"Mightie Flora! goddess of fresh flowers, —
Which clothed hath the soyle in lustie greene,
Made buds spring, with her sweete showers,
By the influence of the sunne shine.
To doe pleasance of intent full cleane,
Unto the States which now sit here,
Hath Vere downe sent her owne daughter deare.
Making the vertue, that dared in the roote,
Called of clarkes the vertue vegitable,
For to transcend, most holsome and most soote,
Into the crop, this season so agreeable,
The bawmy liquor is so commendable,
That it rejoyceth with his fresh moysture,
Man, beast, and fowle, and every creature," etc.
These great Mayings and May-games, made by the governors and masters of this city, with the triumphant setting up of the great shaft (a principal May-pole in Cornehill, before the parish church of St. Andrew), therefore called Undershaft, by means of an insurrection of youths against aliens on May-day, 1517, the 9th of Henry VIII., have not been so freely used as afore, and therefore I leave them, and will somewhat touch of watches, as also of shows in the night.[1]
OF WATCHES IN THIS CITY, AND OTHER MATTERS COMMANDED, AND THE CAUSE WHY
William Conqueror commanded that in every town and village, a bell should be nightly rung at eight o'clock, and that all people should then put out their fire and candle, and take their rest; which order was observed through this realm during his reign, and the reign of William Rufus. But Henry I., restoring to his subjects the use of fire and lights, as afore; it followeth, by reason of wars within the realm, that many men also gave themselves to robbery and murders in the night; for example whereof in this city Roger Hoveden writeth thus : — "In the year 1175, a council was kept a Nottingham; in time of which council a brother of the Earl Ferrers being in the night privily slain at London, and thrown out of his inn into the dirty street, when the king understood thereof, he swore that he would be avenged on the citizens. For it was then (saith mine author) a common practice in the city, that a hundred or more in a company, young and old, would make nightly invasions
- ↑ A paper by Mr. Saunders, in Knight's London, i. 169, entitled, "The Old Spring Time in London," forms a very agreeable commentary on this section of our author's work.
