Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen

For this post I am indebted to the article on Queen Adelaide in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and to Antonia Fraser, Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Bill (W&N, 2014).

Portrait of Queen Adelaide
by John  Simpson, 1832
Public domain

The quest for an heir

The death of Princess Charlotte in 1817 caused a crisis in the royal family. The succession was now in doubt and the royal dukes, the brothers of the Prince Regent, hastened to marry. The Regent was already married, and he and his estranged wife, Caroline of Brunswick, were not going to produce any more children.  The next brother, the duke of York, was married but childless. The third son of George III, William duke of Clarence, was unmarried.

In 1791 he had begun to live with the actress Dora (Dorothy, Dorothea) Jordan, and between 1794 and 1807 she bore him five sons and five daughters while continuing to act. But in 1810 their relationship cooled. At the end of that year George III descended into his final illness, and Clarence moved nearer to the throne.  In December 1811 the couple formally separated, and she died in France in 1816. Clarence continued to live at their home, Bushy House, Teddington. 

The choice of a wife

Meanwhile, he was looking for a rich wife, although it was only after Charlotte’s death that he settled on Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meinengen, who had been recommended to him by his mother.  She had been born on 13 August 1792, the eldest child of George Frederick Charles, duke of the tiny state of Saxe-Meiningen and his wife  Louisa Eleanora of Hohenloe-Langenburg. In April 1818 the government proposed that an extra £7,000 per annum should be granted to him if her married, with £3,000 per annum for his wife, but, much to Clarence's fury, his income was reduced by £1,000 after parliamentary protests. 

Caroline of Brunswick

Caroline of Brunswick (1804)
by Sir Thomas Lawrence
Public domain

The essayist William Hazlitt described the Queen Caroline affair as 

‘the only question I have ever known that excited a thorough popular feeling. It struck its roots into the heart of the nation; it took possession of every house and cottage in the Kingdom.’

Caroline Amelia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel was born on 17 May 1768, the second daughter of Duke Charles William Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, a small vassal state of Prussia in north Germany, and his wife, Princess Augusta,  the elder sister of George III.  The marriage was unhappy. Caroline’s father said,  

‘Only private persons can live happily married because they choose their mates. Royalty must make marriages of convenience, which seldom result in happiness.’ Quoted Flora Fraser, The Unruly Queen (Macmillan, 1996), p. 15.

Caroline had a restricted education, her only skill being playing the harpsichord. At the age of fifteen, she was unable to spell or punctuate. By her twenties she had a reputation as a flirt and was notorious for her unbridled, often indecent conversation. Yet her mother was desperate for her to make a good marriage into her brother’s family.

In the summer of 1794 arrangements were made for Caroline to marry her cousin, George, Prince of Wales.  There were many reasons for the marriage: 

1. There was the need for an heir – the marriage of the second son, the Duke of York was childless. 
2. Caroline was a close relative and thought to be safe. She was also the requisite Protestant princess. 
3. The prince needed to settle his debts, which were over £½ million. Parliament decreed that if he married, his income was to be raised from £60,000 to £125,000, plus £26,000 for the completion of Carlton House.

On the other hand, the Prince had a skeleton in his cupboard, his secret marriage to Maria Fitzherbert, which had taken place in December 1785. Though valid in canon law, the marriage was illegal on two counts. In marrying without his father’s permission, the Prince had violated the Royal Marriages Act of 1772; and in marrying a Roman Catholic he would have given up his right to the throne. For this reason, though an open secret, the marriage was never made public.   

Dining at Kew

There's a lot of interesting material coming online about many aspects of the life of the Hanoverians that somehow never found their way into the main textbooks. If you ever wondered what the royal family actually ate when they sat down at table, here's what we've learned so far.

