The Georgian Princesses E-Book

John Van der Kiste

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 457

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2002

Beschreibung

A chronological account of the princesses and consort Queens of the Georgian era. From Sophia who died shortly before she would have become Queen as heir to Queen Anne, to Adelaide, consort to William IV whose failure to provide an heir ensured the succession passed to his niece Queen Victoria. During this period, an array of colourful personalities came and went - George I's ill-fated wife Sophia Dorothea of Celle who was imprisoned for adultery for over 30 years until her death; the equally tragic Caroline Matilda, Queen of Denmark and sister of George III who married an incipient schizophrenic, saw her lover put to death, was divorced and imprisoned, released after pressure from her brother, only to die of typhoid or scarlet fever aged just 23; George IV's notorious consort, his cousin Caroline of Brunswick, who danced naked on tables and was refused access to his coronation; and their daughter Charlotte, whose death in childbirth in 1817 necessitated the hasty marriages of several of her middle-aged uncles in a desperate race to provide a legal heir to the throne.

Leseprobe

THE

GEORGIAN

PRINCESSES

ALSO BY JOHN VAN DER KISTE

Published by Sutton Publishing unless stated otherwise

Frederick III, German Emperor 1888 (1981)

Queen Victoria’s Family: a select bibliography (Clover, 1982)

Dearest Affie: Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria’s Second Son, 1844–1900 [with Bee Jordaan] (1984, n.e. 1995)

Queen Victoria’s Children (1986; large print ISIS, 1987)

Windsor and Habsburg: the British and Austrian Reigning Houses 1848–1922 (1987)

Edward VII’s Children (1989)

Princess Victoria Melita, Grand Duchess Cyril of Russia, 1876–1936 (1991, n.e. 1994)

George V’s Children (1991)

George III’s Children (1992)

Crowns in a Changing World: the British and European monarchies 1901–36 (1993)

Kings of the Hellenes: The Greek Kings 1863–1974 (1994)

Childhood at Court 1819–1914 (1995)

Northern Crowns: The Kings of Modern Scandinavia (1996)

King George II and Queen Caroline (1997)

The Romanovs 1818–1959: Alexander II of Russia and his Family (1998)

Kaiser Wilhelm II: Germany’s Last Emperor (1999)

Gilbert & Sullivan’s Christmas (2000)

Dearest Vicky, Darling Fritz: Queen Victoria’s Eldest Daughter and the German Emperor (2001)

Royal Visits in Devon and Cornwall (Halsgrove, 2002)

Once a Grand Duchess: Xenia, Sister of Nicholas II [with Coryne Hall] (2002)

THE

GEORGIAN

PRINCESSES

JOHN VAN DER KISTE

First published in 2000 by Sutton Publishing

This Paperback edition first published in 2002

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© John Van der Kiste, 2000, 2002, 2013

The right of John Van der Kiste to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 9491 3

Original typesetting by The History Press

Contents

Sources and Acknowledgements

Genealogical Tables

Introduction

1 ‘I should eclipse all my sisters’

Sophia, Electress of Hanover

2 ‘Surrounded by people without pity or justice’

Princess Sophia Dorothea of Celle; Sophia Charlotte and Sophia Dorothea, Queens of Prussia

3 ‘Her will was the sole spring’

Princess Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, later Queen Caroline, and her daughters

4 ‘Easy, civil, and not disconcerted’

Augusta, Princess of Wales; Queen Charlotte

5 ‘Without hope and open to every fear’

The Daughters of George III and Queen Charlotte; Caroline, Princess of Wales

6 ‘How good and noble she really is’

Princess Charlotte of Wales

7 ‘An injured wife – a depraved woman’

Queen Caroline

8 ‘So well has she conducted herself’

Queen Adelaide

Notes

Bibliography

Sources and Acknowledgements

Excluding those who died in infancy, most of the Princesses have claimed the attentions of earlier biographers to some extent. Not surprisingly the most wayward and notorious of them all – King George IV’s wife Caroline, the self-proclaimed ‘injured Queen of England’ – has inspired several studies since her death; while almost as many can be found about their daughter Charlotte. Others have been less fortunate; no individual biography of Queen Adelaide has been published since 1946, nor of King George II’s Queen Caroline since 1939 – notwithstanding the present author’s joint study of the King and Queen published in 1997. One would search in vain for a life of the latter’s daughter-in-law Augusta, Princess of Wales, her sister-in-law Sophia Dorothea, Queen of Prussia, and most of the daughters of King George III and Queen Charlotte. Of the daughters of King George II, only the eldest, Anne, Princess Royal, has been thus honoured, yet had to wait till 1995 for a full biography.

