The Lost Queen: The Life and Tragedy of the Prince Regent's Daughter

By Anne M. Stott

A look at the tragically short life of the only daughter of Britain’s King George IV who won the heart of a nation.

As the only child of the Prince Regent and Caroline of Brunswick, Princess Charlotte of Wales (1796-1817) was the heiress presumptive to the throne. Her parents’ marriage had already broken up by the time she was born. She had a difficult childhood and a turbulent adolescence, but she was popular with the public, who looked to her to restore the good name of the monarchy. When she broke off her engagement to a Dutch prince, her father put her under virtual imprisonment, and she endured a period of profound unhappiness. But she held out for the freedom to choose her husband, and when she married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, she finally achieved contentment. Her happiness was cruelly cut short when she died in childbirth at the age of twenty-one, only eighteen months later. A shocked nation went into mourning for its “people’s princess,” the queen who never was.

“This perspicacious study of Charlotte’s short life is superb. Anne Stott is an accomplished and highly readable biographer whose earlier subjects have included William Wilberforce and Hannah More. She wears her research lightly—which is not to say that the book is anything less than scholastic (quite the opposite). Highly recommended.” —Naomi Clifford, author of The Murder of Mary Ashford

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781526736451

Book preview

THE

LOST QUEEN

For Katherine and Emilie

THE

LOST QUEEN

The Life & Tragedy of the Prince Regent’s Daughter

ANNE STOTT

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by

PEN AND SWORD HISTORY

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire – Philadelphia

Copyright © Anne Stott, 2020

ISBN 978 1 52673 643 7

eISBN 978 1 52673 644 4

Mobi ISBN 978 1 52673 645 1

The right of Anne Stott to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Personages

List of Illustrations

Family Trees

Abbreviations

Preface

Chapter 1 The parents 1783–96

Chapter 2 The nursery 1796–1801

Chapter 3 The battle for custody 1801–1804

Chapter 4 The education of a princess 1805–1808

Chapter 5 ‘Like a bird escaped from a cage’ 1806–11

Chapter 6 ‘Weep, Daughter of a royal line’ 1811–12

Chapter 7 ‘She stands on a precipice’ 1812–13

Chapter 8 ‘An obstinate Daughter’ 1814

Chapter 9 ‘ La belle prisonnière ’ 1814

Chapter 10 Waiting for Leopold 1815–16

Chapter 11 ‘Oh God! how I love you!’ 1816–17

Chapter 12 Death of a princess 1817–19

Postscript Leopold and Victoria

Notes

Bibliography

A young woman, if she falls into bad hands may be teased, and kept at a distance from those she wants to be with.

Jane Austen, Emma (1815)

Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made;

Thy bridal’s fruit is ashes: in the dust

The fair-hair’d Daughter of the Isles is laid,

The love of millions!

Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto IV (1818)

What a dreadfully sad life my poor Cousin’s & Aunt’s was & only 18 or 19 months of real happiness.

Queen Victoria (1873)

Acknowledgements

In writing this book, I have encountered many institutions and individuals, to whom I offer my grateful appreciation. I would like to thank the following: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for permission to quote from the Royal Archives and to reproduce the relevant pictures; Julie Crocker and all the friendly staff at the Royal Archives; His Majesty the King of the Belgians for permission to quote from the Archives of the Royal Palace, Brussels (a depository that has been too little used by British scholars) and to reproduce the Lawrence portrait of Princess Charlotte; the British Library; Durham University Library Archives and Special Collections, and, in particular, Mike Harkness, the Senior Search Room Assistant; Hampshire Archives and Local Studies; UCL Library Services; Jonathan Wright, Laura Hirst and Linne Matthews at Pen & Sword, who have always responded so quickly and usefully to my queries.

