Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 1).pdf/184

 'Chamber'. The outstanding architectural features of these streets, St. Paul's, the gates at Ludgate and Temple Bar, the conduits in Cornhill and Fleet Street, the great and little conduits, the Standard, and the Cross in Cheapside, were recognized stations for music, speechifying, and pageantry. At some of them temporary arches, adorned with symbolical devices and hung with verses, spanned the highway. When Elizabeth started, in a slight snow-storm, on 14 January 1558, the City companies, in their black and red hoods, lined both sides of the way from Fenchurch to the Cross. The Queen, a coronetted and golden figure, rode in a litter, surrounded by her train of pensioners bearing their axes, and yeomen of the guard in their scarlet liveries with the Tudor rose and crown upon their backs. Behind came the Master of the Horse, leading a white hackney, and the Lords of the Council. There were seven pageants, each with its verses in English or Latin and a child for interpreter. At the first, on a scaffold near Fenchurch, the child delivered a speech of welcome. At the upper end of Gracechurch Street was an arch bearing 'The Uniting of the two Houses of Lancaster and York'; at the Cornhill conduit another, with 'The Seat of Worthy Governance'; at the great conduit a third, with 'The Eight Beatitudes'. The first bore representations of Henry VII, Henry VIII, and Elizabeth herself; the other two allegorical figures of the morality type. At the Cross stood the Mayor and Aldermen, with a speech by the Recorder, and a thousand marks in a purse. At the little conduit was the fourth and principal arch, with sterile and green mounts symbolizing 'A Ruinous and a Flourishing Commonweal'; and Time and Truth presented the Queen as she went by with an English Bible. At the door of the school in St. Paul's Churchyard, a boy of Colet's foundation delivered a Latin speech. At the Fleet Street conduit was 'Deborah, with her Estates, consulting for the good Government of Israel'. At St. Dunstan's church was another speech by a child of the hospital. And, finally, at Temple Bar stood those ancient folk-figures and palladia of the City, without whose beneficent presence no holiday could be complete, the giants Gotmagot and Corineus. When James was crowned on 25 July 1603, a state entry on the traditional lines was planned, but when the arches were already up it was decided that the risk of plague was too great, and the ceremony was put off, first to the