The Duchess of Kent: Conclusion

Tags

Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Princess Royal, Private Secretary, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, Regency, Sir John Conroy, The Duchess of Kent, Victoire of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld

Sir John Conroy had high hopes for his patroness and himself: He envisaged Victoria succeeding the throne at a young age, thus needing a regency government, which, following the Regency Act 1830, would be headed by the princess’s mother (who had already served in that capacity in Germany following the death of her first husband).

As the private secretary of the Duchess, Conroy would be the veritable “power behind the throne”. What Conroy had not counted on was William IV surviving long enough for Victoria to succeed to the throne as an adult with no need for a Regency Consesquently, while cultivating her mother, Conroy had shown little consideration for Victoria and his schemes alienated her in the process.

When Victoria succeeded to the throne in 1837 Conroy risked having no influence over her. He tried one last attempt for power when he forced Victoria to agree to make him her personal secretary, but this plan, too, backfired. Victoria resented her mother’s support for Conroy’s schemes and being pressured by her to sign a paper declaring Conroy her personal secretary. The result was that when Victoria became queen, she relegated the Duchess to separate accommodations, away from her own.

Reconciliation

When the Queen’s first child, the Princess Royal, was born, the Duchess of Kent unexpectedly found herself welcomed back into Victoria’s inner circle. It is likely that this came about as a result of the dismissal of Baroness Lehzen at the behest of Victoria’s husband (and the Duchess’s nephew), Prince Albert. Firstly, this removed Lehzen’s influence, and Lehzen had long despised the Duchess and Conroy, suspecting them of an illicit affair.

Secondly, it left the Queen wholly open to Albert’s influence, and he likely prevailed upon her to reconcile with her mother. Thirdly, Conroy by now lived in exile on the Continent and so his divisive influence was removed. The Duchess’s finances, which had been left in shambles by Conroy, were restored thanks to Victoria and her advisors. By all accounts, the Duchess became a doting grandmother and was closer to her daughter than she ever had been.

Some historians, including A. N. Wilson, suggested that Victoria’s father could not have been the Duke of Kent. Those who promote this position point to the absence of porphyria in the British royal family among the descendants of Queen Victoria – it had been widespread before her; and haemophilia, unknown in either the Duke’s or Duchess’s fam noily, had arisen among the best documented families in history.

In practice, this would have required the Duchess’s lover to be haemophiliac – an extremely unlikely survival, given the poor state of medicine at the time, or the Duchess herself to be a carrier of haemophilia, since haemophilia is X-linked, meaning that her mother would have been a carrier, if haemophilia was not otherwise previously expressed in the Duchess’s parents. Actual evidence to support this theory has not arisen, and haemophilia occurs spontaneously through mutation in at least 30% of cases.

John Röhl’s book, Purple Secret, documents evidence of porphyria in Victoria, Princess Royal’s daughter Charlotte, and her granddaughter, Feodora. It goes on to say that Prince William of Gloucester was diagnosed with porphyria shortly before he died in a flying accident.

The Duchess died at 09:30 on March 16, 1861 with her daughter Victoria at her side, aged 74 years. The Queen was much affected by her mother’s death. Through reading her mother’s papers, Victoria discovered that her mother had loved her deeply; she was heart-broken, and blamed Conroy and Lehzen for “wickedly” estranging her from her mother. She is buried in the Duchess of Kent’s Mausoleum at Frogmore, Windsor Home Park, near to the royal residence Windsor Castle.

Queen Victoria and Albert dedicated a window in the Royal Chapel of All Saints in Windsor Great Park to her memory.

The Duchess of Kent: Part III. The Duchess vs the King

Tags

coronation, Duchess of Kent, Fitzclarence, John Conroy, Queen Adelaide, Queen Victoria, Regency, Regent, The Kensington System, Victoire of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, William IV of the United Kingdom

Together in a hostile environment, John Conroy’s relationship with the Duchess was very close, with him serving as her comptroller and private secretary for the next nineteen years, as well as holding the unofficial roles of public relations officer, counsellor, confidant and political agent.

While it is not clear which of the two was more responsible for devising the Kensington System, it was created to govern young Victoria’s upbringing. The goal they both had was for the Duchess to be appointed regent upon Victoria’s ascension which they assumed would take place prior to her turning eighteen. Once established as recent the Duchess would have Conroy created Victoria’s private secretary and given a peerage. This would established Conroy as the true power behind the throne.

The Duchess and Conroy continued to be unpopular with the royal family and, in 1829, the Duke of Cumberland spread rumours that they were lovers in an attempt to discredit them. The Duke of Clarence referred to Conroy as “King John”, while the Duchess of Clarence wrote to the Duchess of Kent to advise that she was increasingly isolating herself from the royal family and that she must not grant Conroy too much power.

Victoria was raised under the “Kensington System” and the extremely protective Duchess of Kent kept her daughter largely isolated from other children. The system prevented the princess from meeting people whom her mother and Conroy deemed undesirable (including most of Britain’s Royal Family), and was designed to keep her weak and dependent upon them.

The Duchess avoided the court because she was scandalised by the presence of King William IV’s illegitimate children, and perhaps prompted the emergence of Victorian morality by insisting that her daughter avoid any appearance of sexual impropriety. Victoria shared a bedroom with her mother every night, studied with private tutors to a regular timetable, and spent her play-hours with her dolls and her King Charles Spaniel, Dash.