Grateful thanks are also due to the following individuals: Baudoin D’hoore, Archivist of Royal Palace, Brussels; Olivier Defrance, biographer of King Leopold I; Professor Gita Deneckere of the University of Ghent, who kindly sent me the English translation of the relevant chapter in her biography of Leopold; the Marquess of Lansdowne; the Viscount Mersey; Diana Scarisbrick; Professor Arthur Burns and all those working on the Georgian Papers Programme, especially Dr Carolyn Day; Professor Elaine Chalus, Catherine Curzon, Dr Christopher Guyver; Dr Jacqueline Reiter and all the other friends who have helped with my enquiries either face-to-face or on social media; Dr Jarl Kremeier, tour guide extraordinaire, who opened up the German context of the Hanoverian politics; Adrian Whittaker, ace photographer; Dr Evelyn Jain, my most long-standing friend and expert on all aspects of childbirth.

I have a set of obligations that I never anticipated when I set out. After finishing my biography of Hannah More, a prolific writer who lived to her late eighties, I joked that my next subject would have to be someone who died tragically young. I forgot to specify that they should also write legibly. Princess Charlotte’s handwriting would probably have defeated me, but for the painstaking transcriptions of the late Professor Arthur Aspinall, the Victorian writer Lady Rose Weigall, and the transcriber at the Royal Palace, Brussels who deciphered Charlotte’s letters to Leopold, which are not only difficult to read, but were written in ungrammatical French. Having checked all their transcripts against the originals, I am left in awe at their deciphering skills.

I will only add the usual disclaimer that any mistakes in the book are entirely my own. I hope they are few and that I have done full justice to a princess whose tragedy is too little known in the country she seemed destined to rule.

List of Personages

Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales (1796–1817)

George, Prince of Wales, later Prince Regent (1762–1830), Charlotte’s father

Princess Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1768–1821), Charlotte’s mother

Charlotte’s grandparents

George III, King of Great Britain (1738–1820)

Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1744–1818)

Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1736–1806)

Augusta, Duchess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1737–1813)

Charlotte’s uncles

Frederick, Duke of York (1763–1827)

William Duke of Clarence, later William IV (1765–1837)

Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent (1767–1820)

Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, later King of Hanover (1771–1851)

Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (1773–1843)

Adolphus Frederick, Duke of Cambridge (1774–1850)

Frederick William, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1771–1815)

Charlotte’s aunts

Charlotte, Princess Royal, Duchess, later Queen of Württemberg (1766–1828)

Princess Augusta (1768–1840)

Princess Elizabeth, later Hereditary Princess of Hesse-Homburg (1770–1840)

Princess Mary, later Duchess of Gloucester (1776–1857)

Princess Sophia (1777–1848)

Princess Amelia (1783–1810)

Other relatives

Princess Frederica Charlotte of Prussia, Duchess of York (1767–1820)

Prince William, second Duke of Gloucester (1776–1834)

Princess Sophia Matilda of Gloucester (1773–1844)

George FitzClarence (1794–1843), illegitimate son of the Duke of Clarence

Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, later Duchess of Cumberland (1778–1841)

Foreign royalty

Prince Augustus of Prussia (1779–1843)

Prince Frederick of Prussia (1794–1863)

Tsar Alexander I of Russia (1777–1825)

Grand Duchess Catherine of Russia, Duchess of Oldenburg (1788–1819)

Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia, later Tsar Nicholas I (1796–1855)

Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, later King of the French (1773–1850)

Marie-Amélie, Duchess of Orléans, later Queen of the French (1782–1866)

Louise of Orléans, later Queen of the Belgians (1812–50)

Politicians, courtiers and peers

William Adam, Chancellor of the Duchy of Cornwall (1751–1839)

Henry Brougham (1778–1868), lawyer and politician

Lady Charlotte Maria Campbell (later Bury) (1775–1861), lady-in-waiting to Princess Caroline

William Cavendish, sixth Duke of Devonshire (1790-1858)

Sylvester Douglas, Baron Glenbervie (1743–1823)

Catherine Douglas, Lady Glenbervie (1760–1817), Mistress of the Robes and Lady of the Bedchamber to Princess Caroline

Thomas Erskine, first Baron Erskine (1750–1823), lawyer and politician

Charles James Fox (1749–1806), Whig politician

William Wyndham Grenville, Baron Grenville (1759–1834), prime minister

Charles Grey, second Earl (1764–1845), Whig politician

James Harris, Baron, later first Earl of Malmesbury (1746–1820), politician and diplomat

