port that
foreign merchants were to be allowed the same rights as freemen of the
City, was set in the pillory for one hour, with a whetstone hung round
his neck. In the same heroic reign Thomas Lanbye, a chapman, for selling
rims of base metal for cups, pretending them to be silver-gilt, was put
in the pillory for two hours; while in 1382 (Richard II.) we find Roger
Clerk, of Wandsworth, for pretending to cure a poor woman of fever by a
talisman wrapped in cloth of gold, was ridden through the City to the
music of trumpets and pipes; and the same year a cook in Bread Street,
for selling stale slices of cooked conger, was put in the pillory for an
hour, and the said fish burned under his rascally nose.

Sometimes, however, the punishment awarded to these civic offenders
consisted in less disgraceful penance, as, for instance, in the year
1387 (Richard II.), a man named Highton, who had assaulted a worshipful
alderman, was sentenced to lose his hand; but the man being a servant of
the king, was begged off by certain lords, on condition of his walking
through Chepe and Fleet Street, carrying a lighted wax candle of three
pounds' weight to St. Dunstan's Church, where he was to offer it on the
altar.

In 1591, the year Elizabeth sent her rash but brave young favourite,
Essex, with 3,500 men, to help Henry IV. to besiege Rouen, two fanatics
named Coppinger and Ardington, the former calling himself a prophet of
mercy and the latter a prophet of vengeance, proclaimed their mission in
Cheapside, and were at once laid by the heels. But the old public
punishment still continued, for in 1600 (the year before the execution
of Essex) we read that "Mrs. Fowler's case was decided" by sentencing
that lady to be whipped in Bridewell; while a Captain Hermes was sent to
the pillory, his brother was fined L100 and imprisoned, and Gascone, a
soldier, was sentenced to ride to the Cheapside pillory with his face to
the horse's tail, to be there branded in the face, and afterwards
imprisoned for life.

In 1578, when Elizabeth was coquetting with Anjou and the French
marriage, we find in one of those careful lists of the Papists of London
kept by her subtle councillors, a Mr. Loe, vintner, of the "Mitre,"
Cheapside, who married Dr. Boner's sister (Bishop Bonner?). In 1587, the
year before the defeat of the Armada, and when Leicester's army was
still in Holland, doing little, and the very month that Sir William
Stanley and 13,000 Englishmen su