The Mace-bearer
The duty of the mace-bearer was to carry Oxford's Great Mace in front of the Mayor as he went out and about on official city business. This mace represents authority under the Crown. By the end of the nineteenth century the title given to the mace-bearer was Mayor's Sergeant.
Compare the size of the city mace held by the city mace-bearer (left) with the shorter staff held by a university bedel (right)
(photographs from Oxford Remembrance Day Parade in 2006).
The present silver-gilt Oxford city mace, at over 5 feet tall and weighing nearly 18 pounds, is the largest civic one in Britain. It was made in 1651 and is almost a replica of the House of Commons mace. It is carried on the shoulder.
The four original staves currently used by the University were made by a London silversmith in 1723, and historically were carried by the four Bedels representing the Faculties of Divinity, Law, Medicine, and Arts. There are now two more faculties and a total of six bedels and six staves.
The stave is carried in the crook of the arm rather than on the shoulder.
Roger Hewlett (Mayor in 1573/4) thought that the original city mace was too small and he “gave the mayor’s great mace, for before it was not much bigger than a sergeant’s mace”.
In 1651 a former mayor, William Chillingworth, lent the city £18 towards the payment of a new (third) mace, and that is the one still used today.
On 10 May 1660 when Charles II was proclaimed King in Oxford, orders were then given that the state’s arms on the great mace should be defaced and replaced by the King’s. The remodelled mace was first used at the Coronation of Charles II. It bears the words, “This Mace was made in the mayoralty of John Lamb [1659/60], in the reign of Charles II”.
When a councillor was elected an Alderman in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was the custom for him to give the Macebearer a purse containing a “broad piece of gold”.
In July 1809 the Council accepted the resignation of Frederick Rogers, who had served as Macebearer for 39 years, and agreed to pay him £50 a year out of city funds for the rest of his life, and William Giles was elected in his place. (Rogers only enjoyed his pension for about seventeen months, as he died at the age of 79 on 30 Decenber 1810.)
In 1826 the Oxford mace was described on a visit by the Lord Mayor of London as “a massive silver-gilt Mace — that usual ensign of magisterial authority”.
When Isaac Grubb was Mayor (1857/8), he refused to have “that bauble”, namely the city mace, carried before him when he attended Carfax Church.
G.V. Cox in Recollections of Oxford (p. 74n) gives the following story about the staves and the mace on the occasion of the Prince Regent’s visit to Oxford in 1814:
It was intended that the Chancellor and the Mayor should formally surrender the University staves and the City mace into the Prince’s hand; this was done, in a hasty way, as to one of the gold staves; something of the same sort, and in a still more slovenly way, was done as to the City mace. ‘Permit me,’ said Lord Grenville, ‘to surrender the authority of the University into your Royal Highness’s hands.’ ‘It cannot be in better hands’, replied the Regent, with much grace, as he restored the gold staff to his Lordship.
When the Mayor of Oxford perambulated the city’s boundaries at the end of his term of office, the mace-bearer carried this mace so that it could be placed on the boundary stones with the city flag. Certain parts of the “perambulation” were actually undertaken by punt, putting the mace at risk: it was rescued from bottom of the River Cherwell in 1831. Then again in 1892 the Mayor's punt capsized on the Cherwell near Sunnymeade, and when some young men fished it out, the cross at the top was missing, and it had to be replaced. The photograph below (Historic England CC97/02371, click on image to enlarge) shows the Macebearer on a punt at Botley carrying the mace (but the description given is very wrong and confuses the Mayor's perambulation with a parish beating the bounds):
The City Mace is covered up on the death of the Sovereign. David Hawkins, the Lord Mayor’s Sergeant and Macebearer for Oxford City Council at the time of the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, briefly explains here what happens.
The Oxford City Mace shown in use
(1) At the Rifles Parade on 24 May 2015
(2) At the Oxford Remembrance Day Parade on 13 November 2005
The above photograph taken at the Remembrance Parade on 13 November 2005 shows a bedel of the University with his stave on the left and City Macebearer with the great city mace on the right. On the podium (including the two people behind) are:
Lord Lieutenant (Hugo Brunner)
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford (Dr John Hood)
Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University (Rex Knight)
President of the Oxford Branch of the British Legion (Fred Farley)
Lord Mayor (Bob Price)
High Sheriff (Ian Laing)
Chairman of the County Council (Councillor Mrs. Catherine Fulljames)
The above photograph shows the macebearer (with the city mace on his shoulder) flanked by two university bedels with their staves in the crook of the their arm. This macebearer was Tim Cox, who retired in 2011 after working in the Town Hall for 42 years. At the end of his service his full title was “Supervising Town Hall Keeper, Lord Mayor's Sergeant, Sheriff's Officer, and Mace Bearer to the City of Oxford”.
A photograph by Henry Taunt (HT00330) of the Mayor's Sergeant holding the mace and showing off the city plate. The date is uncertain, but Taunt died in 1922 and he probably took the photograph well before that year:
A full set of six staves held by the bedels of the University
This photograph showing six bedels in procession in front of the Chancellor of the University of Oxford (Chris Patten), at Encaenia in 2019 again shows how the stave is carried in the crook of the arm, never on the shoulder like the City Mace:
A print (date unknown) showing the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford preceded by six bedels with staves and another man at the front and back with a stick (HT10386):
