Queen Mary’s St Clement’s Day procession

23 November · London

No longer kept

London

On St Clement’s Day in Queen Mary’s reign a great procession went through the streets of London. Sixty priests and clerks in copes walked with men of the Inns of Court, behind eighty banners and streamers, while the city waits played. Strutt called it the most splendid show of its kind in her time.

it consisted of sixty priests and clerks in their copes, attended by divers of the inns of court who went next the priests, preceded by eighty banners and streamers, with the waits or minstrels of the city playing upon different instruments.

From Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, 2nd ed., p. 320. Read the original

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Folklore from the old calendars

Old Clem at Woolwich No longer kept Kent, LondonOn the evening of St Clement's Day the blacksmiths' apprentices of Woolwich dockyard chose one of their seniors to be Old Clem, in a greatcoat, a mask, an oakum wig and a long white beard.
Clementing in Worcestershire No longer kept WorcestershireA correspondent born in Worcestershire remembered boys going in a band from house to house on the afternoon of St Clement's Day.
St Clement and the hatters Lore and belief IrelandHatters had a tradition that St Clement, fleeing his persecutors, put wool between his sandals and his blistered feet, and found at the end of his journey that it had pressed into a firm cloth.
The smiths’ ode for St Clement No longer kept LondonThe secretary of the Benevolent Institution of Smiths, writing from Southwark in 1825, asked Hone not to forget St Clement, the smiths' saint.
St Clement’s pot No longer kept StaffordshirePlot's Staffordshire recorded an old custom of going about on the night of St Clement's Day to beg drink to make merry with.

Queen Mary’s St Clement’s Day procession

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