with rich hangings and statues; and there the king
dined, and the lords on either side, at tables provided for them:
and all other ceremonies were performed with great order and
magnificence.--Life of lord Clarendon, p. 187.

[3] In order to convey to the reader some idea, how highly parade and
magnificence were estimated by our ancestors, on these solemn
occasions, I shall take notice of the manner of conducting lady Anne
Boleyn from Greenwich, previous to her coronation, as it is recited
by Stow.

King Henry the eighth (says that historian) having divorced queen
Catherine, and married Anne Boleyn, or Boloine, who was descended
from Godfrey Boloine, mayor of the city of London, and intending her
coronation, sent to order the lord mayor, not only to make all the
preparations necessary for conducting his royal consort from
Greenwich, by water, to the Tower of London but to adorn the city
after the most magnificent manner, for her passage through it to
Westminster.

In obedience to the royal precept, the mayor and common council not
only ordered the company of haberdashers, of which the lord mayor
was a member, to prepare a magnificent state barge; but enjoined all
the city corporations to provide themselves with barges, and to
adorn them in the most superb manner, and especially to have them
supplied with good bands of music.

On the 29th of May, the time prefixed for this pompous procession by
water the mayor, aldermen, and commons, assembled at St. Mary hill;
the mayor and aldermen in scarlet, with gold chains, and those who
were knights, with the collars of SS. At one they went on board the
city barge at Billingsgate, which was most magnificently decorated,
and attended by fifty noble barges, belonging to the several
companies of the city, with each its own corporation on board; and,
for the better regulation of this procession, it was ordered, that
each barge should keep twice their lengths asunder.

Thus regulated, the city barge was preceded by another mounted with
ordnance, and the figures of dragons, and other monsters,
incessantly emitting fire and smoke, with much noise. Then the city
barge, attended on the right by the haberdashers' state barge,
called the bachelors', which was covered with gold brocade, and
adorned with sails of silk, with two rich standards of t