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Queen Adelaide, died on December 2, 1849. She was born August 13, 1792  a Princess of Saxe-Meiningen and was the daughter of Georg I, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, and Luise Eleonore of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. She was titled Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, Duchess in Saxony with the style Serene Highness from her birth until the Congress of Vienna (1814–15), when the entire House of Wettin was raised to the style of Highness. 


Adelaide married William of the United Kingdom and Duke of Clarence in a double wedding with William’s brother, Prince Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, and his bride Victoria, Dowager Princess of Leiningen, on July 11, 1818, at Kew Palace in Surrey, England. They had only met for the first time a week earlier. Within the first few years of their marriage Adelaide gave birth to the Princesses Charlotte and Elizabeth but both died in infancy. 

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Adelaide was beloved by the British people for her piety, modesty, charity, and her tragic childbirth history. A large portion of her household income was given to charitable causes. She also treated the young Princess Victoria of Kent (William’s heir presumptive and later Queen Victoria) with kindness, despite her inability to produce an heir and the open hostility between William and Victoria’s mother, the Dowager Duchess of Kent.

William, Duke of Clarence ascended the throne as King William IV of the United Kingdom upon the death of his brother George IV in 1830. After a reign of seven years William IV died and was succeeded by his niece who became Queen Victoria. Adelaide became the Dowager Queen.

Semi-invalid by 1847, Adelaide was advised to try the climate of Madeira for the winter that year, for her health. Queen Adelaide’s last public appearance was to lay the foundation stone of the church of St John the Evangelist, Great Stanmore. She gave the font and when the church was completed after her death, the east window was dedicated to her memory.


She died during the reign of her niece Queen Victoria on December 2, 1849 of natural causes at Bentley Priory in Middlesex. She was buried at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor.