The Marchioness Was There: King George V's Coronation 1911

There is a reference in the London Gazette to the attendance of Caroline Anne nee Caithness, 4th Marchioness of Ely,  as one of the Dowagers at the Coronation of King George V on 11 June 1911. She would have been part of the magnificent scene in Westminster Abbey pictured above in the painting by John Henry Frederick Bacon.

June 22 1911: King George V and Queen Mary's coronation day dawned, according to the King's diary, 'overcast and cloudy with some showers and a strongish cold breeze.' London newspapers reported concerns that the cool damp weather might mean smaller crowds at the event, but the weather made no apparent difference. By 8 a.m. thousands, carrying umbrellas, packed the stands erected along the procession route.

'During the hours of waiting before the Royal arrivals, the Peers and Peeresses had passed in twos and threes to their allotted seats in the transepts, bearing their coronets in their hands. In the north transept, where the Peeresses were seated, the miniver of their furred capes only partly concealing the crimson of their robes, while diamonds and jewels sparkled on head and bosom, the effect was one of splendid grace and beauty. The Peers faced them in the south transept in the order of their degrees of nobility, Dukes, Marquesses, Earls, Viscounts and Barons. Above the Peers and Peeresses were the Commons and members of their families. The Bishops who were not taking part in the ceremonial were seated in a double row on the north of the Sacrarium, in their Convocation robes, while the Judges, in their vestments of state, sat in a gallery at the north-east angle; in all a great gathering of eight thousand people, drawn together to do homage to their King. 

Then, amid dead silence, the Royal Processions advanced through the western door of the Abbey. First came the Prince of Wales, a charming figure of boyish stateliness, followed by the little Princess Mary and the other Royal children. Then the Queen, preceded by the Archbishop of Canterbury in his rich cope, and surrounded by her lovely maids of honour, entered the nave. Her gorgeous train, glowing with burnished gold, was borne by the Duchess of Devonshire and her six ladies-in-waiting, a collar of sparkling jewels at her throat. Thousands of eager eyes followed her stately progress. The King's Regalia were now seen ...  His Majesty advanced up the nave with slow and kingly step. In his crimson robe of State and wearing the Collar of the Garter and the Cap of Maintenance he passed through the upstanding people to his Chair of Estate on the south side of the high altar. The Queen had preceded him to her Chair of Estate near the dais. They were supported by their Bishops, the Bishops of Durham and of Bath and Wells on either side of the King, and the Bishops of Oxford and of Peterborough of the Queen. At the altar stood the Archbishop of Canterbury.' 

Later the King wrote in his diary: 'The Service in the Abbey was most beautiful but it was a terrible ordeal. We left Westminster Abbey at 2:15 (having arrived there before 11).'

Coronation Medals of

King George V and Queen Mary

The Marchioness's Will: A Diamond Tiara and Strongbow's Sword

The real Caroline Anne nee Caithness begins to emerge from the shadows as we peruse her will made four years before she died in 1917. 

Among several heirlooms of the Ely family bequeathed to the trustees of the estate are an inscribed silver gilt christening cup engraved with the Viscount’s coronet, the chased silver gilt cup and cover made from the Great Seal of Ireland, a helmet-shaped ewer and various items engraved with the Ely arms.

 The Loftus Cup (Belfast Museum). The inscription reads: 

This cup was made of the Great Seal of Ireland in the year 1593

 Adam Loftus being then Lord Chancellor. He was also Lord Justice in 1582 and 1583 

in which year he built Rathfernan Castle (below).

Adam Loftus

Paintings similarly bequeathed include the portrait of Adam Loftus, who was Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1593, a portrait of Lady Loftus (no detail as to which one) and two small portraits of an Earl and Countess of Ely. A more personal piece of memorabilia linked to Caroline’s yachtsman husband is a two-handled racing cup, ‘Bermuda’.

Her servants named in the will receive a sum of money as well as the equivalent of a year’s wages. Her maid, Maria Rance, receives 700 pounds and there is an amount thoughtfully put in trust for Maria’s son, Ernest. Maria is also left ‘my blue enamel carriage clock and all my furs and wearing apparel except my Coronation robes and my lace’.

That Caroline loved animals is shown by her bequests to charitable institutions such as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Home of Rest for Horses, Cricklewood and the Home for Lost and Starving Dogs, Hackbridge. Her own dog, Jock, as well as her pony, mare and donkey are not forgotten, funds being set aside for their suitable housing and keep after her death. The Dover Hospital and the Dover Sailors Home and the Hospital for Diseases of the Throat, London, are also remembered. Dover had associations for the 4^th Marquis, whose residence Kearsney Abbey was in that area.

