nd Corporation of London joined with the King's retinue in
lining each side of this long lane. Cromwell had recently gained the
goodwill of foreigners settled in London by granting them exemption from
special taxation for a term of years, and he had claimed, as some return,
that they should make the most of this day of triumph. Accordingly, the
German merchants of the Steelyard, the Venetians, the Spaniards, the
French, and the rest of them, donned new velvet coats and jaunty crimson
caps with white feathers, each master with a smartly clad servant behind
him, and so stood each side of the way to do honour to the bride at the
Greenwich end of the route. Then came the English merchants, the
Corporation of London, the knights and gentlemen who had been bidden from
the country to do honour to their new Queen, the gentlemen pensioners, the
halberdiers, and, around the tent, the nobler courtiers and Queen's
household, all brave in velvet and gold chains.[201] Behind the ranks of
gentlemen and servitors there was ample room and verge enough upon the
wide heath for the multitudes who came to gape and cheer King Harry's new
wife; more than a little perplexed in many cases as to the minimum amount
of enthusiasm which would be accepted as seemly. Cromwell himself
marshalled the ranks on either side, "running up and down with a staff in
his hand, for all the world as if he had been a running postman," as an
eye-witness tells us.

It was midday before the Queen's procession rode down Shooter's Hill to
the tents, where she was met by her official household and greeted with a
long Latin oration which she did not understand, whilst she sat in her
chariot. Then heartily kissing the great ladies sent to welcome her, she
alighted and entered the tent to rest and warm herself over the perfumed
fires, and to don even more magnificent raiment than that she wore. When
she was ready for her bridegroom's coming she must have been a blaze of
magnificence. She wore a wide skirt of cloth of gold with a raised pattern
in bullion and no train, and her head was covered first with a close cap
and then a round cap covered with pearls and fronted with black velvet;
whilst her bodice was one glittering mass of precious stones. When swift
messengers brought news that the King was coming, Anne mounted at the door
of the tent a beautiful white palfrey; and surrounded by her servitors,
each bearing upon his golden coat the black lion of Cleves, and followed