The Parish Clerks’ Company were not a whit behind other City companies in their love of processions and pageantry, and their annual feasts and elections were conducted with great ceremony and magnificence.  The elections took place on Ascension Day, and the feast on the following Monday.  The clerks in 1529 were ordered to come to the Guildhall College on the Sunday before Whit-Sunday to Evensong clad in surplices, and on the following day to attend Mass, when each man offered one halfpenny.  When Mass was over they marched in procession wearing copes from the Guildhall to Clerks’ Hall, where the feast was held.  Fines were levied for absence or non-obedience to these observances.  Machyn describes the accustomed usages in Mary’s reign as follows:  “The sixth of May was a goodly evensong at Yeldhall College with singing and playing as you have heard.  The morrow after was a great Mass at the same place by the same Fraternity, when every clerk offered a halfpenny.  The Mass was sung by divers of the Queen’s Chapel and children.  And after Mass was done every clerk went their procession, two and two together, each having a surplice, a rich cope and a garland.  After them fourscore standards, streamers and banners, and every one that bare had an albe, or else a surplice, and two and two together.  Then came the waits playing, and then between, thirty Clarkes again singing Salva festa dies.  So there were four quires.  Then came a canopy, borne by four of the masters of the Clarkes over the Sacrament with a twelve staff torches burning, up St. Lawrence Lane and so to the further end of Cheap, then back again by Cornhill, and so down to Bishopsgate, into St. Albrose Church, and there they did put off their copes, and so to dinner every man, and then everyone that bare a streamer had money, as they were of bigness then.”  A very striking procession it must have been, and those who often traverse the familiar streets of the City to-day can picture to themselves the clerks’ pageant of former times, which wended its way along the same accustomed thoroughfares.

[Illustration:  THE ORGAN AT THE PARISH CLERKS HALL]

But times were changing, and religious ceremonies changed too.  Less pomp and pageantry characterise the celebrations of the clerks.  There is the Evensong as usual, and a Communion on the following day, followed by a dinner and “a goodly concert of children of Westminster, with viols and regals.”  A little later we read that the clerks marched clad in their liveries, gowns, and hoods of white damask.  Copes are no longer recognised as proper vestments.  Standards, banners, and streamers remain locked up in the City’s treasure-house, and Puritan simplicity is duly observed.  But the clerks lacked not feasting.  Besides the election dinner, there were quarterly dinners, and dinners for the wardens and assistants.  Time has wrought some changes in the mode of celebrating election day and other festive occasions.  Sometimes “plain living and high thinking” were the watchwords that guided the principles of the company.  Processions and gown-wearing have long been discontinued, but in its essential character the election day is still observed, though pomp and pageantry no longer form important features of its ceremonial.