Lady Charlotte Lindsay (1770–1849), lady-in-waiting to Princess Caroline

Francis Rawdon Hastings, first Marquess of Hastings and second Earl of Moira (1754–1826), Whig politician, friend of the Prince of Wales

Robert Banks Jenkinson, second Earl of Liverpool (1770–1828), prime minister

Spencer Perceval (1762–1812), prime minister

William Pitt, the Younger (1759–1806), prime minister

John Scott, first Earl of Eldon (1751–1838), Lord Chancellor

Sarah Sophia Villiers, née Fane, Countess of Jersey (1785–1867), society hostess

Wives and mistresses

Maria Anne Fitzherbert, née Smythe (1756–1837)

Isabella Anne Seymour-Conway, née Ingram Shepheard, Marchioness of Hertford (1760–1834)

Frances Villiers, née Twysden, Countess of Jersey (1753–1821)

Governesses and sub-governesses

Martha Bruce, Dowager Countess of Elgin and Kincardine (1739–1810)

Mrs Alicia Campbell

Sophia, Lady de Clifford, née Campbell (1743–1828)

Frances Garth, sub-governess Helen, née Graham, Lady Dashwood (d. 1796)

Ann Hayman, sub-governess, then Princess Caroline’s Keeper of the Privy Purse

Maria Fox-Strangways, Dowager Countess of Ilchester (d. 1842)

Ellis Cornelia Knight (1757–1837), author and lady companion

Catherine Osborne, née Anguish, Dowager Duchess of Leeds (1764–1837)

Charlotte Wedderburn, Dowager Countess of Rosslyn (d. 1826)

Mrs Martha Udney

Tutors

Mr Angier, speech therapist

Louis von Esch, music teacher

John Fisher (1748–1825), Bishop of Exeter (1803) and Salisbury (1807)

M. Giffardière, French teacher

Herr Küper, German teacher

The Reverend George Frederick Nott (1767–1841)

Dr William Short (c. 1760–1826)

M. Sterkey, French teacher

Francesco Vaccari, guitar teacher (1775–1824)

Members of Charlotte’s households

Colonel John Addenbrooke (?1753–1839), equerry

Mrs Bower, wet nurse

Eliza Gagrin (d. 1813), dresser

Thomas Garth (1744–1829), equerry

Louisa Louis (d. 1838), dresser

Christian Friedrich Stockmar (1787–1863), Prince Leopold’s physician and secretary

Friends

Margaret Mercer Elphinstone, later Comtesse de Flahaut, Lady Nairne and Baroness Keith (1788–1867)

Anne Caroline Fitzroy (1791–1835)

Georgiana Frederica Fitzroy, later Marchioness of Worcester (d. 1821)

George Keppel, later sixth Earl of Albemarle (1799–1891)

Priscilla Anne Wellesley-Pole, Lady Burghersh, later Countess of Westmorland (1793–1879)

Doctors

Matthew Baillie (1761–1823), anatomist and court physician

Sir Richard Croft, sixth baronet (1762–1818), accoucheur

Sir Henry Halford (1766–1844), court physician

Robert Keate (1777–1857), court physician

John Sims (1749–1831), accoucheur

Michael Underwood (1737–1820), accoucheur

Children

Mary ‘Minny’ Seymour (1798–1847), Maria Fitzherbert’s ward

Willy Austin (1802–57), Princess Caroline’s adopted son

Thomas Garth (1800–73), probably illegitimate son of Princess Sophia and Thomas Garth

Suitors

Captain Charles Hesse (d. 1832), officer of the 18th Hussars

Willem Hereditary Prince of Orange, later King Willem II of the

Netherlands (1792–1849)

Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, later King Leopold I of the Belgians (1790–1865)

The names of foreign rulers have been anglicised where those forms might be more familiar to English-speaking readers.

