Event Comment: Edition of 1662: Being a True Relation of the Honourable the City of Londons Entertaining
Their Sacred Majesties Upon the River of
Thames, and Welcoming them from
Hampton-Court to
White-Hall. Expressed and set forth in several Shews and Pageants, the 23 day of August 1662. According to the printed version, the management of the pageant was under the care of
Peter Mills, Surveyor;
Malin, Water Bayliff;
Thomas Whiting, Joyner;
Richard Cleere, Carver. The songs were set by
John Gamble, one of His Majesty's Servants.
Evelyn, Diary: I this day was spectator of the most magnificent Triumph that certainly ever floted on the thames, considering the innumerable number of boates & Vessels, dressed and adorned with all imaginable Pomp: but above all, the Thrones, Arches, Pageants, & other representations, stately barges of the
Lord Major, & Companies, with various Inventions, musique, & Peales of Ordnance both from the vessels & shore, going to meete & Conduct the new
Queene from Hampton Court to White-hall, at the first time of her Coming to Towne.... his Majestie & the Queene, came in an antique-shaped open Vessell, convered with a State or Canopy of Cloth of Gold, made in forme of a Cupola, supported with high Corinthian Pillars, wreathd with flowers, festoones & Gyrlands:
Pepys, Diary: We got into White Hall garden, and so to the Bowling-
green, and up to the top of the new Banqueting House there, over the thames, which was a most pleasant place as any I could have got; and all the show consisted chiefly in the number of boats and barges; and two pageants, one of a King, and another of a Queen, with her Maydes of Honour sitting at her feet very prettily; and they tell me the Queen is
Sir Richard Ford's daughter. Anon come the King and Queen in a barge under a canopy with 10,000 barges and boats, I think, for we could see no water for them, nor discern the King nor Queen. And so they landed at
White Hall Bridge, and the great guns on the other side went off