Demise of the Crown: #25: Queen Consorts

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 the deaths of Queen Mary of Teck and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

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In the 70 years between the funeral of King George VI in 1952 and the next demise of the crown in 2022, there were a number of royal burials at Windsor, including ceremonies for royal consorts in 1953, 2002 and 2021, and the passing of the Duke of Windsor and his wife.

The other notable events that occurred in this context include the services that followed the deaths, both in dramatic circumstances, of Admiral of the Fleet the Earl Mountbatten of Burma in 1979, and Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. The period also witnessed the first non-royal state funeral of modern times, which marked the life of the war-time prime minister Winston Churchill.

Queen Mary

The Gazette had not reported the funeral of any sovereign’s consort since the departure of Prince Albert in 1861, but the service was always noticed in the Court Circular, and referred to in the press, as well as being broadcast through the media of the day.

The first passing of a consort during Elizabeth II’s reign was noticed in The Gazette, in the bulletin which explained that her grandmother had died on 24 March 1953, while sleeping peacefully at Marlborough House (Gazette issue 39808).

Queen Mary’s demise came at a time when London was preparing for the crowning of the new sovereign. The abbey was closed for works to be carried out for the coronation, and this had allowed the dean of Westminster to promote an appeal for funds to be raised by organising a display of the church’s treasures. The exhibition at St James’s Palace opened in February 1953, and included the Actor’s pall that was used at the funerals of the Unknown Warrior, Queen Alexandra and King George V. The event was due to close on 28 March, which proved to be just in time for the pall to be placed over Mary’s coffin as it lay in state.

The royal remains were moved to the Queen’s Chapel at Marlborough Gate, and on 29 March the main London procession was formed. The casket was draped with the Queen’s flag showing her Teck arms, but with no crown on top. The gun carriage was pulled by the horses and men of the Royal Horse Artillery, and took the familiar route across Horse Guards, along Whitehall and past the Cenotaph to Westminster Hall, with members of the armed forces in the procession, but no naval crew to help.

The coffin was accompanied by six pall bearers, who came from units of the armed forces with which the Queen was associated, including the 13^th-18^th Hussars, of which she had been the colonel-in-chief since 1922 (Gazette issue 32771). Behind the coffin walked Mary’s surviving sons David, Duke of Windsor (the former King Edward VIII), and Henry, Duke of Gloucester.

On reaching Westminster Hall, Mary’s flag was replaced by the Actors’ pall for the lying in state. The public was admitted until the early hours of the morning of the funeral, 31 March, and the casket was then taken by motor hearse to Windsor, where it lay in the Albert Memorial Chapel, watched over by the Military Knights of Windsor, and close to the tomb of the Duke of Clarence, who had been the Queen’s fiancé for a few months in the early 1890s.

The Queen’s insignia was borne on three cushions by members of her household, who stood near the altar during the service, with her comptroller, Lord Claud Hamilton (a pall bearer at George V’s funeral) carrying her Garter’s insignia. Mary had joined the order in 1910, and her banner was displayed beside that of her husband in the royal stalls. Sir George Bellew as Garter king of arms proclaimed the late queen’s style and titles, and Elizabeth II cast earth on her grandmother’s coffin.

The royal remains were later placed in the tomb in the north nave aisle that had received her husband’s body in 1939, to which was added Mary’s recumbent effigy by Bertram Mackennal, showing her in the Garter’s robes. This would be the last royal tomb of its kind for a British sovereign or their consort, in a series that began in the 1860s when Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha’s image was placed in his mausoleum at Frogmore.

In due course, a portrait of Queen Mary by Sir William Dick was added to the suite of royal images in Norfolk and was dedicated by the rector of Sandringham in April 1954. A memorial plaque was also unveiled by her granddaughter, Elizabeth II, in London in June 1967 before a gathering of family members.

Queen Mary’s image continues to be seen on a regular basis throughout the Commonwealth, because of a decision that was taken in the 1930s to replace the original Britannia design on the insignia of the Order of the British Empire, with the crowned and Gartered effigies of Mary and her husband that had featured in the medal that was struck to commemorate their silver jubilee in 1935. The change was appropriate, as George V had instituted the order in 1917, and Mary had been its grand master since 1936 (Gazette issue 34268).

Queen Elizabeth

Almost 50 years passed between 1953 and the loss of the next queen consort in 2002, when Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother died at the Royal Lodge at Windsor (Gazette issue 56523). Many of her funeral arrangements were similar to those for Queen Mary, with the pall bearers coming from regiments with which she was associated, including her role as colonel-in-chief of the Black Watch since 1937 (Gazette issue 34396).

There were no restrictions on the use of Westminster Abbey, of the kind that had existed in 1953, when it was being made ready for the coronation at the time of Queen Mary’s death. The main funeral service for Queen Elizabeth was therefore held in the ancient abbey, where Garter proclaimed her style and titles, and her insignia rested on the altar. That insignia included the ensigns of the Order of the Thistle, which she was the first woman to join, as part of her husband’s coronation honours list. A second link with the events of 1937 was present during the 2002 service, as the crown that was made for the Queen’s coronation was placed on the royal flag as her coffin was carried to Westminster Hall, and as it lay in Westminster Abbey.

One aspect of the ritual reflected the Queen’s special relationship with the Irish Guards, who had the honour of supplying her bearer party, rather than men from the more familiar Grenadier Guards. The Queen had formed that relationship during the 1960s and presented shamrocks to the regiment on various occasions. The Gazette also recorded a series of captains and majors from the Irish Guards being appointed to serve as her equerry.

