April 2, 1653: Birth of Prince George of Denmark and Norway, Duke of Cumberland

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Duchess of Marlborough, Duke of Cumberland, George I of Great Britain, Glorious Revolution, King James II-VII of England, Lady Sarah Churchill, Prince George of Denmark and Norway, Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland, Queen Mary II of England

Prince George of Denmark (April 2, 1653 – October 28, 1708) was the husband of Anne, Queen of Great Britain. He was the consort of the British monarch from Anne’s accession on March 8, 1702 until his death in 1708

Early life

George was born in Copenhagen Castle, and was the younger son of Frederik III, King of Denmark and Norway, and Sophie Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg. His mother was the sister of Ernst August, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, later Elector of Hanover, whose son, George Louis, would succeed his future wife as King of Great Britain. This made Prince George of Denmark and King George I of Great Britain first cousins.

His father died in 1670, while George was in Italy, and George’s elder brother, Christian V, inherited the Danish throne. George returned home through Germany. He travelled through Germany again in 1672–73, to visit two of his sisters, Anna Sophia and Wilhelmine Ernestine, who were married to the electoral princes of Saxony and the Palatinate.

Prince George of Denmark and Norway, Duke of Cumberland

In 1674, George was a candidate for the elective Polish throne, for which he was backed by King Louis XIV of France and Navarre. George’s staunch Lutheranism was a barrier to election in Roman Catholic Poland, and John Sobieski was chosen instead.

As a Protestant, George was considered a suitable partner for the niece of King Charles II of England, Lady Anne. They were distantly related (second cousins once removed; they were both descended from King Frederik II of Denmark), and had never met.

George was hosted by Charles II in London in 1669, but Anne had been in France at the time of George’s visit. Both Denmark and Britain were Protestant, and Louis XIV was keen on an Anglo-Danish alliance to contain the power of the Dutch Republic.

Anne’s uncle Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester, and the English Secretary of State for the Northern Department, Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland, negotiated a marriage treaty with the Danes in secret, to prevent the plans leaking to the Dutch. Anne’s father, James, Duke of York, welcomed the marriage because it diminished the influence of his other son-in-law, Dutch Stadtholder William III of Orange, who was naturally unhappy with the match.

George and Anne were married on July 28, 1683 in the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace, London, by Henry Compton, Bishop of London. The guests included King Charles II, Queen Catherine, and the Duke and Duchess of York. Anne was voted a parliamentary allowance of £20,000 a year, while George received £10,000 a year from his Danish estates, although payments from Denmark were often late or incomplete.

George was not ambitious, and hoped to live a quiet life of domesticity with his wife. He wrote to a friend: “We talk here of going to tea, of going to Winchester, and everything else except sitting still all summer, which was the height of my ambition. God send me a quiet life somewhere, for I shall not be long able to bear this perpetual motion.”

Charles II, Anne’s uncle, famously said of Prince George, “I have tried him drunk, and I have tried him sober and there is nothing in him”.

In February 1685, King Charles II died without legitimate issue, and George’s father-in-law, the Roman Catholic Duke of York, became king as James II in England and Ireland and James VII in Scotland. George was appointed to the Privy Council and invited to attend Cabinet meetings, although he had no power to alter or affect decisions.

Prince George of Denmark and Norway, husband of the Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, wearing a ducal robe with the collar of the Garter.

William of Orange refused to attend James’s coronation largely because George would take precedence over him. Although they were both sons-in-law of King James, George was also the son and brother of a king and so outranked William, who, although a Prince, was an elected stadtholder of a republic.

George was unpopular with his Dutch brother-in-law, William III, Prince of Orange, who was married to Anne’s elder sister, Mary. Anne and Mary’s father, the British ruler James II and VII, was deposed in the Glorious Revolution in 1688, and William and Mary succeeded him as joint monarchs with Anne as heir presumptive.

In early April 1689, William assented to a bill naturalizing George as an English subject, and George was created Duke of Cumberland, Earl of Kendal and Baron of Okingham (Wokingham) by the new monarchs. He took his seat in the House of Lords on 20 April 1689, being introduced by the Dukes of Somerset and Ormonde.

William excluded George from active military service, and neither George nor Anne wielded any great influence until after the deaths of Mary and then William, at which point Anne became Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland. In 1707 with the Act of Union between England and Scotland and the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Queen Anne’s title changed accordingly.

During his wife’s reign, George occasionally used his influence in support of his wife, even when privately disagreeing with her views. He had an easy-going manner and little interest in politics; his appointment as Lord High Admiral of England in 1702 was largely honorary.

George was quiet and self-effacing. John Macky thought him “of a familiar, easy disposition with a good sound understanding but modest in showing it … very fat, loves news, his bottle & the Queen.”

The previous husband’s of a British queen regnant had become King Consorts. Felipe II of Spain was a King Consort to his wife Queen Mary I of England. King François II of France and Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, were King Consorts to Mary I of Scotland.

William of Orange, one the other hand, had become a joint sovereign king, and not a King Consort, with his wife, refusing to take a subordinate rank to Mary.

William III and Mary II had exemplified the traditional gender roles of seventeenth-century Europe: Mary was the dutiful wife and William wielded the power.

Prince George of Denmark and Norway, Duke of Cumberland and Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland

George and Anne, however, reversed the roles: George was the dutiful husband and it was Anne who exercised the royal prerogatives. William had assumed incorrectly that George would use his marriage to Anne as a means of building a separate power base in Britain, but George never challenged his wife’s authority and never strove to accrue influence.

In Britain at this time Husbands had a legal right to their wife’s property, and it was argued that it was unnatural and against the church’s teachings for a man to be subject to his wife. George made no such claim or demand; he was content to remain a prince and duke. “I am her Majesty’s subject”, he said, “I shall do naught.”

Anne’s seventeen pregnancies by George resulted in twelve miscarriages or stillbirths, four infant deaths, and a chronically sick son, Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, who died at the age of eleven. Despite the deaths of their children, George and Anne’s marriage was a strong one.

George died on October 28, 1708 aged 55 from a recurring and chronic lung disease, much to the devastation of his wife.

His death has flung the Queen into an unspeakable grief. She never left him till he was dead, but continued kissing him the very moment his breath went out of his body, and ’twas with a great deal of difficulty my Lady Marlborough prevailed upon her to leave him.

Anne wrote to her nephew, Frederick IV of Denmark, “the loss of such a husband, who loved me so dearly and so devotedly, is too crushing for me to be able to bear it as I ought.” Anne was desperate to stay at Kensington with the body of her husband, but under pressure from the Duchess of Marlborough, she reluctantly left Kensington for St James’s Palace.

The immediate aftermath of George’s death damaged their relationship further. He was buried privately at midnight on 13 November in Westminster Abbey.

Accession of Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland. Part VIII.

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Abigail Hill, Duke of Cumberland, George of Denmark, Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland, Sarah Churchill, The Duchess of Marlborough, Tories, Whigs

The Duchess of Marlborough was angered when Abigail moved into rooms at Kensington Palace that Sarah considered her own, though she rarely if ever used them. In July 1708, she came to court with a bawdy poem written by a Whig propagandist, probably Arthur Maynwaring, that implied a lesbian relationship between Anne and Abigail.

