ISSUE 77


SPRING 2012


In this issue Committee Reports p.3


Cheese & Wine Tasting Evening p.11


The newsletter of the City of London


Solicitors’ Company and the City of London Law Society


CitySolicitor www.citysolicitors.org.uk


Company’s Banquet at Mansion House p.12


To Answer the Call p.13


Join the City Livery Yacht Club p.14


Fox finds flaws p.16


City Solicitors meet Royal Fusiliers and lock up the Tower


by the Master, Alderman John White


Very appropriately on the 60th anniversary of The Queen’s accession to the throne, Monday 6th February 2012, 52 of us had dinner in the Officers Mess of The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in The Tower of London and then watched the traditional locking up of The Tower at 10pm.


We had our reception in the recently refurbished museum which contains not only 12 of the 20 Victoria Crosses won by the Regiment, but also a French Eagle standard captured in Martinique in 1809, an iron foot and calf boot to prevent a malinger from stopping his wound from healing (on proof of his deceit when the wound healed properly in the iron boot, he was sentenced by Regimental Court Martial to 500 lashes), and a musket ball mounted on a silver stand that went right through the thigh of Colonel Shipley in the Crimea War (who survived the war).


The dining room has much in the way of portraits and regimental silver connected with the Regiment. There is a large silver model of the White


Tower, and many old Regimental Colours hang on the walls. We were fortunate to drink our wine out of the silver goblets presented by officers on commissioning to the Regiment.


The Royal Fusiliers is closely connected in its long history to The Tower and is very much the infantry regiment of the City of London.


Origins


In June 1648 the Tower Guard was formed as part of the Trained Bands of The Tower of London and its Hamlets. It was also known as The Tower Regiment of Foot, and it formed part of Oliver Cromwell’s


New Model Army. The Regiment’s Royal links date from the formal foundation of ‘Our Royal Regiment of Fusiliers’ by Royal Warrant of James II on June 11th 1685. It had been formed by Lord Dartmouth, Governor of the Tower and Master General of the Ordnance, as the Ordinance Regiment to secure and protect the Royal Arsenal. The Regiment was constituted from the two old independent companies from the Tower’s garrison, together with ten additional companies that were raised from the City, largely men of the Trained Bands.


(Cont. on page 10) The City of London Solicitors’ Company


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