approval. Henry III. afterwards
allowed the presentation to take place in the king's absence before the
Barons of the Exchequer at Westminster, to prevent expense and delay, as
the citizens could not be expected to search for the king all over
England and France.

[Illustration: SIR RICHARD WHITTINGTON. (_From an old Portrait._)]

The presentation to the king, even when he was in England, long remained
a great vexation with the London mayors. For instance, in 1240, Gerard
Bat, chosen a second time, went to Woodstock Palace to be presented to
King Henry III., who refused to appoint him till he (the king) came to
London.

Henry III., indeed, seems to have been chronically troubled by the
London mayors, for in 1264, on the mayor and aldermen doing fealty to
the king in St. Paul's, the mayor, with blunt honesty, dared to say to
the weak monarch, "My lord, so long as you unto us will be a good lord
and king, we will be faithful and duteous unto you."

These were bold words in a reign when the heading block was always kept
ready near a throne. In 1265, the same monarch seized and imprisoned the
mayor and chief aldermen for fortifying the City in favour of the
barons, and for four years the tyrannical king appointed custodes. The
City again recovered its liberties and retained them till 1285 (Edward
I.), when Sir Gregory Rokesley refusing to go out of the City to appear
before the king's justices at the Tower, the mayoralty was again
suspended and custodes appointed till the year 1298, when Henry Wallein
was elected mayor. Edward II. also held a tight hand on the mayoralty
till he appointed the great goldsmith, Sir Nicholas Farindon, mayor "as
long as it pleased him." Farindon gave the title to Farringdon Ward,
which had been in his family eighty-two years, the consideration being
twenty marks as a fine, and one clove or a slip of gillyflower at the
feast of Easter. He was a warden of the Goldsmiths, and was buried at
St. Peter-le-Chepe, a church that before the Great Fire stood where the
plane-tree now waves at the corner of Wood Street. He left money for a
light to burn before our Lady the Virgin in St. Peter-le-Chepe for ever.

The mayoralty of Andrew Aubrey, Grocer (1339), was rather warlike; for
the mayor and two of his officers being assaulted in a tumult, two of
the ringleaders were beheaded at once in Chepe. In 1356, Henry Picard,
mayor of London, was an honoured man, for he had the glory of feasting
Edward III. o