The Duchess wrote to Anne telling her she had damaged her reputation by conceiving “a great passion for such a woman … strange and unaccountable”. Sarah thought Abigail had risen above her station, writing “I never thought her education was such as to make her fit company for a great queen. Many people have liked the humour of their chambermaids and have been very kind to them, but ’tis very uncommon to hold a private correspondence with them and put them upon the foot of a friend.”

While some modern commentators have concluded Anne was a lesbian, most have rejected this analysis. In the opinion of Anne’s biographers, she considered Abigail nothing more than a trusted servant, and was a woman of strong traditional beliefs, who was devoted to her husband.

At a thanksgiving service for a victory at the Battle of Oudenarde, Anne did not wear the jewels that Sarah had selected for her. At the door of St Paul’s Cathedral, they had an argument that culminated in Sarah offending the Queen by telling her to be quiet. Anne was dismayed.

When Sarah forwarded an unrelated letter from her husband to Anne, with a covering note continuing the argument, Anne wrote back pointedly, “After the commands you gave me on the thanksgiving day of not answering you, I should not have troubled you with these lines, but to return the Duke of Marlborough’s letter safe into your hands, and for the same reason do not say anything to that, nor to yours which enclosed it.”

Death of her husband

Anne was devastated by her husband’s death on October 28, 1708 and it proved a turning point in her relationship with the Duchess of Marlborough. The Duchess arrived at Kensington Palace shortly before George died, and after his death insisted that Anne leave Kensington for St James’s Palace against her wishes.

Anne resented the Duchess’s intrusive actions, which included removing a portrait of George from the Queen’s bedchamber and then refusing to return it in the belief that it was natural “to avoid seeing of papers or anything that belonged to one that one loved when they were just dead”.

The Whigs used George’s death to their own advantage. The leadership of the Admiralty was unpopular among the Whig leaders, who had blamed Prince George and his deputy George Churchill (who was Marlborough’s brother) for mismanagement of the navy. With Whigs now dominant in Parliament, and Anne distraught at the loss of her husband, they forced her to accept the Junto leaders Lords Somers and Wharton into the cabinet.

Anne, however, insisted on carrying out the duties of Lord High Admiral herself, without appointing a member of the government to take George’s place. Undeterred, the Junto demanded the appointment of the Earl of Orford, another member of the Junto and one of Prince George’s leading critics, as First Lord of the Admiralty.

Anne appointed the moderate Earl of Pembroke, on November 29, 1708. Pressure mounted on Pembroke, Godolphin and the Queen from the dissatisfied Junto Whigs, and Pembroke resigned after less than a year in office. Another month of arguments followed before the Queen finally consented to put Orford in control of the Admiralty as First Lord in November 1709.

Sarah continued to berate Anne for her friendship with Abigail, and in October 1709, Anne wrote to the Duke of Marlborough asking that his wife “leave off teasing & tormenting me & behave herself with the decency she ought both to her friend and Queen”.

On Maundy Thursday April 8, 1710, Anne and Sarah saw each other for the last time. According to Sarah, the Queen was taciturn and formal, repeating the same phrases—”Whatever you have to say you may put in writing” and “You said you desired no answer, and I shall give you none”—over and over.

Accession of Queen Anne of England, Scotland and Ireland. Part VI

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Act of Union, Alien Act, Duke of Cumberland, George of Denmark, Queen Anne of England, Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland

Anne became queen upon the death of King William III on March 8, 1702, and was immediately popular. In her first speech to the English Parliament, on March 11, she distanced herself from her late Dutch brother-in-law and said, “As I know my heart to be entirely English, I can very sincerely assure you there is not anything you can expect or desire from me which I shall not be ready to do for the happiness and prosperity of England.”

Soon after her accession, Anne appointed her husband George, Duke of Cumberland, Lord High Admiral, giving him nominal control of the Royal Navy. Anne gave control of the army to Lord Marlborough, whom she appointed Captain-General. Marlborough also received numerous honours from the Queen; he was created a Knight of the Garter and was elevated to the rank of duke. The Duchess of Marlborough was appointed Groom of the Stool, Mistress of the Robes, and Keeper of the Privy Purse.

Anne was crowned on St George’s Day, April 23, 1702. Afflicted with gout, she was carried to Westminster Abbey in an open sedan chair, with a low back to permit her train to flow out behind her. On May 4, England became embroiled in the War of the Spanish Succession, in which England, Austria, and the Dutch Republic fought against France and Bourbon Spain.

Carlos II of Spain had died childless in 1700, and the succession was disputed by two claimants: the Habsburg Archduke Charles of Austria and the Bourbon Philippe, Duke of Anjou.

She took a lively interest in affairs of state, and was a patron of theatre, poetry and music. She subsidised George Frideric Handel with £200 a year. She sponsored high-quality medals as rewards for political or military achievements. They were produced at the Mint by Isaac Newton and John Croker. She knighted Newton when she visited Cambridge in 1705.

Acts of Union

While Ireland was subordinate to the English Crown and Wales formed part of the kingdom of England, Scotland remained an independent sovereign state with its own parliament and laws. The Act of Settlement 1701, passed by the English Parliament, applied in the Kingdoms of England and Ireland but not Scotland, where a strong minority wished to preserve the Stuart dynasty and its right of inheritance to the throne.

Anne had declared it “very necessary” to conclude a union of England and Scotland in her first speech to the English Parliament, and a joint Anglo-Scots commission met at her former residence, the Cockpit, to discuss terms in October 1702.

The negotiations broke up in early February 1703 having failed to reach an agreement. The Estates of Scotland responded to the Act of Settlement by passing the Act of Security, which gave the Estates the power, if the Queen had no further children, to choose the next Scottish monarch from among the Protestant descendants of the royal line of Scotland.

The individual chosen by the Estates could not be the same person who came to the English throne, unless England granted full freedom of trade to Scottish merchants. At first, Anne withheld Royal Assent to the act, but she granted it the following year when the Estates threatened to withhold supply, endangering Scottish support for England’s wars.

Queen Anne addressing the House of Lords
In its turn, the English Parliament responded with the Alien Act 1705, which threatened to impose economic sanctions and declare Scottish subjects aliens in England, unless Scotland either repealed the Act of Security or moved to unite with England.

The Estates chose the latter option; the English Parliament agreed to repeal the Alien Act, and new commissioners were appointed by Queen Anne in early 1706 to negotiate the terms of a union.

The articles of union approved by the commissioners were presented to Anne on July 23, 1706 and ratified by the Scottish and English Parliaments on January 16, and March 6, 1707, respectively. Under the Acts of Union, England and Scotland were united into a single kingdom called Great Britain, with one parliament, on May 1, 1707.

A consistent and ardent supporter of union despite opposition on both sides of the border, Anne attended a thanksgiving service in St Paul’s Cathedral. The Scot Sir John Clerk, 1st Baronet, who also attended, wrote, “nobody on this occasion appeared more sincerely devout and thankful than the Queen herself”.

With the Act of Union Queen Anne’s title became Queen of Great Britain and Ireland.

Life of George II, King of Great Britain and Ireland, Elector of Hanover. Conclusion

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Duke of Cumberland, Duke of Devonshire, Elector of Hanover, Frederick-Louis, King George II of Great Britain and Ireland, Prince of Wales, Prince William, Seven Years War, William Cavendish, William Pitt

In the general election of 1747 Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales again campaigned actively for the opposition but Pelham’s party won easily. Like his father before him, the Prince entertained opposition figures at his house in Leicester Square. When Prince Frederick Louis died unexpectedly in 1751, his eldest son, Prince George, became heir apparent.