Queen Charlotte: later married life

The White House at Kew, where George III became ill
(now demolished). Public domain

The royal family: stresses and strains

Historians have often described the marriage of George III and Queen Charlotte as a happy one, and certainly the king believed that he was a loving family man. In fact, he chose not to notice the unhappiness of those around him. He kept his wife isolated in the early years of their married life, he did not appear to notice the strains imposed by her many pregnancies, and from the late 1790s he imposed on her his own love of travelling continually between his three residences. He believed he loved his daughters but he forced them to live extremely restricted and frustrating lives.

The Prince of Wales

George and Charlotte were the first British monarchs since Edward III to have a family of grown-up sons. These sons were notorious for their pleasure-loving lives. However, George was anxious for them to  be useful and this meant that apart from the eldest, they all had military and naval careers.

George, Prince of Wales, was deeply frustrated that he was denied a military career. Deprived of a useful role, he gambled, lived extravagantly and incurred huge debts. Much of his money was spent on two huge architectural projects, Carlton House and the Royal Pavilion, Brighton.

Carlton House
Public domain

On 15 December 1785 the prince secretly married the widowed Catholic Maria, Fitzherbert, whom he had met the previous year. The marriage was illegal according to three acts: the Act of Settlement (1701), the Act of Union (1707), both of which excluded a prince or princess married to a Catholic from succeeding to the throne, and to the Royal Marriages Act (1772). Though the couple initially kept separate establishments, the marriage was an open secret in London society, where they were constantly seen together. However the king and queen were ignorant of it.

Maria Fitzherbert (1756-1837), 
by Sir JoshuaReynolds. 
Public domain

The prince further embarrassed his parents by his open support of the parliamentary Opposition. While the king supported William Pitt the Younger, whom he had appointed prime minister at the end of 1783, the prince supported the Whig leader, Charles James Fox. George III detested Fox, not merely because of his radical politics, but because he believed that he had led his son into bad ways. Fox returned the dislike and hoped that the king would soon die. The prince would then become king and make Fox his prime minister. 

Hair powder

Anyone who would like to know more about hair powder in the Georgian period should enjoy reading this post. 

Frederick, Prince of Wales: a reappraisal

Frederick, Prince of Wales
by Liotard
Royal Collection
Public domain

This article from the History of Parliament website casts an interesting light on a prince who hasn't had a very good press from historians.

Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1744-1818): early married life

Queen Charlotte, by Nathaniel Dance-Holland
Public domain

The posts on Charlotte owe a great deal to the work of Dr Clarissa Campbell Orr, the author of the entry on Charlotte in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and of several entries in the book of the 'Enlightened Princesses' exhibition. It is also indebted to Olwen Hedley's Queen Charlotte and Janice Hadlow's The Strangest Family for detailed analyses of Charlotte's life and her relationship with her family.

If you want to browse through Queen Charlotte's papers, now online at the Royal Archives, click here.

Early life

Sophie Charlotte was born on 19 May 1744 at the place of Mirow, in the duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. She was the second daughter of Duke Karl Ludwig (Charles Louis) and his wife, Elizabeth-Albertine of Saxe-Hildburghausen. 

She was educated at home, and was a clever and responsive pupil, with a taste for serious reading. From Marcy 1760 until her marriage she was the secular (and non-resident) canoness of the imperial (and Lutheran) abbey of Hervoden.

Marriage

From 1760 George III and his mother, Augusta, were looking for a wife for the young king. The choice had to be a careful one, because the Seven Years' War (1756-73) had complicated European diplomacy, and George, who wanted to end the war, did not wish to pick a bride from a family that was too supportive of Prussia. By process of elimination he arrived at Charlotte and on 8 July 1761 he announced his intention to marry her. 

At the age of eighteen, Charlotte left for England, accompanied by her bedchamber woman, Juliana Elizabeth Schwellenberg, unable to speak English. She married George III at the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace, on the evening of her arrival (8 September, 1761). Within a few months she was pregnant, and her son, George, Prince of Wales, was born on 12 August 1762. Fourteen more children were to follow.