ABSTRACT
The Thames has played its part through the centuries in bringing different sections of the people together to mark national events as part of a wider iconography of populism. This chapter focuses on three festival occasions that took place on the Thames. It describes feature three waterborne pageants, each a royal entry into London: the river procession from Greenwich to the Tower of London on the afternoon of 29 May 1533, three days before the coronation of Anne Boleyn; the procession of Charles II and his new Portuguese wife, Catherine of Braganza, from Hampton Court to Whitehall, on 23 August 1662; and the river procession from Putney down the Thames to Tower Bridge, at high water on Sunday 3 June 2012, as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations for Queen Elizabeth II to mark the sixtieth anniversary of her accession to the throne in 1952.
