ed to render the public entry of queen
Elizabeth the most gorgeous and at the same time the most interesting
spectacle of the kind ever exhibited in the English metropolis.

[Note 38: As long as that style of domestic architecture prevailed
in which every story was made to project considerably beyond the one
beneath it, the upper room, from its superior size and lightsomeness,
appears to have been that dedicated to the entertainment of guests.]

Her majesty was first to be conducted from her palace in Westminster to
the royal apartments in the Tower; and a splendid water procession was
appointed for the purpose. At this period, when the streets were narrow
and ill-paved, the roads bad, and the luxury of close carriages unknown,
the Thames was the great thoroughfare of the metropolis. The old palace
of Westminster, as well as those of Richmond and Greenwich, the favorite
summer residences of the Tudor princes, stood on its banks, and the
court passed from one to the other in barges. The nobility were
beginning to occupy with their mansions and gardens the space between
the Strand and the water, and it had become a reigning folly amongst
them to vie with each other in the splendor of their barges and of the
liveries of the rowers, who were all distinguished by the crests or
badges of their lords.

The corporation and trading companies of London possessed, as now, their
state-barges enriched with carved and gilded figures and "decked and
trimmed with targets and banners of their misteries."

On the 12th of January 1559 these were all drawn forth in grand array;
and to enliven the pomp, "the bachelor's barge of the lord-mayor's
company, to wit the mercers, had their barge with a _foist_ trimmed with
three tops and artillery aboard, gallantly appointed to wait upon them,
shooting off lustily as they went, with great and pleasant melody of
instruments, which played in most sweet and heavenly manner." In this
state they rowed up to Westminster and attended her majesty with the
royal barges back to the Tower.

Her passage through the city took place two days after.

She issued forth drawn in a sumptuous chariot, preceded by trumpeters
and heralds in their coat-armour and "most honorably accompanied as well
with gentlemen, barons, and other the nobility of this realm, as also
with a notable train of goodly and beautiful ladies, richly appointed."
The ladies were on horseback, and both they and the lords were habited
in cri