List of Illustrations

1. Grandpappa in his Glory!!! , by Isaac Cruikshank, 13 February 1796. (The Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection)

2. Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales , by Francesco Bartolozzi, 15 May 1797. (National Portrait Gallery)

3. Caroline, Princess of Wales and Princess Charlotte , by Thomas Lawrence, 1801. (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018)

4. Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales , by Marie Anne Bourlier, 19 May 1806. (National Portrait Gallery)

5. Queen Charlotte , by Benjamin West, 1777. (Yale Center for British Art. Paul Mellon Collection)

6. Portrait of George IV, after Sir Thomas Lawrence, c. 1840. (Yale Center for British Art. Paul Mellon Collection)

7. Warwick House . (London Metropolitan Archives, The London Picture Archive)

8. Margaret Mercer Elphinstone as Miranda , by John Hoppner. (By kind permission of Viscount Mersey)

9. Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg , by George Dawe, 1816. (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018)

10. My first Violets of the Season, picked by myself for You, 1816. (Archives of the Royal Palace, Brussels)

11. Quickstep composed by H.R.H. the Princess Charlotte of Wales, c.1816. (Archives of the Royal Palace, Brussels)

12. Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales and Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg , after George Dawe, 1817. (National Portrait Gallery)

13. Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales , by George Dawe, 1817. (National Portrait Gallery)

14. Princess Charlotte of Wales , by Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1817. (Civil List of H.M. the King of the Belgians)

15. Monument to Princess Charlotte of Wales , anonymous photograph, 1899. (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018)

16. The apotheosis of Princess Charlotte , 1818. (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018)

Family Trees

The Descent of Princess Charlotte

Princess Charlotte’s Uncles

Princess Charlotte’s Aunts

Relationship of Prince Frederick of Prussia and Willem, Hereditary Prince of the Netherlands

Family of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld

Abbreviations

ARPB Royal Palace, Brussels, Archive of King Leopold I

BL British Library

GIV The Letters of King George IV (1938), ed. A. Aspinall

Goffinet Royal Palace, Brussels, Archive Goffinet

GPOW The Correspondence of George, Prince of Wales (1963–71), ed. A. Aspinall

Grey Durham University, Grey Papers

Knight Autobiography of Miss Cornelia Knight (1861), vol. 1

LSC Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld

ME Mercer Elphinstone

Letters Letters of the Princess Charlotte 1811–1817 (1949), ed. A. Aspinall

PC Princess Charlotte

PR Prince Regent

PW Prince of Wales

RA Royal Archives, Windsor

QC Queen Charlotte

Preface

Most monarchs have to live with the awkward knowledge that they gained their thrones through the death of a predecessor, none more so than Queen Victoria. She owed her position, and her very existence, not merely to the predictable demise of an elderly uncle, but also to the unexpected death of a young cousin twenty years before. Without this shocking event, Victoria’s parents would probably still have married, but the timing would have been different and any resulting child would not have been Victoria. There would have been no throne for this child to inherit, as the cousin, the daughter of the Prince Regent, was the heiress presumptive to the throne. If she had not died in childbirth, five hours after producing a stillborn son, Princess Charlotte would have eventually become queen.

The dead princess is a ghostly presence in the history of the British monarchy, leaving few visible reminders. There is the melodramatic sculpture tucked away in a side chapel in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, ignored by most visitors, their attention caught instead by the imposing garter banners and the fan-vaulted ceiling. There is the striking portrait in the large anteroom of the Royal Palace in Brussels, brought over from England by her grieving widower, when he became King of the Belgians. Otherwise, the princess, whose death at the age of 21 jolted a shocked nation into extravagant mourning, has become nothing more than a wistful half-memory.

Yet there is much in her story to attract interest. She was the child of a broken marriage, conceived in an act of hatred and disgust and forced to negotiate a perilous path through the vicious quarrels of her parents. She was an endearing, if sometimes difficult child, who grew into the classic rebellious and disgruntled adolescent – perhaps the first ‘teenager’ (as opposed to ‘girl in her teens’) in our history. She committed some spectacular acts of rebellion – writing clandestine love letters, breaking off an engagement that had been arranged as a matter of state, running away from home: actions of a troubled young woman who had never known true stability. Then, in a turn of events that seemed too good to be true, she found her Prince Charming and settled down to live happily ever after – only to meet the fate of so many women of the time. The most experienced obstetrician of the day was unable to save her.

