Staged on St Simon and St Jude’s Day (29 October 1604), the lost speeches for the inauguration of the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Thomas Lowe, a member of the Haberdashers’ Company, are known only through entries in that company’s account books.

In their customary form, the Lord Mayor’s inaugural pageants took place following the mayor’s oath-swearing before the King in Westminster. After a river-borne barge procession back from Westminster Hall, the new office-holder landed at Paul’s Wharf in the City of London and then processed along a traditional route to Paul’s Chain (a lane to the south of St Paul’s Cathedral), through the churchyard, and into Cheapside, passing the Little Conduit and the Cheapside Cross, before turning towards the Guildhall via St Lawrence Lane. After a feast at the Guildhall, the mayor and his entourage returned to St Paul’s for evening prayers, passing back down Cheapside (Manley, 1995, 272). At each of these symbolic stations the mayor would be greeted by a pageant – a moveable ‘device’ often accompanied by speeches and music – which would then join the procession, usually preceding the mayor. The core of the event, the procession (which included members of the mayor’s trade guild, the aldermen, council, and officeholders of the City) embodied the hierarchy and symbolic unity of the city governing structures and its mercantile elite. These mayoral processions are often compared to ‘triumphs’ (as they are here: see Electronic Edition, Masque Archive, Lord Mayor, 2), and were surpassed in their magnificence only by the irregular royal entries into the City. As the Russian envoy was told before Middleton’s Triumphs of Truth (1613), ‘except for the King’s coronation, there is no other such great ceremony in England’ (Middleton, 2007, 965, 977).

The subjects of the allegorical pageants were often drawn from London mythology (such as its foundation as New Troy), or used historical figures (such as Dick Whittington), images of the commercial power of the city (such as ships), or heraldic figures drawn from the livery company’s or mayor’s arms. The processions were often accompanied by other figures, including the city giants, Gog and Magog, green-men, and even stilt-walkers. The mayoral office was highly respected and the individuals elected and their companies strove to make the celebrations and the feasts as magnificent as possible, employing costumiers, painters, and poets such as Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood, Thomas Middleton, Anthony Munday, and Jonson, in the increasingly elaborate entries.

The payments for the 1604 pageant indicate that it consisted of a chariot, a lion, and two galleys with fireworks and banners, accompanied by mermaids. Most of the effort and expenditure focused on the procession of the company’s ranks, the poor men given charity by the new mayor, and the drums, trumpeters, pipers, other musicians, and flag-bearers. Alongside Jonson, Anthony Munday was also remunerated with £2 for his efforts. Jonson’s contribution, ‘his device, and speech for the children’, earned him £12 (Masque Archive, Lord Mayor, 2). There were payments for printing the ‘books of the device’, and the publication is listed in the Stationers’ Register (20 October 1604), a relatively rare occurrence, as only pageant books for 1588, 1604, 1612, 1613, and 1616 were entered in this way (others, such as the 1609 pageant, appear to have been ‘private’ publications: see MSC, 3.1, xxxiii). No copy of the printed text has survived.

The payment to Thomas Kendall (c. 1563–1608), haberdasher and patentee in the Children of the Queen’s Revels, for ‘furnishing the children with apparel and other things needful’, may suggest that the performers were drawn from the Queen’s Revels Children, especially since they had also provided the child playing Thamesis in The King’s Entertainment. Jonson had recently written Cynthia’s Revels and Poetaster for the earlier incarnation of this troupe, and Kendall was a regular supplier of costumes for court performances (Munro, 2005, 27–8, 43–5, 182). Kendall’s efforts may have been directed at providing armour and caparisons associated with the chariot and its riders, and it may be that the show deliberately echoed the coronation royal entry by reutilizing some of its idealization of London as a re-born classical city.

The payment of the largest sum of £12 to Jonson for his ‘device’ may imply that he had some larger role in the overall invention (conception) of the triumph, or simply that he was responsible solely for the creation of the pageant for the children. Munday, who was paid only £2, was a member of the Drapers’ Company, and would produce mayoral pageants in 1605, 1609, 1611, 1614, 1615, 1618, and 1623. His smaller reward may mean that the whole occasion was parcelled out among various poets and created by a committee. It is worth comparing these accounts with those that survive for The Merchant Taylors’ Entertainment, where Jonson was paid for ‘inventing the speech to His Majesty and for making the songs and his directions to others in that business’ (Masque Archive, Merch. Tayl. Ent., 1). It seems possible that, given his links to the Children of the Revels, he functioned similarly as both writer and pageant-arranger here. The Merchant Taylors’ Entertainment, with its ‘very proper child well spoken being clothed like an angel of gladness’, perhaps suggests the kind of welcoming speech that the children offered on this earlier occasion.

(See also JONSON’S LOST PLAYS)