Previous to a court of common council, the members were formerly in the
habit of assembling in the great hall of the Guildhall. When the hour of
business arrived, one of the officers of the lord mayor’s household
summoned them to their own chamber by the noise produced by moving an
iron ring swiftly up and down a twisted or crankled bar of the same
metal, which was affixed behind the door of the principal entrance to
the passage leading to that part of the Guildhall styled, in civic
language, the inner chambers. The custom was disused about forty years
ago. The iron, I understand, remained until the demolition of the old
doorway in the last general repair of the hall, when the giants
descended from their stations without hearing the clock strike, and the
new doorway was formed in a more convenient place. With the
old-fashioned gallery, the invariable appendage to an ancient hall,
which, until that period, occupied its proper place over the entrance,
was destroyed that terror of idle apprentices, the prison of _Little
Ease_. This gallery must be still remembered, as well as its shrill
clock in a curious carved case. Its absence is not compensated by the
perilous-looking balcony substituted for it on the opposite side, an
object too trifling and frivolous for so fine a room as the civic common
hall.