Smithfield, London by Charles of France at Paris a few years earlier, upon the arrival of his consort Isabel of Bavaria. Geoffrey Chaucer supervised preparations for the tournament as a clerk to the King. Along with Tyburn, Smithfield was for centuries the main site for the public execution of heretics and dissidents in London. The Scottish nobleman Sir William Wallace was executed in 1305 at West Smithfield. The market was the meeting place prior to the Peasants' Revolt and where the Revolt's leader, Wat Tyler, was slain by Sir William Walworth, Lord Mayor of London on 15 June 1381. Religious dissenters (Catholics
John Gayer (Lord Mayor of London) John Gayer (Lord Mayor of London) John Gayer or Gayre (died 20 July 1649) was an English merchant who was Lord Mayor of London in 1646. He was born in Plymouth, eldest son of John Gayer senior, a merchsnt, and Margaret Trelawney. Both his parents were Cornish by birth: the Gayer family came originally from Liskeard. Gayer moved to London, and at one stage of his career spent some years in Syria, where a strange event later led him to institute the Lion Sermon. He became a city of London merchant and a member of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers.