Civic Processions. Riding the Franchises

Chapter IV.

Civic Processions - Riding the Franchises - The Liberties

• The Lord Mayor’s Penance.

The greatest change wrought in any one body of our metropolis within the last century has decidedly been in our city Corporation. We speak not of the political alterations effected by “the act for transferring corporate abuses to other hands,” as some one calls the Corporation Reform Bill; but of a change of manners, as marked in the old Corporation before its dissolution as in its present successor - a change brought about, not by the operation of Acts of Parliament, but by the silent progress of time and alteration of public feeling, and evincing itself in the almost total discontinuance of display in civic ceremonies and civic processions. We have now no peregrinations of trades on their saints’ days. The shoemakers no longer perambulate with King Crispin at their head; and the smiths will never again walk in company with a limping Vulcan; nor the fishmongers’ corporation personate the Twelve Apostles. Even the very principal ceremony on which the boundaries of our civic liberties depended is no longer observed; and though the Archbishop of Dublin were to depasture his horses on the Lord Mayor’s garden, or the seneschal of St. Sepulchre’s to execute an attachment under the very piazza of the post-office, the sturdy citizens will never again ride their franchises. The last miserable remnant of our corporate dignity is the Lord Mayor’s annual procession, in his old glass coach, accompanied by a sorry troop of horse police; and the only merry-making that accompanies it is an occasional upset of that terror of pawnbrokers, the city marshal, from his military charger. Ninety years ago those things, though beginning to decline, had not wholly fallen from their ancient state; the remnant of them was kept up, and in some matters adhered to with as much earnestness as ever.

The principal civic ceremony which still continued within that period with unabated splendour was the triennial precession of the Corporation, vulgarly called “riding the fringes.” The great object of all civic corporations, in their original constitution, was the protection of the rights and properties of the citizens against the usurpation of powerful neighbours, Church and lay, and the stout upholding of the several immunities and privileges conferred by their different charters. The vigilance of the Dubliners in ancient times was principally to be exercised against their ecclesiastical neighbours of St. Mary’s Abbey, Kilmainham, Thomas-court, and St. Sepulchre’s, the latter being the Liberty of the Archbishop of Dublin. various were the disputes and feuds about their respective boundaries, and many are the charters and inquisitions defining them, which are still extant.

To guard themselves from encroachment, the citizens from time immemorial perambulated the boundaries of their chartered district every third year, and this was termed “riding their franchises,” corrupted into “riding the fringes.” In ancient times, when the ecclesiastics were a powerful body, this was a very necessary ceremony, and in some measure a dangerous service. The worthy citizens went forth “well horsed, armed, and in good array;” and so they are described in an account of this ceremony in 1488, still extant in the “Book of Christ Church.” But when the power and possessions of their clerical neighbours passed away, there was no one with the will or the means to interfere with them. The citizens had long ceased to march out with a black standard before them - “a great terror to the Irish enemies;” and their military spirit having completely died away, the riding of the franchises became altogether a peaceful exhibition of civic pomp, consisting chiefly of the following emblematic personages, and display of craft

Every one of the 25 corporations was preceded by a large vehicle, drawn by the most splendid horses that could be bought or borrowed; indeed all were eager to lend the best they had. On these carriages were borne the implements of the respective trades, at which the artizans worked as they advanced. The weavers fabricated ribbons of various gay colours, which were sent floating among the crowd; the printers struck off hand-bills, with songs and odes prepared for the occasion, which were also thrown about in the same manner; the smiths blew their bellows, hammered on their anvils, and forged various implements; and every corporation, as it passed, was seen in the exercise of its peculiar trade. They were accompanied by persons representing the various natures or personages of their crafts, mixing together saints and demigods, as they happened to be sacred or profane. Thus, the shoemakers had a person representing St. Crispin, with his last; the brewers, St. Andrew, with his cross; but the smiths, though patronised by St. Loy, were accompanied by Vulcan and Venus, which last was the handsomest woman that could be procured for the occasion, and the most gaily attired. She was attended by a Cupid, who shot numerous darts, *en passant, *at the ladies who crowded the windows. The merchants, who exist under the patronage of the Trinity, could not without profanation attempt any personal representation; but they exhibited a huge shamrock as the emblem furnished by St. Patrick himself, while they were also accompanied by a large ship on wheels navigated by *real *sailors.

