Demise of the Crown: Knights of the Garter

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 demise events during the reign of King George III.

Chapters

Introduction

Farewell to Westminster

Westminster to Windsor

The three Kings

Death and accession notices

Portrait of King George III by Thomas Lawrence

Windsor Castle

Windsor Castle became the permanent residence of King George III after his health failed in 1810, while the regency court that was established under the Prince of Wales in February 1811 usually operated from the Regent’s home at Carlton House in London.

Despite the Regent’s initial preference for living in London rather than with his father at Windsor, it was Berkshire that became the focus for royal funerals during the late Hanoverian period. This built on the precedent that was established by the Duke of Gloucester in 1805, when his remains were laid in the vault he created for his family within easy access of the Garter banners.

Before the onset of his last illness, George III had followed his brother’s example and commissioned a burying place for his family. The vault he created at Windsor was a plain structure and extended over the whole of an area beneath what was known as the Tomb House or Wolsey Chapel, a building that lies immediately to the east of St George’s Chapel.

The King also took steps to transfer the business of the Garter to Windsor from London, where most of the recent chapters or meetings were held. The first of the order’s Windsor investitures was gazetted in May 1805 (Gazette issue 15810), when the Blue Riband was conferred on the dean of Windsor’s brother, the Earl of Dartmouth, whose work as lord chamberlain was mentioned earlier in connection with the Gloucester funeral.

The Regency Gazettes noticed the interment in the Georgian vault of two women of national standing, as well as the burial of two lesser princesses during George III’s lifetime. The services marked the death of the Regent’s daughter, Princess Charlotte, who was the heir presumptive to the crown, as well as the demise of the Queen Consort. This was in addition to the loss of the King’s daughter Amelia, and his sister Augusta of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. The Gazette also reported the new royal crypt being used to house the remains of the Regent’s grandchild, who died with his mother Charlotte in 1817.

Princess Amelia

The first interment in the crypt under the Tomb House related to Princess Amelia, who departed this life in November 1810 (Gazette issue 16426). Her coffin was carried by eight Yeomen of the Guard and, as usual, the chief mourner was a senior peeress (the Countess of Chesterfield), rather than the Prince of Wales, who attended as one of his sister’s executors.

The connection with the Garter was evident from the fact that Amelia’s ritual was performed by the dean of Windsor, while in the quire, under their heraldic banners, “the Prince of Wales, and his royal brothers, as well as the knights of the Garter present, occupied their respective stalls.” The Gazette explained:

“The part of the service before the interment, and the anthem, being performed, the procession moved out of the choir … and proceeded up the north aisle of the choir, flanked by the Royal Horse Guards, Blue, to the place of burial behind the altar. The body being deposited in the vault, and the service concluded, Sir Isaac Heard Garter, after a short pause, pronounced, near the grave, the style of Her late Royal Highness”.

Amelia’s coffin was covered in crimson velvet, which reflected the contemporary practice of using that colour for family members, and purple for the sovereign. During the 1870s the royal caskets were stripped of their original coverings and returned to the crypt enclosed in outer cases of a uniform pattern of polished oak, with brass fittings.

Illustration of Royal Vault, Windsor Castle

Family matters

The royal vault had a mixed fortune in terms of storing the remains of George III and his descendants. Although the bodies of his sons Alfred and Octavius, who died in the 1780s, were transferred from their original resting place in Westminster Abbey in 1820, and three kings were buried beside Princess Amelia, no sovereign was found a permanent home below the old Tomb House after William IV in 1837.

In addition, several remains that were consigned to the Georgian crypt were later moved to a graveyard that was created for the royal family at Frogmore on the Windsor estate, under a burial protocol that was introduced in 1928.

The royal vault had just started to function by the start of the regency in 1811, when separate households were organised for the King and the Regent, the former being known as the Windsor Establishment. The Gazette noticed several burials during the regency, starting with the King’s sister Augusta, Duchess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, whose body was conveyed from her house at Hanover Square to St George’s Chapel in March 1813 (Gazette issue 16716).

The next funeral followed a death that was of constitutional significance, and recalled the passing of William, Duke of Gloucester, in 1700, which effectively led to the Hanoverian succession to the crown. The ceremony in November 1817 marked the loss of the Regent’s only child and the heir presumptive to the crown, the former Princess Charlotte of Wales, who died at Claremont House, near Esher in Surrey, after giving birth to a son. Both mother and child were buried in the royal vault (Gazette issue 17307).

The report about Charlotte’s service was the first to appear in a Gazette that was printed with a black border, and described the “most afflicting” ceremony at which the chief mourner was her husband, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a knight of the Garter, and future king of the Belgians. The Gazette described what happened to the remains of the child, on the day before his mother’s funeral:

“Upon the arrival of the procession at Windsor, the first coach, conveying the remains of the royal infant and the urn, proceeded direct to St George’s Chapel, where the same were received by the dean of Windsor and T. B. Mash, Esq. of the Lord Chamberlain’s Department, and deposited in the royal vault; the coffin of the royal infant being borne from the coach to the vault by four, and the urn by two Yeomen of the Guard.”

