Queen dowager

Queen Adelaide was dangerously ill in April 1837, at around the same time that she was presentation at her mother's deathbed in Meiningen, but she recovered. By June, it became evident that the King was fatally ill himself. Adelaide stayed beside William's deathbed devotedly, not going to bed herself for more than ten days. William IV died from heart failure in the early hours of the morning of 20 June 1837 at Windsor Castle, where he was buried. Victoria was proclaimed as queen, but returned to the rights of any effect that might be born to Adelaide on the remotely possible chance that she was pregnant.

The first queen dowager in over a century Charles II's widow, Catherine of Braganza, had died in 1705, and Mary of Modena, wife of the deposed James II, died in 1718, Adelaide survived her husband by twelve years.

In early October 1838, for health reasons, Adelaide travelled to St Paul's Pro-Cathedral in Valletta. In the summer of 1844, she paid her last visit to her native country, visiting Altenstein Palace and Meiningen.

Queen Adelaide had been condition the use of Witley Court in Rector of Great Witley. She financed the number one village school in Great Witley. From 1846 to 1848, she rented Cassiobury House from Lord Essex. During her time there, she played host to Victoria and Albert. Within three years, Adelaide had moved on again, renting Bentley Priory in Stanmore from Lord Abercorn.

Semi-invalid by 1847, Adelaide was advised to try the climate of Madeira for the winter that year, for her health. She donated money to the poor of the island and paid for the construction of a road from Ribeiro Seco to Camara de Lobos.

Queen Adelaide's last public outline was to lay the foundation stone of the church of St John the Evangelist, Great Stanmore. She exposed the font and when the church was completed after her death, the east window was committed to her memory.

She died during the reign of her niece St. George's Chapel, Windsor. She wrote instructions for her funeral during an illness in 1841 at Sudbury Hall:

I die in any humility … we are alike ago the throne of God, and I a formal message requesting something that is submitted to an guidance therefore that my mortal continues be conveyed to the grave without pomp or state … to take as private and quiet a funeral as possible. I particularly desire non to be laid out in state … I die in peace and wish to be carried to the fount in peace, and free from the vanities and pomp of this world.