After the abbey service the Queen’s coffin was taken by motor hearse to St George’s Chapel for a private committal.

The Gazette published an honours list in August 2002 that dealt with services to the late Queen (Gazette issue 56653), and included membership of the Victorian Order (MVO) for two captains in the Irish Guards: her last equerry, Mark Grayson, and the officer commanding the bearer party, Fabian Roberts.

Silver Royal Victorian Medals were granted to the men who formed the bearer party, and to acknowledge the work of the Royal Horse Artillery with the gun carriage. As had happened after Queen Alexandra’s death in 1925, there were also honours for members of the late Queen’s household, including the grand cross of the Victorian Order for her chamberlain, the Earl of Crawford, and Victorian Medals for her dresser, footman and page.

The Queen Mother with Charles, Andrew, Edward and Anne

Family matters

The different treatment of relatives of a queen consort continued to be evident from the provisions that were made during Queen Elizabeth II’s reign for her grandmother’s Teck relations, and for members of her mother’s Bowes-Lyon family.

Several members of the Teck family died after Queen Mary, with funeral services being arranged in the magnificent setting of St George’s Chapel, followed by burial in the royal ground at Frogmore. This happened for Mary’s brother, the Earl of Athlone (who was also a knight of the Garter), in 1957; her sister-in-law Alice, Countess of Athlone (the last of Queen Victoria’s grandchildren), in 1981; the countess’s son-in-law Sir Henry Abel Smith in 1993; and her daughter Lady May Abel Smith in 1994.

In contrast, the Queen’s Bowes-Lyon relatives were accorded a less regal and more local treatment. The Queen Mother lost her two remaining brothers and sisters during her daughter’s reign, with Michael Bowes-Lyon being buried at Glamis in 1953, while Lady Elphinstone’s funeral took place at Musselburgh in 1961. In both cases the sovereign was not present, although Elizabeth II did attend a second family funeral in 1961 for her uncle Sir David Bowes-Lyon, who was one of the eight sponsors of the future King Charles III when he was baptised at Buckingham Palace in 1948.

The last of the Queen Mother’s siblings was Rose, Countess Granville, whose husband was the first knight of the Garter to be named by his niece (Gazette issue 39711). The countess was cremated in Dundee in 1967, and her funeral service at Glamis Castle was conducted by her nephew Andrew Elphinstone, who was one of the sponsors when Princess Anne (later the Princess Royal) was baptised in 1950.

Princess Margaret

The honours list that was gazetted in August 2002 included awards relating to the passing of the Queen Mother’s daughter Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, who died in King Edward VII’s Hospital in London, just a few weeks before her mother. The princess had been unable to undertake public duties for some time, and it was decided to hold a private funeral service in St George’s Chapel on 15 February 2002, and a memorial service in Westminster Abbey on 19 April.

The funeral was attended by the 101 year old Queen Mother, and by other family members, and with special access arrangements being made into St George’s through the Albert Memorial Chapel, and with no uniforms or decorations being worn, other than by the military bearer party, the trumpeters and piper, and the Military Knights of Windsor. Cushions showing the princess’s insignia, including those of the Order of the Crown of India and the Royal Victorian Chain, were placed on the altar during the service.

There were familiar aspects to the ritual, as the princess’s casket was covered by her flag showing the royal arms and a label of three points, with the central thistle recalling her birth at Glamis in 1930 (Gazette issue 33636). The bearer party was provided by the Royal Highland Fusiliers (Princess Margaret’s Own Glasgow and Ayrshire Regiment), of which the princess had been the colonel-in-chief since its formation in 1959.

The service was conducted by David Conner, the dean of Windsor, but now – and for the first time since Princess Louise in 1939 – the remains of the deceased were not placed in the royal vault under the old Tomb House, or taken to Frogmore, and were instead carried by the men of the Royal Highland Fusiliers to a motor hearse, and then taken to be privately cremated at Slough, which lies to the north of Windsor Castle.

The remains of Queen Elizabeth and her daughter were placed in the King George VI Memorial Chapel, and the black ledger stone was altered to show the dates of the late king’s birth and death, and below that the simple inscription “Elizabeth 1900-2002”. A slate plaque bearing a suitable inscription for Princess Margaret was set in the chapel at the head of the ledger stone.

An image of the Queen Mother, of a similar style to the one designed by William Dick for King George VI at Sandringham, was later put up in the memorial chapel.

Garter robes

The Queen Mother was remembered in a variety of ways after her death, and The Gazette published the royal proclamation of June 2002 which provided for a £5 coin to be struck by the Royal Mint to commemorate her long life (Gazette issue 56624).

The Queen had been a lady of the Garter since 1936, and a statue of her wearing the order’s costume was placed beside that of her late husband in central London. The statue by Philip Jackson was unveiled in February 2009, and the sculptor was made a commander of the Victorian Order (CVO) shortly afterwards.

There was, however, no permanent heraldic memorial close to the Queen’s resting place in St George’s Chapel to mark her unusually long membership of the Garter, as the practice of not erecting stall plates for female members of the order had continued into the 1930s and beyond. A different policy applied in relation to some of the Queen Mother’s other honours, and so she has heraldic stall plates in the Thistle Chapel in Edinburgh, and in the Chapel of the Royal Victorian Order off the Strand in London.

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

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Publication date

7 April 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.