Nevertheless several collective biographies have covered some of the above. From the nineteenth century Dr Doran’s Lives of the Queens of England of the House of Hanover and Percy Fitzgerald’s The Royal Dukes and Princesses of the Family of George III, both in two volumes, spring to mind, while in the twentieth century Dorothy Margaret Stuart’s Daughters of George III, supplemented to some extent by Morris Marples’s Six Royal Sisters, remains invaluable some sixty years after its first appearance. The present work aims to take this process a stage further in surveying as a whole these royal lives which between them spanned the era from the Civil War in the first half of the seventeenth century to the first twenty years of Victorian England. Acknowledgements to specific sources are in the Notes; a full list of books consulted can be found in the Bibliography.

I wish to acknowledge the gracious permission of Her Majesty The Queen to publish certain material of which she owns the copyright.

This book is respectfully dedicated to the memory of my father, Wing-Commander Guy Van der Kiste, who sadly passed away in September 1999 shortly before it was completed, and with particular thanks to my mother Kate, who nevertheless was a tower of strength as ever in reading through the draft. In addition I would like to thank the staff at Kensington & Chelsea Public Libraries for much-appreciated access to their collection; my friends Karen Roth, Sue Woolmans, Robin Piguet, Robert Hopkins and Dale Headington, for their constant help, interest and encouragement over several months; and to editors, Jaqueline Mitchell and Helen Gray, who made the book possible through overseeing it from initial planning stages to completion.

John Van der Kiste

Introduction

In the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there was little choice available for a princess of the royal blood in Europe. The lives of their brothers were generally preordained – a throne for the eldest, ‘education’ through foreign travel and perhaps token attendance at university, followed by military or naval service and a dukedom. Theirs were also generally carved out according to equally narrow choices – marriage to a foreign prince who might be heir to a kingdom, empire, duchy or electorate for some, or tedious spinsterhood and perhaps life in a nunnery for the others. Those who married crowned heads of the future were not always the most fortunate. The first of the Georgian Princesses of this book, born Sophia, Princess of the Palatinate, was the youngest daughter of the ill-fated Frederick, King of Bohemia and his wife Elizabeth, known to posterity as the Winter King and Queen in view of their brief reign which ended with Frederick’s defeat in battle in 1620. The two daughters who took the veil might have considered themselves more fortunate than their mother, destined to eke out a widowhood of thirty years in circumstances which were certainly not affluent by royal standards.

Yet Sophia, who lost her father when she was two years old, made a marriage which was not in itself dazzling. Nonetheless, thanks to the vicissitudes of her relations in a turbulent age, she was destined to become the mother of the Hanoverian dynasty in Great Britain, and had she lived six weeks longer she would have become Queen Regnant, at the remarkable age of eighty-three.

A well-read, intelligent woman, she was to impart considerable charm and intellect to most of the Princesses of the dynasty. The majority of them were well-educated and taught to make the most of their talents. Those who lacked cleverness were noted for their grace, their attractive looks and charm, while some – notably Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, the future Queen Consort of King George II – had both. In the opinion of her first biographer, W.H. Wilkins, it was a misfortune that her mother-in-law Sophia Dorothea spent over half her life a captive in Ahlden Castle, as her ‘grace, beauty and incomparable charm might have lent lustre to the Court of St James’s’, and her ‘innate refinement’ would have helped to tone down ‘some of the grossness’ of the early Hanoverian era.

The six daughters of King George III needed only a little careful flattery for the brushes of Thomas Gainsborough, that archetypal painter of contemporary court elegance, to portray them as what he called ‘a ravishing constellation of youthful beauty’. Like some of the previous generation’s spinster Princesses, they might in middle age bemoan their fate as ‘old cats’, telling their eldest brother in a moment of self-pity that they wondered why he did not choose to ‘put us in a sack and drowning us in The Thames’. Only a few years earlier the poet James Bland Burges wrote that he found it hard to believe there was ‘a more unhappy family in England than that of our good King’. Such a gloomy view should be measured against the more reasoned verdict of one of the King’s most recent biographers, John Brooke, who states that their existence of walking, needlework, reading, card parties, visits to the theatre and concerts, was typical of the life of upper-class ladies of the time. Jane Austen’s heroines, he notes, who spent all their time in the country relieved only by the occasional visit to London and Bath, would have been envious.

To some extent they accepted their fate as part of ‘the nunnery’ with apparent docility. Unlike Jane Austen’s characters they had no chance of meeting a Mr Darcy to sweep them off their feet, propose, and lead them to the altar. They lavished their devotion on their brothers, and their father’s courtiers – the only other men in their lives. There were whispers of clandestine affairs and secret marriages with good-looking gentlemen at court, at least one illegitimate child, and even far-fetched assertions in one case of incest with a brother.

