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 Middleton's title-page refers scornfully to the 'common writer' of mayoral pageants, which may perhaps indicate Munday. A full analysis of all this municipal imagery would be extremely tedious. The original single pageant with its devils and 'wodwoses' underwent much elaboration in the seventeenth century. 'By this light', says a character in Greenes Tu Quoque (1611-12), 'I do not think but to be Lord Mayor of London before I die, and have three pageants carried before me, besides a ship and an unicorn.' Dekker's Troja Nova Triumphans has three movable 'land-triumphs', a chariot of Neptune, a chariot of Virtue, and a House of Fame, which met the Mayor successively at Paul's Chain, Paul's Churchyard, and the Cross in Cheapside, while the little conduit was transformed into a Castle of Envy, and met an assault with fireworks. Sometimes the old 'foist' was revived, and part of the spectacle took place on the water. Or one of the land pageants was designed in the form of a ship. There were personages mounted on strange beasts. Speeches and dialogues afforded opportunities for laudation of the Lord Mayor and his brethren. There was generally some theme bearing upon the history of the company or the industry to which it was related. The Fishmongers made play, both in 1590 and 1616, with Sir William Walworth; the Drapers, both in 1614 and 1615, with Sir Henry Fitz Alwine, and with the Ram with the Golden Fleece. The Merchant Taylors, on whose roll Prince Henry had been inscribed at the dinner of 1607, proudly displayed an impersonation of him in 1611. Often the mimesis was renewed on the way to St. Paul's in the afternoon, or at the Lord Mayor's house in the evening. The Ironmongers have preserved an interesting series of coloured designs for Chrysanaleia, the notes on which indicate that the pageants were preserved as permanent decorations for the company's hall. The ship, which held musicians at the Merchant Taylors' dinner of 1607, was probably a relic of their pageant of 1602.

The growing maritime power of England during the sixteenth century and the significance of the river as a highway between London and the palaces up and down stream led naturally to a development of pageantry by water. There was a water triumph, with an assault of a castle, on Midsummer Day, 1561, and another, arranged by Captain Stukeley, when Elizabeth went down to Greenwich in June 1563. Christian of Denmark gave James a show of the Burning of the Seven Deadly Sins' in 'wildfire' near his flag-ship at Gravesend on 11 August 1606. The creation of Henry was