Demise of the Crown: A fateful year

As the official public record since 1665, The Gazette has been recording the deaths of monarchs for over three centuries. As part of our ‘Demise of the Crown’ series, historian Russell Malloch looks through the archives at The Gazette’s reporting of events following the demise of Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, and her mother, the Duchess of Kent.

Chapters

Introduction

Farewell to Westminster

Westminster to Windsor

The three Kings

Death and accession notices

Victorian funerals

1861

Two events led to a number of royal burials at Windsor, but outside the walls of the castle, which unfolded in what for Queen Victoria would be the fateful year of 1861, as it was the year in which she suffered what would prove to be the life-changing loss of her mother and her husband.

The death of the Duchess of Kent and the Prince Consort led to an almost unending outpouring of grief on the part of the Queen, who seems to have eased her pain by creating cenotaphs, erecting statues and commissioning memorials at Windsor, London and other locations across the length and breadth of her realm.

Duchess of Kent

The first blow came in March 1861, when The Gazette reported that the Duchess of Kent (Gazette issue 22491): “departed this life, at Frogmore House, to the great grief of Her Majesty and all the royal family, after long suffering, which she bore with exemplary patience. The Queen, His Royal Highness the Prince Consort, and Her Royal Highness the Princess Alice, who had arrived from London at eight o’clock last night, and remained during the night at Frogmore, were present when the Duchess of Kent expired.”

Frogmore House lies to the south of Windsor Castle and is located within sight of the castle. It was purchased by George III’s wife Charlotte in the 1790s, and after the Queen’s death in 1818 the property was used by their daughter Augusta who died in 1840. In the following year, The Gazette reported the act of parliament that aimed to preserve the integrity of the royal estate by “annexing the mansion house, gardens, and grounds at Frogmore, part of the land revenue of the crown, to Windsor Castle” (Gazette issue 20025).

By the end of 1842 the house had become the home of the Queen’s mother, who was a daughter of the ducal house of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and the widow of Charles, Prince of Leiningen, and then of Victoria’s father Edward, Duke of Kent. She was also the sister of the Reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and of King Leopold I of the Belgians.

The Gazette did not report the funerals of the duchess’s German relatives, but did publish notices about the court mourning to be observed for several relations, who were also part of the sovereign’s close family, as with the black dress code for the Prince of Leiningen, the Queen’s half-brother, in 1856 (Gazette issue 21941).

The mourning notice for the Duchess of Kent extended from April to May 1861 (Gazette issue 22495), and the programme for her funeral was gazetted, which explained that her body was deposited in St George’s Chapel “and will remain until the completion and consecration of the mausoleum, now in the course of construction in the grounds at Frogmore.” (Gazette issue 22496)

The cavalcade at Windsor incorporated household staff, with the duchess’s coronet being carried by an equerry. Six court ladies acted as pall bearers, and the chief mourner was the Queen’s husband Albert, by now the Prince Consort, who was joined by the Prince of Wales and members of French and German courts. Garter King of arms performed his duty, and The Gazette listed the foreign ministers, officers of state and others who were invited to attend, including the British prime minister, Lord Palmerston.

Prince Consort

A harder blow hit the Queen nine months later, when the Prince Consort died at Windsor Castle on 14 December 1861 (Gazette issue 22577). The Gazette lamented that the “death of this illustrious prince will be deeply mourned by all Her Majesty’s faithful and attached subjects as an irreparable loss to Her Majesty, the royal family, and the nation.” This was indeed a rare event in the history of the monarchy, and the first time that a reigning queen’s husband had expired since the death of Prince George of Denmark in 1708.

The Gazette’s account of the ceremonial for Albert’s funeral on 23 December once again referred to the use of a new mausoleum and explained that his remains were “temporarily deposited in the entrance to the royal vault in St George’s Chapel, where they will remain until the completion and consecration of a mausoleum to be erected hereafter.”

The ritual that was observed to lament the prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha followed a fairly predictable course, in terms of recent royal precedents, although it was not a reliable guide as to what was to come as regards the commemoration of a loved one.

At the service, the prince’s groom of the stole bore his crown, while a lord of the bedchamber carried his field-marshal’s baton, sword and hat. The pall bearers were members of Albert’s household, including his treasurer, equerries, grooms and private secretary, and places were allocated to his German valets. The Prince of Wales was the chief mourner, and the British royal family were joined by representatives of the kings of Belgium, Hanover and Saxony, and by French and German princes, together with the Maharaja Duleep Singh, a previous owner of the Koh-i-Noor, the diamond which became part of the crown that lay on the coffin at the funeral of the Queen Mother in 2002.

