CHAPTER XVI.ILLUSTRISSIMA CAROLINA.

Queen Caroline’sfuneral took place on the evening of Saturday, December 17th (1737), in Westminster Abbey. It was her special request that her obsequies should be as quiet and simple as possible, and the King respected her wish, though he commanded a general mourning, and arranged every detail of the ceremonial. During the month that elapsed between the Queen’s death and her funeral, the body, encased in a lead coffin and an outer one of English oak, rested in the chamber wherein she died, which was transformed into achapelle ardentefor the time being. The walls were hung with purple and black, and tall tapers burned night and day around the bier. The doors were guarded by gentlemen pensioners, with their axes reversed, and the King allowed no one to enter the room except himself and those who watched by the body.

The night before the funeral a brief service was held in the death chamber by the Archbishop of Canterbury, which the King, the Duke of Cumberland, and the Princesses Amelia, Caroline, Mary, and Louisa attended. This was the King’s farewellof all that was mortal of his Queen, for he was too ill, and too much overcome by grief to attend her funeral. The service over, the coffin was privately conveyed by torchlight from St. James’s Palace to the Princes’ Chamber adjoining the House of Lords. Here the late Queen’s pages watched all night, and were joined in the morning by her Majesty’s maids of honour. The body lay in state all that day, guarded by twenty gentlemen pensioners.

At six o’clock in the evening the funeral procession started from the Princes’ Chamber, and passed through Old Palace Yard to the great north door of Westminster Abbey, by means of a covered way lined throughout with black. Though the funeral was officially described as private, the procession was a long one, and included the Ministers, the court officials, the physicians who attended the Queen in her last illness, all those who held places in her household, and many peers. Sir Robert Walpole followed his royal mistress to her last resting-place. The Queen’s Chamberlain carried her crown on a black velvet cushion, and walked immediately before the coffin, which was borne by ten yeomen of the guard, and covered “with a large pall of black velvet, lined with black silk, with a fine holland sheet, adorned with ten large escutcheons painted on satin, under a canopy of black velvet”.130Six dukes acted as pall bearers, and ten members of the Privy Council bore the canopy; in an equal line on either side marched the gentlemen pensioners with their arms reversed.Behind the coffin walked the Princess Amelia as chief mourner. She was supported by the Duke of Grafton and the Duke of Dorset, and her train was born by the Duchess of St. Albans and the Duchess of Montagu. The Princess Amelia was followed by a long train of ladies, including nearly all the duchesses and a large number of other peeresses, the late Queen’s ladies of the bedchamber, maids of honour, and bedchamber women. The chief mourner and all the ladies wore long veils of black crape. The Dean and Canons of Westminster, wearing their copes, and the choir, augmented by the choir boys of the Chapel Royal in their habits of scarlet and gold, bearing wax tapers in their hands, met the coffin at the north door of the Abbey, and the procession wended its way through the north and south aisles to Henry the Seventh’s Chapel, the choir chanting the while the psalmDomine refugium. The coffin was rested by the side of the open grave, hard by the tomb of Henry the Seventh, and the burial service was proceeded with up to the committal prayers. The Garter King of Arms then stepped forward and proclaimed the late Queen’s style and titles in a loud voice.

“Thus it hath pleased Almighty God to take out of the transitory life to His Divine mercy the late most high, most mighty, and most excellent princess, Caroline, by the Grace of God Queen-Consort of the most high, most mighty, and most excellent monarch George the Second, by the Grace of God King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of theFaith, whom God bless and preserve with long life, health and honour, and all worldly happiness.”

Then the choir sang the beautiful anthem which Handel had composed especially for theoccasion:—

“The ways of Zion do mourn, and she is in bitterness: all her people sigh and hang down their heads to the ground. How are the mighty fallen! she that was great among the nations and princess of the provinces. How are the mighty fallen! When the ear heard her, then it blessed her: and when the eye saw her, it gave witness of her. How are the mighty fallen! she that was great among the nations and princess of the provinces. She delivered the poor that cried: the fatherless and him that had no helper. Kindness, meekness, and comfort were in her tongue. If there was any virtue, and if there was any praise, she thought on those things. Her body is buried in peace, but her name liveth for evermore.”131

When the last notes of the anthem had died away, the procession returned to the north door of the Abbey in the same order as it had come. The coffin under its canopy, with tall tapers burning on either side, was left in the Chapel. Later a short service was held privately, when it was lowered to the vault and placed in the large stone sarcophagus prepared for it.

HENRY VII.’S CHAPEL, WESTMINSTER ABBEY, TEMP. 1737.

The King remained inconsolable for many months. He saw no one at first but his daughters, and when he was compelled to see Walpole, orsome other Minister, on important business, he could talk of nothing but his loss and the great qualities of the late Queen. Many thought that he would not long survive her; he seemed completely broken down. The genuineness of his sorrow showed itself in various ways. By her will the Queen had left everything to him, but it transpired that she had little to leave except her house at Richmond, her jewels, and the obligations she had incurred by her charities. When her heart was touched by cases of poverty, sickness or sorrow, she would not only relieve immediate necessities, but often grant pensions for life. These pensions it was found amounted to nearly £13,000 a year. The King took the full burden on his own shoulders. “I will have no one the poorer for her death but myself,” he said. He also paid the salaries of every member of her household until he could otherwise provide for them.