Between November 2018 and April 2019, the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace hosted the exhibition Russia. Art, Royalty and the Romanovs. Little knots of visitors gathered round one exhibit in particular, Princess Charlotte’s blue and gold Russian dress, the colours still fresh after 200 years. She wore it while awaiting the birth of her child, and the skirt has a drawstring at the top, to be let out as her pregnancy advanced. It stands as a poignant memorial to a young life that was so cruelly cut short: the beloved people’s princess, the queen who never was.

Chapter 1

The parents

1783–96

This was a royal wedding so the guests had to be there in good time. Lady Maria Stuart, the daughter of a former prime minister, was distinguished enough to claim entry to St James’s Palace, but not sufficiently grand to be present in the chapel to view the ceremony. In keeping with the late hours of high society, it was to take place at nine in the evening, but she and her sister had to set out in their sedan chairs as early as six in order to be sure of gaining a place. Even so, they found Pall Mall almost gridlocked with coaches and gaping onlookers. After an hour their chairs swayed through the red-brick Tudor gatehouse and set them down in the Great Court from where they struggled through the royal apartments to the crowded inner drawing room, the nearest they could get to the ceremony. The approach to the chapel was lined with soldiers of the foot guards and household troops so that the guests were squashed together, their silk dresses and embroidered coats crumpled in the crush. Few of them were lucky enough to find seats. Each lady would have carried in her pocket a discreet little boat-shaped china bowl known as a bourdaloue for relieving herself.

When the ceremony was over and the royal family began to leave the chapel, the company rushed to form two lines, leaving scarcely enough space for the hooped gowns of the bridegroom’s six sisters as they processed through the drawing room. After half an hour, Lady Maria was finally rewarded with a view of the newlyweds as they emerged from signing the register. As she made her way through the bowing and curtsying company, the bride, encased in bows and silver tissue, ‘appeared in the highest spirits, smiling and nodding to everyone’. The groom, on the other hand, ‘looked like Death and full of confusion, as if he wished to hide himself from the looks of the whole world’.¹ Others thought that he had the pale tormented face of a man going to his execution. It was Wednesday, 8 April 1795. George, Prince of Wales, had just married his cousin, Princess Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, and the marriage had broken down before it had even begun.

***

In the last months of her short life, Princess Charlotte took to reflecting on her parents’ disastrous marriage. Caught in the crossfire of their vicious conflict, she had endured a disrupted and stressful childhood, but now, when for the first time she felt herself truly happy, she could look with some detachment on her parents’ behaviour and had no doubt where most of the blame lay. ‘My mother may have been wicked,’ she told her husband’s confidant, Dr Christian Stockmar, ‘but she would not have turned so wicked had not my father been much more wicked still.’²

It was never going to be a marriage made in heaven. Years before it took place, the Prince of Wales had blurted out at a hard-drinking dinner party that he knew the time would come when ‘he should be forced to marry some ugly German B[itch]’.³ As the heir to the throne, it was his duty to secure the succession. More immediately, he needed to clear his mountain of debts. These debts were long-standing, going back twelve years before his marriage to 1783, the year when he came of age and set up his own household independently of his father, the parsimonious and controlling George III. Most agreed that the establishment of the Prince of Wales could not be run on the cheap and that the heir to the throne needed to live in style in his own grand house. This meant that there would be servants to pay, horses to feed, carriages to maintain, grand entertainments to be laid on and exclusive tailors to provide generously proportioned new breeches for his expanding waistline. The money was to come from the Civil List approved by Parliament and from the farms and tin mines of the Duchy of Cornwall, the hereditary estate of the Prince of Wales. It was not always clear how much money was necessary for the smooth-running of his household and how much was sheer extravagance and display. Realists were well aware how unlikely it was that an immature young man of high rank and a large income would manage to live within his means. As the Victorian political commentator Walter Bagehot was to write eighty years later, with another high-living Prince of Wales in mind, ‘All the world, whatever is most attractive, whatever is most seductive, has always been offered to the Prince of Wales of the day, and always will be. It is not rational to expect the best virtue where temptation is applied in the most trying form at the frailest time of human life.’⁴

