On Good Friday “hot cross buns,” are
prepared and eaten in almost every household, and the streets are vocal with
the cries of itinerant venders.
On Easter Monday, the Mayor and Aldermen
of Nottingham, with their wives, used formerly to attend Divive service, and
then march in solemn procession to St. Ann’s Well, attended by the “clothing”
and their wives, with the officers of the town, preceded by the town waits, and
followed by a number of the inhabitants.
On Royal Oak Day (May 29th),
branches of that tree are still carried from the country, and decorate many of
the signs of public houses in Nottingham, and the coaches which run to and from
the neighbouring villages.
DEERING says that in Nottingham on
Whitsuntide “they keep a general watch, to which every inhabitant of any
ability sets forth a man, as well volunteers as those who are charged with arms,
with such munition as they have; some pikes, some muskets, cavaliers or other
guns, some partisans, or holberts, and such as have armour send their servants
in their armour. The number of these are yearly about two hundred, who at sun
setting meet on the row, the most open part of the town, where the mayor’s
Sergeant-at-Mace gives then an oath. Which done they all march in orderly array
through the principal streets of the town, and then they are sorted into
several companies, and designed to several parts of the town, where they are to
keep watch until the sun dismiss them in the morning.
In this business the fashion is for every
watchman to wear a garland, made in the fashion of a crown imperial, bedecked
with flowers of various kinds, some natural, some artificial, bought and kept
for that purpose as also ribands, jewels, and for the better garnishing whereof
the townsmen use the day before to ransack the gardens of all the gentlemen
within six or seven miles round Nottingham, besides what the town itself
affords them; their greatest ambition being to outdo one another in the bravery
of their garlands.” This custom appears to have been general in Nottingham in
the reign of Charles I.
The custom of eating geese at Michaelmas
is very general in Nottinghamshire, and the Mayor of Nottingham formerly
appears to have given feasts of “hot roasted geese” on the last day of his
mayoralty, previous to the election of his successor. It is a popular belief
that if you eat goose on Michaelmas day you will not want money until that time
next year, and this belief may in some measure account for the general desire
to ensure so good a dinner.
The Corporation were wont to go once a
year to Southwell, in their livery, on Whitsun Monday, where service was
performed in the church; on the return home of the functionaries they rode
through Nottingham, their cloaks being borne after them on horse-back. This
indicated that Nottingham regarded Southwell as the mother church.
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Sue Kay 1999.