Stranica 138 [138]
116 THE CITY GOVERNMENT
“The citizens are mum, say not a word,”
is Buckingham’s report to his master. Nevertheless, the mayor and
some others extorted a reluctant assent, and waited on Richard at
Baynard’s Castle with a formal offer of the crown. It was in the Guild¬
hall, in 1554, that Lady Jane and her husband, Lord Guildford Dudley,
with Archbishop Cranmer and others, were tried and condemned. Here
domar, the Spanish ambassador. In the following reign Charles I made
a similar expedition into the city about a charlatan doctor Lamb, but
gained little by it; and here, in the Guildhall, in 1642, he in vain
demanded the surrender of the five members of the House of Commons
from the mayor, sheriffs, and citizens. Finally, not to prolong these
associations, it was in the Guildhall that the assembly met in 1688
which elected the Prince of Orange to the throne of England.
The inconvenience felt when the Lord Mayor entertained guests
either in his own house or in
the hall of the company to
which he happened to belong,
must have been considerable,
and was increased when it be¬
came a common occurrence for
the Lord Mayor not to reside
in the city. In 1734 it was
resolved by the Common
Council to appropriate the sum
‘of £18,000, which had accumu¬
lated from the fines imposed
on citizens who refused to act
. as sheriffs, to building a suit¬
able residence for the head of