Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen - Queen Dowager

Queen Dowager

Queen Adelaide was dangerously ill in April 1837, at around the same time that she was present at her sister's deathbed in Meiningen, but she recovered. By June it became evident that the King was fatally ill himself. Adelaide stayed beside William's deathbed devotedly, not going to bed herself for more than ten days. William IV died from heart failure in the early hours of the morning of 20 June 1837 at Windsor Castle, where he was buried. The first queen dowager in over a century (Charles II's widow, Catherine of Braganza, had died in 1705, and Mary of Modena, wife of the deposed James II, died in 1718), Adelaide survived her husband by twelve years. After her husband's death, Queen Adelaide became a tenant of William Ward and took up residence at the latter's newly purchased house, Witley Court in Worcestershire, from 1842 until 1846. She was a frequent visitor to Gopsall Hall (now part of the crown estate) in Leicestershire and many of the locals were very fond of her. On one occasion, when meeting the people in Measham, the public were told to approach her by horse and carriage. One man was so desperate to meet Queen Adelaide that he approached her in a bathtub pulled by a mule. The Queen greeted him nevertheless.

She died during the reign of her niece Queen Victoria on 2 December 1849 of natural causes at Bentley Priory in Middlesex and was buried at St. George's Chapel, Windsor. She wrote instructions for her funeral during an illness in 1841 at Sudbury Hall: "I die in all humility", she wrote, "we are alike before the throne of God, and I request therefore that my mortal remains be conveyed to the grave without pomp or state…to have as private and quiet a funeral as possible. I particularly desire not to be laid out in state…I die in peace and wish to be carried to the fount in peace, and free from the vanities and pomp of this world."