Caroline of Brunswick’s Funeral Plate Returns to the Market at £75,000
A small piece of silver is carrying a large share of British royal history this week. A coffin plate linked to Caroline of Brunswick, the estranged wife of George IV, is being offered for £75,000 at the Treasure House Fair at the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London, accompanied by a replica of her coffin.
Engraved by Paul Storr in 1821, the plate bears the words Caroline asked for on her deathbed: “the injured Queen of England.” That inscription became the center of a bitter struggle during her funeral, when the plate was repeatedly removed and replaced as royal officials and her supporters fought over how she should be identified in death. The official version, imposed by the King’s representatives, described her as Queen Consort and lavished praise on George, while also getting her age wrong.
Caroline died in 1821 at age 53, after a marriage that had long been a public scandal. She and George, then Prince of Wales, married in 1795 under pressure and quickly separated. Their daughter, Charlotte, became widely admired, and Charlotte’s death in childbirth in 1817 intensified public sympathy for Caroline. By the time George became king in July 1821, Caroline had become a symbol of opposition to the monarchy.
The funeral itself became a final act of conflict. Her cortege stopped in Colchester on the way to Harwich, where the coffin was taken into St Peter’s Church overnight. According to the account, a carpenter reattached Caroline’s own plate, only for another to remove it in the small hours under orders from the Lord Chamberlain. The official plate, later found in a pub in Hammersmith, was eventually fixed back in place and remains on the coffin in Brunswick cathedral in Germany.
The plate had remained in Stephen Lushington’s family until it was sold at a Christie’s auction last year. Its appearance at Treasure House Fair turns a funerary object into a sharply legible fragment of political theater, one that still carries the marks of the struggle over Caroline’s name, rank, and memory.
