Legal Village

Pomp and circumstance in the City

Posted 26/03/2007 by Bill Knight

Last Friday, when most of you were working, I was in St Paul’s helping to represent the City Solicitors Company at the United Guilds Service.

This is an occasion of total civic pomp. The cathedral is packed with liverymen in full dress. Trumpeters, choir, the Lord Mayor and, this year, the Archbishop of Canterbury as preacher. The service was started by the Guilds of the City of London in 1943 to cheer everybody up and it still has something of that effect.

I enjoy watching the assorted heroes and villains of the City dressed up to the nines. "Through tattered clothes small vices do appear. Robes and fur’d gowns hide them all," said William Shakespeare and on this occasion one sees what he meant.

The Archbishop told the City that the pursuit of profit alone was not an adult occupation.

I trust the message was received by those present. Last year the preacher was Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, who told us that he had just returned from electing the Pope in Rome.

"It is great to be a cardinal in Rome just before the election of the Pope," he told us. "Everyone is very nice to you because they just never know..."