Less than three years later he was selected, and at Michaelmas 1545 was installed, as Sheriff of London together with Ralph Aleyn (three times Master of the Worshipful Company of Grocers), to coincide with the mayoralty of Sir Martin Bowes (citizen and Goldsmith) for the term 1545-1546.

The year was marked by the celebrations for the Treaty of Ardres and the great Midsummer Watch conducted through London by the Lord Mayor; there were also various executions for heresy and treason which it was the Sheriffs' duty to see performed, not least the burning of the Protestant martyr Anne Askew.

[8] Through the middle years of the reign of King Edward VI, Barne became an important figure in promoting expeditions for the expansion of English overseas trade.

English contacts with the North American coast and Newfoundland had arisen in 1497 and 1498 with John Cabot's voyages out of Bristol under the commission of Henry VII.

His son, the explorer Sebastian Cabot, among his many and varied endeavours sought to discover the Northwest Passage, and dreamed of finding sea-routes to Cathay.

[12][13] As was customary, the election of the new Mayor occurred on Michaelmas day (29 September 1552) and a sermon was made in the Guildhall Chapel, the use of Communion for that occasion having been discontinued.

Maynard, a Mercer, was chosen after three previously selected persons, beginning with the citizen and Master Clothworker John Crymes, had refused the office and paid fines of £200 each to avoid it.

On the same day the King's Lord of Misrule came to Tower Wharf with his company and met with the Sheriff's Lord of Misrule with all of his, and all attired in velvet suits and embroidered costumes with ribbons and spangles with horse riders, fools and hangmen and prisoners, and morris men dancing as they went, they processed in a pageant through Gracechurch Street and the Cornhill, making proclamations with their heralds.

On Christmas Day, when the Lord Mayor and aldermen rode to St Paul's, the street through Cheap was lined with the children (some 350 of them) and their keepers, the masters of the Hospitals, all in their liveries.

He set others in the pillory for selling by false measures, he punished bawds and whores by having them driven around in carts, and he had the vagabonds whipped out of the city, "so that all malefactors feared him for his good executinge of justice.

On 17 March 1553 John Maynard rode in through Aldgate with a standard and drums, followed in procession by giants and hobby horses, with great men and horses with coats of velvet and gold chains on their necks: then followed the morris dancers, and many minstrels, and he who had lately been lord of misrule rode in, arrayed gorgeously with chains of gold about his neck and many valuable rings in his hands.

At Ratcliff "the iij shypes that was rygyng [there, to go] to the New-fouland, and the ij pennons [pinnaces] shott guns and chambers a grett nombur.

Hugh Willoughby was not only a highly experienced naval commander, he was moreover closely related to that side of the royal lineage traced through the descendants of Mary Tudor, which in the spring of 1553 was favoured as the most likely to produce a Protestant succession.

[22] Having the particular support (as it is said) of George Barnes and William Garrard, the society of adventurers promoting this voyage was now to receive a Charter from King Edward to incorporate them as a Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands, "for the discoverie by sea, of Iles, lands, territories, dominions and Seigniories vnknowen, and by the Subiects of the sayd late king not commonly by seas frequented" (so it is related in Elizabeth's charter of 1566), but that the said king "died before the finishing and sealing of his most ample and gracious letters of priuiledges promised to the sayd Subiects".

It is likely that the governance of this Company (known commonly as the Muscovy Company), which in Philip and Mary's Charter to them of February 1554/55 was granted to Sebastian Cabot as Governor, with four Consuls, Sir George Barne, William Garrard, Anthony Hussey and John Southcote, and twenty-four named Assistants,[24] reflected the intention of the Edwardian Charter.

Soon after receiving his knighthood, Sir George sat in the Guildhall with Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London and the Chief Justice Sir Roger Cholmeley, as Commissioners, to receive certificates from all the churchwardens listing the remaining money, plate, jewels and other metals in their churches, which, together with all copes and vestments of cloth of gold, were now to be surrendered to the King, reserving only a chalice and paten, the bells, and a small number of necessaries for each church.

In April 1553 Edward granted his Charter for the Bridewell Palace, presenting it to the City Corporation as a Hospital for poor children and a House of Correction for wanton women.

The Duke of Northumberland disclosed the news secretly to them, and required them to countersign the Letters Patent for the Limitation of the Crown of England and Ireland, the purpose of which was to exclude the Catholic, Mary, and his sister Elizabeth from the throne and to nominate Lady Jane Grey as the legitimate successor.

Jane, who was brought from Greenwich to the Tower and was received there as queen on 10 July 1553, was proclaimed at four usual places in London by William Garrard the sheriff with two heralds and their trumpeters.

As many rallied to Mary in East Anglia and proclaimed her the rightful successor, the Duke of Northumberland went off to forestall her approach to London, taking many of the lords and knights with him and many of the men of arms.

Sir Ralph's funeral occurred on 17 July: in his procession to St Benet Sherehog were borne five pennons of arms and a standard, his coat armour, helmet, mantle and crest with twelve dozen escutcheons.

Charles Wriothesley, in his Chronicle, relates that on 19 July 1553 Barne had a secret meeting with the Earl of Shrewsbury and Sir John Mason (Clerk to the Council) at Paul's Wharf, who summoned him to meet privately with the Council an hour later at the Earl of Pembroke's place at Baynard's Castle, with his sheriffs and whichever of the aldermen he thought best.

(Thomas Lodge was chosen by the Commons on 1 August for the other sheriff: but he delayed in Flanders, and the office fell eventually upon William Hewett.)

[34] Matters being so settled, on 3 August 1553 Queen Mary made her formal entry into the City from Whitechapel, on a palfrey, fully costumed, with more than five hundred lords, knights, ladies and gentlemen in velvet coats, and all the king's trumpeters, heralds and serjeants-at-arms riding with her in procession.

This so angered the crowd that, amidst the shouting and commotion, one man threw a dagger at the preacher, which struck part of the pulpit.

Barne accordingly had all the Commons of the Livery appear at the Guildhall on 15 August, where Mr Recorder asked them to state whether they would stand by the Lord Mayor, and see these malefactors punished and reformed, or whether they would prefer to have their liberties taken away.

The answer was given that, with the good help and means of the Lord Mayor and his brethren, they would be aiding and assisting so that the queen should have no further complaint against them, and that the malefactors should be punished.

The next day the Mayor received instruction from the queen to bring 50 of the leading city commoners and Common Council to the Tower of London, to hear the Duke of Northumberland, at a Roman Mass of Holy Communion in the Tower Chapel, confess his long error from the true Catholic faith and his wish that his hearers should avoid such ill doctrines as his.

[48] Sir George Barne the elder's arms were formerly "Argent, on a chevron wavy azure between three barnacles proper, three trefoils slipped of the first."

"[49] The Barne arms are shown in the 1568 Visitation of London[3] as, Quarterly: Crest: On a mound vert an eagle rising argent, beaked and ducally gorged or.