Lady Mary Russell was one of Queen Elizabeth’s maids of honor on the day she was crowned Queen. She died on September 18, just a day before the late monarch’s state funeral. She was 88.
The wife and mother of five died “peacefully” at home with her family September 18. It says in the obituary section of the Times. The obituary said she and her husband David had three sons named Anthony, Philip and Jason and two daughters named Arabella and Marianne. They also had 12 grandchildren.
The next day, more than 2,000 family members, guests and heads of state came to Westminster Abbey for Queen Elizabeth’s state funeral. She was the longest-reigning British monarch.
In 1953, when Queen Elizabeth was crowned at Westminster Abbey, Lady Russell was the youngest of the six ladies-in-waiting there. She was only 19 years old. As they carried the Queen’s six-yard train through Westminster Abbey, the six women wore embroidered silver gowns with long silk gloves and tiaras. The Earl of Haddington, who was Lady Russell’s father, was friends with the Queen Mother when they were young.
Queen Elizabeth wore a duchess gown of white satin. It was designed by Sir Norman Hartnell, who also made her wedding dress in 1947 and the dresses for her maids. Queen Elizabeth requested that embroidered flowers representing the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries be added as a personal touch. They gave the dress so much weight that it probably weighed more than 11 pounds.
Lady Russell also remembered how heavy the dress was, as if it was a problem that day. “It was amazing and exciting – especially during the anointing,” Lady Russell said of the coronation. “It was an amazing moment, but all I could think about was how heavy the embroidery was.”
Lady Russell did not take the honor of being a maid for granted. “Out of all the girls our age in the country, six of us girls were chosen to carry the Queen’s train and that meant a lot,” she said.
Lady Anne Glenconner, one of the other maids of honor, told the BBC that the six women were “the Spice Girls of their day” because they were so important at the coronation. Lady Russell was the second of the six ladies-in-waiting to die. Lady Moira Campbell, who was 90 when she died in 2020, was the first. Lady Glenconner, Lady Jane Lacey, Lady Rosemary Moore and Baroness Willoughby de Eresby are still alive.
A full year had passed since her father’s sudden death before the grand coronation ceremony. In 1952, King George VI died suddenly at home. He had lung cancer and had one of his lungs removed. He died of coronary thrombosis, which was discovered after his death.
After his sudden death, plans were quickly made for his daughter to become queen, although she immediately took the throne.
This month, Queen Elizabeth was laid to rest in the King George VI Memorial Chapel at Windsor Castle with her beloved father and mother. Instead of getting a statue or memorial bearing her name, the Queen is said to have wanted to be buried with her family. The graves of her sister Princess Margaret and her husband Prince Philip are also there.
“She did not wish to see a statue of herself or even to have a separate burial chamber in the chapel of St. George,” historian Robert Hardman, author of Queen of Our Times: The Life of Elizabeth II, told sources. “As her cousin Margaret Rhodes once told me, ‘She wanted to make her father proud.'”
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