at Drapers' Hall.

At Richard III.'s coronation (1483), the Lord Mayor, Sir Edmund Shaw,
attended as cup-bearer with great pomp, and the mayor's claim to this
honour was formally allowed and put on record. Shaw was a goldsmith, and
supplied the usurper with most of his plate. Sir William Horn, Lord
Mayor in 1487, had been knighted on Bosworth field by Henry VII., for
whom he fought against the "ravening Richard." This mayor's real name
was Littlesbury (we are told), but Edward IV. had nicknamed him Horn,
from his peculiar skill on that instrument. The year Henry VII. landed
at Milford Haven two London mayors died. In 1486 (Henry VII.), Sir Henry
Colet, father of good Dean Colet, who founded St. Paul's School, was
mayor.

Colet chose John Percival (Merchant Taylor), his carver, sheriff, by
drinking to him in a cup of wine, according to custom, and Perceval
forthwith sat down at the mayor's table. Percival was afterwards mayor
in 1498. Henry VII. was remorseless in squeezing money out of the City
by every sort of expedient. He fined Alderman Capel L2,700; he made the
City buy a confirmation of their charter for L5,000; in 1505 he threw
Thomas Knesworth, who had been mayor the year before, and his sheriff,
into the Marshalsea, and fined them L1,400; and the year after, he
imprisoned Sir Lawrence Aylmer, mayor in the previous year, and extorted
money from him. He again amerced Alderman Capel (ancestor of the Earls
of Essex) L2,000, and on his bold resistance, threw him into the Tower
for life. In 1490 (Henry VII.) John Matthew earned the distinction of
being the first, but probably not the last, bachelor Lord Mayor; and a
cheerless mayoralty it must have been. In 1502 Sir John Shaw held the
Lord Mayor's feast for the first time in the Guildhall; and the same
hospitable mayor built the Guildhall kitchen at his own expense.

Henry VIII.'s mayors were worshipful men, and men of renown. To Walworth
and Whittington was now to be added the illustrious name of Gresham. Sir
Richard Gresham, who was mayor in the year 1537, was the father of the
illustrious founder of the Royal Exchange. He was of a Norfolk family,
and with his three brothers carried on trade as mercers. He became a
Gentleman Usher Extraordinary to Henry VIII., and at the tearing to
pieces of the monasteries by that monarch, he obtained, by judicious
courtliness, no less than five successive grants of Church lands. He
advocated the construction of an Exchange, enco