The king commiserated with the Dowager Princess of Wales (Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha) and wept with her. As her son would not reach the age of majority until 1756, a new British Regency Act was passed to make her regent, assisted by a council led by Frederick Louis’ brother, Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, in case of George II’s death.

The king also made a new will, which provided for Cumberland to be sole regent in Hanover. After the death of his daughter Louisa at the end of the year, George lamented, “This has been a fatal year for my family. I lost my eldest son – but I am glad of it … Now [Louisa] is gone. I know I did not love my children when they were young: I hated to have them running into my room; but now I love them as well as most fathers.”

Seven Years’ War

In 1754 Pelham died, to be succeeded by his elder brother, Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle.

Hostility between France and Britain, particularly over the colonization of North America, continued. Fearing a French invasion of Hanover, George aligned himself with Prussia (ruled by his nephew, Friedrich the Great), Austria’s enemy. Russia and France allied with Austria, their former enemy. A French invasion of the British-held island of Minorca led to the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War in 1756.

Public disquiet over British failures at the start of the conflict led to Newcastle’s resignation and the appointment of William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, as prime minister and William Pitt the Elder as Secretary of State for the Southern Department. In April the following year George dismissed Pitt in an attempt to construct an administration more to his liking.

Over the succeeding three months attempts to form another stable ministerial combination failed. In June Lord Waldegrave held the seals of office for only four days. By the start of July Pitt was recalled, and Newcastle returned as prime minister. As Secretary of State, Pitt guided policy relating to the war. Great Britain, Hanover, and Prussia and their allies Hesse-Cassel and Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel fought against other European powers, including France, Austria, Russia, Sweden and Saxony. The war involved multiple theatres from Europe to North America and India, where British dominance increased with the victories of Robert Clive over French forces and their allies at the Battle of Arcot and the Battle of Plassey.

George said his son Prince William, Duke of Cumberland (pictured), had “ruined me and disgraced himself” at the Convention of Klosterzeven, 1757.

George’s son, the Duke of Cumberland, commanded the king’s troops in northern Germany. In 1757 Hanover was invaded and George gave Cumberland full powers to conclude a separate peace, but by September George was furious at Cumberland’s negotiated settlement, which he felt greatly favoured the French.

George said his son had “ruined me and disgraced himself”. Cumberland, by his own choice, resigned his military offices, and George revoked the peace deal on the grounds that the French had infringed it by disarming Hessian troops after the ceasefire.

In the Annus Mirabilis of 1759 British forces captured Quebec and captured Guadeloupe, defeated a French plan to invade Britain following naval battles at Lagos and Quiberon Bay, and halted a resumed French advance on Hanover at the Battle of Minden.

Death

By October 1760 George II was blind in one eye and hard of hearing. On the morning of October 25, he rose as usual at 6:00 am, drank a cup of hot chocolate, and went to his close stool alone. After a few minutes, his valet heard a loud crash and entered the room to find the king on the floor; his physician, Frank Nicholls, recorded that he “appeared to have just come from his necessary-stool, and as if going to open his escritoire”.

The king was lifted into his bed, and Princess Amelia was sent for; before she reached him, he was dead. At the age of nearly 77 he had lived longer than any of his English or British predecessors. A post-mortem revealed that the king had died as the result of a thoracic aortic dissection.

Frederick Louis died suddenly in 1751, nine years before his father, so George II was ultimately succeeded by his grandson, as King George III. He was buried on November 11, in Westminster Abbey. He left instructions for the sides of his and his wife’s coffins to be removed so that their remains could mingle. He is the most recent monarch to be buried in Westminster Abbey.

For two centuries after George II’s death, history tended to view him with disdain, concentrating on his mistresses, short temper, and boorishness. Since then, reassessment of his legacy has led scholars to conclude that he exercised more influence in foreign policy and military appointments than previously thought.

History of Male British Consorts Part X

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Duke of Cumberland, George of Denmark, Male British Consorts, Mary II, Queen Anne, William III

Anne’s older sister Mary had moved to the Netherlands after her marriage to William of Orange. Protestant opposition to James was therefore increasingly focused around Anne and George instead of Mary, who was heir presumptive. The social and political grouping centred on George and Anne was known as the “Cockpit Circle” after their London residence.

On 5 November 1688, William invaded England in an action, known as the “Glorious Revolution”, which ultimately deposed King James II-VII. George was forewarned by the Danish envoy in London, Frederick Gersdorff, that William was assembling an invasion fleet. George informed Gersdorff that James’s army was disaffected, and as a result he would refuse any command under James, but only serve as an uncommissioned volunteer. Gersdorff’s alternative plan to evacuate George and Anne to Denmark was rejected by George.

George accompanied the King’s troops to Salisbury in mid-November, but other nobles and their soldiers soon deserted James for William. At each defection, George apparently exclaimed, “Est-il possible?” (Is it possible?). He abandoned James on 24 November, and sided with William. The defection of George and other nobles was instrumental in whittling away the King’s support. In December, James fled to France, and early the following year William and Mary were declared joint monarchs, with Anne as heir presumptive.

In early April 1689, William assented to a bill naturalizing George as an English subject, and George was created Duke of Cumberland, Earl of Kendal and Baron of Okingham (Wokingham) by the new monarchs. He took his seat in the House of Lords on April 20, 1689, being introduced by the Dukes of Somerset and Ormonde.

The mistrust between George and William was set aside during the revolution of 1688–89 but dogged relations during the latter’s reign. George held mortgages on Femern, Tremsbüttel and Steinhorst, Schleswig-Holstein, which he surrendered to the Duke of Holstein as part of the peace of Altona of 1689 negotiated by William between Denmark and Sweden.

William agreed to pay George interest and the capital in compensation, but George remained unpaid. During the military campaign against James’s supporters in Ireland, George accompanied the Williamite troops at his own expense, but was excluded from command, and was even refused permission to travel in his brother-in-law’s coach.

Snubbed from the army by William, George sought to join the navy, without rank, but was again thwarted by his brother-in-law. When William’s Dutch guards failed to salute George, Anne assumed they were acting under orders. George and Anne retired from court. Some degree of reconciliation was achieved following Queen Mary’s sudden and unexpected death from smallpox in 1694, which made Anne heir apparent. In November 1699, William finally recommended that Parliament pay the mortgage debt to George, and in early 1700, the debt was honoured.

By 1700, Anne had been pregnant at least seventeen times; twelve times, she miscarried or gave birth to stillborn children, and two of their five children born alive died within a day. The only one of the couple’s children to survive infancy—Prince William, Duke of Gloucester—died in July 1700 at the age of 11. With Gloucester’s death, Anne was the only person in the line of succession to the throne, as established by the “Glorious Revolution”. To extend the line and secure the Protestant succession, Parliament passed the Act of Settlement 1701, which designated William and Anne’s nearest Protestant cousins, the House of Hanover, as the next in line after Anne.

