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.

Marriage

The Electress Sophia, the heir to the English throne, had long wanted to see Caroline married to her grandson, George Augustus, Electoral Prince of Hanover. In June 1705 George travelled incognito to Ansbach to see her and fell in love with her. They were married in the chapel of the Leineschloss in Hanover on 2 September. Caroline promptly began to learn English and persuaded her husband to do the same. She employed British ladies in her household, read English novels and began to drink tea. 

In 1707 she gave birth to their first child, Frederick Louis. In spite of the dynastic significance of this birth, her father-in-law, who was jealous of her popularity, refused to join in the celebrations. Three daughters followed: Anne, who later married the Prince, later William IV of Orange, Amelia, and Caroline Elizabeth.

George did not remain faithful to Caroline but he always loved her. In 1709 he wrote: 

‘The peace of my life depends on knowing you in good health and upon the conviction of your continued affection for me. I shall endeavour to attract it by all imaginable passion and love, and I shall never admit any way of showing you that no one could be more wholly yours.’ (quoted Janice Hadlow, The Strangest Family) 

It was an intense rather than a straightforwardly happy marriage and they had few shared interests. She loved books, he rarely read and despised what he called her ‘learned nonsense’. When they became king and queen he showed little interest in her plans for laying out and improving the parks at Richmond and Kew. He was a hoarder, she a spendthrift.

Princess of Wales

In July 1714 Sophia died in Caroline’s arms, and when Queen Anne died on 1 August died and the crown passed to her father-in-law, who then became George I. In September he arrived at Greenwich, accompanied by his son. They were later followed by the three princesses and then by Caroline. Frederick was left behind in Hanover - something that might have been significant for his relationship with his parents. George and Caroline were to have three more surviving children: William, duke of Cumberland, Louisa, who became Queen of Denmark, and Mary who married a German prince. Caroline's fertility was one of her great political assets. It offered dynastic stability at a time when the Hanoverian dynasty was under threat from the exiled Stuarts.

Caroline had not married into a happy family. In later life George II said that his father ‘had always hated him and used him ill’. Neither of them ever spoke about Sophia Dorothea, though she was the presence that came between them. Like his father Geroge had a great deal of physical courage and pursued a military career, serving as one of Marlborough’s cavalry officers at Oudenarde in 1708. But he was bitter with his father for denying him a permanent military role. Apart from a shared love of the military, they were temperamentally at odds. George I was cold and reserved, George II was hot-tempered and volatile. 

It was politics as well as personality that drove father and son apart. With the accession of the Hanoverians, the Tories were banished and the Whigs seemed supreme. But in 1716 the Whigs split over the question of foreign affairs. The Prince of Wales and his wife began courting the opposition Whigs, and his home, Leicester House in Leicester Square, became the focus of an alternative government. 

At the end of 1717 the quarrel between the king and prince came into the open. The prince was  ordered to leave St James’s, and to the king’s surprise Caroline declared her wish to accompany him. The king then told the couple that under no circumstances would their children leave with them. Caroline declared that her children ‘were not a grain of sand compared with’ her husband. She made the decision to abandon her baby and her three daughters, who remained at St James’s under the care of the widowed Countess of Portland. Caroline and her husband moved to Leicester House. For their summer residence they chose Richmond Lodge. 

In February 1718 Caroline was granted permission to see her baby, but at Kensington Palace rather than St James’s, and the baby died before she could see him. In 1720 king and prince were reconciled, but the children continued to live at St James’s.

The events of 1717 established the legal precedent that it was the king rather than the father who was the legal guardian of the royal children.

Queen

Caroline in her coronation robes (detail)
by Charles Jervas
Public domain

With the death of George I in 1727 George and Caroline became king and queen, and Caroline came into her own. One of her first acts was to persuade her husband to keep on Sir Robert Walpole as prime minister.  

Sir Robert Walpole
Public domain

It was widely believed that Caroline was the power behind the throne. A contemporary lampoon claimed

You may strut, dapper George, but 'twill all be in vain/We know 'tis Queen Caroline, not you, that reign.

She was chair of the Regency Council when George II visited Hanover in 1729, 1732, 1735 and 1736. She played an important role in the appointment of at least four bishops consecrated between 1727 and 1737. She was concerned to anglicise the dynasty and made much of her descent from Matilda, Duchess of Saxony, the daughter of Henry II.

She supported other learned women, notably the Anglo-Saxon scholar, Elizabeth Elstob. 

The wife and the mistress

Caroline was relaxed about George’s relationship with his mistress, Henrietta Howard. 

Henrietta Howard, Countess of Suffolk
by Charles Jervas
Public domain

In October 1714 she was made Caroline’s woman of the bedchamber. She became George's mistress round about the time of his quarrel with his father. In 1723 he settled South Sea stock on her and this allowed her to buy land on the bank of the Thames and build the Palladian House, Marble Hill in Twickenham.

Marble Hill, Twickenham
photo by Ethan Doyle White

Caroline tolerated the relationship, because she knew she was the one with political influence. In seeking to retain power, Walpole had wisely chosen to court her rather than Henrietta. As he put it, he ‘caught the right sow by the ear’.

Science and philanthropy

Caroline was largely responsible for making the new practice of inoculation acceptable when she had her daughters inoculated successfully in April 1722, and she sent the surgeon Charles Maitland to Hanover to inoculate Frederick. 

She was one of the supporters of Captain Thomas Coram's Foundling Hospital.

Frederick, Prince of Wales
by Jean-Étienne Liotard

'Unnatural mother'?

Caroline seems to have been fond of all her children, apart from Frederick, for whom she developed a pathological hatred because of his opposition to his father. According to Lord Hervey's Memoirs, she described him as a ‘monster’ and frequently expressed the wish that he would die. She much preferred her second son, the duke of Cumberland. Her relationship with her son and daughter-in-law will be followed up in the next blog post.

Death

Caroline died painfully of a rupture on 20 November 1737 after a week of suffering and ineffectual medical treatment. She died devoutly but refused the Sacrament. She was buried in Henry VII's chapel in Westminster Abbey. George II had not been faithful to her, but he was distraught at her death.

Conclusion

1. Caroline was the most powerful and successful queen consort of the Hanoverian period and perhaps of any other period. She patronised the arts, science, and philanthropy. Her support of Walpole and her hatred of her son had important political implications.
2. She was certainly the cleverest queen consort – one of the most intellectual royals in British history.