FREEMAN FR CHRISTOPHER SMITH ON A NEW ROLE IN THE CITY.
11 DECEMBER 2024
One of the nice things about being a clergyman is the sheer variety of the job. And I have acquired a new role for the academic year: I am now chaplain to an old friend of mine, Gregory Jones KC, who has become the Aldermanic Sheriff for the City of London. My church, St Alban’s Holborn, is just outside the City, although I can see the boundary from my dining-room window, and, indeed, part of the parish is in the City. So it is quite fun to move into that world for a little while. To date, I have attended ‘my’ Sheriff at his installation, and taken part in the ceremonies for the election of the new Lord Mayor, and later his installation at the so-called ‘Silent Ceremony’. The only words spoken on that occasion were those of the oath of office
The following day came the Lord Mayor’s Show. I have usually toddled down from the Vicarage here to see the procession go past on Fleet Street, but this year I was in a carriage—hence the photograph, taken by a friend of mine on Ludgate Hill. It was quite a privilege to be present as the Lord Mayor swore the oath to the Lord Chief Justice and the Master of the Rolls in the Law Courts on the Strand, and I found it heartening to see how many people still turn out to line the processional route.
Needless to say, all these things are followed by lunches or dinners, and the grandest of them is the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, which is the occasion on which the Prime Minister is invited to make a speech on foreign affairs. But we had already tried the menu, at the rather quieter (and rather lovelier) ‘Lighting-up Dinner’, which the outgoing Lord Mayor gives in order to thank the staff who make everything work so smoothly behind the scenes. And for me, as a still-new Stationer, it has been a great pleasure to bump into our Master at several of these events, and to see the Stationers well-represented in the procession at the Lord Mayor’s Show. Domine dirige nos!
Photo Credit: Michael Harazin