Demise of the Crown: #16: Duke of Clarence
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 family demise events during the reign of Queen Victoria.
Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence
The Queen commissioned a second large monument to be placed beside that of Prince Leopold in the Albert Memorial Chapel in Windsor Castle, this time for her grandson Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, who was one of seven grandchildren to die during her lifetime.
The prince was the heir of the Prince of Wales, and so next in the line to succeed to the crown after his father, but he died at Sandringham in January 1892. Only one month earlier he had received the Queen’s consent to marry Victoria Mary (Gazette issue 26233), the daughter of the Duke of Teck and Princess Mary of Cambridge.
The Gazette noted the similarity between the events for the passing of Prince Leopold in 1884 and those for his nephew in 1892, as equerries carried the Duke of Clarence’s insignia, and representatives were sent by the German and Russian emperors, and by the kings of Belgium, Denmark, Portugal and Wurttemberg. The report also reflected the prince’s army affiliation, just as with Leopold’s link with the Seaforth Highlanders.
The coffin was draped with the Union Jack and displayed Clarence’s busby and sword, rather than a royal standard and/or coronet, and the military flavour was provided by men of the 10th Royal Hussars, the regiment in which the prince had served, while the gun carriage was accompanied by ten Hussars under the command of Captain Julian Byng, who became a field-marshal and governor-general of Canada (Gazette issue 32424).
The prince’s monument in his grandfather’s memorial chapel was completed without the services of the Queen’s favoured sculptor, Joseph Boehm, who had died in 1890. The elaborate commission was instead given to the artist Alfred Gilbert and included a recumbent effigy of Clarence wearing his Hussars uniform.
The death of Queen Victoria in 1901 brought a close to the practice of laying effigies of princes at Windsor. After that, the only significant additions for the departed to be set within the castle’s precincts were the tombs of sovereigns and their consorts. The effigies of Edward and Alexandra, and George and Mary, found a home within the existing structure of St George’s, while a small chapel was created in the 1960s to contain the remains of King George VI and his family, but without sufficient space for any recumbent effigies.
In parallel with this more restrained attitude towards adding to the contents of St George’s, the quire of the chapel continued to provide the setting for many royal services, but with the remains of the deceased being laid to rest in other locations, and in particular at Frogmore, where plain gravestones were preferred to elaborate marble effigies of the deceased in their uniform and/or Garter robes.
King of Hanover
Before St George’s witnessed the passing of the two princes Leopold and Albert Victor, who were later commemorated in the Albert Memorial Chapel, the Garter’s spiritual home hosted a number of other royal obsequies.
The most significant in the recent past was organised in 1878, when the remains of George V, the last Hanoverian monarch, were buried in the royal vault, near to where his Garter banner had hung since the 1830s (Gazette issue 19298), and rather than in the mausoleum on his family’s estate at Herrenhausen in Germany, which was built by his father, King Ernest Augustus I.
The family’s fortunes had changed radically since the then Prince George of Cumberland, the grandson of King George III, inherited the German crown in 1851, as the kingdom was occupied by Prussian forces after Hanover supported Vienna during the Austro-Prussian war of 1866. By the time of George V’s death in Paris in 1878 (Gazette issue 24592) there were political factors that worked against returning his remains to Hanover, and so his family accepted the British offer of a burial at Windsor.
The Gazette reported the removal of the king’s body from France, and its journey by steamer to Dover and train to Windsor. For the first time, The Gazette referred to insignia being carried in a royal funeral procession, as the king’s ensigns were borne into St George’s Chapel by two of his Hanoverian aides de camp, and the crown of Hanover was carried by a member of his household.
The Hanoverian king, who was also the duke of Cumberland, was given the honour of both a court and general mourning, and The Gazette reported orders being issued by the Admiralty, College of Arms, Lord Chamberlain’s Office and War Office. As was often the case, The Gazette reported the mourning for some of the King of Hanover’s relatives, but not their funeral ceremonial, as with the black dress period in 1841 for George V’s mother, Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (Gazette issue 19996).
House of Cambridge
The Gazette noticed the departure of two of the King of Hanover’s relatives, as his aunt Augusta, Duchess of Cambridge, was laid to rest with her husband in their mausoleum at Kew Green in 1889, while the King’s cousin, Princess Mary of Cambridge, Duchess of Teck, was buried in the Georgian crypt at Windsor.
The ritual for the Cambridge princess was performed in St George’s Chapel in 1897. The ceremonial reflected a higher-ranking treatment of the deceased than seemed to be merited, given that the duchess was no more than the Queen’s cousin. Several European sovereigns were represented, including the emperors of Austria, Germany and Russia, and the pall bearers were distinguished public figures, among them the prime minister, Lord Salisbury. She was also accorded a period of general mourning, in addition to the standard court provision (Gazette issue 26904).
The princess may have been remote from the succession to the crown when she died, but that was not so with her descendants. Her daughter Victoria Mary of Teck’s engagement to the Duke of Clarence came to nothing because of his death in 1892, but one year later she married Clarence’s brother George, Duke of York, and became the Princess of Wales in 1901, and Queen Mary after her husband succeeded to the crown in 1910.
The last royal funeral to be gazetted before Queen Victoria expired, related to Queen Mary’s father Francis, Duke of Teck, who died in 1900. The Gazette had named Francis as one of the sponsors of Victoria’s grandson, Edward of York, in 1894 (Gazette issue 26533), and it was likely that the duke would be the ancestor of a future sovereign, which is what occurred in 1936 when the York prince succeeded to the crown as King Edward VIII. As things turned out, the Duke of Teck was the ancestor of two future sovereigns, as another one of his grandsons, Prince Albert of York, came to the throne as King George VI.
The Duke of Teck’s coat of arms, consisting of black antlers and lions, with a central diamond shield of gold and black, formed part of the heraldic display over the tomb of Queen Mary at Windsor, in the Garter banner that had previously hung over her stall.
The duke had three sons: Adolphus, Alexander and Francis. Adolphus became the marquess of Cambridge and was one of the sponsors at the baptism of the future King George VI in 1896, while Alexander received the earldom of Athlone. The grant of these peerages during the first world war reflected the fact that both princes had established their homes in England, and by 1917 they were active members of the British, rather than any German, royal family.
The Gazette explained how the Duke of Teck’s remains were moved from the White Lodge at Richmond Park (where his grandson, the future Edward VIII, was born on 23 June 1894) (Gazette issue 26525). The programme reflected the fact that Britain was at war, as “Their Serene Highnesses the Princes Adolphus, Francis, and Alexander, of Teck, were unavoidably absent, being on active service in South Africa”, where the Salisbury government was engaged in fighting the Dutch republics.
The duke’s insignia as a knight grand cross of the Bath and the Victorian Order were carried by a member of the Teck household, and his coffin was borne by men of the Post Office Volunteers, an army unit of which he had been the honorary colonel. Three chief mourners were listed in The Gazette: the Prince of Wales, representing the Queen; the Duke of Cambridge, the former commander-in-chief of the British army; and Teck’s son-in-law, the Duke of York. The ceremonial as described in The Gazette differed from the usual format, as the officers of arms did not attend, and there was no proclamation of the titles of the duke whose grandsons would later be sovereigns of the Most Noble Order of the Garter.
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.
Available to order now from the TSO Shop.
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.
See also
King Charles III and The Gazette
Gazette Firsts: The history of The Gazette and monarch funerals
Find out more
Succession to the Crown: - From Charles II to Charles III (TSO shop)
Images
The Gazette
National Portrait Gallery
Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2025
The Gazette
Publication date
27 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.