George did not play a senior role in government until his wife Anne succeeded as queen on William’s death in 1702. George was the chief mourner at William’s funeral. Anne appointed him generalissimo of all English military forces on 17 April, and Lord High Admiral, the official but nominal head of the Royal Navy, on 20 May. Actual power at the Admiralty was held by George Churchill, whose elder brother was John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, a great friend of Anne’s and the captain-general of English land forces. Prince George had known the Churchills for years: another brother Charles Churchill, had been one of his gentlemen of the bedchamber in Denmark, and Marlborough had accompanied George on his journey from Denmark to England for his marriage to Anne in 1683.

George’s secretary in the 1680s was Colonel Edward Griffith, brother-in-law of the Duchess of Marlborough, who was Anne’s close confidante and friend. George followed William III as Captain-General of the Honourable Artillery Company, and was made Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. Anne failed, however, in her attempts to persuade the States General of the Netherlands to elect her husband captain-general of all Dutch forces, to maintain the unified command of the Maritime Powers that William had held.

Anne obtained a parliamentary allowance of £100,000 a year for George in the event of her death. The bill sped through the House of Commons easily but it was only narrowly passed by the House of Lords. Marlborough supported the bill, but one of the lords against was Marlborough’s son-in-law, Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland. Marlborough dissuaded her from asking Parliament to make “her dearly loved husband King Consort”.

Generally, during her reign, Anne and her husband spent the winter at Kensington and St James’s Palaces, and the summer at Windsor Castle or Hampton Court Palace, where the air was fresher. George had recurrent asthma, and the cleaner air in the country was better for his breathing. They visited the spa town of Bath, Somerset, in mid-1702, on the advice of George’s doctors, and again in mid-1703. They occasionally visited Newmarket, Suffolk, to view the horse racing. On one visit, Anne bought George a horse, Leeds, for the vast sum of a thousand guineas.

At the end of 1702, the Occasional Conformity Bill was introduced to Parliament. The bill aimed to disqualify Protestant Dissenters from public office by closing a loophole in the Test Acts, legislation that restricted public office to Anglican conformists. The existing law permitted nonconformists to take office if they took Anglican communion once a year. Anne was in favour of the measure, and forced George to vote for the bill in the House of Lords, even though, being a practising Lutheran, he was an occasional conformist himself.

As he cast his vote, he reportedly told an opponent of the bill, “My heart is vid you” [sic]. The bill did not gather sufficient parliamentary support and was eventually dropped. The following year, the bill was revived, but Anne withheld support, fearing its reintroduction was a deliberate pretence to cause a quarrel between the two main political groups: the Tories (who supported the bill) and the Whigs (who opposed it). Once again it failed. George never became a member of the Church of England, which was headed by his wife throughout her reign. He remained Lutheran even after her accession, and had his own personal chapel.

In the first years of Anne’s reign, the Whigs gained more power and influence at the expense of the Tories. In his capacity as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, George held influence in parliamentary boroughs on the south coast of England, which he used to support Whig candidates in the general election of 1705. In that year’s election for Speaker of the House of Commons, George and Anne supported a Whig candidate, John Smith. George instructed his secretary, George Clarke, who was a Member of Parliament, to vote for Smith, but Clarke refused, instead supporting the Tory candidate William Bromley. Clarke was sacked, and Smith was elected.

Illness and death

In March and April 1706, George was seriously ill. There was blood in his sputum, but he seemed to recover, although he was too ill to attend a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s Cathedral in June for a British victory in the Battle of Ramillies. He missed another thanksgiving service in May 1707, to celebrate the union of England and Scotland, as he was recuperating at Hampton Court.

The Scilly naval disaster of 1707, in which a fleet commanded by Sir Cloudesley Shovell foundered, highlighted mismanagement at the Admiralty, for which George was nominally responsible. Pressure grew to replace Admiral Churchill with someone more dynamic. By October 1708, five powerful politicians, known as the Whig Junto—Lords Somers, Halifax, Orford, Wharton and Sunderland—were clamouring for the removal of both Prince George and Churchill. Marlborough wrote to his brother telling him to resign, but Churchill refused, protected by Prince George.

Amid the political pressure, George was on his deathbed, suffering from severe asthma and dropsy. He died at 1:30 p.m. on 28 October 1708 at Kensington Palace. The Queen was devastated. James Brydges wrote to General Cadogan,

His death has flung the Queen into an unspeakable grief. She never left him till he was dead, but continued kissing him the very moment his breath went out of his body, and ’twas with a great deal of difficulty my Lady Marlborough prevailed upon her to leave him.

Anne wrote to her nephew, Frederik IV of Denmark, “the loss of such a husband, who loved me so dearly and so devotedly, is too crushing for me to be able to bear it as I ought.” Anne was desperate to stay at Kensington with the body of her husband, but under pressure from the Duchess of Marlborough, she reluctantly left Kensington for St James’s Palace. Anne resented the Duchess’s intrusive actions, which included removing a portrait of George from the Queen’s bedchamber and then refusing to return it in the belief that it was natural “to avoid seeing of papers or anything that belonged to one that one loved when they were just dead”. Anne and the Duchess had been very close, but their friendship had become strained over political differences. The immediate aftermath of George’s death damaged their relationship further. He was buried privately at midnight on 13 November in Westminster Abbey.

Personal traits and portrayal

Charles II, Anne’s uncle, famously said of Prince George, “I have tried him drunk, and I have tried him sober and there is nothing in him”. He was quiet and self-effacing. John Macky thought him “of a familiar, easy disposition with a good sound understanding but modest in showing it … very fat, loves news, his bottle & the Queen.” In making fun of George’s asthma, Lord Mulgrave said the Prince was forced to breathe hard in case people mistook him for dead and buried him. By the time of Queen Victoria, George had a reputation as a dullard, and was the target of disdain. Victoria hoped her own husband, Prince Albert, would never fill the “subordinate part played by the very stupid and insignificant husband of Queen Anne”. In the 1930s, Winston Churchill said he “mattered very little”, except to Anne.

He had little impact on the running of the navy, but he was interested enough in navigation and welfare at sea to sponsor the publication of John Flamsteed’s Observations in 1704. He was not one of the most colourful political characters of his day—he was content to spend his time building model ships—but he was a loyal and supportive husband to Queen Anne. Their marriage was a devoted, loving and faithful one, though beset by personal tragedy.

The previous husband of a British queen regnant, William of Orange, had become king, refusing to take a subordinate rank to Mary. William and Mary had exemplified the traditional gender roles of seventeenth-century Europe: Mary was the dutiful wife and William held the power. George and Anne, however, reversed the roles: George was the dutiful husband and it was Anne who exercised the royal prerogatives. William had assumed incorrectly that George would use his marriage to Anne as a means of building a separate power base in Britain, but George never challenged his wife’s authority and never strove to accrue influence. Anne occasionally used the image of wifely virtue to escape unpalatable situations by claiming, as a woman, she knew “nothing except what the prince tells me”, but it was an artifice.

Husbands had a legal right to their wife’s property, and it was argued that it was unnatural and against the church’s teachings for a man to be subject to his wife. George made no such claim or demand; he was content to remain a prince and duke. “I am her Majesty’s subject”, he said, “I shall do naught but what she commands me.” In the words of historian Anne Somerset, “the fact that Prince George was widely regarded as a nonentity helped reconcile people to his anomalous status, and so, almost by accident, George achieved a major advance for feminism.” Winston Churchill wrote that he

was a fine-looking man, tall, blond, and good-natured … He was neither clever nor learned—a simple, normal man without envy or ambition, and disposed by remarkable appetite and thirst for all the pleasures of the table. Charles’s well-known verdict … does not do justice to the homely virtues and unfailing good-humour of his staid and trustworthy character.

