THE Queen is not the first of our monarchs to use the Thames as the backdrop for a spectacular royal occasion.
One of the grandest, the Aqua Triumphalis staged in 1662 by King Charles II to greet his Portuguese wife Catherine of Braganza, was described by Samuel Pepys as “the most magnificent triumph that ever floated on the Thames”.
The diarist secured a prime viewing spot on the roof of the Banqueting House in Whitehall. He put the number of boats and barges at 10,000 and recorded “the innumerable boates and vessells dress’d and adorn’d with all imaginable pomp, but above all the thrones, arches, pageants, and other representations”.
Twelve barges, each carrying a mythological character, delivered an oration to the king and queen, but Pepys found his attention diverted by the sight of Lady Castlemaine, one of the king’s mistresses, and “glutted myself with looking at her”.
The first king to travel to his coronation by river is believed to have been Richard III in 1483. In 1533 the coronation procession of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife, featured about 300 boats which carried her from Greenwich to the Tower of London.
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Lord mayors of London between the 14th and 19th centuries used the Thames in processions to swear allegiance to the monarch, famously captured by Canaletto in his 1748 painting, The Thames on Lord Mayor’s Day.