The licence and liberty to indulge in furtive relationships – when they could escape from the watchful eye of an ailing and possessive mother – made them consider how much worse it might have been if they had been able to ‘escape’ from home. Anne, Princess Royal, eldest daughter of King George II, could not wait to fly the family nest. By the age of twenty-five, she was faced with a stark choice between perpetual spinsterhood and a ‘piece of deformity in Holland’, the sadly misshapen Prince William of Orange. Nevertheless she would rather marry him than ‘die an ancient maid immured in her royal convent at St James’s’. In her later years she might have envied her sister Amelia, who remained indifferent to the scoldings of her parents as she indulged in one shameless flirtation after another with gentlemen at court. In the last generation of Georgian Princesses there was the short and turbulent life of Charlotte of Wales, who found herself tricked by her father into betrothal to another Prince William of Orange. Only a courageous display of self-assertiveness, and support from her elders, made her father agree to breaking the engagement and sanctioning her marriage to a prince from Saxe-Gotha, a happy matrimonial union destined to end all too quickly in death in childbirth.

Marriage into other European royal houses could indeed be hazardous, and for at least one Georgian Princess the result was tragic. The hapless Caroline Matilda was barely out of the schoolroom before she was betrothed to her cousin Christian, soon to become King of Denmark. This ‘Queen of tears’ died a captive in 1775 at twenty-three, having seen her physician, who became her lover, executed for treason. By comparison the fate of Caroline of Brunswick, the ‘happy merry soul’ married to and rapidly estranged from her cousin the Prince of Wales, was a less sorry one. While her undignified odyssey around Europe did her cause little good in the eyes of those who might otherwise have supported her against the flagrant infidelities of her husband, at least she could console herself with the reflection that she had some life of her own.

The other Georgian Princesses were less notorious. Several, particularly those destined to live out their lives as spinsters, found self-fulfilment in working to alleviate the lot of those less privileged than themselves. King George II’s reclusive daughter Caroline gave away most of her money to charities, particularly those which ameliorated the conditions of former prisoners; while in her last years the blind Sophia, daughter of King George III, whiled away the hours by tearing up the pages of old books as she was told that pillows filled thus were comfortable for the sick.

Though some of the Princesses were more intellectual or artistic than others, all of them knew their place in one sense at least; and that was never to interfere in politics. It was a charge often levelled at Queen Adelaide, consort of King William IV, who had the misfortune to reign during the height of the political agitation which led to the passing of the Great Reform Bill. While the Queen never strove to take an active role in politics, regarding it as her duty to merge her views in her husband’s and support his role as a constitutional monarch, she was abused for exerting a reactionary influence on her good-natured but supposedly stupid and weak-willed husband, and attacked in the press by vitriolic journalists who scoffed at her German birth and upbringing, saying that ‘a foreigner is not a very competent judge of English liberties’. However, such condemnations were rare, and generally followed by apologies from the newspapers involved. The Queen surely concurred with the views of her sister-in-law Elizabeth, Landgravine of Hesse-Homburg. ‘Politics I know nothing of,’ she wrote in 1833, after political agitation and riots in Frankfurt, ‘and they are so disagreeable that I never ask any questions, for I always hated them and more than ever now, for all appears melancholy.’

Mindful of the self-willed character of her young niece Queen Victoria, as a respected member of the elder royal generation, Dowager Queen Adelaide could compliment her in 1841 on ‘the good grace with which she had changed her Government’, after being obliged to receive the resignation of her political mentor Lord Melbourne as Prime Minister and reluctantly appoint Sir Robert Peel in his place. The irony of such constitutional good practice would surely have been appreciated by Queen Victoria’s great-great-great-great-grandmother Sophia, Electress of Hanover, who could recall to the end of her days that she was a young woman of eighteen when the monarchies of Europe were shocked to learn that her uncle King Charles had gone to the scaffold in his defence of the Divine Right of Kings.

The first of the Georgian Princesses in the present context was in fact a Stuart Princess, Sophia, Princess of the Palatinate, destined to become the mother of the Hanoverian dynasty in Great Britain. By this same reckoning the last was Mary, Duchess of Gloucester, the longest-lived and last surviving daughter of King George III. During the 227 years (1630 to 1857) which elapsed between the birth of the first and death of the last, there were four Queens Consort – the former Caroline of Ansbach, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Caroline of Brunswick, and Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen – as well as the ill-fated Sophia Dorothea of Celle, who but for the divorce court would have preceded them. To these may be added two Queens Consort of Prussia (Sophia Charlotte and Sophia Dorothea), a Queen Consort of Denmark (Caroline Matilda), and in addition a Princess of Wales (Augusta) who was denied a consort’s crown by the early death of her husband.

