Demise of the Crown: #14: Beyond Windsor

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 Victorian demise events in Sandringham and the Isle of Wight.

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Sandringham

Two sovereigns passed away at Sandringham House, the royal residence that was created by the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) in Norfolk, near King’s Lynn, and more than one hundred miles to the north of London. The house was also the setting for the demise of other members of the royal family, among them two of Queen Victoria’s grandsons, one of whom was the second in the line of succession to the crown when he expired.

Sandringham was never the location of a sovereign’s burial, but The Gazette of 1871 reported the birth and death of Prince Alexander of Wales, at his father’s recently acquired country home. The prince was the first of seven of Victoria’s grandchildren to die during her lifetime, and The Gazette (Gazette issue 23728) published a brief account of his funeral ceremony, which explained that the remains of the infant prince “were interred in a vault in Sandringham churchyard, in the county of Norfolk.”

The service in April 1871 was conducted by the dean of Windsor, assisted by the rector of Sandringham, and the child’s remains were followed to the grave by the Prince of Wales, and his two surviving sons, as well as “the tenantry of the Sandringham Estate”. Both of the young princes who witnessed this melancholy event also died at Sandringham: Albert Victor, later Duke of Clarence, did so in 1892, while George, later King George V, expired there in 1936.

The royal presence in rural Norfolk came to the public’s notice for a second time in 1871, after the Prince of Wales fell seriously ill and came close to death. The Queen spent most of November and December of that year with her son and was at Sandringham on what she described as the “dreadful anniversary” of the loss of the Prince Consort.

The heir to the throne survived his ordeal, and The Gazette published the ceremonial for the service that was held in St Paul’s Cathedral in February 1872 to give thanks for his recovery (Gazette issue 23836), as well as the letter the Queen sent to the prime minister, William Gladstone, to express publicly her “own personal very deep sense of the reception she and her dear children met with […] from millions of her subjects, on her way to and from St Paul’s” (Gazette issue 23835).

The thanksgiving service provided an example of court mourning being put on hold for a specific reason, as the black dress code for the Queen’s niece, the Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen, was suspended for one day to take account of the celebration for the recovery of the Prince of Wales (Gazette issue 23827).

20 years later, The Gazette reported the death of Prince Albert Victor of Wales, but it did not record the previous loss of, or the funeral arrangements for, any of Victoria’s other grandchildren:

Frederick of Hesse, who perished at the age of two years, after falling from his mother’s bedroom window in May 1873.
Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein, who died when he was only a few days old in May 1876.
Mary of Hesse, who died of diphtheria at four years old in November 1878.

The Queen’s Schleswig-Holstein grandson was the child of Princess Helena, and was interred in the Georgian crypt at Windsor, while provision was made for the children of Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, to be laid to rest at their home at Darmstadt in Germany.

The Gazette of the 1870s did, however, report the arrangements that were announced by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office to mourn the passing of Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein (Gazette issue 24329) and Mary of Hesse (Gazette issue 24647).

Sandringham House

Duke of Clarence

The Gazette published the ceremonial for the events that were organised in January 1892 after the Prince of Wales’s eldest son, the Duke of Clarence, died at Sandringham House and was “a lamentable loss to Her Majesty and to his illustrious parents and relatives.” (Gazette issue 26245)

A preliminary service to allow the family to grieve for its lamentable loss was held in St Mary Magdalene Church at Sandringham, and a gun carriage procession then conveyed the prince’s remains to Wolferton Station, with the coffin being followed by the prince’s father and brother George, now Duke of York, along with family members and people from the Sandringham Estate. On its arrival at Windsor, the casket was borne by a party from the Duke of Clarence’s troop of the 10^th Royal Hussars, and the prince’s funeral service was conducted in St George’s Chapel (Gazette issue 26254).

As fate would have it, the 1892 sequence of death and an initial religious service at Sandringham, followed by an informal procession of family and estate workers, and a railway journey to St George’s Chapel, was what happened with the remains of King George V in 1936 and King George VI in 1952, although with the additional step of a lying in state in Westminster Hall before the final act at Windsor.

The last two of Victoria’s grandchildren to die during her lifetime were commemorated by periods of court mourning that were gazetted in February 1899 for Prince Alfred of Edinburgh, the son of the Duke of Edinburgh, and now the hereditary prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (Gazette issue 27050), and in October 1900 for Princess Helena’s son, Prince Christian Victor of Schleswig-Holstein (Gazette issue 27242).