The Prince of Denmark’s March by Jeremiah Clarke was written in his honour, and Prince George’s County, Maryland, was named after him in 1696. Portraits by Sir Godfrey Kneller are at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire, and (in a double portrait with George Clarke) All Souls College, Oxford. Portraits in Denmark include one by Willem Wissing in the Reedtz-Thott collection and one by Karel van Mander in the national collection at Frederiksborg Palace.

November 3, 1777: Birth of Princess Sophia of the United Kingdom. Part II.

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Charles Greville, Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg- Strelitz, Duke of Cumberland, Illegitimate Child, King George III of the United Kingdom, King George IV of the United Kingdom, Queen Charlotte of Great Britain, Sophia of Great Britain, The Prince Regent, Thomas Garth

The Princess Royal was the only daughter who was able to marry while relatively young. The rest of the princesses were not without suitors, but most of the various men’s efforts were stopped by Queen Charlotte. Most of the girls longed for families and children of their own, and often asked the Prince of Wales, to whom they remained close, for help, either in finding spouses, allowing them to marry their loves, or allowing them to live outside of Queen Charlotte’s household.

A grateful Sophia once jokingly wrote to her brother, saying “I wonder you do not vote for putting us in a sack and drowning us in the Thames.” Before George became regent, he had little power to oblige his sisters. His ascension to the regency in 1811 led to Sophia and the other remaining unmarried princesses to receive increases in their allowances, from £10,000 to £13,000. He also supported their desire to venture out into society. Queen Charlotte was outraged at these attempts, and the Prince-Regent had to reconcile the two parties carefully so that his sisters could still enjoy some independence.

During Sophia’s lifetime, there were various rumours about her alleged incestuous relationship with her brother, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, who later became the King of Hanover. The Prince Regent supposedly warned his sisters not to be alone in the same room with the Duke, and Cumberland was deeply unpopular with the British people.

It is unclear whether there was truth to these rumours or whether they were circulated by the Duke’s numerous political enemies.

Limited in exposure to eligible men, Sophia and several of her sisters became involved with courtiers and equerries. Sophia entered into a relationship with her father’s chief equerry, Major-General Thomas Garth, a man thirty-three years her senior. He had a large purple birthmark on his face, causing Sophia’s sister Mary to refer to him as “the purple light of love” and courtier and diarist Charles Greville to call him a “hideous old devil”.

Despite this, one lady-in-waiting noted “the princess was so violently in love with him that everyone saw it. She could not contain herself in his presence.” Greville wrote about Sophia and her sisters’ affairs in a diary entry, “women fall in love with anything – and opportunity and the accidents of the passions are of more importance than any positive merits of mind or of body… [The princesses] were secluded from the world, mixing with few people – their passions boiling over and ready to fall into the hands of the first man whom circumstances enabled to get at them.”

Gossip soon spread of the existence of an illegitimate child. Some historians contend that, sometime before August 1800 in Weymouth, Sophia gave birth to a child fathered by Garth. Flora Fraser believes the rumours that Sophia had a child, but has questioned whether the child was fathered by Garth, or Sophia’s brother the Duke of Cumberland. Historians further write that the child, baptised Thomas Garth like his father, was raised by his father in Weymouth, where his mother would visit him occasionally. In 1828 he apparently tried to blackmail the royal family with certain incriminating documents from his father about his supposed parents’ relationship, though this ended in failure.

Conversely, Anthony Camp challenges the belief that Sophia had a child and provides a detailed summary of the available evidence. In his book Royal Babylon: the Alarming History of European Royalty, author Karl Shaw writes of the possibility that the Duke raped his sister, citing evidence from Charles Greville’s diaries, as well as other factors. Historian Gillian Gill believes that Sophia secretly gave birth to the child and that this is the reason Sophia never married. Alison Weir and others, however, write of a possible marriage between Sophia and Garth the same year as the child’s birth, but there is no evidence to back this assertion other than the presence of a wedding ring in a portrait of an aged Sophia.

Fight over Crown Jewels between Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and her uncle King Ernst-August of Hanover.

Tags

Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz., Crown Jewels, Duke of Cumberland, Elector of Hanover, House of Hanover, King Ernst-August of Hanover, King George I of Great Britain, King George III of the United Kingdom, King of Great Britain, Kingdom of Hanover, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom

From the Emperor’s Desk: After Queen Victoria came there was an ongoing struggle between her and her uncle King Ernst-August of Hanover over which Crown Jewels belonged to the Queen and which belonged to the King of Hanover.

Below is an article that originally appeared in the Times of London, Dec 23, 1857 Concerning the matter.

Coronation portrait of Queen Victoria

“The Crown Jewels”

We find the following in a letter from Hanover, of December 19:

“The hearts of the King and Royal Family of this country have been much rejoiced by intelligence which has just reached them through the Hanoverian Minister at the Court of St. James’s, that the long dispute between the King of Hanover and the Queen of England respecting the right to certain jewels of enormous value, in the possession of the Sovereign of England, and forming no inconsiderable portion of what have been hitherto called the British Crown jewels, has been decided in favour of Hanover.

“Many of your readers are no doubt aware that when the kingdom of Hanover was severed from the United Kingdom by the accession of Queen Victoria to the throne, a claim was made by the late King of Hanover, formerly the Duke of Cumberland, to nearly the whole of the jewels usually worn on State occasions by the English Sovereign, on the ground that part of them, which had been taken over to England by George I, belonged inalienably to the Crown of Hanover; and that the remainder had been purchased by George III out of his privy purse, and had been left him by his Queen Charlotte to the Royal Family of Hanover.

“As the jewels thus claimed are supposed to be worth considerably more than 1,000,000 pounds, a single stone having cost nearly 20,000 pounds, they were not to be relinquished without a struggle; and I am assured that every possible expedient was resorted to in England to baffle the claimant. 

King Ernst-August of Hanover

“Ultimately, in the lifetime of the late King, the importunity of the Hanoverian Minister in London drove the English Ministry of the day to consent that the rights of the two Sovereigns abroad should be submitted to a commission composed of three English judges; but the proceedings of the commission were so ingeniously protracted that all the commissioners died without arriving at any decision; and until Lord Clarendon received the seals of the British foreign office all the efforts of the Court of Hanover to obtain a fresh commission were vain. Lord Clarendon, however, seems to have perceived that such attempts to stifle inquiry were unworthy of his country, for he consented that a fresh commission should be issued to three English judges of the highest eminence, who, after investigation, found the Hanoverian claim to be indisputably just, and reported in its favour.

“The Court here consequently is in high glee this Christmas at the prospect of removing the Crown and regalia, so jealously guarded in the Tower of London, almost bodily to Hanover.” — Globe

***

Note: Queen Victoria subsequently returned only a few items to her Hanoverian cousins, including Queen Charlotte’s small diamond nuptial crown and a few other diamond pieces.

June 5, 1771: Birth of Ernst-August, King of Hanover.