One morning, soon after the Queen’s death, he woke early and sent for Baron Borgman, one of his Hanoverian suite. When he came the King said, “I hear you have a picture of the Queen, which she gave you, and that it is a better likeness than any in my possession. Bring it to me here.” Borgman brought it to the King, who said it was very like her Majesty, and burst into tears. “Put it,” he said presently, “upon that chair at the foot of my bed, and leave me until I ring the bell.” Two hours passed before he rang, and then he was quite calm. “Take the picture away,” he said to its owner, “I never yet saw a woman worthy to buckle her shoe.”Some little time later, he was playing cards one evening with his daughters. Some queens were dealt to him, and no sooner did he pick up the cards and perceive them than he burst into tears, and was unable to go on with the game. Princess Amelia guarded against a repetition of the scene the following night by privately ordering all the queens to be taken out of the pack.

The King was very morbid in his grief, and much given to dwelling upon the material aspect of death. He was very superstitious and a firm believer in ghouls and vampires. Lord Wentworth gives an illustration of this in a letter he wrote to his father, Lord Strafford, shortly after the Queen’s funeral. “Saturday night, between one and two o’clock, the King waked out of a dream very uneasy, and ordered the vault, where the Queen is, to be broken open immediately, and have the coffin also opened; and went in a hackney chair through the Horse Guards to Westminster Abbey, and back again to bed. I think it is the strangest thing that could be.” In a subsequent letter he refers to it again: “The story about the King was true, for Mr. Wallop heard of one who saw him go through the Horse Guards on Saturday night with ten footmen before the chair. They went afterwards to Westminster Abbey.”

Thirty-three years later George the Second was buried by his Queen’s side, and as a last proof of his devotion he left orders that one side of her coffin should be removed, and one side of his taken away,so that their bones should mingle, and in death be not divided.132

Caroline was widely mourned by all classes of her husband’s subjects. Even those disaffected to the House of Hanover admitted the high qualities of the Queen, and the Jacobites tempered their judgment, when they remembered that she had always been on the side of mercy. Only from the Prince of Wales’s household and from those who supported him came any discordant note, and it must be admitted that some of these were very discordant indeed. In the eighteenth century personal and political hatreds were carried beyond the grave, and some of the epigrams and mock epitaphs composed by the Queen’s enemies after her death form anything but pleasant reading. The fact that she did not see the Prince of Wales during her last illness was seized upon as a pretext for attacking her memory.

And unforgiving, unforgiven dies!

cried Chesterfield with bitter sarcasm, while Pope with more subtle ironywrote:—

Hang the sad verse on Carolina’s urn,And hail her passage to the realms of rest.All parts perform’d, andall her children blest!

Hang the sad verse on Carolina’s urn,

And hail her passage to the realms of rest.

All parts perform’d, andall her children blest!

But these outbursts were overwhelmed in the spontaneous tribute of affection and respect paid to the dead Queen on all sides. Her loss was felt to be a national calamity. “The Lord hath taken away His anointed with a stroke,” cried a preacher, “the breath of our nostrils is taken away. The great princess is no more under whose shadow we said we should be safe, and promised ourselves lasting peace—she, whom future generations will know as Caroline the Illustrious.”133And indeed the Queen’s pre-eminent qualities fit her for no lesser epithet. Caroline’s character was formed on bold and generous lines, and her defects only served to bring into stronger relief the purity of her life, the loftiness of her motives and the excellence of her wisdom. She was a good hater but a true friend, patient under suffering, strong in adversity, fond of power, yet using it always for the good of others. In the words which Frederick the Great applied to her early mentor the Queen of Prussia, “She had a great soul”.

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER XVI:130The Gentleman’s Magazine, 17th December, 1737.131This same anthem was sung at the memorial service in Westminster Abbey for Queen Victoria.132The large stone sarcophagus which contains the remains of George the Second and Queen Caroline stands in the middle of a vault below Henry the Seventh’s chapel in Westminster Abbey. This vault was used only for the family of George the Second. But many years after it was opened to admit the coffin of a child of the Duke of Cumberland. In 1837, when the duke became King of Hanover, he decided to remove this coffin to Hanover, and the vault was again opened. The two sides that were withdrawn from George the Second’s and Queen Caroline’s coffin respectively, were then seen, standing against the wall at the back of their sarcophagus.133Sermon preached on the death of Queen Caroline by the Rev. Dr. Crowe, chaplain in ordinary to his Majesty, and Rector of St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate.

130The Gentleman’s Magazine, 17th December, 1737.

131This same anthem was sung at the memorial service in Westminster Abbey for Queen Victoria.

132The large stone sarcophagus which contains the remains of George the Second and Queen Caroline stands in the middle of a vault below Henry the Seventh’s chapel in Westminster Abbey. This vault was used only for the family of George the Second. But many years after it was opened to admit the coffin of a child of the Duke of Cumberland. In 1837, when the duke became King of Hanover, he decided to remove this coffin to Hanover, and the vault was again opened. The two sides that were withdrawn from George the Second’s and Queen Caroline’s coffin respectively, were then seen, standing against the wall at the back of their sarcophagus.

133Sermon preached on the death of Queen Caroline by the Rev. Dr. Crowe, chaplain in ordinary to his Majesty, and Rector of St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate.

THE END.

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