Due to Conroy’s continual influence, the relationship between the Duchess’s household and King William IV increasingly soured, with the Duchess regarding the King as an oversexed oaf. As far as she dared, the Duchess denied the King access to his niece. She prevented her daughter from attending William’s coronation out of a disagreement of precedence, a decision attributed by the Duke of Wellington to Conroy.

In 1831, the year of William’s coronation, Conroy and the Duchess embarked on a series of royal tours with Victoria to expose her to the people and solidify their status as potential joint regents. Their efforts were ultimately successful and, in November 1831, it was declared that the Duchess would be sole regent in the event of Victoria’s youthful accession to the crown.The Duchess further offended the King by taking rooms in Kensington Palace without the King’s permission. These were rooms that the King had reserved for himself.

Both before and during William’s reign, she snubbed his illegitimate children, the FitzClarences. Both the King and his wife Queen Adelaide were fond of their niece, Princess Victoria of Kent. Their attempts to forge a close relationship with the girl were frustrated by the conflict between the King and the Duchess of Kent.

The King, angered at what he took to be disrespect from the Duchess to his wife, took the opportunity at what proved to be his final birthday banquet in August 1836 to settle the score. Speaking to those assembled at the banquet, who included the Duchess and Princess Victoria, William expressed his hope that he would survive until Princess Victoria was 18 so that the Duchess of Kent would never be regent.

He said,”I trust to God that my life may be spared for nine months longer … I should then have the satisfaction of leaving the exercise of the Royal authority to the personal authority of that young lady, heiress presumptive to the Crown, and not in the hands of a person now near me, who is surrounded by evil advisers and is herself incompetent to act with propriety in the situation in which she would be placed.”

The breach between the Duchess and the King and Queen was never fully healed, but Victoria always viewed both of them with kindness.

March 16, 1861: Death of HRH The Duchess of Kent, Victoire of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. Part I.

Tags

George III of the United Kingdom, George IV of the United Kingdom, Prince Edward of the United Kingdom, Prince of Leiningen, Sir John Conroy, The Duchess of Kent, The Duke of Kent, Victoire of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, William IV of the United Kingdom

March 16, 1861: Today is the 160th anniversary of the death of HRH The Duchess of Kent (born Princess Victoire of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld), the mother of Queen Victoria, the sister of King Leopold I of the Belgians and the paternal aunt of her son-in-law Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

This will begin a multiple series on her life.

Victoire was born in Coburg on August 17, 1786 in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and was named Marie Louise Victoire. She was the fourth daughter and seventh child of Franz Friedrich Anton, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and Countess Augusta of Reuss-Ebersdorf. One of her brothers was Ernst I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and another brother, Leopold, future king of the Belgians, married, in 1816, Princess Charlotte of Wales, the only legitimate daughter of the future King George IV, and heiress presumptive to the British throne.

First marriage:
On December 21, 1803 at Coburg, a young Victoire married (as his second wife) Emich Carl, 2nd Prince of Leiningen (1763–1814). Victoire was a niece of his late wife, Henriette of Reuss-Ebersdorf, the youngest daughter of Heinrich XXIV, Count of Reuss-Ebersdorf, by his wife, Countess Karoline Ernestine of Erbach-Schönberg. Henriette’s father, Heinrich XXIV, Count of Reuss-Ebersdorf, and Victoire’s mother, Countess Augusta of Reuss-Ebersdorf, were siblings.

She bore him two further children:

Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Emich (12 September 1804 – 13 November 1856); succeeded his father as third prince; married on 13 February 1829, Countess Maria von Klebelsberg zu Thumburg, and had issue.

Princess Anna Feodora Auguste Charlotte Wilhelmine of Leiningen (7 December 1807 – 23 September 1872); married in 1828, Ernst I, Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, and had issue. She is an ancestor of various European royals, including Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, Felipe VI of Spain, and Constantine II of Greece.

Regency
Emich Carl died at Amorbach on July 4, 1814, and was succeeded by his only surviving son, Carl Friedrich. After the death of her first spouse, Victoire served as regent of the Principality of Leiningen during the minority of their son, Carl.

Second marriage
The death of Britain’s Pincess Charlotte of Wales, the wife of Victoire’s brother Leopold, in 1817, prompted a succession crisis. With Parliament offering them a financial incentive, three of Charlotte’s uncles, sons of George III, were prepared to marry. One of them, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (1767–1820) proposed to Victoire and she accepted.

The couple were married on May 29, 1818 at Amorbach and on July 11, 1818 at Kew, a joint ceremony at which Edward’s brother, the Duke of Clarence, later King William IV, married Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen.

Shortly after their marriage, the Kents moved to Germany, where the cost of living would be cheaper. Soon after, Victoire became pregnant, and the Duke and Duchess, determined to have their child born in England, raced back. Arriving at Dover on April 23,  1819, they moved into Kensington Palace, where Victoire gave birth to a daughter on May 24, 1819, Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent, later Queen Victoria. An efficient organiser, Sir John Conroy’s planning ensured the Kents’ speedy return to England in time for the birth of their first child.