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Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz., Duke of Cumberland, Ernst August of Hanover, Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia, George III, King Georg V of Hanover, King George III of the United Kingdom, King George IV of the United Kingdom, Kingdom of Hanover, Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain

Ernst-August, King of Hanover (June 5, 1771 – November 18, 1851) was King of Hanover from June 20, 1837 until his death. As the fifth son of King George III of the United Kingdom and Hanover, and Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was the youngest daughter of Duke Charles-Ludwig-Friedrich of Mecklenburg (1708–1752; known as “Prince of Mirow”) and of his wife Princess Elisabeth-Albertine of Saxe-Hildburghausen (1713–1761). Mecklenburg-Strelitz was a small north-German duchy in the Holy Roman Empire.

Ernst-August, King of Hanover

Initially Ernst-August seemed unlikely to become a monarch, but none of his elder brothers had a legitimate son. Ernest succeeded in Hanover under Salic law, which debarred women from the succession, ending the personal union between Britain and Hanover that had begun in 1714.

Ernst-August was born in London but was sent to Hanover in his adolescence for his education and military training. While serving with Hanoverian forces near Tournai against Revolutionary France, he received a disfiguring facial wound.

After leaving the nursery, he lived with his two younger brothers, Prince Adolphus-Frederick (later Duke of Cambridge) and Prince Augustus (later Duke of Sussex), and a tutor in a house on Kew Green, near his parents’ residence at Kew Palace. Though King George III never left England in his life, he sent his younger sons to Germany in their adolescence.

George III, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, King of Hanover. (Father)

Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (Mother)

This was done to limit the influence Ernest-August’s eldest brother George, Prince of Wales, who was leading an extravagant lifestyle, would have over his younger brothers. At the age of fifteen, Prince Ernst-August and his two younger brothers were sent to the University of Göttingen, located in his father’s domain of Hanover. Ernst-August proved a keen student and after being tutored privately for a year, while learning German, he attended lectures at the university.

The King’s eldest son, George, Prince of Wales (later King George IV), had one child, Charlotte, who was expected to become the British queen, but she died in 1817, giving Ernest some prospect of succeeding to the British throne as well as the Hanoverian one. However, his older brother Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent, fathered the eventual British heir, Victoria, in 1819.

Marriage.

Ernst-August married Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (Friederike Louise Caroline Sophie Charlotte Alexandrine) (3 March 3, 1778 – June 29, 1841). She was a German princess who became, by marriage, Princess of Prussia, Princess of Solms-Braunfels, Duchess of Cumberland in Britain and Queen of Hanover (in Germany) as the consort of Ernst-August, King of Hanover (the fifth son and eighth child of King George III).

Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was born in the Altes Palais of Hanover as the fifth daughter of Charles II, Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and his first wife, Frederica, daughter of Prince Georg-Wilhelm of Hesse-Darmstadt. Her father assumed the title of Grand Duke of Mecklenburg on June 18, 1815. Duchess Frederica was the niece of her future mother-in-law, Queen Charlotte, through her father.

Charles II, Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

Frederica’s parents were anxious to arrange advantageous marriages for all their daughters, and used family connections to bring this about. Queen Frederika-Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt, wife of King Friedrich-Wilhelm II, was a first cousin of Frederica’s mother. Frederica’s parents broached with the Prussian royal family the idea of marriage between their children, and the Prussians were not averse. On March 14, 1793, the Princesses of Mecklenburg-Strelitz “coincidentally” met the Prussian King Friedrich-Wilhelm II at the Prussian Theatre in Frankfurt-am-Main. He was immediately captivated by the grace and charm of both sisters, Frederica and Louise. The pending marriage negotiations received traction, and within weeks, the matter was settled: Frederica’s elder sister Louise would marry Crown Prince Friedrich-Wilhelm (King Friedrich-Wilhelm III of Prussia) and Frederica would marry his younger brother Prince Ludwig.

Prince Ludwig of Prussia.

Louise and Friedrich-Wilhelm and Frederica and Prince Ludwig of Prussia were all married at the same venue. Unlike her sister, Frederica did not enjoy a happy marriage. Although her husband died from diphtheria in 1796, only three years after the wedding, Ludwig was said to have preferred the company of his mistresses and completely neglected his wife.

Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (sister of Frederica)

King Friedrich-Wilhelm III of Prussia

In 1797, Frederica and her cousin Prince Adolphus-Frederick, Duke of Cambridge, seventh son of King George III of Great Britain by his wife Queen Charlotte (Frederica’s paternal aunt), became unofficially engaged. The Duke of Cambridge asked the consent of his father to the marriage. The King did not refuse his consent but asked his son to wait until the ongoing war with France was over. The relationship eventually ended, with rumors circulating that either Adolphus had offered to release Frederica from the engagement, or – as Queen Charlotte believed – Frederica had jilted him for another man.

In 1798 Frederica became pregnant. The father was Prince Frederick William of Solms-Braunfels, perhaps the man she jilted the Duke of Cambridge for? The prince recognized his paternity and requested her hand in marriage, a proposal that was quickly granted in order to avoid scandal. On December 10, of that year, the couple was married in Berlin and immediately moved to Ansbach.

In May 1813, during a visit to his uncle Duke Charles in Neustrelitz, Prince Ernst-August, Duke of Cumberland, the fifth son of King George III of Great Britain, met and fell in love with Frederica.

Some time later Frederica asked the Prussian king for approval for her divorce from Prince Friedrich-Wilhelm of Solms-Braunfels. All parties agreed, including the Prince of Solms-Braunfels, but Friedrich-Wilhelm’s sudden death on April 13, 1814 precluded the need for a divorce. The prince’s demise was considered by some as a little too convenient, and some suspected that Frederica had poisoned him.

In August, the engagement with Ernst-August was officially announced. After the British Prince Regent gave his consent to the wedding, Frederica and Ernst-August were married on 29 May 29, 1815 at the parish church of Neustrelitz. Some time later, the couple traveled to Great Britain and married again on August 29, 1815 at Carlton House, London.

Ernst-August, King of Hanover.

Queen Charlotte bitterly opposed the marriage, even though her future daughter-in-law was also her niece. She refused to attend the wedding and advised her son to live outside England with his wife. Frederica never obtained the favor of her aunt/mother-in-law, who died unreconciled with her in 1818. During her marriage to Ernest Augustus she gave birth three times, but only a son survived, who would eventually become King Georg V of Hanover.

On April 23, 1799, George III created Prince Ernst-August, Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale and Earl of Armagh, and was granted an allowance of £12,000 a year. Though he was made a lieutenant-general, of both British and Hanoverian forces, he remained in England and, with a seat in the House of Lords, entered politics. Ernst-August was an active member of the House of Lords, where he maintained an extremely conservative record. There were persistent allegations (reportedly spread by his political foes) that he had murdered his valet, had fathered a son by his sister Sophia, and intended to take the British throne by murdering Victoria. Following the death of his brother King William IV, Ernst-August became Hanover’s first resident ruler since George I.

Ernst-August had a generally successful fourteen-year reign but excited controversy near its start when he dismissed the Göttingen Seven, including the two Brothers Grimm, from their professorial positions for agitating against his policies. A revolution in 1848 was quickly put down in Hanover. The kingdom joined the German customs union in 1850 despite Ernest’s reluctance. He died the next year and was succeeded by his son Georg.

