Augusta of Saxe-Gotha (1719-72)

Wife to the Prince of Wales

Augusta was born in 1719, the thirteenth child of Frederick II, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg and his wife (and first cousin) Magdalena Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst.

Schloss Friedenstein, Gotha

George II was looking for a wife for his rebellious son, Frederick. In 1736 the King was passing the summer in Hanover and he invited the seventeen-year-old Augusta to meet him. 

Frederick, Prince of Wales
by Jean-Étienne Liotard
Royal Collection
Public domain

There had never been marriages into the Saxe-Gotha Altenburg dynasty before. The family had lost land and prestige since the sixteenth century but it was still wealthy and provided cultural leadership through hosting one of the largest court theatres in Germany. But Augusta impressed the king with her deference and eagerness to please. She also had the religious asset of descent from Luther’s patron, Frederick III of Saxony.  But she was ill-prepared for her new role. Her widowed mother was so ignorant of England that she thought that the British court all spoke German so that Augusta would not need to learn English.

In England

She married Frederick in St James’s Palace on 27 April 1736. Her unassuming manners charmed her mother-in-law and made her popular with Londoners. She soon learned English and was able to communicate easily with those she met. When Augusta visited representatives of the commercial community in Bristol, the Gentleman’s Magazine reported that she ‘talked freely with the ladies in good English, which entirely won their hearts’.

Princess Augusta, by William Hogarth
National Museum of Warsaw
Public domain

The family quarrel

But Augusta could not be kept out of Frederick’s quarrel with his parents. On 31 July 1737 she suddenly went into labour at Hampton Court. Frederick was so determined to separate himself from his parents that in 1737 he forced Augusta to move from Hampton Court to St James’s Palace. The child was a girl named after her mother (not her grandmother, which might have been more courteous and diplomatic). 

Caroline of Ansbach (1683-1737)

Queen Caroline, by Joseph Highmore
1735
Public domain

In her book Courtiers, Lucy Worsley describes Caroline as ‘fat, funny and adorable … plump but pin-sharp… the cleverest queen consort ever to sit upon the throne of England’.

Early life

Wilhelmine Karoline of Ansbach was born on 1 March 1683,  the daughter of John Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach and his second wife, Eleanore of Saxe-Eisenach.  

Ansbach in the seventeenth century
Public domain

Her father died of smallpox when she was three. In 1692 her mother married John George IV, Elector of Saxony and the family moved to Dresden. Two years later he too died of smallpox. Eleanore died in 1696 and the thirteen-year-old Caroline went to live with new guardians, her mother’s kinsman, Frederick III, Elector of Brandenburg, who became King in Prussia (Frederick I) in 1701, and his second wife Sophie Charlotte of Hanover the sister of George I.

Sophie Charlotte, the first queen consort
of Prussia
Caroline's mentor

Caroline spent the next few years at the brand new palace of Lietzenburg, commissioned by Sophie Charlotte. (At Sophie Charlotte’s death in 1705 it was renamed Charlottenburg in her honour.) She had a theatre built at the palace to host Italian opera. 

Sophie Charlotte was a woman of great intellect and considerable personality. She loved arguments and discussions. At Lietzenburg Caroline was introduced to some of the greatest intellectuals of her day: the philosophers Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz and John Toland and the composer Georg Frideric Händel.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz
philosopher and mathematician

In 1703 Caroline received a proposal from the Archduke Charles of Austria, subsequently the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles VI. She turned him down after refusing to convert to Catholicism and resisting the overtures of the Jesuit priests who were sent to bring her round.

Why Germany?

Germany

The consorts are
Sophia Dorothea of Celle, wife of George I
Caroline of Ansbach, wife of George II
Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, wife of Frederick, Prince of Wales
Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, wife of George III
Caroline of Brunswick, wife of George IV
Adelaide of Saxe Meiningen, wife of William IV
Albert of Saxe-Coburg, husband of Queen Victoria

They were all  German. Why?

