The King behaved with appropriate delicacy on this occasion. When Lord Albemarle, the duke’s executor, presented to the King the key of his uncle’s cabinet, George III. returned it, bidding Lord Albemarle use his own discretion in examining all private papers, and in destroying all such as the duke himself probably would not have wished to be made public. On the 28th of December the death of his Majesty’s youngest brother, Prince Frederick, at the early age of sixteen years, threw additional gloom on the circle of the royal family. At least, so say the journalists of the period.
At this time the King and Queen resided chiefly at Richmond, in very modest state, and with very few servants. Their chief amusement, amid the turmoil of politics and the crush of factions, consisted in ‘going about to see places,’ as Walpole describes their visits to such localities as Oatlands and Wanstead; and the ‘call’ of the Queen at Strawberry Hill, which the sovereign lady could not see, for the sufficient reason that the sovereign lord was in bed and unable to perform the necessary honours.
The youngest daughter of Frederick, Prince of Wales, was married by proxy on the 1st of October 1766, in the Chapel Royal, St. James’s, to Christian VII., King of Denmark. Queen Charlotte was not present, she having given birth, only two days previously, to Charlotte Augusta, Princess Royal, and subsequently Duchess of Wurtemburg.
The King of Denmark was an exceedingly small, but not an ill-made, a weakly, not an ill-favoured man. His character was, however, in every respect detestable; and when poor Caroline Matilda passed on in tears, amid the congratulations of the court of Queen Charlotte, her tears were better founded than their smiles. She was speedily treated with cruelty, and abandoned at home while her lord travelled in foreign countries and indulged in profligacy. Queen Charlotte accorded him a more hearty reception than he deserved when he came over to England, two years subsequent to the marriage. At that time his absurdly pompous airs were the ridicule of the circle at the Queen’s and at Carlton House, the residence of the Princess-dowager of Wales.
After spending some years in travel, he returned, neither a wiser nor a better man, to Denmark. In his suite was the German physician, Struensee. This man enjoyed his master’s utmost confidence. He soon gained that of the young Queen also, who sought by his means to be reconciled to the King. He was, on the other hand, hated by the Queen-mother and other branches of the royal family; particularly in his character of reformer of political abuses. They contrived to overthrow him, procured a warrant for his execution from the King, and involved the young Queen in his ruin, on the ground of an improper familiarity between them. The triumphant enemies of Struensee would have put Caroline Matilda also to death but for the appearance in the Baltic of a British fleet under Admiral Keith, by whom she was carried off to Zell, where she died in 1775, neglected, unhappy, and under the weight of accusation of a charge of which she has never been proved guilty.
It may be stated here, that of all the children of Frederick, Prince of Wales, George III. can be said to have been the only one happily married. The second son, William Henry, the amiable, assiduous, brave, but not over-accomplished Duke of Gloucester (born in 1743), scandalised Queen Charlotte and the court by a mésalliance which he contracted, in 1766, with Maria, Countess-dowager of Waldegrave. This marriage was not, indeed, especially unhappy to the contractors of it, except inasmuch as they were embarrassed by being obliged for some time to keep it secret, and that when discovered, the royal husband and his noble wife were for a long period banished from court. They resided during a portion of their time of exile in Italy; and at Rome, the Pope himself had so much esteem for the Prince that his Holiness, on one occasion, declined to take precedence of him when their carriages encountered in the streets. The Holy Father drew on one side, and courteously waited while the Prince, in obedience to the bidding of the Universal Bishop, passed on. The children of this union were subsequently acknowledged as the legal heirs of their parents. The duke died in 1805.
The third son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, Henry, Duke of Cumberland (after the death of his uncle ‘the Duke’), born in 1744, more grievously offended Queen Charlotte by a mésalliance than his brother. He was fierce of temper, frivolous of character, and foppish in his dress. In the year 1770 the attentions of the duke to Lady Grosvenor were so marked, and so ridiculous, that everybody talked about them, except her husband. The lady, when a Miss Vernon, had been first seen by Lord Grosvenor as she and a companion were leaving Kensington Gardens, flying under sudden and heavy rain. He looked at and pitied the shower-bearing nymphs, as Aristophanes styles maidens so molested, and he offered them an asylum in his carriage. Soon after, Miss Vernon was the married mistress of his house; and the union would have been happy had not the foolish prince appeared to disturb it. He speedily contrived to seduce Lady Grosvenor from her duty. He followed her about in disguises, often betraying himself by his fopperies and imbecility, slept whole nights in woods like any Corydon not subject to the infirmities of nature, and subsequently had 10,000l. to pay for the ruin he brought to Lord Grosvenor’s hearth. But this guilt did not so much flurry Queen Charlotte as the marriage of the duke in the following year with Mrs. Horton, a widow, daughter of Lord Carhampton, who was much older than the senseless and coarse-minded prince, her husband.
This act of folly caused him to be permanently banished from court. The Queen would never consent to a reconciliation; and the King, to prevent such unions in future, brought in the Royal Marriage Act. By this act no prince or princess of the blood could marry without consent of the Sovereign before the age of twenty-five. After that age the royal sanction was still to be applied for; but if withheld the prince or princess had a resource in the privy council. To this body the name of the individual to whom the English member of the royal family desired to be married was to be given, and if parliament made no objection within the year the enamoured parties were at liberty to enter into the holy bond of matrimony. Queen Charlotte, who was exceedingly ‘nice’ on such matters, thought that she at least prevented all such alliances among her own children. She little thought how one of her sons would twice offend.
The duke died childless and a widower in 1790, but a paternity derived from him was claimed by ‘Olivia Serres,’ who professed to be the daughter of a second marriage. Her claim was never heeded, but she used to patronise the cheaper minor theatres, whose bills announced her presence as that of ‘H.R.H. the Princess Olivia of Cumberland.’ She was as much a princess as the counterfeits upon the stage, but not more so.
There are two more children of Frederick yet to be mentioned. These are Edward, Duke of York, the second son, born in 1739, and the Princess Louisa Anne, born ten years later. Neither of these was married. A report, nevertheless, was long prevalent that the weak (he voted against ministers on the American Stamp Act) but witty duke was privately married to a lady at Monaco, where he died in 1767. The Princess Louisa, his sister, was almost from her birth the victim of slow consumption, which finally ended her life when she was in the eighteenth year of her age.