April 26, 1721: Birth of Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland & the Battle of Culloden

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Battle of Culloden, Charles Edward Stuart, Duke of Cumberland, George II, Highlanders, House of Hohenzollern, James Francis Edward Stuart, King George II of Great Britain, King James II-VII of England and Scotland, Kingdom of Great Britain, Prince William Augustus of Cumberland

Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, (April 26, 1721 – October 31, 1765), was the third and youngest son of King George II of Great Britain and Ireland and his wife, Caroline of Ansbach, the daughter of Johann Friedrich, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, and his second wife, Princess Eleonore Erdmuthe of Saxe-Eisenach. Her father, a scion of the House of Hohenzollern, was the ruler of one of the smallest German states; he died of smallpox at the age of 32, when Caroline was three years old.

William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland

William was born in Leicester House, in Leicester Fields (now Leicester Square), Westminster, London, where his parents had moved after his grandfather, George I, accepted the invitation to ascend the British throne. His godparents included the King Friedrich Wilhelm I and Queen Sophie in Prussia (his paternal aunt, Sophia Dorothea of Hanover the sister of George II, King of Great Britain, and the mother of Friedrich II, King of Prussia). The Prussian Monarchs apparently did not take part in person and were presumably represented by proxy.

On July 27, 1726, at only five years old, he was created Duke of Cumberland, Marquess of Berkhamstead in the County of Hertford, Earl of Kennington in the County of Surrey, Viscount of Trematon in the County of Cornwall, and Baron of the Isle of Alderney.

The young prince was educated well; his mother appointed Edmond Halley as a tutor. Another of his tutors (and occasional proxy for him) was his mother’s favourite Andrew Fountaine. At Hampton Court Palace, apartments were designed specially for him by William Kent. William’s elder brother Frederick, Prince of Wales, proposed dividing the king’s dominions. Frederick would get Britain, while William would get Hanover. This proposal came to nothing.

George II, King of Great Britain and Ireland, Prince Imperial Elector of Hanover.

He had several mistresses but never married. He served in the army and for a short while in the navy and was wounded at the battle of Dettingen.

During the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48), he became commander of the allied forces (1745) and was severely defeated by France’s Marshal Maurice de Saxe at the Battle of Fontenoy (May 11, 1745). His subsequent military failures led to his estrangement from his father, King George II (reigned 1727–60).

The lead to the Battle of Culloden: Background

In June 1688, two events turned dissent into a crisis; the first on June 10, was the birth of a son and heir, James Francis Edward, to King James II-VII of England, Scotland and Ireland, threatening to create a Roman Catholic dynasty and excluding his Anglican daughter Mary and her Protestant husband William IIII of Orange. The second was the prosecution of the Seven Bishops for seditious libel; this was viewed as an assault on the Church of England and their acquittal on June 30 destroyed his political authority in England. Anti-Catholic riots in England and Scotland now made it seem only Jame’s removal as monarch could prevent a civil war.

Prince James Francis Edward, The Prince of Wales.

Leading members of the English political class invited Prince William III of Orange to assume the English throne; after he landed in Brixham on November 5, 1688, James’s army deserted, and he went into exile in France on December 23. In February the Convention Parliament grave the crown jointly to Prince William III of Orange and his wife Prince Marry eldest daughter of King James II-VII of England, Scotland and Ireland.

James Francis Edward was raised in Continental Europe. After his father’s death in 1701, he claimed the English, Scottish and Irish crown as James III of England and Ireland and James VIII of Scotland, with the support of his Jacobite followers and his cousin Louis XIV of France. Fourteen years later, he unsuccessfully attempted to gain the throne in Britain during the Jacobite rising of 1715.

Queen Anne, the last monarch of the House of Stuart, died in 1714, with no living children. Under the terms of the Act of Settlement 1701, she was succeeded by her second cousin George I of the House of Hanover, who was a descendant of the Stuarts through his maternal grandmother, Elizabeth, a daughter of James VI-I. Many, however, particularly in Scotland and Ireland, continued to support the claim to the throne of Anne’s exiled half-brother James Francis, excluded from the succession under the Act of Settlement due to his Roman Catholic religion.

On July 23, 1745 James Francis’ eldest son Charles Edward Stuart landed on Eriskay in the Western Islands in an attempt to reclaim the throne of Great Britain for his father, accompanied only by the “Seven Men of Moidart”. Most of his Scottish supporters advised he return to France, but his persuasion of Donald Cameron of Lochiel to back him encouraged others to commit and the rebellion was launched at Glenfinnan on August 19, 1745.

Charles Edward Stuart “Bonnie Prince Charlie.”

The Jacobites won a battle at Falkirk between Edinburgh and Sterling in January 1746. The triumph was not followed up and counted for nothing as the Jacobites were being pursued by the Teutonic figure of William Augustus Duke of Cumberland. His temperament made him cruel by nature even to his own troops and had only genocidal contempt for Scott and I’ll Highlanders. The Duke of Cumberland preserved the strictest discipline in his unit. He was inflexible in the execution of what he deemed to be his duty, without favour to any man. In only a few cases he exercised his influence in favour of clemency.

Cumberland’s army at Culloden comprised 16 infantry battalions, including four Scottish units and one Irish. The bulk of the infantry units had already been defeated by the Jacobites in January at Falkirk, but had been further drilled, rested and resupplied since then.

On 8 April 1746, the Duke of Cumberland set out from Aberdeen for Inverness, and, on 15 April, the government army celebrated Cumberland’s twenty-fifth birthday by issuing two gallons of brandy to each regiment. That evening the Jacobites tried to carry out a night attack on the government encampment.

Night attack at Nairn

Jacobite lieutenant-general Lord George Murray was to cross the River Nairn and encircle the town, and confront Cumberland’s forces but there was only one hour left before dawn. After a heated council with other officers, Murray concluded that there was not enough time to mount a surprise attack and that the offensive should be aborted. Charles Edward Stuart was not told of the change of plan.

Not long after the exhausted Jacobite forces had made it back to Culloden, an officer of Lochiel’s regiment, who had been left behind after falling asleep in a wood, arrived with a report of advancing government troops. By then, many Jacobite soldiers had dispersed in search of food or returned to Inverness, while others were asleep in ditches and outbuildings; several hundred of their army may have missed the battle.

The Battle of Culloden

The morning of April 16, 1746 camel the decisive Battle of Culloden, in which the Stuart forces were completely destroyed.

Prince Charles ignored the advice of general Lord George Murray and chose to fight on flat, open, marshy ground where his forces would be exposed to superior government firepower. He commanded his army from a position behind his lines, where he could not see what was happening. He hoped that Cumberland’s army would attack first, and he had his men stand exposed to the British Royal artillery.

The battle, which lasted only 40 minutes, resulted in bitter defeat for the heavily outnumbered Jacobites. Some 1,000 of the Young Pretender’s army of 5,000 weak and starving Highlanders were killed by the 9,000 Redcoats, who lost only 50 men.

The morning following the Battle of Culloden the Duke of Cumberland ordered his troops to show no quarter against any remaining Jacobite rebels (French Army personnel, including those who were British-or Irish-born, were treated as legitimate combatants). His troops traversed the battlefield and stabbed any of the rebel soldiers who were still alive.When Cumberland learned that a wounded soldier lying at his feet belonged to the opposing cause, he instructed a major to shoot him; when the major (James Wolfe) refused to do so, Cumberland commanded a private soldier to complete the required duty.

