The poor princess, ‘Queen of Great Britain,’ as those who loved her were wont to call her, had been long in declining health, born of declining hopes; and yet she endured all things with patience, contenting herself in her last moments with reasserting her innocence, commending herself to God, naming her children, and pardoning her oppressors. On the 2nd of November 1726, after much hope, not only deferred but crushed out; after much disappointment of expectations, built on the promises of false friends; and after marked but gradual decrease of health, Sophia Dorothea became suddenly and dangerously ill. She lost all consciousness, and on the 13th of the month she lay dead on her bed in the castle of Ahlden. The news soon reached Hanover, where the authorities, with a feeling of becomingness, ordered a general mourning as for the death of a queen in the land. As soon as this decent step was known in England, the King was vulgar in his wrath. He sent peremptory orders to Hanover to do away immediately with all signs of mourning, and the officials, if not the public, went into ordinary, or holiday, gear. At the Court of Berlin, the daughter of Sophia Dorothea, the King, and consequently all the Prussian fashionable world, assumed the deepest mourning, as for a Queen of England so nearly allied to the Queen of Prussia. The King of Great Britain took this natural circumstance for an insult; but he was obliged to bear, albeit with blaspheming impatience, what he could not resent. The simple royal order for the funeral was that the Duchess of Ahlden should be buried in a grave dug for her on the banks of the Aller. The soil was dug into, over and over again, but the water rushed in and mocked the attempts of the workmen. Meanwhile, the body of Sophia Dorothea lay in a plain leaden coffin in the castle and no one knew what to do with it, for fear of offending the King. After several weeks had passed, a few strong men carried it down to a cellar, and, covering it over with a cart-load or two of sand, left it till further gracious orders should arrive from over the water. At the end of six months there was a stir in the royal stud stables at Zell. Four of the King’s horses were taken thence and were ridden over to Ahlden. The chief of the men in charge there showed the royal order by which he was commissioned to take up the body from beneath the heap of sand and carry it back to Zell. And this was to be done without any ceremony whatever.