Note 48 — May 1.] MAY DAY.
Reading edition
This pole, when it was fixed in the ground, was higher than the church steeple; and it is to this that Chaucer the poet refers when he says, speaking of a vain boaster, that he bears his head “as he would bear the great shaft of Cornhill.”—Stow’s Survey, B. ii. p. 65; Godwin and Britton, Churches of London, 1839.
[49] Pennant, London (5th edition, p. 587), says this shaft gave rise to the insurrection. Godwin and Britton deny this was the case.
[50] Hall, in his Chronicle, says these foreigners “compassed the citie rounde aboute, in Southwarke, in Westminster, Temple Barre, Holborne, Sayncte Martynes, Sayncte John’s Strete, Algate, Toure Hyll, and Sainct Katherines.”
[51] Cholmondeley, constable of the Tower, discharged some guns into the streets, while the Earls of Shrewsbury and Surrey, collecting the gentlemen of the Inns of Court, restrained the violence of the populace.—Lyttleton, History of England, vol. ii. p. 167.
[52] Of the pent-house, or shelving roof projecting from the main wall, by which the shops at that period were ordinarily protected, many examples, Godwin and Britton say, existed in their time.