Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria

The state funeral of Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India, occurred on 2 February 1901, after her death on 22 January. It was one of the largest gatherings of European royalty.

Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria's funeral procession
Date
  • 22 January 1901 (1901-01-22)
  • (death)
  • 2 February 1901 (1901-02-02)
  • (state funeral)
Location
ParticipantsBritish royal family and members of various other royal houses
Burial

Description
Queen Victoria on her deathbed, 1901

In 1897, Victoria had written instructions for her funeral, which was to be military as befitting a soldier's daughter and the head of the army,[1] and feature white dress instead of black.[2] On 25 January, her body was lifted into the coffin by her sons Edward VII and Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, and her grandson the German Emperor Wilhelm II.[3] She was dressed in a white dress and her wedding veil.[4] An array of mementos commemorating her extended family, friends and servants were laid in the coffin with her, at her request, by her doctor and dressers. A dressing gown that had belonged to her husband Albert who had died 40 years earlier, was placed by her side, along with a plaster cast of his hand, while a lock of John Brown's hair, along with a picture of him, was placed in her left hand concealed from the view of the family by a carefully positioned bunch of flowers.[1][5] Items of jewellery placed on Victoria included the wedding ring of John Brown's mother, given to her by Brown in 1883.[1] Her funeral was held on Saturday, 2 February, in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, and after two days of lying-in-state, she was interred beside Prince Albert in the Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore at Windsor Great Park.[6]

Memorial services were held at churches across the country to coincide with the state funeral; this is the order paper for a "Special Service" at Westminster Abbey.

The state funeral of Queen Victoria took place in February 1901; it had been 64 years since the last burial of a monarch. Victoria left strict instructions regarding the service and associated ceremonies and instituted a number of changes, several of which set a precedent for state (and indeed ceremonial) funerals that have taken place since. First, she disliked the preponderance of funereal black; henceforward, there would be no black cloaks, drapes or canopy, and Victoria requested a white pall for her coffin. Second, she expressed a desire to be buried as "a soldier's daughter".[7] The procession, therefore, became much more a military procession, with the peers, privy counsellors and judiciary no longer taking part en masse. Her pallbearers were equerries rather than dukes (as had previously been customary), and for the first time, a gun carriage was employed to convey the monarch's coffin. Third, Victoria requested that there should be no public lying in state. This meant that the only event in London on this occasion was a gun carriage procession from one railway station to another: Victoria having died at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, her body was conveyed by boat and train to Victoria Station, then by gun carriage to Paddington Station and then by train to Windsor for the funeral service itself.

The Passing of a Great Queen; painting by William Wyllie[8]
The funeral procession in London.

The rare sight of a state funeral cortège travelling by ship provided a striking spectacle: Victoria's body was carried on board HMY Alberta from Cowes to Gosport, with a suite of yachts following conveying the new king, Edward VII, and other mourners. Minute guns were fired by the assembled fleet as the yacht passed by. Victoria's body remained on board ship overnight before being conveyed by gun carriage to Gosport railway station the following day for the train journey to London. Victoria broke convention by having a white draped coffin.

At Windsor, when the royal coffin was loaded atop the gun carriage for the procession and the artillery horses took the weight, granddaughter of Queen Victoria Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone said the day was very cold and "nothing in the world would make them start". An attendant Royal Guard from HMS Excellent was shortly then ordered to haul the gun carriage with ropes instead, a disruption which subsequently became state funeral tradition.[9] She further observed that the Royal Artillery, responsible for the horses and the gun carriage, "were furious... humiliated beyond words" by the incident.[10]

Victoria's children had married into the great royal families of Europe and a number of foreign monarchs were in attendance including Wilhelm II of Germany as well as the heir-presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand.[11]

