ABSTRACT
On 10 January 1608, the River Thames invaded James I’s brand new Banqueting House at Whitehall. Flooding was, and remained, a common enough occurrence there: indeed Pepys later noted, after an exceptionally high tide in December 1663, that all Whitehall had been ‘drowned’.1 In 1608, however, the river had not overflowed its banks but was simply ‘personated by Master Thomas Giles’, dancing master, who – crowned with flowers, and wearing a blue cloth of silver – leaned upon an urn that did, indeed, flow with water. The occasion was Jonson’s Masque of Beautie in which Vulturnus, a south-easterly wind, addressed the Thames thus:
Rise, aged Thames, and by the hand Receive these Nymphes, within the land: And, in those curious Squares, and Rounds, Wherewith thou flow’st betwixt the grounds Of fruitfull Kent, and Essex faire, That lend thee gyrlands for thy hayre; Instruct their silver feete to tread, Whilst we, againe to sea, are fled.
