Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury his nephew, Arthur Balfour. King Edward VII conferred upon him the Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO), with the order star set in brilliants, during his resignation audience. Salisbury, due to breathing difficulties caused by his great weight, took to sleeping in a chair at Hatfield House. His death in August 1903 followed a fall from that chair, when by then he had a weak heart condition and blood poisoning caused by an ulcerated leg. Salisbury was buried at St Etheldreda's Church, Hatfield, where his predecessor as prime minister, Lord Melbourne, is also interred. When Salisbury died his
Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and succeeded Winston Churchill's first premiership after their coalition broke up but only after a two-month interval when Attlee was not a member of the government. Anthony Eden succeeded Churchill after his second premiership, not because he had been Deputy Prime Minister, but because he had long been seen as Churchill's heir apparent and natural successor. The intermittent existence of a Deputy Prime Minister has been on occasion so informal that there have been a number of occasions on which dispute has arisen as to whether or not the title has actually been conferred. The position of Deputy Prime Minister