In the eighteenth century it was common for the rulers of the great powers to marry princesses from minor German principalities. Catherine the Great was the obscure Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst before she married Peter, the heir to the Russian throne in 1745. In the power-politics of the time, this made sense. Dynastic marriages were arranged for political reasons and Germany was at Europe’s strategic crossroads.

There was no nation-state called Germany. The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation was a federation of over three hundred sovereign states of various sizes, comprising fifteen million people, more than twice the population of Britain. There were three main types: principalities, ecclesiastical states, and city states. The nine princes who elected the Emperor were the most important rulers. 

Succession was by the strict dynastic law of male inheritance. Because it was common for the land to be divided among all the sons, many of these states were tiny, though some became larger through marriage alliances - hence the hyphens in the names of so many of the states! However small the state, the children of the rulers were princes or princesses. This meant that there were many available princesses for the Catholic and Protestant rulers of Europe. 

The Hanoverian succession

In the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries, Hanover became one of the most important of the German states. In 1679 Ernst August of Braunschweig-Lüneburg became Duke of Hannover (Hanover). In 1683 he introduced primogeniture into his territories. In 1692 he was appointed Elector by the Emperor Leopold, though it was not until 1708 that Hanover was confirmed as the ninth electorate. The electors’ main palace was Herrenhausen, modelled on Versailles, which became one of the most splendid of the German courts.

The gardens at Herrenhausen. The schloss was destroyed
in the Second World War
Johannes D.

In 1658 Ernst August had married Sophia, the granddaughter of James I. 

Sophia, Electress of Hanover
Queen Anne's heir
Public domain

Their son, Georg Ludwig (George Louis) was born in 1660. When Ernst August died in 1698 Georg Ludwig became Duke (and elector of Hanover from 1708).  In 1701 the English Parliament passed the Act of Settlement that settled the crown on Sophia after the death of the Princess Anne of Denmark (who in 1702 became queen). The Act of Union of 1707 created the nation of Great Britain and brought Scotland into line with the succession law. Sophia died on 28 May 1714, Anne on 1 August. George was proclaimed king of Great Britain and he landed at Greenwich on 18 September. 

Sophia Dorothea of Celle (1666-1726)

Sophia Dorothea, Electoral Princess
of Hanover, with her children,
George and Sophie
Public domain

Georg Ludwig

Georg Ludwig (George Louis), the son of Ernst August of Hanover and his wife, Sophia of the Palatinate, was born in 1660. He received a formal education from a governor and preceptor until 1675. He gained a good command of French and German as well as Latin, some Italian, and Dutch. However, his English was always rudimentary - even after he became king of Great Britain!

From an early age he loved riding, hunting, and all things military. He fought with his father in the Dutch War against the French in 1675 and in subsequent years. He took part in the siege of Vienna in 1683 and served with distinction in the War of the Spanish Succession. 

The bride

Ernst August planned for his son to marry Sophia Dorothea, the daughter of his elder brother, Georg Wilhelm. This marriage made it likely that on Georg Wilhelm’s death his territory of Celle would be united to Hanover.  

Sophia Dorothea was only eleven when the marriage was first proposed. She had been brought up in a very relaxed atmosphere in a happy family. Her parents had married for love and she was their only child. She was lively and confident and had a number of suitors. The Electress Sophia did not believe that she would be a suitable wife for her son. In spite of her misgivings, however, the marriage was celebrated on 22 November 1682. She was sixteen, he was twenty-two. 

By the time George left for military service to fight for the Emperor Leopold against the Turks, she was expecting a child. Their son, George August, was born on 30 October/9 November 1683. [Note: Until 1752 the British still kept to the Julian calendar rather than the Gregorian calendar in use in Europe.] Sophia Dorothea had succeeded in the main aim of the marriage – to provide a male heir. A daughter was born four years later, and became the mother of Frederick the Great.