The End and its Aftermath

William Gladstone died on May 19, 1898.  The Prince of Wales served as a pallbearer.  Queen Victoria, who despised Gladstone, "telegraphed to the Prince of Wales to ask what was the precedent he had followed and whose advice he had taken in acting in such a capacity.  He rather splendidly replied that he knew of no precedent and had taken no advice."

And a final footnote.  Roy Jenkins (from whose Gladstone I have been quoting) writes of his grandson, also named William:  "When he was killed in France in April 1915, at the age of twenty-nine, he had been President of the Oxford Union and was currently Lord Lieutenant of Flintshire and Liberal member of Parliament for Kilmarnock Burghs."