BUBB DODDINGTON.
Lord Melcombe.
“N.B.—The Duke of Somerset was Chief Mourner, notwithstanding the flourishing state of the Royal Family.”
So ends Bubb Doddington’s account of the Prince’s illness, death and burial, and it will be seen from his description of the latter that King George the Second’s hatred for his eldest son did not cease with death, but that his petty animosity went beyond it to the grave, and touched those who stood around it.
On such a nature it would be vain to waste good English words, his own reflections on the events of this year are the best comment and explanation of it, and it is a sort of pleasure to think that these words suggest some ring of sorrow in them for his actions past.
Touched by the death of his daughter, the Queen of Denmark, George the Second made the following soliloquy.
“This (1751) has been a fatal year to my family,” he said “I have lost my eldest son, but I was glad of it. Then the Prince of Orange died and left everything in confusion. Poor little Edward has been cut open for an imposthume in his side, and now the Queen of Denmark is gone! I know I did not love my children when they were young. I hated to have them coming into the room. But now I love them as well as most fathers.”[74]
After a long description of the sepulture of the viscera of the Prince, which appears to have been attended with almost as much ceremony as his funeral, and seems to have attracted a ghoulish interest, the Gentleman’s Magazine for April, 1751, proceeds as follows, with an account of the latter function.
The procession began half-an-hour after eight at night, and passed through the old Palace Yard to the south-west door of Westminster Abbey, and so directly to the steps leading to Henry the Seventh’s Chapel.