The anniversary of Elizabeth I’s accession, 17 November, was long kept with bells and rejoicings as Queen Elizabeth’s Day. In the anti-Catholic fever of 1679 to 1681 the Green Ribbon Club turned it into great night processions through the City to Temple Bar, where an effigy of the pope was burned. A bellman led the way crying ‘Remember Justice Godfrey!’, followed by a rider carrying a mock corpse of the murdered magistrate. Some two hundred thousand people were said to have watched in 1679.
Queen Elizabeth’s Day
17 November · Temple Bar, London
No longer kept
the bells generally about the town began to ring about three o'clock in the morning
From Chambers's Book of Days, vol. 2, pp. 588-589. Read the original
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