with Sir Thomas Empson the agent of that monarch's financial oppression, was here sentenced to death, and executed upon Tower Hill. In 1547 Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, a man of great intellectual force and of high poetic gifts, to whom is assigned the credit of having been the first to introduce the sonnet and blank verse into English poetry, was here found guilty of treason, and executed on January 19th. His father, the Duke of Norfolk, was one of the very few who escaped from Henry the Eighth's cruelty. He was sentenced to death on January 27, 1547, and the warrant for his beheading sent to the Lieutenant of the Tower; but fortunately for the duke the great Tudor monarch died in the night, and the warrant was never executed. In 1570 John Felton, one of the many Romish conspirators of Elizabeth's reign, was here condemned to an execution the details of which are horrible to read, and enable us to understand the absolute disregard of humanity in Tudor times in the punishment of treason. Here the men who had poisoned Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower, Richard Weston and Sir Jervis Elwes, discovered in 1615 that their sin had found them out. Weston was hung at Tyburn, and Elwes formed one of the long list of Tower Hill sufferers.

But in the Guildhall even in Tudor and Stuart times a prisoner sometimes escaped with life. In 1554 Sir Nicholas Throckmorton was declared not guilty by a jury whose action was so resented by the Commissioners presiding over the trial that they sent them all to the Fleet, releasing them only after the payment of heavy fines.

Of all the sad scenes that took place within those ancient fifteenthcentury walls, two, in each of which a woman was the victim, stand out above all others in the mournful series. Here, in 1546, Anne Askew, a name ever to be reverenced in the annals of English Evangelical Christianity, was tried or examined no less than three times, prior to that revolting scene in one of the gloomiest vaults of the Tower, where Lord Chancellor Wriothesley and Master Rich are said to have laid their own hands to the rack, in order to increase her torture. She died, as bravely as she had lived, at Smithfield, at the early age of twenty-five years. Seven years later another trial, in which a woman was the chief figure, took place. Under the year 1553 the chronicles of the Grey Friars record: 'Thys yere the xiii day of Novembre the Byshoppe of Cantorbury Thomas Creme and Lady Jane that wolde abene Queen and iii of the Dudleys condemyd at the yelde-halle for hye-tresone.' Out of this company the Lady Jane died on Tower Green, Guildford Dudley on Tower Hill, and Cranmer was burnt at Oxford in 1555.

But we must leave the shadows no less than the sunshine of the past, and glance at those portions of the buildings included under the general term, Guildhall, utilised for modern civic needs, and for the benefit of the citizens generally.

Our limits of space do not permit us to enter with any fulness of detail into these matters. But before quitting the Guildhall we must consider briefly the chief provisions for municipal government, and the valuable aid given to the intellectual development of the citizens by the handsome and well-stocked Library and Museum.

The Corporation consists of the Lord Mayor, the Aldermen, and the Common Council. We have already mentioned some facts in the history of the mayoralty. Authorities seem generally agreed that the first official in any real sense answering to the Lord Mayor was Henry Fitz-Alwyn, who appears to have held the office from 1189 until his death in 1212. During Henry the Third's and Edward the First's reigns Edward the First's reigns constant struggles occurred between the royal and civic powers, resulting finally in the triumph of the latter, and in 1299 the commonalty exercised the right of electing the Mayor, conferred upon them by the charter of King John in 1215. From this time forward the power of election appears to have been vested entirely in the commonalty. In 1383 it was resolved: 'That no person shall from henceforth be Mayor of the said City, if he have not first been Sheriff of the said City, to the end that he may be tried in governance and bounty, before he attains such estate of the Mayoralty.'

In 1406 Richard Whittington was elected Mayor for the second time, and the record, yet preserved in the archives, gives an interesting picture of how City affairs were administered in the early part of the fifteenth century. 'On Wednesday, the Feast of the Translation of St. Edward the King and Confessor (13th October), John Wodecok, Mayor of the City of London, considering that upon the same day he and all the Aldermen of the said City, and as many as possible of the wealthier and more substantial Commoners of the same City, ought to meet at the Guildhall, as the usage is, to elect a new Mayor for the ensuing year, ordered that a Mass of the Holy Spirit should be celebrated, with solemn music, in the chapel annexed to the said Guildhall; to the end that the same Commonalty, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, might be able peacefully and amicably to nominate two able and proper persons to be Mayor of the said City for the ensuing year, by favour of the clemency of Our Saviour, according to the customs of the said City. Which Mass having in the said chapel been solemnly celebrated ... the Commoners peacefully and amicably, without any clamour or discussion, did becomingly nominate Richard Whytyngtone, mercer, and Drew Barentyn, goldsmith, and presented the same. And hereupon the Mayor and Aldermen, with closed door, in the Chamber of the Mayor's Court, chose Richard Whytyngtone aforesaid, by guidance of the Holy Spirit, to be Mayor of the City for the ensuing year.' This method struck the citizens as so satisfactory that it was resolved to continue it; but, like many others of those good ancient resolutions, has been more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

The Court of Aldermen is first mentioned in 1200, in which year were 'elected 25 of the most discreet citizens, and sworn to consult for the City together with the Mayor.' These 'discreet citizens' were originally styled 'Barons,' a title which to this day stands upon the Common Seal. The election by wards dates from 1293; in 1393 the office was made a life tenure; and in 1413 it was decided that birth within the kingdom and descent from an English father was essential. The Court now consists of twenty-six members, and from them the Lord Mayor is annually chosen. The Court-room in the Guildhall is a handsome apartment. The ceiling was painted by Thornhill, and the stained-glass windows exhibit the arms of past Lord Mayors.

