Till the Soul that is not man’s soul was lent us to lead.”
Rudyard Kipling (The Seven Seas).
At the death of Queen Anne a great change took place in the reigning family. The people would not have Queen Anne’s brother, Prince James, for their King, because he was a Roman Catholic, but there were many plans and plots in his favour, as we have heard. And even here again the Abbey plays a part in it all, for the famous Dean of Westminster, Francis Atterbury, was concerned in these Jacobite plots. It is said, indeed, that on Queen Anne’s death he had been ready to go to Charing Cross to proclaim James III, but James and his friends somehow let their opportunity slip, and instead of James III, George I was proclaimed. Later on it was discovered that Jacobite plots still went on at the Westminster Deanery, and Dean Atterbury was imprisoned and then exiled in France, where he died in 1731–32. He is buried in the Abbey, close to the Deanery entrance in the Nave, and, as he wished, “as far from Kings and Cæsars as the space will admit of.”
George I, in spite of his mother’s descent from the Stuarts, was really a foreigner, and he is buried in his native town of Hanover, just as the first Norman King is buried at Caen, and the first Plantagenet Kings at Fontevrault.
George II, and his wife, Caroline of Anspach, are buried in Henry’s VII’s Chapel, straight in front of Edward VI’s grave. Queen Caroline died in 1737, and George II in 1760. They are the last sovereigns buried at Westminster. Since that time the Kings and Queens of England have been buried at Windsor and in the new Mausoleum at Frogmore, where Queen Victoria and Prince Albert rest.
At the funeral of Queen Caroline the choir sang the beautiful anthem which had just been composed by Handel, “When the ear heard her, then it blessed her.” It was King George’s special wish that his ashes should mingle with his wife’s, and therefore the two coffins are placed in one large sarcophagus. There is no monument; only the names on the stones above.
It is interesting to remember that George II was the last English sovereign to be present at a battle. During the years 1740 to 1748 several of the nations of Europe were fighting in what was called the War of the Austrian Succession. This war was really caused by Frederick the Great of Prussia and other German sovereigns trying to get various possessions away from the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. England took the Austrian side, and George II himself joined the army at the Battle of Dettingen, in 1743. The English and their allies were victorious. Handel composed his famous “Dettingen Te Deum” for the thanksgiving after the victory.
Several other members of the Hanoverian Royal House are buried in the central aisle of Henry VII’s Chapel. Among them are the following: Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales (son of George II), and his wife, Augusta Princess of Wales, the father and mother of King George III.
William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, third son of George II, is also buried here. The Duke of Cumberland was a brave soldier, but his severity to the Scotch Jacobites after the Battle of Culloden in 1746 earned him the name of “the Butcher.” The Scotch, who had been fighting for Prince Charlie, were mercilessly slaughtered, and this cruelty has never been quite forgotten.
There are several other monuments in the Abbey to remind us of the Jacobite Rising of 1745. Such, for instance, is the monument to Marshal Wade, on the south side of the Nave. Marshal Wade was commander-in-chief of the army which was sent to quell the rebellion, and he was the man who made the great military roads through the Highlands spoken of in the well-known rhyme—