The course of proceeding of this motley assembly was this: they drew up at the old custom-house, and passing along Temple-bar and Fleet-street, they came to the sea at Ringsend. They then proceeded to low-water mark, when a trumpet was sounded, a water bailiff advanced, and, riding into the water as far as he could, hurled a spear eastward. This marked the eastern boundary of the city. They then crossed the Strand, and traversing the boundaries of the city and county, by Merrion, Bray-road, Donnybrook, &c., came by Stephen’s-green to the division between the city and liberties. Then traversing Kevin’s-port, Bolton-lane, [Probably Great Boater-lane, now Bishop-street.] Bride-street, Bull-alley, &c., they again emerged at Dolphin’s-barn, from whence they took a round by Stonybatter, Finglas, Glasnevin, and Clontarf, ending a little beyond Raheny. In the course of this peregrination they passed through several houses, and throw down any fences that came in their way, particularly on the confines of the Liberties. [The Earl of Meath’s Liberties. Originally the Liberties of the Monastery of St. Thomas of Canterbury in Thomas-court, Thomas-street, granted by Henry VIII. to William Brabazon, ancestor of Lord Meath.]

The Liberties of Dublin consist of an elevated tract on the western side of the city, so called from certain privileges and immunities conferred upon it. It contained formerly a population of 40,000 souls, who had obtained a high degree of opulence by the establishment of the silk and woollen manufacture among them. After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, a number of industrious artisans of the reformed faith, driven from their own country, had taken refuge in this district, and brought the manufacture of silk and woollens to a high state of perfection. About 100 years ago they had 3,400 looms in active employment; and in 1791 there were 1,200 silk looms alone. This prosperity was liable to great fluctuations. Two years after, when war was declared with France, and the raw material was difficult to be procured, the poor artisans experienced great distress; but the breaking out of the insurrection of ‘98, in which many of them were engaged, entirely ruined them; so that at the time of the Union they were reduced to utter beggary.

On all occasions of distress, they descended in masses from their elevated site to the lower parts of the town, and, as has been remarked, they resembled an irruption of some foreign horde - a certain wildness of aspect, with pallid faces and squalid persons, seemed to mark, at these times, the poor artizans of the Liberty as a separate class from the other inhabitants of Dublin. Of this famous and flourishing community nothing remains at the present day but large houses, with stone fronts and architectural ornaments, in ruins, in remote and obscure streets; and a small branch of the poplin and tabinet manufacture, a fabric almost exclusively confined to them, and whose beauty and excellence are well known.

At the time of which we write, however, they exhibited their power on every public occasion; and during the perambulation of the Lord Mayor, they particularly signalized themselves. As they had manor-courts and seneschals of their own, with a court-house and a prison, they were exceedingly jealous of their separate jurisdiction. They assembled in detachments in some places leading to their territories, and made a show of strongly opposing any invasion of their independence. The most remarkable was on the Cross Paddle, [Now leading to Dean-street.] leading to the Coombe, the great avenue to the interior of the Liberties; and here they made a most formidable exhibition of resistance. They seized upon the sword-bearer of the Corporation, wrested from his hand the civic weapon, and having thus established their seeming right to resist encroachment, the sword was restored, on condition of receiving a present as a tribute, and liberating a prisoner from confinement. These demands being complied with, a formal permission was given to the procession to move on. The man who wrested the sword from the bearer had a distinguished name and an achievement to boast of during the rest of his life.

Besides hurling the spear into the sea, the Lord Mayor and Corporation observed several other ceremonies. In their progress they made various stops, and held sham consultations, which were called courts. At a court at Essex-gate it was a regular ceremony to summon Sir Michael Creagh in the following form:-

“Sir Michael Creagh! Sir Michael Creagh come and appear at the court of our lord the king, holden before the right honourable the Lord Mayor of the city of Dublin, or you will be outlawed.”

This singular ceremony originated from the circumstance of Sir Michael Creagh having been Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1688, and absconded, carrying with him the gold collar of SS, which had been given to the Corporation only a few years before by Charles II. The civic citation to the fugitive thief being wholly fruitless, and Sir Michael Creagh never having returned with the collar, a new one was obtained by Bartholomew Vanhomrigh from William III., in 1697, which is the one at present in use. The citation, however, continued to be made during the procession. The worthy citizen through whom the collar of SS was restored was father to Swift’s celebrated Vanessa.

