King George I died in Hanover, but his son, King George II, who died in 1760 at Kensington Palace, did have a lying-in-state there, in the Prince’s Chamber. The coffin lay on a bedstead draped with purple velvet curtains. Those who came to visit it (like the diarist Horace Walpole, son of the first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole) included foreign ambassadors and politicians. But it was not a public event as we understand that today. King George IV and King William IV both died at Windsor Castle, and tickets were sold to view their coffins. William IV had been more popular, and according to the newspaper reportage of the day, about 2,000 bought tickets to view him lying in state in the Waterloo Chamber for two days. But apparently many were turned away, despite having tickets, because the arrangements were so chaotic.
The nearest resemblance to a modern perspective on a royal lying-in-state came with the 1817 death in childbirth of Princess Charlotte, the only child of the later George IV. Highly popular, the national outpouring of grief was no mere formality. It was traditional for the population to go into mourning after a royal death, wearing black, mourning rings etc, but it was usually more ‘the done thing’, and fashionable, rather than an expression of genuine sentiment. But when the carriages carrying the coffins containing Charlotte’s body, and that of her stillborn son, passed through London en route from Claremount in Esher to Windsor, crowds of ordinary people turned out to line the streets. Her coffin lay in crimson-draped state at Lower Lodge overnight (this no longer exists) and during the day of 19 November, and would-be visitors lined up to try to get tickets for the melancholy sight.