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). 


George II was so enraged by his son’s conduct that he expelled him from the court.  It was fortunate for Frederick that Augusta was popular and she became his chief political asset. 

Frederick and Augusta

The prince and princess were now settled at Carlton House, London, Cliveden in Buckinghamshire, and Kew in Surrey. On 4 June 1738 she gave birth to a boy, the future George III. She and Frederick eventually had four sons and three daughters. 

Her fertile maternity was a great asset, and she was frequently painted alongside her children, who were taken by their parents to the theatre and on visits to manufactories. George and Caroline did not blame Augusta for her husband’s conduct. They sympathised with her predicament and admired her as a mother.  Augusta’s portraits from this period frequently show her as surrounded by her children. She also presented herself as a patriotic Englishwoman, wearing Spitalfields silk, when French fabrics were fashionable at George II’s court. She was thought to be a good influence on her husband, and as such was courted by the politicians.

Princess Dowager

Frederick died suddenly on 20 March 1751, leaving Augusta a pregnant widow. 

The family of Frederick Prince of Wales
painted after his death
by George Knapton
Royal Collection
Public domain

Her first act was to destroy any compromising political papers. She knew that she needed the support of George II and cut off all her outward links with the opposition. She received the title Princess Dowager and the right to be regent (though with very limited powers) if George II died before her son came of age.  

Augusta found it impossible to avoid a political role. She believed that George II was too subservient to his ministers, and she disliked the tutors he chose for her son. To guard her son’s morality, she kept him at Leicester House away from court society. In trying to instruct him in his duties as a king, she turned to her late husband’s friend, the Scottish peer, John Stuart, the third Earl of Bute, who became mentor to the young Prince of Wales. Her obvious affection for him led to rumours that the two were lovers. 

Augusta as Princess Dowager
by Liotard, 1754
Royal collection
Public domain

In 1756 young George came of age, and he appointed Bute his Groom of the Stool, a position that gave him close access to the future monarch.  Augusta’s reputation was blackened, and she never recovered her popularity. She was accused not only of being Bute’s mistress, but also of instilling absolutist ideas into her son: ‘George, be king!’. The Oxford Magazine published a poem: 

‘Her name is Tyranny, and in a string/She leads the shadow of an infant king’.

After George came of age Augusta lived quietly and frugally at Carlton House and at Kew. She gave a great deal of money anonymously to charity and spent the rest of her disposable income on the grounds of the botanical garden at Kew. Her great passion was plant collecting and in 1768 alone her gardener's bill for shipping and transportation amounted to £90.

The Pagoda at Kew Gardens
erected 1762

After her son’s accession in 1760, she again became a controversial figure, attacked in John Wilkes’s North Briton, as (along with Bute) the power behind the throne, especially after Bute became prime minister in 1762. She was compared with the scheming Queen Isabella, the wife of Edward II, and Bute with her lover, Roger Mortimer. Images of the 'Boot and the Petticoat' were widely disseminated.

Apart from George, all her children grieved her. She was especially distressed at the unhappy marriages of her two daughters, Augusta, duchess of Brunswick and Caroline Matilda Queen of Denmark. In 1770 she travelled to the Continent to see them. Her advice had some effect on Augusta, none on the wayward Caroline Matilda.

By the autumn of 1771 she was terminally ill with cancer. She died on 15 February 1772. Her funeral was disorderly, showing how her reputation had declined from the early days of her popularity.

Conclusion

1. Augusta was a loving wife and mother who attempted to instil her own strict morality to her children.
2. She successfully imparted these values to George III, but she was also, probably unfairly, suspected of imbuing him with ideas of absolutism. Her unwise friendship with the Earl of Bute permanently damaged her popularity.