The Lord Mayor's Show and the Politics of London's Clothworkers’ Company in the Mid-Seventeenth Century

Review of periodical literature for 2022: (iii) 1500–1700

“…Street hawkers were not the only London labourers to receive attention. Using records of the Clothworkers’ Company, Legon explores motivations behind clothworkers’ inability and refusal to participate and financially contribute to the Lord Mayors’ Shows between 1658 and 1662. Having become increasingly elaborate by the seventeenth century, the Lord Mayors’ Shows were an annual spectacle to mark the inauguration of the Lord Mayor, who had been elected from one of the twelve foremost London livery companies.…”

“…The Shows were financed by livery company members whose ability to contribute ‘fines’ was assessed on a sliding scale. Inability to pay was sometimes due to financial hardship (poverty and ill health), however, Legon gives room in his analysis to political and religious tensions of the time. Refusal to pay and participate in the Shows, he argues, was driven by political opposition to the elected mayors themselves as well as to the very concept of the Shows.…”