| 1590 | The court of burghmote appointed six watchmen to guard the city by night. The plague was raging in the
city. | |
| 1598 | There were weekly assessments raised to maintain the poor. There was a carved post set beside the door
to the Guildhall where tradesmen would meet; here was where rogues and idle persons were punished. | |
| 1613 | The city entertained the King and prince. There were five waits who played loud music from the top of
All Saints Church when they entered the city by Westgate. There was the prince, his sister the lady Elizabeth, and
the Palsgrave her husband. They were received there by the mayor together with the aldermen and the common
council; eighty shot (soldiers) with halberts, etc., and drested in red coats, new hats and feathers, forty on each side
of the street acting as a guard from Westgate to the one past Christ Church. Here they entered the Dean's house
where they lodged for nine days. The Dean requested a pike (soldier) to hang out (his flag as a signal) at the top
of Bell-Harry steeple, so the party would know when the wind had shifted making their departure by ship from
Margate favorable. | |
| 1625 | King Charles and his Queen Henrietta of France stayed at the Abbey of St. Augustine for a time. | |
| 1626 | The duties of the Common Beadle were laid out as follows: He shall daily walk the streets of the city and
attach all such rogues, vagabonds, beggars, and idle persons as do resort to the city, and those persons he shall see
punished, or set to work, or driven out of the city, and should the city be visited with the plague he shall attend
the searchers to the infected houses, and back to their own houses again, and by walking before the bodies from
infected houses to their graves. | |
| 1628 | They built a common washing shambles on the river, near Bridewell. | |
| 1630 | They made tents for the relief of the infected with the plague, and set up on the lower part of the Dungeon,
where most out of sight of passers-by. | |
| 1631 | They took an order to end a dispute between the waits of the city who played their music in the morning
in the street, and to settle the number of boys, i.e., apprentices, they were to keep. | |
| 1642 | They ordered the city to be speedily fortified, providing for the purchase of considerable ordnance. | |
| 1643 | They ordered the housekeepers of the city to watch the ordnance on the Dungeon both day and night. | |
| 1649 | They took down the King's Arms at the Guildhall and replaced them with those of the Commonwealth. | |
| 1651 | The Corporation gave a dinner for the Lord General Cromwell as he was passing through the city. | |
| 1653 | They got a new rope for Bell-Harry which tolled every Saturday at ten in the morning, when the Mayor
and Aldermen attended market to officially declare it open. (In 1629 a person was fined for beginning market
before the bell was rung.) | |
| 1656 | A certain John Alcock, a labourer, was indicted for feloniously killing Thomas Slawter at Canterbury, and
being found guilty, they asked him if he had anything to say why sentence should not proceed. He claimed to be
a clerk and prayed the benefit of clergy be allowed in his behalf. Then a certain James Lamb, a clerk, came in and
delivered the book (Bible) to John Alcock, who read it as a clerk would. Therefore they considered that John
Alcock was indeed a clerk and ordered him to be burnt on his left hand. | |
