George V

George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936.

He was the second son of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales and Queen Victoria. In 1901, George's father became King-Emperor of the British Empire, and George was created Prince of Wales. He succeeded his father in 1910. 

His reign saw the rise of socialism, communism, fascism, Irish republicanism, and the Indian independence movement, all of which radically changed the political landscape. The Parliament Act 1911 established the supremacy of the elected British House of Commons over the unelected House of Lords. As a result of the First World War (1914–18) the empires of his first cousins Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany fell while the British Empire expanded to its greatest effective extent. In 1917, George became the first monarch of the House of Windsor, which he renamed from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as a result of anti-German public sentiment. In 1924 he appointed the first Labour ministry and in 1931 the Statute of Westminster recognised the dominions of the Empire as separate, independent states within the Commonwealth of Nations. He had health problems throughout much of his later reign and at his death was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward VIII.

First World War

Since he and his wife were descendant from a important German dynasty he didn’t approve a war to Germany. On 17 July 1917, George changed the name of the British royal house from House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the House of Windsor.

Sir Herbert Edward Ryle

Ryle was the Bishop of Exeter and Winchester and the Dean of Westminster.

Ryle was born in Onslow Square, South Kensington, London, on 25 May 1856; his father was the first Bishop of Liverpool.

In Ryle attended at Eton College, and after than at Cambridge. Between 1879 and 1881 he distinguished in theology. Therefore he became teacher at College of Cambridge in April 1881.

Ryle published a number of books connected with his academic interests, including The Early Narratives of Genesis (1892), The Canon of the Old Testament (1892), and Philo and Holy Scripture (1895). After his election as President of Queens' College, Cambridge in 1896 Ryle found little time for writing. He was, however, responsible for the edition of Genesis in the Cambridge Bible (1914), when he was Dean of Westminster.

During World War I Ryle used to take the midday service of intercession personally, and he was responsible for the many special services held in wartime.

The idea of a Tomb of The Unknown Warrior was first conceived in 1916 by the Reverend David Railton, who, while serving as an army chaplain on the Western Front, had seen a grave marked by a rough cross, which bore the pencil-written legend 'An Unknown British Soldier'.

He wrote to Dean Ryle in 1920 proposing that an unidentified British soldier from the battlefields in France be buried with due ceremony in Westminster Abbey "amongst the kings" to represent the many hundreds of thousands of Empire dead. The idea was strongly supported by Ryle and the then Prime Minister Lloyd George. There was initial opposition from King George V (who feared that such a ceremony would reopen the wounds of a recently concluded war) and others but a surge of emotional support from the great number of bereaved families ensured its adoption. The inscription on the tomb was composed by Ryle.

He died on 20 August. He was buried on 25 August in Westminster Abbey in a spot close to the tomb of The Unknown Warrior.

David Railton

David Railton was born on 13 November 1884 in London, he was a clergyman and he is known to be the originator of the idea of the Unknown Soldier’s tomb. The Railtons were a Scottish family and David Railton’s father George Scott Railton work together  General William Booth in the founding of the Salvation Army. Educated in Oxford and Liverpool, David joined the Church of England in 1908: when the First World War broke out he was a curate in Folkestone and he would have seen hundreds of thousands of soldiers leaving the town for the Western Front, he would have become a military chaplain to the 2nd Battalion of the Hon. Artillery Company, so he saw the war trough his eyes. He has been awarded the Military Cross for an important military action: he saved two comrades under fire of a heavy machinegun.

In 1916 in France, he found a makeshift grave which brings a particular inscription on a wooden cross:  An Unknown British Soldier. It was the first step of the birth of the war memorial in Westminster Abbey. Railton had the idea to build a symbolic burial in Great Britain to commemorate the men who died in the Great War without a name and for the realization of the project he convinced the most important British authorities. He couldn’t know that his project will be concretized in one of the most important British war memorials.

When the war finished he became vicar of Margate and in 1920, two years after the end of the First World War,  he suggested Herbert Ryle, Dean of Westminster, the construction of a memorial into the abbey which would have represented the WW1’s casualties without identification. During the year,  king George V, the Parliament and the government approved the idea, so the dream of David Railton took place.

David Railton sadly died in a train on 13 June 1955.