The reform of the calendar, introduced by the Pope in 1582, was adopted in Hanover by the Elector in 1700, when he decreed that eleven days should be subtracted from the month of February. As from 1 March that year the Electorate used the New Style (NS) calendar, already in use in most European countries. England retained the Old Style (OS) calendar until September 1752, when eleven days were removed to bring the country into line with the rest of Europe. OS dates are given for Hanoverian events prior to 1700 and English events to 1752, and NS dates for other events, or both in a few cases where confusion might arise.

ONE

‘I should eclipse all my sisters’

SOPHIA, ELECTRESS OF HANOVER

‘I was born, they tell me, October 14, 1630,’ Princess Sophia of the Palatinate, as she was at birth, noted in her memoirs, ‘and being the twelfth child of the King my father, and of the Queen my mother, I can well believe that my birth caused them but little satisfaction. They were even puzzled to find a name and godparents for me, as all the kings and princes of consideration had already performed this office for the children that came before me.’1 This problem was solved by her parents writing names on slips of paper and casting lots to make a choice, from which they settled on two ladies named Sophia as godmothers, the Countess of Hohenlohe and Princess Sophia Hedwig of Nassau Dietz.

It was an inauspicious start for the life of a princess born in exile of parents who were royal yet comparatively poor. Her father was Frederick V, formerly King of Bohemia and Elector Palatine of the Rhine, and her mother, his wife Elizabeth, daughter of King James I of England and VI of Scotland. Frederick had been called to the throne in 1619 by a country in rebellion against its Catholic Habsburg ruler, but he was defeated within a year at the battle of the White Mountain, deposed, and in recognition of his fleeting reign known thereafter as the ‘Winter King’. He, his Queen and children found refuge in the Dutch republic, and it was at the Wassenaer Court Palace, The Hague, that Sophia was born.

Nobody could have predicted that this Princess, born in such humble circumstances, would become mother of the next royal dynasty of England, and only narrowly fail to become Queen Regnant of England herself. Like her siblings she was brought up at a separate establishment for the first few years. As soon as they could be parted from her, when they were aged about three months, Queen Elizabeth sent all her babies to the Prinsenhof, Leiden, a nursery presided over by Frederick’s former governor, Monsieur von Pless, and his wife Anne, assisted by tutors and sub-governesses.

Frederick was a devoted father, and to the end of their days the elder children always recalled his affection for them and his keen interest in the progress of their education. A thirteenth child, Gustavus Adolphus, was born in January 1632, but by Christmas the surviving ten youngsters were fatherless when Frederick died suddenly of a fever, leaving a last wish that his widow should devote herself to the re-establishment of their family in the Holy Roman Empire.

All the children were expected to learn the living languages of French, German, English and Dutch, as well as Latin and Greek, theology, history, mathematics and law. Sophia disliked her masters and lessons, except for the daily hour given over to dancing. Nevertheless she was as bright as her brothers and sisters, learning ‘everything they seemed so unaccountably anxious for me to know as quickly as possible in order to have done with learning the sooner’.2 Ample provision was made for walks and rests between lessons, as well as long sessions of prayer and Bible reading. At an early age she could recite the Heidelberg Catechism by heart, though she admitted she did not understand a word.

Queen Elizabeth’s preoccupation with European diplomacy, as well as her keen interest in artistic and intellectual pursuits, made Sophia feel starved of affection in her formative years. In later life she looked back on her years at Leiden as tantamount to banishment, and felt that her mother had cared more for her dogs and monkeys than her children. As the youngest sister she was shy and lacked self-confidence, thinking herself too thin, pale and ugly, and destined to die young. An English visitor to the court tactlessly remarked to their mother one day on the good health and appearance of the fair-haired, angelic Gustavus Adolphus, comparing him with the plain, thin, less robust-looking Sophia, in her hearing, adding even more foolishly that she hoped the little girl did not understand English. Ironically the poor boy did not live to see his tenth birthday, while she remained sprightly into her early eighties. However, she was devoted to and fiercely protective of him, and she grieved almost as much as their mother when his years of suffering came to an end.

