Last week there was Swan-upping on the Thames.
Nearly 750 years ago that traveling Plantagenet, Richard Coeur de Lion, on one of his infrequent visits to England, imported the white swan and decreed that it was a "bird royal," to be owned only by the king and a few favored nobles. Later this privilege was extended to two great medieval corporations, the Honorable Company of Vintners and the Worshipful Guild of Dyers. A ceremony was instituted, whereby representatives of the King, of the Vintners and of the Dyers were to row up the Thames...
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