Charlotte’s procession included the archbishop of Canterbury, the prime minister and members of the government, as well as the great officers of state and members of the Windsor Establishment.

A monument for the princess was later erected in St George’s Chapel, and showed Charlotte rising from her tomb, supported by two winged angels, with mourners lying beside her shrouded remains. The cenotaph was paid for by subscribers to a scheme that was launched in 1817, under the auspices of a memorial committee that tried to find suitable locations in St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, but were unable to do so. In 1824 Charlotte’s father, by now King George IV, agreed that his daughter’s monument could be housed at Windsor. The structure was subsequently placed in the small chantry chapel that lies close to the western entrance to St George’s, and is named after Christopher Urswick, who was the dean of Windsor and register of the Garter in Tudor times.

A marble statue of Charlotte’s husband – by then Leopold I of the Belgians – was erected at the entrance to the Urswick Chapel by Queen Victoria in 1879 and shows the prince holding a field-marshal’s baton, and wearing the mantle and collar of the Garter, of which he had been a knight since 1816, as well as the collar of the Bath.

Queen Charlotte

One year after the death of his wife and child, Prince Leopold returned to St George’s to assist in the service to mourn the passing of his wife’s grandmother, Queen Charlotte, who died at Kew in November 1818.

This was the first funeral for a sovereign’s consort since 1737 when George II’s wife, Caroline of Brandenburgh-Anspach, was buried in Westminster Abbey. The Regency ceremony followed the standard format, with the coffin being carried by the Yeomen of the Guard, and the queen’s crown borne by an officer of arms. A few modifications were made, as a German minister of state was given a place, to reflect the creation of the kingdom of Hanover in 1814, and the pall bearers were dukes rather than peeresses.

The Gazette described the way in which weapons were carried during the service, as the hearse was escorted by 40 Yeomen of the Guard “with partizans reversed”, that is with the spearhead being carried in a downward position (Gazette issue 17429). This method of carrying the partizan, was also evident at the ceremonial for Elizabeth II in 2022, when the Gentlemen at Arms also reversed their battle axes.

The Gazette described some of the costume at Queen Charlotte’s funeral, including the dress worn by her son, as the Regent attended as the chief mourner “in a long black cloak, with the star of the Order of the Garter embroidered thereon, and wearing the collars of the Garter, the Bath, and of the Royal Hanoverian Guelphic Order, and the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece.”

Modern ceremonials do not detail the insignia worn by those taking part, but the emblems of the Garter and the Bath, and the other orders of knighthood, were just as much on display in 2022 as they were during the Hanoverian era. At the funeral service for Elizabeth II, for example, the star of the Garter was worn by King Charles III and his brothers and sister, and by his eldest son, while Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence wore a companion’s badge of the Order of the Bath (Gazette issue 64462).

Duke of Kent

The death of Princess Charlotte in 1817 was a matter of immediate concern to the welfare of the House of Hanover, as none of the Regent’s nephews or nieces were eligible to succeed to the crown because of their mothers’ status. Arrangements were therefore made to secure the throne for one of the Regent’s brothers and/or their legitimate descendants, and The Gazette reported three marriages that were part of the succession planning project.

In May 1818 the Duke of Cambridge married Augusta of Hesse-Cassel (Gazette issue 17365), and the union of the Duke of Kent and Victoria, the widow of the Prince of Leiningen, was solemnised at Coburg (Gazette issue 17378), while the Duke of Clarence’s ceremony with Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen took place at Kew Palace in July of that year. Each project produced children who were entitled to sit on the throne, with the birth of George of Cambridge and Charlotte of Clarence in March, followed by Victoria of Kent in May of 1819.

Queen Victoria never knew her father, as the Duke of Kent died in January 1820, just a few days before his father the King. The sequence of the family deaths led to changes being made to funeral plans, as the duke died at Sidmouth in Devon, and was buried in the royal vault at Windsor, but before his father’s remains were laid to rest. It was reported that no anthem was played in the quire of St George’s Chapel during the service, as it was contrary to etiquette for the organ to sound in any cathedral or collegiate church while a monarch lay unburied. The press also explained what was done to relieve the strain on the Duke of Kent’s bearer party:

“An awful silence pervaded the spectators in the chapel and the solemn service commenced with the dean of Windsor’s distinct and impressive delivery of the opening verses of the burial service … The procession then separated to the right and left, and the coffin, which was of such a size as not to allow its passing without some difficulty through the opening of the vault into which it was to be deposited, was placed on the moveable car, invented by Sir W. Congreve, for the Queen’s funeral. It was then propelled by mechanical power to the platform, from which, by imperceptible machinery, it was afterwards let down into the tomb. The contrivance was invented to alleviate the labour of the bearers, which on former occasions had been found almost insupportable.”₁

Sir Isaac Heard performed his duty as Garter king of arms, and proclaimed the prince’s style and titles, including knight of the Garter, grand cross of the Bath, and knight of St Patrick, of which he was a founder member in 1783 (Gazette issue 12412). A few days later Sir Isaac and the royal family returned to Windsor to bury the King.

Gazette Succession to the Crown paperback book

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

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