gOTernecl by a Pimtan Lord Mayor and a majority of Puritan 
Aldermen, the handsome mace, that had been used in civic 
processions for more than a century and a half, should be consigned 
to the melting pot to give place to a nevr one more costly and more 
richly decorated than any that the city had previously possessed. 
In the year 1647, when ceremonial and j)ageantry, and even 
royalty itself, were dying out of the land, the civic chair was 
occupied by Thomas Dickinson, a rigid Puritan and active 
Parliamentarian, afterwards distinguished as one of the few 
persons upon whom Cromwell conferred the honoim of knighthood. 
Dimng his mayoralty the Corporation made it manifest that the 
spirit of display and ostentation was not extinguished in the city, 
by providing a new and costly great mace. It is represented to 
have contained 192 oz. of silver, and (after deducting the sum 
allowed as the value of the old mace) to have cost the sum of 
£81 12s. 
I have no doubt that the mace now in the possession of the 
Corporation is that which was provided by Sir Thomas Dickinson 
and his colleagues in the year preceding that which witnessed the 
unhappy termination of the reign of King Charles the First. 
The only alteration the mace has undergone since it was originally 
manufactured is the ‘‘blotting out” of the armorial bearings of the 
Commonwealth, which were engrpwed on the top of the bowl, and 
the substitution of the King’s arms in their place. This was done 
by an order of the Corporation dated the 9th of May, 1660. 
The mace in its present state is a fine specimen of goldsmith’s 
work, executed in a bold and artistic manner. The staff or stem 
has an elegant termination of the lower extremity, and a central 
band decorated with the following heraldic devices in low rehef: — 
1. A shield of the city arms. 
2. A shield bearing the cross of {8t. George. 
3. A crowned lion upon a chapeau d’honneur; the crest of Queen 
Elizabeth. 
4. The Tudor rose ensigned by a royal crown; the badge of 
Queen Ehzabeth. 
0 . A portcullis ensigned by a prince’s coronet, f The portcullis 
is the badge of the house of Beaufort. 
^ This ornamentation possesses so much of a Tudor character as to warrant 
a conjectiu’e that in executing- the mace of 1647 the artist had either copied or 
adapted the stem of the Elizabethan mace of 1580. 
t The initials W. H. stamped near the royal shield are most probably those 
of the goldsmith who made the alteration in May, 1660. The length of the mace 
is nearly 4 feet; the staff or stem hemg about 2 feet 9 inches long. 
