Guildhall, together with the queen. Pitt also was a guest. He and Temple drove down together in a carriage and pair, and were received with even greater acclamation than the king himself. The entertainment was given in the most costly style, the tables being loaded with "all the delicacies which the season could furnish or expense procure." ”

“ On the evening of his election the new Lord Mayor presides at a splendid feast in the Guildhall, and among the illustrious company assembled not the least picturesque figures are the liverymen of London in their gowns edged with fur, wearing the golden chain-like collars from which depend jewelled badges. ”

“ The City has not wasted its substance. Large sums have been expended upon local improvements, upon the erection of markets, upon bridges, not forgetting that latest marvel of engineering skill, the Tower Bridge, upon the City's schools, upon the erection of the Guildhall library with its adjacent Museum and Art Gallery, as well as upon the establishment and maintenance of one of the most successful Schools of Music ever known in this country. ”

“ The procession of the corporation of London to Westminster on the occasion of the new lord mayor being sworn into office, is familiar to most residents in the metropolis, and the journals annually record the modern processions and festivals in the Guildhall, sufficiently to acquaint those who have not witnessed them with the nature of the proceedings. It is not purposed then, for the present, to describe what passes in our own times, but to acquaint the citizens and all who feel an interest in ancient customs, with something of the splendour attendant upon the ceremony in old times. ”

“ Rich and North were sworn into office amid a great concourse of citizens at the Guildhall, the entrance to which was strongly guarded by a company of trained bands in case of disturbance. When the oath was about to be administered to them a protest was made by Papillon and Du Bois, who attempted to get possession of the book; but upon the lord mayor commanding them in the king's name to depart and keep the peace, they left the hall and with them went several of the aldermen who were their supporters. ”

“ As he had named a little after ten as the hour, I could not immediately proceed to his house, and so walked moderately over London Bridge and into the city, meaning to take a cab from Charing Cross, or thereabouts. Passing through some street or other, contiguous to Cheapside, I saw in a court-yard the entrance to the Guildhall, and stepped in to look at it. It is a spacious hall, about one hundred and fifty feet long, and perhaps half as broad, paved with flagstones which look worn and some of them cracked across ”

“ There remains to us of the present day nothing to remind us of London under the Roman empire, save a fragment of a wall, a milestone, a few coins and statuettes, and some articles of personal ornament or domestic use—little more in fact, than what may be seen in the Museum attached to the Guildhall Library. ”

“ Paul’s document, c. 1130, refers to the Guildhall, [194] and when further we find that a Gildhalla burgensium at Dover appears in Domesday we can hardly doubt that the foundation of the London hall dates from the time of the Frith Gilds. In the laws of Athelstane it was ordained by the “bishops and reeves of London” that the people should be numbered in hyndens (tens) , and that “every month the hynden men and those who directed the tithings should gather together for bytt filling, ... and let those twelve men have their refection together and deal the remains for the love of God.” ”

“ These merchants of Haunce had their Guildhall in Thames street in place aforesaid by the said Cosin lane. Their hall is large built of stone, with three arched gates towards the street, the middlemost whereof is far bigger than the other, and is seldom [210] opened, the other two be mured up; the same is now called the old hall. ”

“ London was not alone in having giants. York, Norwich, Chester, possessed city giants. In Belgium the city giant is still carried in procession in Antwerp, Douai, and other towns. The figure of the giant symbolised the strength and power of the city. After Agincourt Henry V. was welcomed at the south gate of London Bridge by two giants: his son, Henry VI., was also received by a giant seventeen years later. Two giants stood on London Bridge to welcome Philip and Mary: the same two, at Temple Bar, afterwards welcomed Elizabeth. The pair of giants now in Guildhall were carved in 1707. ”

“ In a work, which contains much information respecting the “London Triumphs” of the lord mayors, and the “pageants” of those processions in the olden time, there is a chapter devoted to a History of the Carvings called the “Giants in Guildhall.” ”

“ Whilst a Bill for re-building the city was being prepared for parliament the civic authorities were busy considering how to find the money necessary for re-building the Guildhall, the city's gates, the prisons and other public buildings. ”

“ It is not certain, yet it is probable, that these were the wicker-giants brought from Guildhall for the occasion. In the reign before, when queen Mary and Philip II. of Spain made their public entry, there was at London bridge a grand spectacle, with two images representing two giants, the one named Corinæus, and the other Gogmagog, holding between them certain Latin verses. [454] There is scarcely a likelihood that these were any other than the Guildhall giants, which on the occasion of a corporation rejoicing could be removed with the utmost ease. ”

“ Upon this affair a court of Common Council was assembled at Guildhall, on the evening before Mayday, in which it was resolved to order every man to shut up his doors and keep his servants at home; and this advice being immediately communicated to the Cardinal, met with his approbation.
Upon this every Alderman sent to inform his ward, that no man should stir out of his house after nine o’clock, but keep his doors shut and his servants within, till nine in the morning. ”