The only section of the Corporation that can be considered in any modern sense as representative is the Common Council. It originated when the City was divided into wards, certain citizens of each being appointed to assist the Alderman in the discharge of his functions. In 1273 they numbered in all forty; in 1840 they had increased to 206, the present number. The first date that refers to their Chamber is given by Stow, who says that in 1424 'was built the Mayor's Chamber and the Council Chamber, with other rooms above the stairs.' Between 1611 and 1615 a new Council Chamber was built, which was destroyed in 1666. In 1883 the magnificent apartment in which the Common Council now transact their business was begun, and the first business meeting was held in it on October 2, 1884. It is described as duodecagonal in design; its diameter is fifty-four feet, and it is surrounded by a corridor nine feet wide, above which is a gallery for the press and the public. The height from floor to dome is sixty-one feet six inches, and above this rises an oak lantern, the top of which is eighty-one feet six inches above the floor. This lights and ventilates the whole apartment. Seats are provided for twenty-six Aldermen, the Recorder and other officers, the Sheriffs, and 206 Common Councilmen. The details of the stone and wood work and the whole interior decoration are worthy of careful study. The Guildhall Library contains a very fine and easily accessible collection of books, housed in an appropriate and beautiful home. have been facilities for literary research connected with the Guildhall from very early times. A library was founded here either by Sir Richard Whittington, or by his executors and those of William Bury. The original Library was a building adjoining the south side of the Chapel, and was for the use of the students connected with Whittington's College. The Library seems to have possessed, almost from the foundation, a valuable collection of books, but in Edward the Sixth's reign, Somerset, the Protector, borrowed three cartloads, and never returned them. This spoliation practically suppressed the Library, and in 1552-how great a fall!—the building became a 'common market for the sale of clothes!' Early in Elizabeth's reign, however, the scandal was removed by a renewed attempt to 'founde a very mete and apte

There

house to make a lyberary of,' which library appears to have finally perished in 1666. In 1824 a committee was appointed by the Corporation to establish a Library at the Guildhall. In 1828 the first librarian, William Herbert, was appointed. In 1832 the first building was erected, and in 1840 the first catalogue issued contained ten thousand volumes. In 1859 the number had increased to thirty thousand. In 1869 it was determined to erect the present handsome building, which, together with the land, cost £90,000, and was formally opened as a Free Library on November 5, 1872, by the then Lord Chancellor, Lord Selborne.

The Principal Library, now daily thronged with readers and students, is one hundred feet long, and sixty-five feet wide, and fifty feet in height, divided into nave and aisles, the latter being filled with oak book-cases, forming twelve bays. The room is well lighted, the clerestory over the arcade of the nave, with the large windows at the north and south ends, together with those in the aisles, transmitting plenty of light to every corner of the room. The beautiful roof comprises arched ribs which are supported by the arms of the twelve great City Companies, with the addition of those of the Leathersellers' and Broderers', and also the Royal and City arms. The timbers are richly moulded, and the spandrels filled in with tracery. Each spandrel of the arcade has, next to the nave, a sculptured head, representing History, Poetry, Printing, Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Philosophy, Law, Medicine, Music, Astronomy, Geography, Natural History and Botany; the several personages chosen to illustrate these subjects being Stow, Camden, Shakespere, Milton, Gutenberg, Caxton, William of Wykeham, Christopher Wren, Michael Angelo, Flaxman, Holbein, Hogarth, Bacon, Locke, Coke, Blackstone, Harvey, Sydenham, Purcell, Handel, Galileo, Newton, Columbus, Raleigh, Linnæus, Cuvier, Ray and Gerard. There are three fireplaces in this room. The one at the north end, executed in D'Aubigny stone, is very elaborate in detail, the frieze consisting of a panel of painted tiles, the subject being an architectonic design of a procession of the Arts and Sciences, with the City of London in the middle, emblematised by an enlarged representation of the ancient seal, viz., St. Paul, and some mediæval buildings with a river in the foreground. The quatrefoil panels on either side have sculptured heads of Carpenter, the founder of the City of London School, and Chaucer, the "Father of English Poetry." The screens in front of the fireplaces at the south end are executed in oak, the panels being inlaid with coloured foreign wood, and the bases of the screens forming dwarf book-cases which are fitted to receive large folio books.'*

The number of books now exceeds 70,000, and among these are a very large number illustrative of the history, life, and antiquities of London. Every facility is offered by the committee and their officers to place the

A Descriptive Account of the Guildhall, pp. 229, 230.