On 6^th November 1817, Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Prince Regent and heir presumptive to the throne, died at Claremont House after a labour lasting 51 hours in which she had given birth to a stillborn son. The funeral of Princess Charlotte took place at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, thirteen days after her death.

So great was public grief at Charlotte’s death that, on the orders of the Lord Chamberlain, an armed guard was posted at the undertakers’ in London to ensure that no member of the public could see or gain access to the coffin.  Leopold, Charlotte’s husband, was to visit the coffin at 11pm each day until the funeral.

It was announced that tickets would be available to those other than would be in the “Royal Procession” and to the Dean and Canons of Windsor and their staff, only in the aisles and organ loft of the Chapel.  In the final days before the funeral there was a dispute between the representative of the Lord Chamberlain acting for the Prince Regent and Dean Hobart. It appears that the Canons of Windsor had claimed the stalls in the Quire and the Chapel which, in line with the Statutes of the Order of the Garter, were allocated to Garter Knights, leaving insufficient places for those in the Royal Procession.  The repercussions of this were to continue for some time after the funeral.

On the evening preceding the funeral, the coffins, including that of Charlotte’s infant son, were brought from Claremont to Windsor, a “prodigious multitude” lining the route of the hearse procession up the High Street to the Henry VIII gate entrance to the Lower Ward of the Castle.  The coffins were placed overnight in St George’s Chapel.

Early on the day of the funeral Charlotte’s coffin was brought back to nearby Lower Lodge and placed in the room which, when Charlotte had occupied the Lodge, had been the Dining Room.  The main mourners, members of George III’s household and those who had applied successfully to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office for tickets, were able to view the coffin, covered with crimson Genoa velvet, enriched with silver gilt nails.

The funeral took place at 8.00 pm.  In Windsor, as throughout Britain, all shops, inns and businesses were closed, as most had been since Charlotte’s death was announced.   For many hours in advance the town was thronged with onlookers and with carriages whose occupants were in deepest mourning.

Charles Knight, editor of The Windsor and Eton Express, whose reports of the events following Charlotte’s death are an important source of the chaos and confusion at the entrance and inside the Lower Ward of the Castle, had obtained a coveted ticket for the organ loft of St George’s Chapel.  He was for some time refused entry, along with other ticket holders, and he describes being roughly jostled and pushed against a wall of the Castle in a mêlée of carriages and people arriving on foot, while soldiers permitted entry to others, including some fellow soldiers and their ladies who had no ticket.

The funeral service was held without further disruptive incident.  The Prince Regent, Charlotte’s father, too distressed to attend, spent the day “in mournful privacy” at Carlton House.  Charlotte’s coffin, that of her infant son and their funerary urns, were interred in the Royal Vault, beneath the east end of St George’s Chapel, completed only a few years earlier on the order of George III.

Three years later the funeral of George III, in the Quire of St George’s Chapel, was to prove a most shamefully disorganised and chaotic formal royal occasion.

Jill Hume (Archives volunteer)

Note:   In the exhibition “Queens in Waiting” currently at the National Portrait Gallery, a painting of the “Funeral Procession of Princess Charlotte” and an engraving of the funeral service in St George’s Chapel can be seen.

On November 6th 1817, Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Prince Regent, died aged 21 after giving birth to a stillborn son. The public response, nationwide, to the loss of the heir presumptive to the throne, the only surviving legitimate grandchild of George III, was overwhelming. Charlotte’s popularity and esteem had soared during the tumultuous years of The Regency, in inverse proportion to the decline of that of her father. An increasing number of journals and news sheets were being published in this era, also the great output of satirical cartoonists, all reaching a large and eager market.

An example of public adoration of Charlotte can be seen three years before her death, when she visited Weymouth, where she was welcomed by great crowds and where the centrepiece of an illuminated welcome read: “Hail, Princess Charlotte, Europe’s Hope and Britain’s Glory”. Charlotte, on boarding from her yacht, the huge gunship ‘RN Leviathan’, compared herself with Elizabeth I, “who took great delight in the Navy”.

There had been great rejoicing at Charlotte’s marriage to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg in May 1816 and excitement at the news, early in the following year, of her pregnancy. On the news of her death the mourning of the nation was on a scale never before seen.

The Windsor and Eton Express reported that: “The death of the Princess Charlotte has fallen upon the people like a sudden and universal darkness. It has everywhere produced the same expression of deep regret for the public loss, the same remembrance of her promising virtues… Admiration of her character and grief for her loss have penetrated every portion of…these kingdoms”

On the announcement of Charlotte’s death most people went into mourning, and black “mourning cloth” quickly sold out. Shops, inns, markets and law courts closed, often until after the funeral, and church bells tolled and memorial services were held across the kingdom.

Royal courts in France, Belgium, Holland and Berlin also went into mourning. Although the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars against France had ended only a few years earlier, a French newspaper, the Journal des Debat could report that: “The mourning of one nation becomes that of all… and then, more than ever, they remember that they are brethren… Though in the days of prosperity, power sometimes experiences in England contradictions and resistance, in those of misfortune it only meets with consolation, with homage and devoted loyalty”.

A Dublin newspaper, announcing the “melancholy event” of the death of Charlotte, recorded that: “Every [Irish] countenance expressed astonishment and anguish – every individual felt overwhelmed by… misfortune. Every family seemed as if it had lost one of its dearest members”.

From Edinburgh it was reported that: “There is a loyal people who feel it deeply. Many people who had crowded to the post office burst into tears when the death of the Princess was announced… This expression of public sympathy, unlike the normal mourning for a Princess is genuine and general”.

Jill Hume (Archives volunteer)

When Edward III founded the Order of the Garter in or about 1348 (the exact date remains uncertain), he included his eldest son, Edward, Prince of Wales, better known as the Black Prince, amongst the Knights of the Garter. This has led historians and other commentators to assume that, from the outset, the eldest son of the monarch was automatically admitted to the Order on his creation as Prince of Wales. However, the late Peter Begent disputed this in his seminal work, The Most Noble Order of the Garter: 650 years, written jointly with Hubert Chesshyre and published in 1999.  He provided evidence that prior to 1805 not all Princes of Wales were appointed Knights of the Garter and that those who were had been elected in the same way as other Knights, often some years after their Welsh investiture. Neither Henry VI’s son, Edward, nor Richard III’s son, Edward, were Knights of the Garter, although they were both created Princes of Wales, whilst the Garter Statutes of 1415 specifically mention the term ‘elected’: ‘[the] Prince of Wales … shall always hold the Stall opposite that of the Superior of the Order after he has been elected’.

In 1786, George III, wishing to appoint all nine of his sons to the Order, increased the number of Knights by means of a new Garter statute. In addition to the Sovereign and his twenty-five Knights Companion, the number at which the Order had been fixed since the fourteenth century, the Monarch could appoint ‘Supernumerary Knights’. At this point the Prince of Wales, already elected a member of the Order, was removed from the ‘Companionship of the twenty-six’ and became one of the new ‘Supernumerary Knights’ along with his brothers. However, in 1805, a further Garter Statute reversed this decision, restoring the Prince of Wales to the inner fold. Since this time, the eldest son of the Monarch ipso facto on his creation as Prince of Wales has become one of the twenty-six Knights Companion, an appointment subsequently confirmed by his formal Garter investiture and installation. However, this was not always the case.

Clare Rider  (Archivist and Chapter Librarian)