Isle of Wight

The fourth and last of the funeral locations to feature in The Gazette’s account of royal obsequies during Victoria’s reign, after Kensal Green, Kew Green and Sandringham, was the Isle of Wight, the island in the English Channel on which Victoria and Albert established a family home at Osborne House in the 1840s, and where the Queen often retreated during her widowhood.

Three of Victoria’s daughters lost their husbands during her reign, starting with the spouses of the German Empress (and Princess Royal), and Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse. The Gazette did not record their funeral ceremonies, as the ritual took place in Germany, although the passing of the Queen’s sons-in-law left a trace in the official public record, as court mourning was set at six weeks for the German Emperor Frederick III in June 1888 (Gazette issue 25828), and for Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse in March 1892 (Gazette issue 26267).

The third loss was sustained by Princess Beatrice, who formed a home in England with her husband Prince Henry of Battenberg who, like the German emperor and the grand duke, was a knight of the Garter.

One of the last Victorian burials to take place beyond Windsor was organised for the Battenberg prince, who died at sea in January 1896 while returning from active service with the Ashanti Expedition in west Africa (Gazette issue 26712). His remains were transferred to another ship at Madeira, and on arrival at Portsmouth they were taken to the Isle of Wight.

The Gazette contained mourning notices for Prince Henry and both of his parents, starting with his father Alexander of Hesse in December 1888 (Gazette issue 25885), and then his mother, the Princess of Battenberg, in September 1895 (Gazette issue 26664). The black dress period for the Queen’s son-in-law was set at six weeks (Gazette issue 26702).

The island ceremonial reflected the current protocol for royal funerals, as European sovereigns and foreign military units sent envoys to the obsequies. The Italian ambassador and the Belgian, Danish and Portuguese ministers attended, along with officers from a Prussian regiment in which Prince Henry had served, and a Bulgarian regiment of which he was the honorary colonel. The pall bearers came from the army and royal household, and the gun carriage was borne by men of the Scots Guards. The prince’s Garter insignia, busby and sword were placed on his coffin, which was covered with the Union Jack.

The ritual took place in St Mildred’s Church in the village of Whippingham, close to Osborne House. The church was often visited by the Queen and her family during their time on the Isle of Wight, and it was at Whippingham that Beatrice was confirmed in 1874, and where the couple were married in 1885. The close connection with the island led to Prince Henry being buried at Whippingham, rather than close to his stall at Windsor, although a few years later his Garter banner and crest were set up in the Battenburg Chapel that was created in St Mildred’s to house his marble sarcophagus.

Royal Honours

The Gazette of 1896 reported the first in a continuing series of honours that were awarded in connection with the demise and funerals of members of the royal family, as Queen Victoria recognised the services of some of the personnel who helped to care for her son-in-law’s remains as they made their way to the Isle of Wight.

The Queen used honours relating to the Royal Victorian Order, which she instituted in 1896, only a few months after Henry of Battenberg’s death. The first ordinary, as opposed to honorary, appointments to the order were gazetted in May 1896. The official notice from St James’s Palace stated that “as a mark of Her Majesty’s appreciation of the special services rendered by them on the occasion of the lamented death of Colonel His Royal Highness Prince Henry Maurice of Battenberg, K.G.” membership of the fourth class of the order (MVO) was granted to (Gazette issue 26738):

Captain Edmund Poe of HMS Blenheim, the ship which brought the prince’s remains to England.
Captain Peyton Hoskyns of HMS Blonde, the ship on which the prince had died.
Major Henry Legge of the Coldstream Guards, the equerry who managed the naval and military arrangements associated with the funeral on the Isle of Wight.

The order also welcomed Harry Herstlet of the Lord Chamberlain’s Department, who went to Madeira after the prince’s death, and Colonel Lord William Cecil, the prince’s equerry, who was one of his pall bearers, and had the honour of casting earth on his coffin.

Since 1896 the five classes of the Victorian Order, and the three grades of its medal, have played a part in the story of the demise of the crown, as the honours were employed to reward services connected with the funeral of Queen Victoria in 1901, and The Gazette has continued to reflect their use for that purpose, up to and including the provisions that were made following the death of Queen Elizabeth II at Balmoral Castle in 2022.

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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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Publication date

13 January 2025

Any opinion expressed in this article is that of the author and the author alone, and does not necessarily represent that of The Gazette.