Royal Musings

Friday, April 24, 2026

New London exhibit: Elizabeth I: Queen and Court

Elizabeth I:

Queen & Court

14th May - 10th July 2026

Open Mondays to Fridays from 9.30am to 6pm.

Admission is free and booking is not required.

This spring, the gallery presents Elizabeth I: Queen and Court, an exhibition exploring how portraiture shaped one of Britain’s most iconic reigns. Featuring outstanding Tudor works drawn from private collections, the exhibition includes the earliest surviving life-size, full-length portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, alongside portraits of some of the key figures from her close circle of courtiers and confidantes. These rarely seen paintings reveal how portraiture functioned as a tool of power and was used to project authority, secure allegiance, and, in rare cases, register dissent.

Crucially, the exhibition does not purely focus on members of the elite. In fact, it presents an exceptionally rare act of visual resistance: a concealed portrait of John Stubbs (c.1544-1589) the Buxton-born Puritan and seditionary, shown alongside his severed right hand, commemorating the punishment he suffered in 1579 for publishing a pamphlet criticising Queen Elizabeth I’s proposed marriage to the Roman Catholic Francis, Duke of Anjou (1555-1584). In a culture of meticulously managed loyalty to the Crown, the portrait of Stubbs stands apart, demonstrating that portraiture could, on occasion, quietly rebel.

Philip says, “We are very fortunate, through the generosity of our private lenders, to be able to assemble a cast of the key figures of the first Elizabethan age. Above all is the compelling presence of Elizabeth herself, who, working with the most resourceful artists of her time, continually reshaped her image to meet the monarchical ambitions of a single woman on a stage of extraordinary challenge.”

The exhibition will be accompanied by an online publication featuring essays by Tudor historians Dr Elizabeth Goldring and Dr Christina Faraday.

https://philipmould.com/exhibitions/62-elizabeth-i-queen-court-tudor-portraits/

The gallery is located at 18-19 Pall Mall in London.

State of war keeps King George VI from approving a marriage

In January 1946, Princess Sophie of Hesse and Prince Georg Wilhelm of Hanover announced their engagement. The couple planned a quiet wedding, as Sophie was a widow. Her first husband, Prince Christoph, was killed in a flying accident during the Second World War in October 1943. Sophie, a princess of Greece and Denmark by birth, was pregnant with her fifth child, a daughter who was born posthumously.

Prince Georg Wilhelm of Hanover's mother, Viktoria Luise, and the late Prince Christoph were first cousins. Sophie and both her husbands were descendants of Queen Victoria

Victoria - Victoria - Wilhelm II - Viktoria Luise - Georg Wilhelm.

Victoria - Victoria - Margarete - Christoph

Victoria - Alice - Victoria - Sophie

Georg Wilhelm was the second son of HRH Prince Ernst August of Hanover and Princess Viktoria Luise of Prussia. The Hanover royal family was the only surviving male line of descent from King George III.

George III - Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland (King of Hanover) - Georg V - Ernst August -Ernst August - Georg Wilhelm. Until 1917, members of the Hanover Royal family were treated as members of the British Royal Family. World War I - and the Titles Deprivation Act - changed this situation.

https://royalmusingsblogspotcom.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-house-of-hanover-and-its.html

https://royalmusingsblogspotcom.blogspot.com/2012/04/titles-deprivation-act-of-1917.html

In the early 1930s, Georg Wilhelm's father, the Duke of Brunswick, "decreed" that his male-line descendants would continue to be styled as Prince or Princess of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, despite the Titles Deprivation Act.

In January 1938, Crown Prince Paul of the Hellenes married Princess Frederika of Hanover, Georg Wilhelm's younger sister. Frederika's father, as the head of the House of Hanover, requested permission for his daughter's marriage under the Royal Marriages Act.

King George VI gave his assent to the marriage on December 31, 1937, nine days before Frederica married the future King of the Hellenes.

Nine years later, it was time for Prince Georg Wilhelm to seek approval for his marriage. His father, Prince Ernst August, Duke of Brunswick, sent the following letter to King George VI.

"To His Majesty the King.

Sir.

My son George William Ernest Augustus Frederic Axel Prince of Hanover, Prince of Great-Britain and Ireland, Duke of Brunswick and Luneburg, Royal Highness, born at Brunswick on 25th March 1915 is engaged to be married to Her Royal Highness Sophia Princess dowager of Hesse, born Princess of Greece and Denmark, born at Korfu on 26th June 1914 and the wedding is to be celebrated in a short time.

Before taking any public or official steps in this matter, my duty as a Descendant of His Majesty George the Second of glorious memory, obliges me to conform to the terms of the Royal Statute XII George III chapter XI.

It is then to this end that I solicit hereby the consent of Your Majesty to the Union above mentioned, begging You to ratify this consent under the Great Seal of State, to declare it in Your Privy Council and to enroll the same in the Registers of Licenses of Marriages and of the said Privy Council, also with an extract from the Council Register to be forwarded on to me.

