[ [505] ["The display was most magnificent; the powerful light which threw all below into strong relief, reached but high enough to touch the pendent helmets and banners into faint colouring, and the roof was a vision of tarnished gleams and tissues among the Gothic tracery. The vault was still open, and the Royal coffin lay below, with the crowns of England and Hanover on cushions of purple and the broken wand crossing it. At the altar four Royal banners covered with golden emblems were strewed upon the ground, as if their office was completed; the altar was piled with consecrated gold plate, and the whole aspect of the Chapel was the deepest and most magnificent display of melancholy grandeur."-From a description of the funeral of George the Third (signed J. T.), in the European Magazine, February, 1820, vol. 77, p. 123.]
["So by the unseen comforted, raised I my head in obedience,
And in a vault I found myself placed, arched over on all sides
Narrow and low was that house of the dead. Around it were coffins,
Each in its niche, and pails, and urns, and funeral hatchments,
Velvets of Tyrian dye, retaining their hues unfaded;
Blazonry vivid still, as if fresh from the touch of the limner;
Nor was the golden fringe, nor the golden broidery, tarnished."
A Vision, etc., ii.
"On Thursday night, the 3rd inst. [February, 1820], the body being wrapped in an exterior fold of white satin, was placed in the inside coffin, which was composed of mahogany, pillowed and ornamented in the customary manner with white satin.... This was enclosed in a leaden coffin, again enclosed in another mahogany coffin, and the whole finally placed in the state coffin of Spanish mahogany, covered with the richest Genoa velvet of royal purple, a few shades deeper in tint than Garter blue. The lid was divided into three compartments by double rows of silver-gilt nails, and in the compartment at the head, over a rich star of the Order of the Garter was placed the Royal Arms of England, beautifully executed in dead Gold.... In the lower compartment at the feet was the British Lion Rampant, regardant, supporting a shield with the letters G. R. surrounded with the garter and motto of the same order in dead gold.... The handles were of silver, richly gilt of a massive modern pattern, and the most exquisite workmanship."—Ibid., p. 126.]
[ [507] {491}["The body of his Majesty was not embalmed in the usual manner, but has been wrapped in cere-clothes, to preserve it as long as possible.... The corpse, indeed, exhibited a painful spectacle of the rapid decay which had recently taken place in his Majesty's constitution, ... and hence, possibly, the surgeons deemed it impossible to perform the process of embalming in the usual way."—Ibid., p. 126.]
[ [508] [The fact that George II. pocketed, and never afterwards produced or attempted to carry out his father's will, may have suggested to the scandalous the possibility of a similar act on the part of his great-grandson.]
[ [gl] {492}
In whom his { vices virtues } all are reigning still.—[MS. erased.]
[ [509] [Lady Byron's account of her husband's theological opinions is at variance with this statement. (See Diary of H. C. Robinson, 1869, iii. 436.)]