ransaction
should be forgotten in the splendour of the coronation. If there was
scandal in the condition of the queen, yet under another aspect that
condition was matter of congratulation to a people so eager for an heir;
and Henry may have thought that the sight for the first time in public of
so beautiful a creature, surrounded by the most magnificent pageant which
London had witnessed since the unknown day on which the first stone of it
was laid, and bearing in her bosom the long-hoped-for inheritor of the
English crown, might induce a chivalrous nation to forget what it was the
interest of no loyal subject to remember longer, and to offer her an
English welcome to the throne.

In anticipation of the timely close of the proceedings at Dunstable, notice
had been given in the city early in May, that preparations should be made
for the coronation on the first of the following month. Queen Anne was at
Greenwich, but, according to custom, the few preceding days were to be
spent at the Tower; and on the 19th of May, she was conducted thither in
state by the lord mayor and the city companies, with one of those splendid
exhibitions upon the water which in the days when the silver Thames
deserved its name, and the sun could shine down upon it out of the blue
summer sky, were spectacles scarcely rivalled in gorgeousness by the
world-famous wedding of the Adriatic. The river was crowded with boats, the
banks and the ships in the pool swarmed with people; and fifty great barges
formed the procession, all blazing with gold and banners. The queen herself
was in her own barge, close to that of the lord mayor; and in keeping with
the fantastic genius of the time, she was preceded up the water by "a foyst
or wafter full or ordnance, in which was a great dragon continually moving
and casting wildfire, and round about the foyst stood terrible monsters and
wild men, casting fire and making hideous noise."[434] So, with trumpets
blowing, cannon pealing, the Tower guns answering the guns of the ships, in
a blaze of fireworks and splendour, Anne Boleyn was borne along to the
great archway of the Tower, where the king was waiting on the stairs to
receive her.

And now let us suppose eleven days to have elapsed, the welcome news to
have arrived at length from Dunstable, and the fair summer morning of life
dawning in treacherous beauty after the long night of expectation. No
bridal ceremonial had been possible; the marriage had been huddled o