One of the most famous ancestors of the Duchess of Kent, and therefore of Queen Victoria herself, was Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony in the early years of the sixteenth century, who ranks among the first converts to Protestantism, and who befriended Luther when that great reformer stood in peril of his life. The Prince Consort was likewise descended from the same family, and the Queen’s children are thus doubly connected with one of the most distinguished German houses of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In later times, various members of the Saxon family have shown their prowess as warriors, or their capacity as rulers; but the father of the Duchess of Kent, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, was a man of pacific inclinations and retiring habits, with a taste for the fine arts. The Duke of Kent was remarkable as a generous supporter of popular government—even to an extreme bordering on democratic ideas—at a time when the Court and the ruling classes were fanatically enthusiastic on the Tory side. Tall and striking in aspect, trained to military service, irreproachable in private life, and exact in all his business habits, the Duke of Kent inherited the manly and sedate qualities of his father, George III., while superadding to them a breadth of intellect to which the King himself could advance no claim. As a commander in the British army, his Royal Highness incurred some temporary disfavour by his strictness as a disciplinarian; but this was afterwards removed by the liberal character of his political views. At a banquet, during which he replied to the toast of “The Junior Members of the Royal Family,” he said:—“I am a friend of civil and religious liberty, all the world over. I am an enemy to all religious tests. I am a supporter of a general system of education. All men are my brethren; and I hold that power is delegated only for the benefit of the people. These are the principles of myself, and of my beloved brother, the Duke of Sussex. They are not popular principles just now; that is, they do not conduct to place or office. All the members of the Royal Family do not hold the same principles. For this I do not blame them; but we claim for ourselves the right of thinking and acting as we think best.”
Like some of the other Royal Princes, the Duke of Kent refrained from marriage until after the death of the Princess Charlotte, on the 6th of November, 1817. That ill-fated lady—the only child of the Prince Regent, afterwards George IV.—had been married, on the 2nd of May, 1816, to Prince Leopold, third son of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, and brother of the Princess who was subsequently united to the Duke of Kent, and became the mother of our Queen. Leopold (who, several years later, was chosen King of the Belgians) was distinguished, from his earliest maturity to his latest days, by high character and distinguished abilities; and the English people hoped much from a union which seemed to promise so fairly. But, unhappily, the Princess Charlotte died in childbed; and, as the infant was still-born, the succession to the throne was left in a very precarious state. Accordingly, in the following year (1818), the Duke of Clarence, third son of George III., and afterwards William IV., the Duke of Kent, fourth son, and the Duke of Cambridge, seventh son, contracted nuptial alliances; but that of the Duke of Clarence, the elder brother of the Duke of Kent, was unattended by any issue that survived, so that the Princess Victoria soon became heiress-presumptive to the crown of Great Britain.
For some time after their marriage, the Duke and Duchess of Kent resided abroad, chiefly from motives of economy, the allowance of the former being restricted within narrow limits by the servile Parliament of that day, owing to his political independence. In view, however, of an expected event, the Royal couple returned to England in the latter part of April, 1819, so that their child should be “born a Briton;” and, as we have said, the future Queen of England drew her first breath on the 24th of May. The Duke of Kent had been long estranged from his brother, the Prince Regent; but a reconciliation took place shortly after the birth of the Princess Victoria. The infant was christened on the 24th of June at Kensington Palace, where she had been born; on which occasion, the gold font was brought from the Tower, and the draperies were removed from the Chapel Royal, St. James’s. Chief among the sponsors were the Prince Regent and the Emperor Alexander of Russia, the latter represented by the Duke of York. It was in compliment to the Czar that the infant Princess received Alexandrina as her first name. In subsequent years, however, this Russianised Greek appellation was wisely abandoned, as unfamiliar and unwelcome to English ears, and the far nobler-sounding “Victoria” took its place. The second name, now famous throughout the world, is of course pure Latin, and no more native to our race than Alexandrina. But in a certain sense we are all Latins—we of the West of Europe; and the accents of the Imperial tongue are familiar to our ears. The meaning and sound of “Victoria,” moreover, are strikingly appropriate to the sovereign of a great Empire; and the omen has, on the whole, been happily fulfilled under the sceptre of her Majesty, not merely in the triumphs of war, but also in the victories of peace.
It is not generally known, that, so far as can be inferred from imperfect and obscure records, a monarch bearing the name of Victoria once before held sway in Britain. During the general weakness of the Roman Empire in the second half of the third century, several of the provinces detached themselves from the central authority, and for a while established separate governments. Spain, Gaul, and Britain formed a western realm of immense extent, the capital of which was at Trèves, on the Moselle, then a city of Gallia Belgica; and the sovereignty of this varied region passed in time to an ambitious and energetic woman named Victoria. She is mentioned in the great work of Gibbon; yet little is known of her acts or character. It is probable that she was a resolute and capable despot; but she appears in history as a name, and little else.
For the brief remainder of his life, the Duke of Kent dwelt principally at Claremont, which, but a short time before, had been the residence of the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold, and which was rendered sadly memorable by the death of the former. But the unusually severe winter of 1819-20 induced the Duke and Duchess to visit Sidmouth, for the sake of the mild climate of Southern Devonshire. At Salisbury Cathedral, to which he made an excursion during the frosty weather, the Duke caught a slight cold, which, after his return to Sidmouth, became serious, owing, it would seem, to neglect and imprudence. According to the medical custom of those days, the patient was copiously bled, and not improbably owed his death to the exhaustion thus occasioned. He expired on the 23rd of January, 1820, in his fifty-third year; and so small were his means that he left the Duchess and the Princess totally devoid of maintenance. Such was the statement made long afterwards by Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who was with his sister during the days of her trial and bereavement. Soon after the fatal event, the Prince accompanied the widowed lady to London, where addresses of condolence were voted by both Houses of Parliament. The address of the Commons was presented by Lords Morpeth and Clive, when the Duchess of Kent
CLAREMONT.
appeared with the infant Princess in her arms. The scene was one of the chambers in Kensington Palace; and that historic building can scarcely have witnessed a more affecting interview.
The edifice in which Queen Victoria passed most of her early years, and which yet attracts the interest both of Englishmen and Americans, dates, as a palace, from the time of William III., though, at a rather earlier period, the Finches, Earls of Nottingham, had a mansion on the same spot, of which a small portion is believed to be still existent. The second Earl of Nottingham sold the house and grounds to the illustrious Dutchman who came to rescue us from the Pope and the Stuarts; and his Majesty caused additions to be made to the building by the greatest English architect of that time—Sir Christopher Wren. Successive