Page 134 [134]
OCR
112 THE CITY GOVERNMENT commissions as such; that, like other " Lords,’ most of whom are not privy councillors, he is entitled to the appellation “right honourable " ; that no one but the sovereign takes precedence of him within the city boundaries, and that in other places he ranks as an earl. At the accession of anew king or queen, it is customary to invite him to attend the first meeting of the privy council, : —a reminiscence, per- haps, of the days when the voice of the London- ers decided the elections of English The orihall was in sovereigns. ginal GuildAlderman- bury. A city cuild always met with solemnities and festivities, and a very old writer indeed, brensis, calls public hall, the resort to it Giraldus Camit in Latin, "a named from of drinkers.” A newer hall was built about 1290 behind the old into what was one, and faced then the market-place. Of this hall a beautiful crypt remains. Ihe present Guildhall dates from the time of Henry IV. Within living memory great improvements have been made at the Guildhall. Not only has the hall itself been re-roofed, and made to look more like what it may have been in the days of Whittington, but a new and commodious council chamber has been built in the same
