Page:Englishhistorica36londuoft.djvu/621

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1921 SHORT NOTICES 613 various heads, such as Folk-Pageantry, Trade-Pageantry, Political Pageantry ; the Parkerian (dreadful word) Pageant ; and Pageantry in the United States. He has added a very full and useful bibliography and a copious index. This second volume is similar in character to the first, though from the fact that it is in large part concerned with pageantry of quite recent date it will prove of somewhat less interest to most readers. If the material is somewhat undigested these two volumes will prove a valuable storehouse of information for future inquirers. Mr. Withington has supported his text with abundant notes. As suggested in a notice of the first volume in a former number of this Keview 1 the notes would have benefited by the exercise of a little more discrimination. It is rather unfortunate that the volume should begin with the doubtfully accurate statement ' Early in the thirteenth century King John granted a mayor to the citizens of London, who had hitherto been governed by bailiffs. The first man to hold this office was Sir Henry FitzAlwin, who was sworn in in 1209.' This is supported by a lengthy and rather confused note, in which many authorities of no weight are cited, whilst there is no reference to Dr. Bound's decisive handling in the Commune of London ; there is of course no question that Henry FitzAlwin was mayor as early as 1193. When discussing the origin of the water procession, Mr. Withington dismisses the statement that John Norman was the first mayor to go by water in 1453 as mere tradition. But the version of the Brut known as Caxton's Chronicles (which was compiled between 1464 and 1470) states definitely that Norman went by water ' which was never used afore, but sith that time they have gone ever by water in barges In spite of the evidence Mr. Withington adduces for a water procession in 1422, this is conclusive that the practice dated from 1453. No doubt the reason for a departure from custom in 1422 was that the city was in mourning for Henry V and therefore the procession was abandoned, the mayor and crafts going by barge, which was at the time the ordinary means for going from the City to Westminster. None of the other references to the use of barges before 1453, which Mr. Withington cites, appear to relate to the mayor's procession. The statement which Mr. Withington quotes from the 1618 edition of the Survey as to Norman having had a barge made at his own charge seems to be a mere piece of tradition interpolated by Anthony Munday ; Stow made no such statement. C. L. K. Dr. Giuseppe Gerola, whose works upon the Venetian monuments of Crete and the medieval buildings of the thirteen Sporades occupied by the Italians were reviewed in these pages, 2 has published a valuable monograph upon the island of Seriphos in the Italian period — Serfino {Seriphos) — at Bergamo (Istituto Italiano d'Arti Grafiche, 1921). The monograph, which is profusely illustrated, contains a brief summary of the island's history under its Latin lords (1207-1538), of whom one, Alvise Michiel, has left his coat-of-arms, dated 1433, and now over a house door near the remains of the Venetian castle. Of later monuments ' little Seriphos ' also possesses three double-headed eagles, while traces of Venetian influence linger in two or three place-names, in the church bells, 1 Ante, xxxiv. 269. f Ante, xxi. 370 ; xxiii. 772 ; xxxi. 309 ; xxxv. 307.