The British Army then embarked upon the so-called “pacification” of Jacobite areas of the Highlands. All those troops believed to be ‘rebels’ were killed, as were non-combatants; ‘rebellious’ settlements were burned and livestock was confiscated on a large scale. Over a hundred Jacobites were hanged. Women were imprisoned, and droves of people were sent by ship to London for trial; as the journey took up to 8 months, many of them died on the way.

While in Inverness, Cumberland emptied the jails that were full of people imprisoned by Jacobite supporters, replacing them with Jacobites themselves. Prisoners were taken south to England to stand trial for high treason. Many were held on hulks on the Thames or in Tilbury Fort, and executions took place in Carlisle, York and Kennington Common.

The common Jacobite supporters fared better than the ranking individuals. In total, 120 common men were executed, one third of them being deserters from the British Army. The common prisoners drew lots amongst themselves and only one out of twenty actually came to trial. Although most of those who did stand trial were sentenced to death, almost all of these had their sentences commuted to penal transportation to the British colonies for life by the Traitors Transported Act 1746.

Flight of Bonnie Prince Charlie

Murray managed to lead a group of Jacobites to Ruthven, intending to continue the fight. Charles thought that he was betrayed, however, and decided to abandon the Jacobite cause.

Charles hid in the moors of Scotland, always barely ahead of the government forces. Many Highlanders aided him, and none of them betrayed him for the £30,000 reward. Charles was assisted by supporters such as pilot Donald Macleod of Galtrigill, Captain Con O’Neill who took him to Benbecula, and Flora MacDonald who helped him escape to the Isle of Skye by taking him in a boat disguised as her maid “Betty Burke”.

He ultimately evaded capture and left the country aboard the French frigate L’Heureux, arriving in France in September. The Prince’s Cairn marks the traditional spot on the shores of Loch nan Uamh in Lochaber from which he made his final departure from Scotland. With the Jacobite cause lost, Charles spent the remainder of his life on the continent.

Charles’s subsequent flight is commemorated in “The Skye Boat Song” by Sir Harold Edwin Boulton and the Irish song “Mo Ghile Mear” by Seán Clárach Mac Domhnaill.

Butcher Cumberland

Following Culloden, the Duke of Cumberland was nicknamed “Sweet William” by his Whig supporters and “The Butcher” by his Tory opponents the latter being a taunt first recorded in the City of London and used for political purposes in England. Cumberland’s own brother, the Prince of Wales (who had been refused permission to take a military role on his father’s behalf), seems to have encouraged the virulent attacks upon the Duke.

Butcher Cumberland

The Duke’s victorious efforts were acknowledged by his being voted an income of £25,000 per annum over and above his money from the civil list. A thanksgiving service was held at St Paul’s Cathedral, that included the first performance of Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabaeus, composed especially for Cumberland, which contains the anthem “See the Conquering Hero Comes”.

After Culloden

The Duke of Cumberland then returned to the war against the French; in July 1747 he lost the Battle of Lauffeld to Saxe. During the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) he was defeated by the French at the Battle of Hastenbeck (July 1757) in Hanover, one of George II’s possessions. Because he signed the Convention of Klosterzeven (September 1757), promising to evacuate Hanover, he was dismissed by his father, who repudiated the agreement. His refusal to serve as commander in chief unless William Pitt was dismissed as prime minister led to Pitt’s fall in April 1757. Following the Convention of Klosterzeven in 1757, he never again held active military command and switched his attentions to politics and horse racing.

Cumberland’s final years were lived out during the first years of the reign of his nephew, George III, who acceded to the throne on the death of William’s father on October 25, 1760: Cumberland became a very influential advisor to the King and was instrumental in establishing the First Rockingham Ministry.

Cabinet meetings were held either at Cumberland Lodge, his home in Windsor, or at Upper Grosvenor Street, his house in London. The Duke of Cumberland never fully recovered from his wound at Dettingen, and was obese. In August 1760, he suffered a stroke and, on October 31, 1765, he died at his home on Upper Grosvenor Street in London at the young age 44. He was buried beneath the floor of the nave of the Henry VII Lady Chapel in Westminster Abbey. He died unmarried, without an heir and his titles reverted back to the crown.

December 4: These Events in Royal History.

Tags

Battle of Culloden, Carloman I of the Franks, Charlemagne, Charles Edward Stuart, Charles IX of France, Christian V of Denmark, Duke of Cumberland, Jacobite Rising, William Augustus of Hanover

Events

* 771 – Austrasian king Carloman I dies, leaving his brother Charlemagne king of the now complete Frankish Kingdom. Carloman I, was king of the Franks from 768 until his death in 771. He was the second surviving son of Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon and was a younger brother of Charlemagne. His death allowed Charlemagne to take all of Francia and begin his expansion into other kingdoms.

* 1259 – Kings Louis IX of France and Henry III of England agree to the Treaty of Paris, in which Henry renounces his claims to French-controlled territory on continental Europe (including Normandy) in exchange for Louis withdrawing his support for English rebels. The Treaty of Paris (also known as the Treaty of Albeville) was a treaty between Louis IX of France and Henry III of England, agreed to on December 4, 1259, ending 100 years of conflicts between the Capetian and Plantagenet dynasties

* 1676 – The Danish army under the command of King Christian V engages the Swedish army commanded by the Swedish king, Carl XI at the Battle of Lund, to this day it is counted as the bloodiest battle in Scandinavian history and a turning point in the Scanian War. The Battle of Lund, part of the Scanian War, was fought on December 4, 1676, in an area north of the city of Lund in Scania in southern Sweden, between the invading Danish army and the army of Charles XI of Sweden. The Danish had an army of about 13,000 under the personal command of 31-year-old King Christian V of Denmark, aided by General Carl von Arensdorff. The Swedish army, which numbered about 8,000, was commanded by Field Marshal Simon Grundel-Helmfelt and the 21-year-old Swedish king Charles XI. It is one of the bloodiest battles in percent of casualties on both sides ever fought on European soil.

King Christian V of Denmark and Norway

* 1745 – Charles Edward Stuart’s army reaches Derby, its furthest point during the Second Jacobite Rising. The Jacobite rising of 1745, also known as the Forty-five Rebellion or simply the ’45 was an attempt by Charles Edward Stuart to regain the British throne for his father, James Francis Edward Stuart. (former Prince of Wales son of King James II-VII of England, Scotland and Ireland). It took place during the War of the Austrian Succession, when the bulk of the British Army was fighting in mainland Europe, and proved to be the last in a series of revolts that began in 1689, with major outbreaks in 1708, 1715 and 1719.

Prince Charles Edward, The Young Cavalier

The final confrontation of the Jacobite rising of 1745 culminated in The Battle of Culloden was On April 16, 1746, the Jacobite forces of Charles Edward Stuart were decisively defeated by Hanoverian forces commanded by William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands.

Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, (April 26, 1721 – October 31, 1765), was the third and youngest son of King George II of Great Britain and Ireland and his wife, Caroline of Ansbach. He was Duke of Cumberland from 1726. He is best remembered for his role in putting down the Jacobite Rising at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, which made him immensely popular throughout Britain…..well, England actually, the Duke was reviled in Scotland.