Nevertheless, initially it was George’s good fortune that the government was in the hands of his friend, Charles James Fox, and his fellow Whigs, who needed his political support and were therefore inclined to be generous. Armed with a grant of £62,000, agreed after acrimonious discussions between the king and Parliament, he began a lavish rebuilding of his new residence, Carlton House in Pall Mall. The architect, Henry Holland, the son of a master bricklayer, was summoned to transform a somewhat dilapidated Palladian mansion into a neoclassical palace, a mini-Versailles that Horace Walpole thought unparalleled for ‘taste and propriety’, though he wondered how it could be paid for.⁵ The answer was debt and yet more debt, so that after three years the prince owed nearly £270,000. With the new prime minister, William Pitt, less inclined to be generous than his Whig predecessors, he was forced to retrench. He closed down Carlton House, calling a temporary halt to the building works, sold his racehorses and carriages and went to live with Mrs Fitzherbert, his unofficial wife, in Brighton. In 1787, a slightly mollified Parliament voted to pay part of his debts and provide £60,000 for the completion of Carlton House. The prince took this as permission to spend more money and begin work on his Brighton orientalist extravaganza, the Marine Pavilion. He was now caught in an unstoppable spiral of self-indulgence and high spending. In 1792, James Gillray produced a savage print, A Voluptuary under the Horrors of Digestion, which showed a grossly overweight prince, picking his teeth with a fork, sitting at a dinner table littered with chewed bones, while behind him an overflowing chamber pot rests on sheaves of unpaid bills.

In October 1794, Parliament again discussed the prince’s debts. William Pitt, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as prime minister, noted with dismay that they now stood at £552,000, and that it would take twenty-five years before they were settled. At a time of war, poor harvests and high taxes, Parliament could not be seen to be too generous, and there now seemed to be only one way out. George’s brother, Frederick, Duke of York, had married the daughter of the King of Prussia three years earlier and been rewarded with an additional £18,000 a year. If the prince followed his example, he and his wife would be provided with the money for a new establishment, and he could start afresh.

The only problem was that he was already married.

***

The prince had begun his pursuit of the twice-widowed Maria Fitzherbert in 1784, when he was 22 and she six years older. From the time he had fallen in love, at the impressionable age of 16, with the virtuous and sensible Mary Hamilton, his sister’s sub-governess, George had always been attracted to older women, perhaps seeking from them the comforting quality that he had not found in his mother. Two of his more embarrassing affairs were with the actress Mary Robinson, who blackmailed the royal family into paying for the return of his letters, and the wife of the Hanoverian envoy, whose husband lost his post as a consequence. The affairs followed a pattern – a flamboyant declaration of love, an ardent pursuit, a brief, intense relationship, and then a cooling, with a courtier left to break the bad news so that the prince was shielded from tears and recriminations. Yet when he encountered Mrs Fitzherbert, attractive, elegant and dignified, but comfortingly plump and motherly, he was convinced he had found his ideal woman, and her principled refusal to become his mistress only made her more desirable. When he learned that she planned to leave the country, he stabbed himself near the heart, leaving a bloodstained shirt as evidence of his despair, and blackmailed her into a promise to marry him. She fled abroad but returned to London in the autumn of 1785. In December she and the prince were married in a secret ceremony in her locked drawing room in Park Street.

Fortunately for Mrs Fitzherbert’s devout scruples, the marriage was legal according to Anglican canon law. There was an officiating clergyman, the requisite number of witnesses and a marriage certificate signed by both parties. No banns were called, but these were not required for members of the royal family. In every other respect, however, the marriage was illegal. Mrs Fitzherbert was a Catholic from an ancient recusant family, and the same Act of Settlement of 1701 that had established the succession of the Hanoverian dynasty had decreed that the monarch and his spouse had to be Protestant. A more recent statute had made it illegal for a member of the royal family to marry without the monarch’s consent. The couple were therefore condemning themselves to living in a grey area, husband and wife perhaps by the law of God, but not by the law of the land.

Far from remaining secret, the marriage became the talk of London society, though it was always officially denied. After several partings and reconciliations, the prince reverted to his bad old ways, and in the summer of 1794 he abandoned Mrs Fitzherbert for Frances Villiers, Countess of Jersey, an experienced predator coolly determined to see off all rivals. She was nine years older than the prince (the type of age gap he felt comfortable with), a grandmother, and blessed with a husband who knew when to turn a blind eye. However, Parliament could not afford to be so accommodating, and with the prince’s debts soaring, he was only offered one way of escape. The moment he had dreaded had arrived: he had to marry, and this time in accordance with the law.

