Members of the Royal Family will pay their respects to the Queen Mother today as her coffin rests at St James's Palace after a solemn journey from Windsor on Tuesday witnessed by crowds of people.

The indomitable matriarch died on Easter Saturday at the age of 101.

Parliament will also pay tribute to the Queen Mother on Wednesday as MPs and peers return early from their Easter break.

Prime Minister Tony Blair will lead the tributes, followed by speeches from Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith and Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy.

The Queen Mother's coffin, draped in her own standard, was taken on Tuesday from the chapel of All Saints in Windsor Great Park to the strains of a lone piper's Highland lament.

Flanked by police outriders, the black hearse was then driven to the Queen's Chapel in London's St James's Palace. The coffin will be moved to Westminster Hall on Friday where it will lie in state for four days.

A sprinkling of onlookers lined the hearse's route into the capital. But crowds swelled to several hundred people outside Buckingham Palace. In soft spring sunshine, they stood up to three deep against the railings.

As the hearse swept into view for the last leg of its journey, people fell silent, bowing their heads and crossing themselves.

It was a low-key procession with none of the pomp and circumstance planned for next Tuesday's funeral in Westminster Abbey. Officials at Buckingham Palace called the move "an administrative manoeuvre".

The Palace said senior members of the royal family will walk behind the coffin when it is moved by horse-drawn gun carriage on Friday in a ceremonial procession to Westminster Hall.

The coffin will pass a statue of the Queen Mother's beloved "Bertie" -- her late husband King George VI who died half a century before her.

Officials expect up to 400,000 people to file past the coffin to pay their last respects to the feisty figurehead who saw the monarchy buffeted through seven decades of change.

The most moving tribute to the Queen Mother was offered by her grandson, heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles.

The prince, grief etched on his face in a television broadcast on Monday, said: "She seemed gloriously unstoppable."

With his eyes filling with tears, Charles said: "She was quite simply the most magical grandmother you could possibly have and I was utterly devoted to her."

It was a strong expression of raw emotion from the House of Windsor -- and a sharp contrast to the monarchy's perceived coldness when Princess Diana died in a Paris car crash in 1997.

The royal family was accused of being uncaring as Britain was engulfed by a tidal wave of sorrow over the tragic death of the "People's Princess".

The reaction after the Queen Mother's death has been much more muted -- but more than 500 bouquets of flowers were left outside the chapel in Windsor Castle.