‘Trooping the Colour’: The History of the King’s Birthday Parade
Date: 20 June 2025
Author: Dr Jemima HubbersteyIt was during the Georgian era that King’s Birthday Parade, or ‘Trooping the Colour’, became a new royal tradition. But when exactly did this famous tradition start? And how else did the monarchs celebrate their birthdays?
Here, Jemima Hubberstey, Research Officer at Historic Royal Palaces, explores the history of royal birthday traditions.
Throughout the Georgian era (1714-1837), the king’s birthday was always marked with a few special traditions: gun salutes from the Tower of London and Hyde Park and a splendid ball at court. A royal birthday was often a chance for widespread festivities too – for instance, for the 26th birthday of George III, newspapers reported celebrations throughout London, including bonfires, illuminations and a particularly grand firework display on Tower Hill.
By the early nineteenth-century, the Birthday Parade was fixed as another royal tradition. In 1819, one London guidebook declared that ‘the picturesque ceremony of ‘Trooping the Colour’ is annually performed on the official birthday of the King.’
What is ‘Trooping the Colour’?
The practice began so that troops would recognise their regimental flag (or ‘colours’) as a rallying point during battle. During ‘Trooping the Colour’, officers marched slowly between ranks of soldiers, holding up the regimental flag. But when did this tradition start?
Image: King Charles III Coronation Gun Salute on the Tower Wharf, 2023. © Historic Royal Palaces.
Tracing traditions
It is often thought that 1748 was the first year of the Birthday Parade, during the reign of George II – though there is sparse historical evidence. There is a reference to ‘keeping’ or celebrating the birthday in 1748 in the Grenadier Guards order books.
These were record books used by a regiment to document daily orders, activities and other important information. On 30 November 1748, there is an instruction for ‘an additional Guard of a Subaltern Officer, 2 Sergeants, 2 Corporals and 40 Private Men’ to be ‘added to the King’s Guard on Friday next being the Day appointed for keeping His Majesty’s Birthday’.
But there is no specific mention of a parade, and this order is more likely referring to the need for additional guards at the palace for the King’s birthday ball. During the birthday balls, dense crowds would bustle around the gates of St James’s Palace, all hoping to catch a glimpse of the glamorous guests with their crested carriages, liveried footmen and dazzling dress.
(Re)Belles of the ball
The King’s and Queen’s birthday balls were the most extravagant events of the royal calendar, and attendees were expected to buy the best clothes they could afford. It was rumoured that for George II’s birthday in 1752, Augusta, the Dowager Princess of Wales, planned to wear a gown ‘of White & Gold of 6£ per yard’.
To put that in perspective, one yard cost roughly twice the annual salary of a housemaid – and several yards would have been needed to create the wide-skirted mantua, such as the one pictured here.
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This mantua showcases the elaborate gowns worn by guests attending royal birthday balls.
Image: The Rockingham Mantua, Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection. © Historic Royal Palaces/ Image captured by Google.
And many tried to keep up with these fashions.
In 1741, Horace Walpole, writer and notorious society gossip, ordered a suit from Paris especially for the King’s birthday ball, writing to a friend of his ‘fright about my birthday clothes’ when they had still not arrived. When it did arrive on the day of the ball, he judged his own suit ‘the most superb’ of all.
Yet some resented having to dress up for the birthday.
The literary hostess, Jemima Marchioness Grey, had to be practically dragged from her country house salons to instead ‘put on a fine Gown & be a Marchioness in a Crowd at Court’ for the King’s birthday in 1747.
Frances Boscawen, member of the Bluestocking Circle – a group of writers, translators and conversationalists who championed women’s intellectual pursuits, also begrudged the expectation of attending court in expensive clothes. She complained, ‘I hate to pay for fine clothes; I hate the trouble of buying them and, more, the trouble of wearing them.’
Image: 18th Century Court Suit, Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection. © Historic Royal Palaces/Image captured by Google
Origins of the Birthday Parade
Both George I and II had fashioned themselves as martial monarchs and made public appearances at military reviews. These reviews, involving displays of drills and manoeuvres, served an important training purpose for soldiers, but they also became popular public spectacles.
George III was no exception in his enthusiastic support for the army, regularly visiting troops and attending military reviews. From 1777, he even made uniforms a part of regular court dress with the ‘Windsor Uniform’.
From 1777, George III even made uniforms a regular part of court dress with the ‘Windsor Uniform’, which he wears in this portrait by Peter Edward Stroeling.
Image: George III by Peter Edward Stroehling. © Royal Collection Enterprises Ltd 2025 | Royal Collection Trust
Image: J. Marshall, The Grand Review in Hyde Park of the Volunteer Corps by his Majesty on his Birth Day, June 4 1799. Image courtesy of the National Army Museum, London.
On 4 June 1799, there was a grand review of the Volunteer Corps in Hyde Park, which fell on George III’s birthday.
The New Annual Register declared, ‘at no time, during the whole of his majesty’s reign, was the anniversary of his birth celebrated with more splendid demonstrations of joy’, adding that the sight of the troops and the waving crowds ‘is said to have drawn tears of joy’ from the King.
George III’s enthusiasm for these military reviews is likely the reason that a special birthday parade was later added as a formal part of the royal celebrations.
‘In Honour of His Majesty’s Birth Day’
The first reference to a specific birthday parade for the King is in 1805. The regimental order book from 1803-1807 shows a command from the George III’s second son, Frederick, Duke of York, then commander-in-chief of the British Army:
‘…the first brigade of Grenadiers, now in London, shall Parade in St James’s Park in full dress and white gaiters at the usual hour for Guard on Tuesday 4th June in Honor of His Majesty’s Birth Day.’
After 1805, the Birthday Parade became an annual event, although with the tradition still in its infancy and perhaps not rehearsed as well as it is today, there appears to have been some confusion among the troops about exact parade protocol.
On 4 June 1807, one regretful entry to the regimental order book for 1807 – 1812 notes that during the Birthday Parade, ‘the Non-Commissioned Officers marched past H.R.H. the Duke of York some with their arms advanced in the right hands & some in the left’, adding ‘they are to be warned of the impropriety that it may be prevented in future, and their arms carried in the proper hand.’
After 1810, celebrations were scaled back due to George III’s final period of illness, which confined him to Windsor. However, there were still instructions in the regimental order book for the King’s Guard to mount ‘in white Gaiters on his Majesty’s Birth Day with the King’s Colour’.
Why does the King have two birthdays?
The day the birthday was ‘kept’, or officially celebrated, was not always on the monarch’s actual birthday. But Edward VII standardised the summer ‘official’ birthday celebrations, so they always took place in June.
The late Queen Elizabeth II initially marked her ‘official’ birthday on the second Thursday of June, the same day as her father, King George VI. However, in 1959, she changed it to the second Saturday of June.
King Charles III has decided to keep the same date for his official celebration.
Into the modern era
The Birthday Parade soon became a familiar part of royal celebrations, becoming a feature in the reigns of George IV and William IV too.
In Queen Victoria’s journals, she wrote about attending her uncle William’s Birthday Parade on Sunday 21 August 1836, and before long, she was writing about her own. On 21 May 1841, she described watching her husband, Prince Albert, ‘in uniform, ride off, with a large suite to attend the Birthday Parade & Trooping of Colours at the Horse Guards.’
Through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with only a few exceptions, including the two World Wars, the tradition of the Birthday Parade has continued every year. While the Birthday Parade isn’t the oldest royal tradition, it has certainly become one of the most iconic events that is still celebrated to this day.
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