s kept Dr.
Watts, as his guest and friend, in his mansion at Stoke Newington. "No
business or festivity," remarks Mr. Timbs, "was allowed to interrupt Sir
Thomas's religious observances. The very day he became Lord Mayor he
withdrew from the Guildhall after supper, read prayers at home, and then
returned to his guests."

In 1702, Sir Samuel Dashwood (Vintner) entertained Queen Anne at the
Guildhall, and his was the last pageant ever publicly performed, one for
the show of 1708 being stopped by the death of Prince George of Denmark
the day before. "The show," says Mr. J.G. Nicholls, "cost L737 2s., poor
Settle receiving L10 for his crambo verses." A daughter of this Dashwood
became the wife of the fifth Lord Brooke, and an ancestor of the present
Earl of Warwick. Sir John Parsons, mayor in 1704, was a remarkable
person; for he gave up his official fees towards the payment of the City
debts. It was remarked of Sir Samuel Gerrard, mayor in 1710, that three
of his name and family were Lord Mayors in three queens' reigns--Mary,
Elizabeth, and Anne. Sir Gilbert Heathcote (mayor in 1711), ancestor of
Lord Aveland and Viscount Donne, was the last mayor who rode in his
procession on horseback; for after this time, the mayors, abandoning the
noble career of horsemanship, retired into their gilt gingerbread coach.

Sir William Humphreys, mayor in 1715 (George I.), was father of the
City, and alderman of Cheap for twenty-six years. Of his Lady Mayoress
an old story is told relative to the custom of the sovereign kissing the
Lady Mayoress upon visiting Guildhall. Queen Anne broke down this
observance; but upon the accession of George I., on his first visit to
the City, from his known character for gallantry, it was expected that
once again a Lady Mayoress was to be kissed by the king on the steps of
the Guildhall. But he had no feeling of admiration for English beauty.
"It was only," says a writer in the _Athenaeum_, "after repeated
assurance that saluting a lady, on her appointment to a confidential
post near some persons of the Royal Family, was the sealing, as it were,
of her appointment, that he expressed his readiness to kiss Lady Cowper
on her nomination as lady of the bed-chamber to the Princess of Wales.
At his first appearance at Guildhall, the admirer of Madame Kielmansegge
respected the new observance established by Queen Anne; yet poor Lady
Humphreys, the mayoress, hoped, at all events, to receive the usual
tribute from