The bride could not be a British subject. At the time of his accession George III had been infatuated with Lady Sarah Lennox, the sister of the Duke of Richmond, only to be firmly told by his advisors that the marriage was impossible; no king had married a subject since Henry VIII’s marriage to Katherine Parr in 1543. Moreover, from 1714, the British monarch had also been Elector of Hanover. A marriage between a prince and a commoner was unequal in Imperial Law and any children were barred from the succession. The prince’s choice was limited, in effect, to a Protestant princess from one of the 300 German states that made up the Holy Roman Empire.

As if these constraints were not enough, George III had imposed a further restriction on his family. From the start of his reign, he had seen himself as the benign head of his family, loftily laying down the law, and entitled to expect their unquestioning obedience. The reality could not have been further from the truth. The first to rebel had been his brother, William, Duke of Gloucester, who, in 1766, at the age of 23, had secretly married the widowed Countess of Waldegrave, whose extraordinary beauty and tempestuous character had made her a celebrity. As a royal bride she could hardly have been more unsuitable. She was the illegitimate daughter of Sir Edward Walpole, son of the first prime minister, and a milliner’s assistant, and though she had made a distinguished first marriage and produced three famously lovely daughters, nothing could erase the stain of her birth.

Five years later, a second royal brother made a clandestine marriage to a glamorous widow, when Henry, Duke of Cumberland, married Anne Horton, the sister of a prominent politician. He was banished from court but the couple seemed unmoved by their disgrace, setting up their own court in open mockery of the king. In his fury, George III turned to Parliament and in March 1772, stretching his prerogative to its limits, he bludgeoned the Royal Marriages Act through an uneasy House of Commons. The act, which applied to all descendants of George II, apart from the children of royal princesses who married into foreign families, made it illegal for any member of the royal family to marry without the sovereign’s consent. Should the consent of the sovereign be withheld to someone over 25, a year’s notice could be given to the Privy Council and the marriage could then take place without the sovereign’s approval, provided that neither house of Parliament raised an objection. Any marriage conducted in defiance of these stringent provisions would be deemed null and void. But if George believed that he had satisfactorily resolved the problem of disobedient family members, he could not have been more wrong. In the autumn the Duke of Gloucester broke cover and when he admitted his marriage, he too was banished from court. George’s siblings were proving as recalcitrant as the American colonies, and he could only hope that his children would be more amenable.

***

The prince went into his marriage in a mood of reckless self-pity, sullenly indifferent as to who would be found for him; he is alleged to have said, ‘Any damned German frau would do.’ This could not have been more different to his father’s attitude when he was looking for a wife. George III had chosen Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz after eliminating some less suitable princesses and when he was still recovering from his doomed love for Sarah Lennox. Having made his choice, he did not regret it. He and Charlotte were both determined to be good sovereigns and to make their marriage work, and they soon discovered many tastes in common. Within a year, Charlotte fulfilled her most important task and provided the country with an heir, George, Prince of Wales, born on 12 August 1762. Fourteen more children were to follow. To outward appearances at least, George’s careful choice had been vindicated and he did not see why his son could not follow the same path.

Yet the king had before him a tragic instance of how a diplomatic marriage could go wrong in the story of his sister, Caroline Matilda, colourfully depicted in the Danish film A Royal Affair. In 1766, at the age of 15, she had left England in tears for a wretched marriage to her mentally unstable cousin King Christian VII of Denmark. Within a few years, she had taken a lover and mounted a virtual coup d’état against her husband. Early in 1772 she was arrested, her lover was beheaded, and, after fraught negotiations between Britain and Denmark, she was allowed to live in Hanoverian territory under her brother’s protection. Her disgrace was followed by her death at the age of 23. George III loved his sister and was inclined to sympathise with her rather than condemn her behaviour, but he drew no lessons from her tragedy.