Specific monetary bequests are made to her brother George John Caithness, her niece Violet Irene Caithness and to her godson, George Henry Wellington Loftus, as well as to other members of the Loftus family. Some items of jewellery are mentioned, such as her pearl necklace to her godchild, Violet, and her three stone diamond ring to her brother George John Caithness. However, her diamond tiara is bequeathed to the trustees ‘to be held and enjoyed … by the lady who shall at my death be entitled to the title of Marchioness of Ely … and on her death successively by the other ladies who shall be entitled to such title for their respective lives’.

Perhaps the most intriguing item bequeathed to the trustees is ‘Strongbow’s Sword’ – Strongbow being the nickname of the almost mythical medieval Earl of Pembroke. For what length of time this heirloom, believed to have belonged to Strongbow, had been in the possession of the Elys is not certain but in 1928 it was used to cut the cake at the wedding of Viscount Loftus and Miss Thea Gronwold.

Trove: The Argus, Melbourne, Victoria 1928

Caroline expressed her wish to be cremated and for her urn to be placed with her husband’s at the Ely family tomb in Kensal Green Cemetery, London. She had been a widow for 28 years.

Acknowledgement:
Tom Sheldon

The Marquis and the Mariner's Daughter 2

The marriage entry, 9 December 1875, for Caroline Anne Caithness and John Henry Wellington Graham Loftus gives the groom's residence as Ely Lodge, Enniskillen in the County of Fermanagh, Ireland. 

This house dates back to the 1830s when the 2nd Marquis, lacking a seat in County Fermanagh (they had estates there as well as in County Wexford), built Ely Lodge on a promontory beside Lough Erne. Stone for its construction came from another family home, Castle Hume not far away, which had been demolished. 

'Ely Lodge was a large classical house ...The main front was a five-bay, two storey, stuccoed block with Tuscan pilasters and a central, columned porch. On either side were single-storeyed bowed wings.' This residence lasted for thirty years. In 1870, for a series of possible reasons described as '(1) an unwelcome visit from Queen Victoria, (2) the discovery of the agent's fiddling and (3) the building of a bigger and better house, Ely Lodge was blown up as the climax of the festivities that marked the coming-of-age of the 4th Marquis.'

The proposed new house was never built, probably because the 4th Marquis overspent on rebuilding his other seat, Loftus Hall, County Wexford. However, from his will made in 1884 it seems that the stable block at Ely Lodge was converted to domestic use and became in time the seat of the family until sold in 1947.

Loftus Hall: near Fethard-on-Sea, Co. Wexford, 'a gaunt three-storey mansion of 1871 with rows of plate-glass windows and a parapet, incorporating parts of a previous late 17th c house. The house, (which was built by the 4th Marquis of Ely after he turned 21) stands near the tip of Hook Head, an extremely windswept spot bereft of trees and shelter.' The coastal view above gives an impression of the starkness of the place.

Whether Lady Caroline Anne ever spent any time at either Ely Lodge or Loftus Hall history doesn't relate. If she did, perhaps Kearsney Abbey in the softer countryside of Kent, the 4th Marquis's English residence by the 1880s, was more to her liking.

Acknowledgement:

Tom Sheldon 

The Marquis and the Mariner's Daughter

Lady Caroline Anne

For Caithness family researchers, the importance of the 4th Marquis of Ely rests on his marriage to Caroline Anne Caithness, daughter of George Caithness, which event took place on 9 December 1875 and was announced in the London Standard's Marriages column of Monday 13 December: 

According to an account in an American newspaper (see previous post on this blog) the 4th Marquis had at one time prior to his marriage been in the running as a suitor to Princess Beatrice but this did not eventuate and 'the Marquis was seen no more at court'. 

In fact it appears that the Marquis was rarely seen in England at all, spending most of his time 'abroad' and becoming well-known as 'a yachtsman'. The circumstances of his meeting with Caroline Anne Caithness remain conjecture. As the daughter of a mariner - even a respectable Master Mariner - Caroline was unlikely to have moved in the same circles as the Marquis, yet meet they did and presumably fell in love. 

