[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 the king’s and queen’s arms at her head and stern, besides a variety of flags and streamers, containing the arms of that company, and those of the merchant adventurers; besides which, the shrouds and ratlines were hung with a number of small bells:  on the left was a barge that contained a very beautiful mount, on which stood a white falcon crowned, perched upon a golden stump, enriched with roses, being the queen’s emblem; and round the mount sat several beautiful virgins, singing, and playing upon instruments.  The other barges followed, in regular order, till they came below Greenwich.  On their return the procession began with that barge which was before the last, in which were the mayor’s and sheriff’s officers, and this was followed by those of the inferior companies,