***

Having resigned himself to his inevitable marriage, the prince chose quickly. On 24 August 1794 he travelled to his parents, who were on holiday at Weymouth, and announced that he intended to marry his first cousin, Princess Caroline, the daughter of Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, and his wife, Augusta, the king’s elder sister. If contemporary gossip was to be believed, it was Lady Jersey who had made the choice, determined to replace Mrs Fitzherbert with a compliant foreigner who would never be a rival. The king and queen responded to the news in very different ways. In spite of his reservations about the marriage of cousins, the king was cautiously pleased, believing, as he told Pitt, that if his son would but mend his ways and make himself respectable, then the marriage would be happy.⁶ The queen, on the other hand, remained silent.

As it happened, Princess Caroline was already on her mind, though as a possible future sister-in-law rather than as a daughter-in-law. Her brother, Duke Karl II of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, had been recently widowed. He had no heir, he was looking for a new wife and he had suggested Caroline to his sister, only to receive a horrified reply:

a relative of that Family, who is indeed very attached to the Duke [of Brunswick], has spoken to me of Princess Caroline with very little respect. They say that Her Passions are so strong that the Duke himself said that she was not to be allowed even to go from one Room to another without her Governess, and that when she Dances, this Lady is obliged to follow her for the whole of the Dance to prevent her from making an exhibition of herself by indecent conversations with men … and that all amusements have been forbidden her because of her immodest conduct. … There, dear Brother, is a Woman I do not recommend at all.⁷

But while she was blunt in her advice to her brother, she said nothing to her husband, though a quiet word with him might have prevented a great deal of misery and scandal. Her reticence was to prove disastrous, but she felt she had no choice.

***

Until George III’s final descent into madness (if that is what it was), his marriage was seen as a success and has been accepted as such by historians. Yet Charlotte’s marital happiness came at the price of severe limitations on her freedom to be herself. In September 1761, at the age of 17 she had made a storm-tossed voyage to England and walked trembling to her wedding to a man she had never seen and whose language she did not speak. Coming from a minor German duchy, she had no prior knowledge of what it meant to be the queen of a major power. She felt her way cautiously and when her husband instructed her to stay clear of politics she did as she was told. One courtier was later to sum up the isolation of her position: ‘Coming over with natural good spirits, eagerly expecting to be queen of a gay court, finding herself confined in a convent, and hardly allowed to think without the leave of her husband, checked her spirits, made her fearful and cautious to an extreme.’⁸ ‘I have so many things I could say,’ she later wrote to a friend, ‘but prudence imposes silence, and that dear little word has so often stood my friend in necessity that I make it my constant companion.’⁹

There was a second reason for her silence, which can be traced to the traumatic family crisis occasioned by George III’s outbreak of what was believed to be madness only six years previously. For Queen Charlotte it was a time of great distress and humiliation, as, against her will, she found herself dragged into politics. As a bill that would have given the Prince of Wales the powers of a regent made its way through Parliament, the prince’s supporters noisily and unfairly put it about that she was withholding evidence about her husband’s condition in order to grab power for herself. Unsurprisingly, therefore, by the beginning of 1789 – four months into the crisis – the queen was a shadow of what she had been, so thin that it was reported that her stays would wrap round her twice.

By March, however, the king’s illness had peaked and he was recovering, and on 23 April the king and queen drove in state to St Paul’s Cathedral for a thanksgiving service. In the summer the family went on holiday to Weymouth, to be cheered all the way by loyal crowds. The crisis was over, but the royal family would never be the same. The queen had learned that her relationships with her husband and her eldest son were far more fragile than she had thought. Thomas Lawrence’s portrait, painted when the crisis was over, shows a thin woman with tense posture and a haunted, anxious face. The foundations of her life had shifted and she was never again to know the security she had enjoyed before her husband’s illness. Confronted, therefore, with what she saw as the looming disaster of her son’s marriage to a grossly unsuitable woman, she kept quiet. This refusal to interfere in an affair of state required heroic self-control, but she was used to that.

While his mother kept her counsel, the prince’s brother, the Duke of York, was breezily encouraging. The princess was, he assured him, ‘a fine girl in every respect’.¹⁰ This confidence was based on a fleeting visit to Brunswick made some years earlier. In November 1794, James Harris, Baron Malmesbury, an experienced diplomat and a political friend of the prince, was despatched