My intimate conviction of the sincere interest which Your Majesty takes in all that concerns me, as well as the veritable and true attachment with which You have always honoured me, assures me beforehand of the favourable reception which this request will not fail to meet with, and I eagerly seize this opportunity to renew to Your Majesty the assurance of the high esteem and unalterable friendship with which I remain

Sir

Your Majesty's affectionate Cousin

Ernest August (Duke of Brunswick)

Marienburg-Nordstemmen

22nd March 1946."

The approval should have been a slam dunk. It wasn't. Sir Gerald Grey Fitzmaurice (1901–1982), the deputy legal advisor at the Foreign Office, was asked to offer his expertise in the matter. He considered the matter of Prince Georg Wilhelm's marriage as a "nice problem." Ernest Bevin, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was, according to official correspondence about the "propriety of expressing The King's consent in the formal manner contemplated by the Statute, as was done when the Duke's daughter became engaged to Prince Paul of Greece in 1937, before the war broke out."

The King's "wish to let the Duke through that from his personal point of view that there is no objection to the marriage." It was understood that George VI's response would be "conveyed to the Duke through our people in Germany, with an explanation that in present circumstances it is not possible (if such in fact is the position for His Majesty to declare his consent in Council as could have been in normal circumstances."

The Duke of Brunswick's "point of view, and from whatever motives he may have acted, he has done the correct thing in applying to His Majesty, and The King would naturally not wish to appear discourteous by ignoring his letter. At the same time it would seem impossible to avoid the fact that the Duke is technically of enemy status, which to say the least of it must cast a certain doubt on the expediency of following in Council the procedure laid down by the Statute. The latter however declares specifically that "no descendant of the body of His late Majesty King George the Second, Male or Female (other than the issue of princesses who have married, or may hereafter marry, into Foreign Families), shall be capable of contracting Matrimony without the consent of His Majesty, His Heirs or Successors, signified under the great Seal, and declared in Council", and in face of this wording the adoption of the informal middle course which I have indicated would seem to be a means of saving The King from appearing discourteous but might be misinterpreted as being formal consent under the statute when in fact the statutory procedure has not been followed."

The King could not give his consent because "a state of war still exists between Great Britain and Germany, and in view of the fact the Duke's son is the issue of a Princess who married into a foreign family, His Majestu is advised that the case is not one in which is practivable or necessary for His Majesty's consent to be given in the formal manner contemplated by the Act."

The referenced princess was Queen Victoria's daughter, Victoria, who married Emperor Friedrich III of Germany. Princess Viktoria Luise was the only daughter of Empress Friedrich's eldest son, Wilhelm II.

The Lord Chancellor, William Jowitt, did not agree that the Royal Marriages Act applied to Prince Georg Wilhelm. He was a male-line descendant of George II. This view was shared by Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice who held the "opinion that it was contrary to the spirit, if not the letter of the law as enacted by the Act of 1772, that a descendant of George III who through his mother was issue of a Princess who a had married into a foreign family but whose father was a descendant of George III hut not the issue of such a Princess, was outside the Act."

The final decision was shared with the King's Private Secretary, Sir Alan Lascelles who informed George VI.

A telegram was sent to the British Commander-in-Chief in Berlin:

FROM FOREIGN OFFICE TO POLITICAL ADVISER TO COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, GERMANY (BERLIN)

18th April, 1946.

D. 7.05 p.m. 18th April, 1946.

MOST IMMEDIATE

The Duke of Brunswick has formally applied to The King by letter of March 22nd for the consent of His Majesty under the Act 12 Geo. III, cap. 11 to the marriage of his son Prince George William with Princess Sophia Dowager Princess of Hesse. The marriage is understood to be taking place on April 23rd.

Please convey to the Duke an informal intimation that in view of the fact that a state of war still exists between Great Britain and Germany, His Majesty is advised that the case is not one in which it is practicable for His consent to be given in the manner contemplated by the Act."

[In August 1951, Georg Wilhelm's older brother, Prince Ernst August, married Princess Ortrud of Schleswig-Holstein, and his marriage was approved by King George VI.]

Princess Sophie and Prince Georg Wilhelm were married in civil and religious ceremonies at Schloss Salem on April 23, 1946. One of the guests at the wedding was Sophie's younger brother, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark. Nineteen months later, on November 20, 1947, Prince Philip married Princess Elizabeth, the elder daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.

Philip's three surviving sisters, Margarita, Theodora, and Sophie, were not invited to his wedding due to the state of war between the United Kingdom and Great Britain, which formally ended in 1951.

Photos of the late Queen Elizabeth II

State Visit 1992 all photos @Marlene A Eilers Koenig

I wanted to have this post up on April 21, the centenary of Queen Elizabeth II's birth. All of the photos were taken by me - some are fine, others, well ... I did not have a fancy camera in the 1980s.

Arriving in Lexington, KY - May 1989 - Her third of five visits to Kentucky

Trooping

May 1989 Will Farish and his wife with the Queen at their home in Versailles, Ky

Arriving with Prince Edward at the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh in 1986

Folger Shakespeare Library 1992

Mount Vernon

British Embassy. I was standing next to Crown Prince Alexander and Crown Princess Katherine. The Crown Prince greeted the Queen (his godmother) with a kiss, calling her Lilibet.