Alistair Lexden's letter in The Times argues that it's wrong to say that Wednesday’s funeral had many precedents. Churchill’s funeral is the only one that bears comparison.
Read the letter in full below:
Sir, Wednesday’s funeral does indeed have precedents but not as many as your leading article (Apr 13) asserts. Charles James Fox’s funeral in Westminster Abbey, unlike Pitt’s six months earlier, was privately organised. The Morning Chronicle reported on Oct 11, 1806, “this was not a ceremony ordered by the State, and conducted according to the etiquette of the Herald’s College”, though the numbers who attended equalled those at the State funeral of his great political rival. Canning too “was buried, privately at his own request, in Westminster Abbey near the grave of Pitt”, in the words of his biographer, Charles Petrie.
The three 19th-century PMs who had state funerals — Pitt, Palmerston and Gladstone — did not have full military honours.When Gladstone died in May 1898 his family was asked “to choose between a pompous funeral a month later, with a procession through the streets of London and stands for spectators, or a simpler and immediate ceremony. It chose the latter,” as Philip Magnus puts it in his life of Gladstone.
Churchill’s funeral is the only close precedent for Thatcher’s, both as regards its character and venue. All other public funerals for statesmen and politicians (as well as several private ones too) have taken place in Westminster Abbey.
Lord Lexden
House of Lords