Praised by Alexander Pope in his Moral Essays as possessing a ‘proud alcove’ in which one might happily be ‘galant and gay’, the great house of Cliveden, Taplow, where Meghan Markle spent the night before her wedding to Prince Harry, was visited by Queen Victoria in 1866, who stayed as guest of the Duchess of Sutherland from 26 May to 5 June. It was not the first time she had visited Cliveden, however. The Buckinghamshire mansion, which the diarist John Evelyn described as that “stupendous natural Rock, Wood & Prospect of the Duke of Buckinghams”, he also compared to being like Frascati, the villa of Aldobrandini which had sweeping views as far as Rome, just as the vista from the roof of the present Cliveden stretches as far as Windsor Castle.
Queen Victoria had visited Cliveden, the site of the splendid mansion which had been leased to her paternal great-grandfather, Frederick, Prince of Wales in 1738 by Anne, 2nd Countess of Orkney. It was where the composer Thomas Arne’s legendary patriotic aria Rule Britannia was performed for the prince in the amphitheatre in the grounds by the Covent Garden Company, the day after the third birthday of his daughter, Princess Augusta, in 1740. It was given as part of his commission, ‘Alfred, A Masque’. The mansion was sold to the Sutherland family on the death of Sir George Warrender, who had purchased the estate from the 4th Countess of Orkney.

The great house of Cliveden, Taplow (WyrdLight.com [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
There are early fleeting references to Cliveden throughout the Queen’s journal before Albert’s death, with descriptions of driving out there to visit the Duchess of whom she was so fond. The Duchess of Sutherland drove over to Windsor Castle from Cliveden less than two months before the Prince Consort’s death, in 1861. By far the most extended visit that the Queen made to the Duchess lasted some nine days in 1866, as part of which the Queen was given the Duchess of Sutherland’s rooms, whilst the Library at Cliveden became her drawing room for the duration of her stay. The luxury hotel which now occupies Cliveden House featured the Sutherland Suite as an illustration in one of its former brochures, showing the original bed and dressing table which had both belonged to the Duchess of Sutherland during the time she lived at Cliveden, from 1849-1868. The Spring Cottage, now available as private family accommodation, was a place where the Queen apparently took tea with the Duchess. Its pleasant situation being a most peaceful one, the lush waters of the Thames lapping at its edge, as they do still today.

Spring Cottage in the grounds of Cliveden (Stephen Daglish / Cliveden Estate from the River Thames [Public Domain via www.geograph.org.uk]
Cliveden was also the chosen place where Princess Helena’s daughter, Princess Marie-Louise of Schleswig-Holstein, spent her honeymoon with her bridegroom, Prince Aribert of Anhalt, following their wedding at St George’s Chapel on 6 July 1891.
Another link, therefore, of Cliveden’s royal connection to Queen Victoria’s family and a further connection with an earlier royal wedding at St George’s Chapel.