Above: “The Triumphall Entertainment of ye King and Queenes Matie by ye... Maior of London at their coming from Hampton Court to Whitehall”, or the marriage of King Charles II and Catherine of Braganza on 23 August 1662
the wynde. On the outside of the barge were thre dosen scochyons (escutcheons) in metal of armes of the kyng and the queens.”
The escorting barge on the Lord Mayor’s port side carried the Queen’s emblem, consisting of a crowned white falcon with red and white roses, surrounded by virgins singing and playing sweetly. Such festivities were a distant memory by the time Anne Boleyn made the same journey three years later under very different circumstances that ultimately led to her execution.
‘ANCIENT BRITAIN REVIVED’ At the end of her daughter’s reign in 1603, a torch-lit barge draped in black brought Queen Elizabeth I’s coffin down the Thames from Richmond Palace to Whitehall to lie in state. Seven years later, the river was a focal point for the celebrations to mark the creation of her successor’s eldest son as Prince of Wales. To ensure his heir’s profile remained in check, King James I arranged for Prince Henry to travel to the capital for the investiture ceremonies by water rather than riding through the streets in a grand procession. The Lord Mayor was given just six days’ notice to lay on an official welcome along the lines of his annual pageant, rather than the more elaborate festivities normally given to royalty. As Prince Henry’s barge made its way down the Thames from Richmond Palace, he was met by a flotilla of decorated barges laid on by the Livery Companies. A programme of entertainment was
hurriedly assembled with the theme of ‘Ancient Britain revived in her Prince’, which culminated in Prince Henry’s official reception on the steps of Whitehall. One of the river’s greatest pageants was organised 52 years later to celebrate the marriage of King Charles II to Catherine of Braganza. The celebrations began as the royal couple travelled downstream from Hampton Court to Whitehall on 23 August 1662. Noted diarist John Evelyn sailed among the boats and later wrote: “I was a
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spectator of the most magnificent triumph that ever floated on the Thames, considering the innumerable boats and vessels, dressed and adorned with all imaginable pomp, but, above all, the thrones, arches, pageants and other representations, stately barges of the Lord Mayor and Companies, with various inventions, music and peals of ordnance both from the vessels and the shore, going to meet and conduct the new Queen from Hampton Court to Whitehall. “In my opinion, it far exceeded all the Venetian Bucentoras on the Ascension, when they go to espouse the Adriatic. His Majesty and the Queen came in an antique-shaped open vessel, covered with a state, or canopy, of cloth of gold, made in form of a cupola, supported with high Corinthian pillars, wreathed with flowers, festoons, and garlands.”
“The most magnificent triumph that ever floated on the Thames”
Describing the events from his vantage point on top of the Banqueting House, the equally renowned diarist Samuel Pepys, wrote: “Anon come the King and Queene in a barge under a canopy, with 1,000 barges and boats I know for we could see no water for them, nor discern the King nor Queene. And so they landed at White Hall Bridge, and the great guns on the other side went off.” The coronation of King Charles II’s younger brother in 1685 triggered another major celebration on the Thames, when King James II travelled by river to Westminster. A day later, yachts, barges and wherries gathered by Whitehall Palace to witness a magnificent fireworks display set off from floating pontoons. The scenes were immortalised in pencil sketches by the renowned Dutch artist Willem van de Velde the Elder. Despite its promising start, King James II’s reign was brought to a premature end in 1689 by his avowed Catholicism. His daughter Mary and son-in-law William of Orange succeeded him as joint rulers. In the year of their coronation, King William III commissioned an elegant 41ft (12.5m) rowing barge known as the Queen’s Shallop. Remarkably, she
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