Funeral service

The service in the afternoon of Saturday 2 February at St George's Chapel followed the liturgy of the Burial Service in the Book of Common Prayer and was the first royal funeral for which a printed order of service had been produced. The organisation of the service lay with the Dean of Windsor and the Lord Chamberlain, with the active participation of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.[12] The music started with the first of the funeral sentences by William Croft and Psalm 15 to a setting by William Felton. After the lesson came further funeral sentences sung as anthems; Man that is born by Samuel Sebastian Wesley and Thou knowest Lord by Henry Purcell. The Lord's Prayer in Latin by Charles Gounod, and the anthem How blest are they by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky followed. After the Garter Principal King of Arms had proclaimed the Queen's styles and titles, the anthem Blest are the departed by Louis Spohr was reportedly followed by the Dresden amen. The inclusion of so much music by foreign composers was unprecedented and was not repeated in later royal funerals where British music predominated. At the end of the service, the funeral march attributed to Ludwig van Beethoven but actually by Johann Heinrich Walch was played instead of the traditional "Dead March" from Saul because Victoria was known to dislike Handel's music and was reported to have forbidden its use at her funeral.[13]

The Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore.

Interment service

The interment at the nearby Frogmore Mausolem was held two days after the funeral on 4 February. The procession from St George's Chapel was accompanied by massed military bands playing funeral marches, but in the final part of the journey, pipers played a lament, the Black Watch Dead March. Arriving at the mausoleum, the choir of St George's sang Yea, though I walk from Sir Arthur Sullivan's oratorio, The Light of the World. This was followed by the funeral sentences by Wesley and Purcell that had been sung at the funeral, Lord have mercy by Thomas Tallis and Gounoud's Lord's Prayer. A hymn, Sleep thy last sleep, preceded the concluding prayers read by the Dean of Windsor, after which Sullivan's anthem, The face of death and Sir John Stainer's Sevenfold Amen concluded the service.[14]

Guests

As per report in London Gazette.[15]

Immediate family

Other descendants of the late Queen's paternal grandfather, King George III and their families:

Extended family

Other foreign royalty

Nobility

See also

Bibliography
  • Range, Matthias (2016). British Royal and State Funerals. Boydell Press.

References
  1. Matthew, H. C. G.; Reynolds, K. D. (2004). "Victoria (1819–1901), queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and empress of India". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36652. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. Retrieved 20 September 2022. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. Hibbert, p. 497; Longford, p. 563
  3. St Aubyn, p. 598
  4. Longford, p. 563
  5. Hibbert, p. 498
  6. Longford, p. 565; St Aubyn, p. 600
  7. Rappaport, Helen (2003). Queen Victoria: a biographical companion. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
  8. Wyllie depicts a scene during the funeral of Queen Victoria. The royal yacht, HMY Alberta, carrying the Queen's body, arrives in Gosport in the late afternoon of 1 February 1901, with the setting sun behind her. The royal standard flies at half-mast, and surrounding the small vessel are several escorting destroyers. In the background the anchored battleships fire salutes. Following behind the Alberta is the larger royal yacht HMY Victoria and Albert, flying the royal standard and carrying King Edward VII and other royal mourners.
  9. "Memorials and Monuments in Portsmouth - Field Gun Carriage". www.memorialsinportsmouth.co.uk. Archived from the original on 19 September 2022. Retrieved 5 June 2021.
  10. Victorian Ladies 2/2 Princess Alice & Queen Victoria's Funeral, archived from the original on 5 June 2021, retrieved 5 June 2021
  11. "The Funeral at Windsor of Queen Victoria. The Royal Windsor Website.com by ThamesWeb". Thamesweb.co.uk. Archived from the original on 18 October 2016. Retrieved 22 January 2017.
  12. Range, Matthias (2016). British Royal and State Funerals: Music and Ceremonial since Elizabeth I. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press. p. 268. ISBN 978-1783270927. Archived from the original on 4 August 2023. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  13. Range 2016, pp. 270-273
  14. Range 2016, pp. 275-276
  15. "No. 27316". The London Gazette (Supplement). 22 May 1901.
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