John Henry Wellington Graham Loftus, Caroline's husband, was the only son of John Henry, 3rd Marquis, and was educated at Harrow and Oxford, succeeding to the marquisate at the age of eight on the death of his father in July 1857. Though the 4th Marquis was described prior to his marriage as 'young, rich and handsome and a favourite at court', by the time he died in 1889 things had changed.

The 'two jointures' mentioned would have been those to the Dowager Marchioness, the 4th Marquis's mother, Jane (who died a year after her son), and to his widow, Caroline Anne. The latter's will shows that Caroline was left fairly well-off. She survived her husband by 28 years, dying in 1917. There is a reference in the London Gazette to her attendance as one of the Dowagers at the coronation of King George V on 11 June 1911, perhaps Caroline's last public appearance.

Kearsney Abbey, Dover, Kent, residence of the 4th Marquis
at the time of his death in 1889

Built by the Dover banker John Minet Fector in 1820-22, Kearsney Abbey was described as 'a charming residence, in extensive grounds, in which the two branches of the Dour unite, forming a lake, in which there are ornamental fountains'. A manor house rather than an Abbey (it had never been a monastic building) materials from the ancient town walls and demolished churches were used in its construction. 

To be continued 

Acknowledgement:

Tom Sheldon

Cremation of a Marquis 1889: Macabre Details

'FIRE BURIAL'

The 4th Marquis of Ely 'had specially provided in his will that his remains should be disposed of in this way', i.e. by cremation or 'fire burial'.

That the London event was of international interest is shown by this and other reports appearing in American newspapers, this brief column being published in the Las Vegas Daily Optic of 10 May 1889. 

A more detailed account appeared in The Northern Indicator, Iowa: 'Four Pounds of White Ashes All that is Left of Princess Beatrice's Lover - The Event may make Cremation Fashionable - Other Peers to be Burned.' ... 'The urn contained about four  pounds of snow white ashes, similar in appearance to a sample of the best brand of Minneapolis flour, and two or three small pieces of beautiful, silver-like, frosted bone.'  These were 'the mortal remains of the Right Honourable and Most Noble John, fourth Marquis of Ely, the rich, handsome young noble who, fifteen years previously had been within an ace of becoming the husband of a  princess of the royal house of England.' 

Cremation became legal in Great Britain in 1885. There had been increasing interest in this form of disposal of human remains during the second half of the 19th c, influenced by ideas from Italy. 
A surgeon and physician to Queen Victoria, Sir Henry Thompson, became the promoter of cremation in England because he believed:
‘it was becoming a necessary sanitary precaution against the propagation of disease among a population daily growing larger in relation to the area it occupied’. 

In addition, he believed, cremation would prevent premature burial, reduce the expense of funerals, spare mourners the necessity of standing exposed to the weather during interment, and urns would be safe from vandalism.

In 1878 an acre of land in Woking was purchased for the establishment of a crematorium. The resulting apparatus was first tested in March 1879 when the body of a horse was cremated. The inhabitants of Woking protested vigorously against the use of the facility. Cremation was eventually declared legal in February 1884, the first official cremation in the UK taking place in Woking on 26 March 1885.

At the date of the 4th Marquis of Ely’s cremation, April 1889, only three years later, anything concerning the cremation topic was still hot news, though perhaps the Northern Indicator's report pushed the boundaries of good taste.

THE PRINCESS AND THE MARQUIS

It's not certain whether the same newspaper’s remarks on the 4th Marquis of Ely having been a suitor for the hand of Queen Victoria’s 5th daughter and youngest child, Princess Beatrice, were based in fact. The Queen was against Beatrice marrying, preferring to keep her daughter at her side as companion and unofficial secretary, an arrangement to which Beatrice apparently consented. 

Louis Napoleon, the Prince Imperial

Various suitable matches were nevertheless put forward. Among the contenders was Louis Napoleon, the Prince Imperial of France, to whom Beatrice was attracted, but her hopes were blighted when the Prince was killed during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. Interestingly, the 4th Marquis of Ely’s mother, Jane, was a friend of the Prince Imperial’s mother, Empress Eugenie.

Princess Beatrice eventually married Prince Henry of Battenburg in July 1885. Ten years later Prince Henry died of malaria contracted during service in the Asante War, and Beatrice remained with her mother until the latter’s death in 1901. It was Beatrice who undertook the thirty-year long task of editing Queen Victoria’s journals for publication, deleting much private material: the resulting journals are only a third as long as the originals (which were destroyed as the editing progressed). 





Acknowledgements:
Tom Sheldon