IN THE 16TH CENTURY the Thames became the river of royal pomp and procession;
this was the river down which Henry VIII, and preeminently Elizabeth I,
sailed in state. It was the river of pageant – gilt barges decorated with
banners and streamers, awnings and tapestries, flags sewn with tiny bells
that rang out in the breeze, musicians playing their sackbuts and cornets
upon the water, barges and galleys swathed in cloth of gold and arras. It
was the river of pleasure, and the river of spectacle. It was the stage upon
which the rulers and principals of the kingdom could display themselves to
the populace. It was the theatre of water.
Anne Boleyn, dressed in cloth of gold, processed down the Thames for her
coronation in 1533; it was said that the barges following her stretched for
four miles. On that day, according to contemporary reports, “there were
trumpets, shawms, and other divers instruments, all the way playing and
making great melody”. The barges themselves were “gorgeously garnished with
banners, pennons and targets richly covered”. The state barge of the lord
mayor led the procession “adorned by flags and pennons hung with rich
tapestries and ornamented on the outside with scutcheons of metal, suspended
on cloth of gold and silver”. It was the triumph of the Thames as much as of
the ill-fated queen. The Thames was the appropriate setting for extravagance
and conspicuous wealth.
It was the same river that carried Anne Boleyn to her beheading three years
later; it was the same route, from Greenwich to the Tower, but the river was
now the baleful conduit of death. This was also the river upon which Sir
Thomas More, and later the young Princess Elizabeth, were taken to the
Tower. It was the river down which the body of Elizabeth was taken to the
Palace of Whitehall. In Annales Britannia (1615) William Camden wrote
that: The Queen was brought by water to Whitehall, At every stroake the oars
did let tears fall: More clung about the Barge fish under water Wept out
their eyes of pearl, and swam blind after.
It was the river that seemed to curl through the affairs of state, noble or
ignoble, bloody or benign, and was an intrinsic part of royal London. That
is also why the great palaces of the nobility and the clergy were built on
the banks of the river, so that they might be near the ultimate source of
power. Although the belief in the water’s divinity had apparently been
dispelled, the continuing invocation of nymphs and sea gods – not least in
the Thames pageants – suggests that there was some residual faith in the
deities of the river. It was the river that blessed the monarch, not the
reverse.
The Thames was seen as the microcosm of the kingdom, incorporating past and
present, the world of pastoral and the world of the city, the centre of
secular as well as of religious activities, the site of sports and carnivals.
It was also the highway along which all the traffic of London passed – not
just for the fishermen in their coracles, and not just for the merchants in
their vessels from Spain and the Low Countries, but for the ordinary
citizens who used the Thames as the most convenient means of transport
through London. Of course they travelled across the water from north to
south, especially when London Bridge was busy and crowded, but also they
sailed along the north bank to the various “stairs” where they could alight
and continue their journey. The streets of the city were narrow and
perilous, and it was considered safer and easier to travel by water. The
number of small boats, barges, lighters, tilt-boats and ferries upon the
river was a source of perpetual interest to foreign observers. And of course
there were hundreds of watermen with their boats for hire, the water
continually in motion with their labouring oars. There were many occasions
when the press of boats was so great that traffic came to a halt in what
became known as a “lock” or “jam”. This was the Thames well known and even
celebrated for its crowded wharves and busy shores. It is not at all
surprising that the citizens congregated along its banks, since in the 16th
century the majority of Londoners still earned their living directly or
indirectly from the river. From a distance, it was said, the Thames looked
like a forest of masts. At any one time there were estimated to be some
2,000 vessels on the water, as well as 3,000 watermen.
It was the river down which the first explorers sailed. Hugh Willoughby and
Richard Chancellor set sail from Deptford in 1553, with a letter addressed
to “all kings, princes, rulers, judges, and governors of the earth”. At a
later date Colonel John Smith left from Blackwall and, after a perilous
voyage, established the colony of Jamestown in Virginia. The Mayflower
sailed from Rotherhithe. It seemed then that the waters of the world might
be interpreted as one extended Thames.
So when Wenceslaus Hollar depicted the river in the 1630s, in his famous
panoramic map of London, it was appropriate that he should depict the banks
and stairs, wherries and barges, as combined in a vast network of activity.
In contrast the streets and houses of the city seem deserted, as if all the
energy and business of London were concentrated upon the flowing Thames.
Below London Bridge the great merchant ships are docked while Mercury, the
god of commerce, is pointing to the cartouche of “LONDON” itself. This vista
became the model for many later maps and representations, so that the
prospect of London stretching from the river became the single most
important vision of the city. The Thames represented the city’s destiny. It
was how London was imagined. THE REBUILDING OF London after the Fire of
course greatly changed the prospect of the city from the Thames. It also
altered the appearance of the banks themselves. The warehouses and quays,
destroyed or damaged, were rebuilt. The streets leading down from the City
were also rebuilt, their houses now constructed of russet or yellow brick,
and above the roofs rose the gleaming steeples of the 51 churches that
Christopher Wren, the king’s Assistant Surveyor-General, restored or built
again. It was a more solid, a grander, riverscape than that of the medieval
or Tudor city.
The king had decreed that “we do resolve and declare that there shall be a
fair key or wharf on all the river side”. As a result there emerged a plan
for a continuous Thames Quay, a model of progress and efficiency on the
north bank of the Thames that would complete London’s preeminence as a
trading nation. It was to take the place of the jumble of wooden sheds and
warehouses, stairs and alleys, that characterised the old riverscape.
It did not quite succeed. Below the bridge, private and unplanned quays had
already been erected, before the programme of public works had begun; they
had been needed immediately after the Fire, not least to bring provisions
and materials for the army of building workers who had migrated to the city
in the first stages of rebuilding. It did not seem practicable to begin
again.
The rebuilding was occasional and sporadic. But there were specific
accomplishments. Houses were erected along the side of the river in more
orderly fashion. And there were additions to the litany of great buildings
along the Thames. Preeminent among them stood the cathedral church of St
Paul, with its dome of shining Portland stone. Wren changed the Thames just
as he changed London; he designed the hospital at Chelsea for wounded
soldiers, and then the hospital at Greenwich for naval men. The official or
administrative life of the river was partly his invention.
It was now being celebrated as the calm river, the river that did not rage,
the river without extremes, the river that did not generally overflow its
banks in excessive vigour. In that sense it became an image of the new
dispensation of the renewed kingdom, averse to extremism and the enthusiasm
of any faction. The river incorporated the myth of the nation.
© Peter Ackroyd 2007; edited extract from Thames: Sacred River (Chatto &
Windus)
