A city of pageantry

With mayor, aldermen, citizens and commonalty all acting together, Norwich was known for its splendid civic pageantry. The mayors’ procession of modern times is a reminder of the grand procession known as the Mayor’s riding. This in turn had its origins in the processions of the all-powerful Guild of St George. This was organised to perambulate the City’s bounds and celebrate All Saints Day, Christmas Day, the Monarch’s birthday, gunpowder day and other ‘national deliverance' days. Freemen dressed in the livery of their craft assembled in order of precedence. Whifflers with their swords cleared the way for the mayor on horseback accompanied by sword and macebearers, followed by aldermen. Civic standards were carried. Survivals of some of this costume, made from Norwich damasks, reflect the alignment of the industry with the interests of the City. Such processions were followed by lavish feasts for the Freemen in St Andrews Hall. The cost of these as largely borne by the Mayor. So members of the governing elite were expected to be men of substance who undertook the dubious pleasure of mayor ship as part of their wider responsibilities. Freemen also participated in their Guilds in the Corpus Christi Day pageants.

From the 17th century the guild system declined and the 70 or 80 surviving guilds were amalgamated into 12 companies each with two aldermen appointed as masters. During the later 17h century, Whig and Tory party politics gradually came to dominate. Bribery and vote-rigging had become rife by the late 18th and early 19th century, However, because of City’s status as a county returning two MPS, 40 shilling freeholders ( the majority of householders) were able to vote the decline in the status of handloom weavers had meant that they were only too ready to sell their vote for a very welcome £10.

Some of the civic ceremony survived into modern times, the Norwich Snapdragon, the final form of the orginal dragon of the St. Georges pageant, still accompanying the mayor within living memory. 'Snap' is now in honourable retirement in the Castle Museum, Norwich

This section is summarised from information in Buxom to the Mayor, A Hstory of Norwich Freemen by Elizabeth Griffiths and Prof. A Hassell Smith, Centre of East Anglian Studies, UEA 1987