The trappings and equipments of this procession seem to have been borrowed from the ancient practice of acting plays or mysteries by the different guilds of C the Corporation. Those representations had been discontinued since the time of Elizabeth; they are, however, mentioned by many writers; and in the books of the Corporation there are several entries relating to the expenses, and mode of proceeding for them, which show the allegories acted to have been similar to the characters assumed by the guilds in riding the franchises. They were a most extraordinary medley of religion and profanity, morals and indecency. Thus, in the same interlude, the carpenters acted the story of Joseph and Mary; the tailors, Adam and Eve; while the vintners personated Bacchus and his companions, with their drunkenness and gallantries; and the smiths, Vulcan and the intrigues of his fair consort; or, as it was modestly entered, “Vulcan, and what related to him.” Such things formed regular items in the Corporation accounts. Several items are given in Whitelaw and Walsh’s [the Rev. Robert Walsh, Rector of Finglas, father of the author of this book. The author’s son, Archdeacon Walsh, is author of the “Churches of Fingall] “History of Dublin,” and are sufficiently amusing.

For a celebration of St. G cargo’s day are the following:-

“Item 3. The elder master to find a maiden, well attired, to lead the dragon; and the clerk of the market to find a golden line for the dragon.

“Item 4. The eider warden to find for St. George four trumpets; but St. George himself to pay them their wages.”

On the subject of civic processions, we may mention one which, though discontinued for many centuries, was much talked of on the election of the first Roman Catholic Mayor of the new Corporation, viz., the ceremony of the Lord Mayor walking barefooted through the city on Corpus Christi day. The origin and account of this ceremony is given at length in Stanihurst’s “Chronicle.” In 1514, there were constant disputes between Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, and James Butler, Earl of Ormonde. The origin of the long-continued feud between their two illustrious families is referred to the contest between the houses of York and Lancaster, the family of Kildare adhering to the house of York, and that of Ormonde to the house of Lancaster. The Government, after the accession of Henry the Seventh, relied implicitly on the Kildare family, and the Earl of Kildare was accordingly made deputy; but, in the words of the historian, “James, Earl of Ormonde, a deepe and farre reaching man, giving backe like a butting ram, to strike the harder push, devised to inveigle his adversarie, by submission and curtesie, being not then able to match him with stoutnesse or pre-eminence. Whereupon Ormonde addressed his letters to the deputie, specifying a slander raised on him and his, that he purposed to defame his government, and to withstand his authoritie; and for the cleering of himself and his adherents, so it stood with the deputie his pleasure, he would make his special repaire to Dublin, and there in an open audience would purge himself of all such odious crimes, of which he was wrongfullie suspected.”

The Earl of Kildare having assented to this arrangement, Ormorde marched to Dublin at the head of a “puissant army,” and took up his quarters in Thomas-court, now a part of the city, but then a suburb. The meeting was arranged to take place in Patrick’s Church. Before it took place, however, the feuds between Ormonde’s followers and the citizens had arisen to an uncontrollable height; and during the conference, while the leaders were wrangling in the church about their mutual differences, their adherents came to blows, anda body of archers and citizens rushed to the church, meaning to have murdered Ormonde. The earl, however, suspecting treachery, fled into the chapter-house, and made fast the door. The disappointed citizens, in their rage, shot their arrows at random through the aisles and into the chancel, leaving some of them sticking in the images. In the riot a citizen named Blambfeil was slain.

The Earl of Ormonde was so much alarmed that he would not come out of his sanctuary till the deputy assured him of his life by joining hands. A hole was accordingly cut in the door; but Ormonde, suspecting it was a trick to get an opportunity to chop off his hand, refused to put it out; so the Earl of Kildare, to reassure him, thrust his hand in, after which they shook hands, and were for the present reconciled. We give the result so far as the citizens were concerned, in the historian’s words:-

“Ormonde, bearing in mind the treacherie of the Dublinians, procured such as were the gravest prelates of his clergie to intimate to the court of Rome the heathenish riot of the citizens of Dublin in rushing into the church armed, polluting with slaughter the consecrated place, defacing the images, prostrating the relicks, rasing down altars, with barbarous outcries, more like miscreant Saracens than Christian Catholikes. Whereupon a legat was posted to Ireland, bending his course to Dublin, where, soone after, he was solemnly received by Walter Fitzsimon, Archbishop of Dublin, a grave prelat, for his lerning and wisdome chosen to be one of King Henrie the Seventh his chaplins, in which vocation he continued 12 yeares, and after was advanced to be Archbishop of Dublin. The legat, upon his arrival, indicted the city for this execrable offence; but at length, by the procurement as well of the Archbishop as of all the clergie, he was weighed to give the citizens absolution with this caveat, that in detestation of so horrible a fact, and *ad perpetuam rei memoriam, *the major of Dublin should go barefooted through the citie, in open procession before the Sacrament, on Corpus Christi daie, which penitent satisfaction was after in everie atch procession dulie accomplished.”

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