Stranica 138 [138]
OCR
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 Guildhall, 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 became 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 accumulated from the fines imposed on citizens who refused to act . as sheriffs, to building a suitable residence for the head of