Albert’s mourning period far exceeded that for any foreign sovereign, and contrasted with the three weeks that were allocated in 1861 to lament the demise of Frederick William IV of Prussia in January (Gazette issue 22468), and Peter V of Portugal in November (Gazette issue 22565). The black dress rule was set at 12 weeks (Gazette issue 22578), which was the same duration as for George IV and William IV. This was the longest mourning period to be ordered for any person other than the sovereign, and had practical consequences in terms of the dress that could be worn by those who attended the levees and drawing rooms that continued to be noticed in The Gazette, and which had survived despite the Queen’s years of withdrawal from public duties.

The Gazette had disclosed mournings for some of Albert’s relations, as with his father, the Reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in 1844 (Gazette issue 20320), his grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg in 1848, and his stepmother, the Dowager Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in 1860 (Gazette issue 22432). The duke who died in 1844 was, of course, a person of note in the history of the British monarchy, as he was the paternal grandfather of a successor to the crown, the future King Edward VII.

Photo of Victoria and Albert on their wedding day by Fenton

Frogmore

Queen Victoria had a passion for grieving for the dead and commissioned two structures at Frogmore in the shadow of Windsor Castle to contain the remains of her mother and husband. The construction of the first mausoleum was a work in progress before the Duchess of Kent died, while the second project was planned before Albert departed this life.

The Queen had visited her husband’s home at Coburg, and learned about a mausoleum being erected to house his family’s remains. There were also events nearer to home that influenced the Queen’s decision to provide something more magnificent than the plain Georgian crypt under the Tomb House at Windsor. On the day after Prince Albert attended Queen Adelaide’s funeral in 1849, the Queen wrote in her journal: “We dined alone & after dinner talked of the funeral, & of building a mausoleum for ourselves.”

The Duchess of Kent had thought about her mortal remains and is said to have wanted to be buried in the ducal mausoleum at Coburg, which Albert helped to design. The building was finished during the 1850s, and Queen Victoria had visited it as recently as 1860, during a trip that was marred by the death of Albert’s stepmother, Mary of Wurttemberg, the dowager duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, whose mourning notice was gazetted in October of that year. The “Kent at Coburg” plan proved to be untenable, and so steps were taken to create a mausoleum for the duchess in the grounds of her home at Frogmore.

The circular building was designed in the style of a Greek temple but was unfinished by the time the duchess died. The structure was, however, capable of being consecrated by Samuel Wilberforce, the bishop of Oxford and chancellor of the Garter, in July 1861, and a few days later the body of the Queen’s mother was removed from the entrance to the royal vault and deposited in her tomb (Gazette issue 22535).

The Prince Consort’s mausoleum was sited less than 100 metres to the east of his mother-in-law’s memorial and was conceived on a far grander scale. The Queen laid the foundation stone in March 1862, and the edifice was ready by 17 December 1862, when the mausoleum was consecrated by Bishop Wilberforce. On the following day, the Prince of Wales attended the transfer of his father’s remains to a temporary sarcophagus at Frogmore (Gazette issue 22691).

The fitting-out of the Romanesque style building took several years to complete, and the sarcophagus that was intended to contain the remains of Albert, and in due course Victoria herself, was not put in place until 1868. The sarcophagus of polished Aberdeen granite was the work of a Scottish stonemason, whose family business won a prize at the Great Exhibition of 1851, which Albert had helped to organise (Gazette issue 21254). The design of MacDonald and Leslie’s prize medal was poignant, as it showed portraits of Victoria and Albert placed together, just as they would later lie side by side in their granite tomb.

The recumbent effigy of the Prince Consort that sat on top of the sarcophagus at Frogmore showed him wearing the mantle of the Garter, together with the collars of the Garter, Thistle and Star of India, and was the first monumental image of a sovereign or their consort to be placed in a royal chapel since Henry VII’s tomb was erected in Westminster Abbey during the early 16^th century.

Albert’s effigy was also the first in a series of memorials that were crafted for Windsor, and ended with a representation of King George V’s widow Mary being shown in her Garter robes and placed in St George’s Chapel after her death in 1953.

Succession to the Crown: From Charles II to Charles III

Succession to the Crown is essential reading for anyone with a keen interest in the British royal family and provides an excellent and trusted source of information for historians, researchers and academics alike. The book takes you on a journey exploring the coronations, honours and emblems of the British monarchy, from the demise of King Charles II in 1685, through to the accession of King Charles III, as recorded in The London Gazette.

Historian Russell Malloch tells the story of the Crown through trusted, factual information found in the UK's official public record. Learn about the traditions and ceremony engrained in successions right up to the demise of Queen Elizabeth II and the resulting proclamation and accession of King Charles III.

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About the author

Russell Malloch is a member of the Orders and Medals Research Society and an authority on British honours. He authored Succession to the Crown: From Charles II to Charles III, which explores the coronations, honours and emblems of the British monarchy.

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Succession to the Crown: - From Charles II to Charles III (TSO shop)

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The Gazette

Russell Malloch