Of all the eulogies passed upon Caroline, few were so profuse in their laudation as that contained in a sermon preached before the council at Boston, in America, by the Rev. Samuel Mather. There was not a virtue known which the transatlantic chaplain did not attribute to her. As woman, the minister pronounced her perfect; as queen, she was that and sublime to boot. As regent, she possessed, for the time, the King’s wisdom added to her own. Good Mr. Mather, too, is warrant for the soundness of her faith; and he applied to her the words in Judith: ‘There was none that gave her an ill word, for she feared God greatly.’

William III. is recorded as having said of his consort, Mary, that if he could believe any mortal was born without the contagion of sin, he would believe it of the queen. Upon citing which passage, the Bostonian exclaims: ‘And oh, gracious Caroline, thy respected consort was ready to make the same observation of thee; so pure, so chaste, so religious wast thou, and so in all good things exemplary, amidst the excesses of a magnificent court, and in an age of luxury and wantonness!’ And he thus proceeds: ‘The pious Queen was constant at her secret devotions; and she loved the habitation of God’s house; and from regard to the divine institutions, with delight and steadiness attended on them. And as she esteemed and practised every duty of piety towards the Almighty, so she detested and frowned on every person and thing that made but an appearance of what was wicked and impious. As she performed every duty incumbent on her towards her beloved subjects, so she deeply reverenced the King; and while his Majesty honours her and will grieve for her to his last moments, her royal offspring rise up and call her blessed.’

‘Seven are the children,’ said the preacher, ‘which she has left behind her. These, like the noble Roman Cornelia, she took to be her chief ornaments. Accordingly, it was both her care and her pleasure to improve their minds and form their manners, that so they might hereafter prove blessings to the nation and the world. What a lovely, heavenly sight must it have been to behold the majestic royal matron, with her faithful and obsequious offspring around her! So the planetary orbs about the sun gravitate towards it, keep their proper distance from it, and receive from it the measures of light and influence respectively belonging to them. Such was—oh, fatal grief!—such was the late most excellent Queen.’

The issue of the marriage of Caroline and George II. comprised four sons and five daughters—namely, Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales, born January 20, 1706; Anne, Princess of Orange, born October 22, 1708; Amelia Sophia, born June 10, 1711; Caroline Elizabeth, born May 31, 1713; William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, born April 15, 1721; the Princess Mary, born February 22, 1723; the Princess Louisa, born December 7, 1724. All these survived the Queen. There was also a prince born in November 1716, who did not survive his birth; and George William, Duke of Gloucester, born November 2, 1717, who died in February of the year following.

At the funeral of Caroline, which was called ‘decently private,’ but which was, in truth, marked by much splendour and ceremony, not the King, but the Princess Amelia, acted as chief mourner; and the anthem, ‘The Ways of Zion do mourn,’ was ‘set to Musick by Mr. Handell.’ Of all the verses poured out on the occasion of her death, two specimens are subjoined. They show how the Queen was respectively dealt with by the Democritus and Heraclitus of her subjects:—

Here lies, lamented by the poor and great—

(Prop of the Church, and glory of the State)—

A woman, late a mighty monarch’s queen,

Above all flattery, and above all spleen;

Loved by the good, and hated by the evil,