On his death Prinsenhof was closed down. During adolescence her brothers went to study at university or joined the armies of a foreign ruler, while she and her four sisters formed part of their mother’s court. What she lacked in confidence and prettiness she made up for with spirit and intelligence, appreciating that shrewdness and tact would go a long way for a princess without worldly goods. When the family decided to stage a performance of Corneille’s Medea, they felt that she was too young to be able to learn any of the parts. Without telling anyone, and after begging them to assign her one role, she memorized the whole play and performed her part, coached in her gestures by a professional actress.

Though in the estimation of all her daughters she remained a distant, even unfeeling mother to the last, Queen Elizabeth soon recognized the positive qualities of the youngest. When Sophia became of a marriageable age, she suggested a match between her and her cousin Charles Stuart, proclaimed King of the Scots after the execution of his father King Charles I and Cromwell’s declaration of an English republic in 1649. Sophia was the only one younger than Charles, though Queen Elizabeth briefly considered the next youngest daughter, Henrietta, as a possible Queen Consort of England instead. Seven years earlier Mary, Princess Royal of England, had come to the European mainland to be betrothed to Prince William of Orange, and Sophia ‘heard the English milords say to each other that, when grown up, I should eclipse all my sisters. This remark gave me a liking for the whole English nation.’3 During a visit to The Hague Charles paid her some attention as a potential bride, but spoilt his case when he expressed more interest in financial help from Lord Craven, whose fortune had long supported the family in exile, and tactlessly told her that she was ‘handsomer’ than his mistress, Lucy Walter.

After this sobering experience she decided to leave The Hague and settle in Heidelberg at the court of her eldest brother Charles Louis, now Elector Palatine. He was an outspoken ruler who had caused some consternation among the family as well as incurring the undying wrath of his uncle in England King Charles I for praising the Puritans as ‘the children of truth and innocency’, despite the fact that his brother Rupert, nicknamed ‘Robert le Diable’ for his bravery on the battlefield, had a reputation as one of the most loyal and dashing royalist commanders in the English Civil War. Their mother did not welcome Sophia’s departure but knew there was nothing she could do to prevent it, especially as the recently married Elector was now head of the family. Her main objection, that this would spoil any chance of an English marriage – for which Queen Elizabeth had not given up hope, even though Sophia had firmly ruled Charles out – came to nothing as it was pointed out that any necessary negotiations could be carried out from Heidelberg just as well. However, Sophia knew she would probably have a better chance of finding a prospective husband at her brother’s court, and without her mother around, she would have more choice in the matter.

Though Sophia had always got on well with her brother, she soon found that Heidelberg was not the happy home she had hoped for. An industrious young woman who relished mental and physical activity, she took a keen interest in his rebuilding and refurbishing the electoral palaces and gardens, meeting men from the university for intellectual discussions, and visitors who came to the court to see plays and dances, as well as the chance to accompany the Elector and Electress Charlotte on official and private journeys within the Empire. When left to her own devices she was never at a loss for anything to do, as she could keep herself amused with reading, needlework, singing lessons, or long walks which she preferred to riding and playing cards. However, she soon found that family visits gave rise to unpleasantness and quarrels.

The Elector’s marriage was not turning out well, and he fell in love with one of his wife’s maids of honour, Louise von Degenfeld. Charlotte had a suspicious nature and an uncertain temper which made Sophia treat her with caution. She tried to get on well with Charlotte but found they had nothing in common. Charlotte, a fine horsewoman, loved gambling, fine clothes, and talking about herself. Sophia shared none of these interests, found her sister-in-law’s self-absorption a bore, and was aghast when she admitted in a soul-baring mood that she had never wanted to marry Charles Louis and had only done so at her mother’s bidding; she would sooner have had her pick of several admiring young princes rather than ‘this jealous old man’ (who was only ten years older than she). When Charles Louis eventually tired of his bitter, mercurial wife and asked for a divorce in order to marry Louise morganatically, an idea which he was persuaded to abandon, Charlotte was furious, and made spiteful insinuations about an incestuous relationship between her husband and Sophia.

The latter knew that the only way out from this was either joining a convent, as two of her elder sisters had done, or marrying in order to obtain her own independent establishment. Too lively to consider life in a nunnery, she applied herself carefully to the prospect of matrimony. At first pride prevented her from considering marriage with a bridegroom who was not a ruling prince, but at length she allowed negotiations to take place for betrothal to Adolphus John of Zweibrücken, Regent for the German duchy on behalf of his brother, King Charles X of Sweden. The Regent took it for granted that Sophia would accept him as a husband, but he and King Charles were too slow in drawing up the marriage contract, and soon there was a more suitable prospective suitor at Heidelberg.

Late in 1656 George William, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, accompanied by his younger brother Ernest Augustus, came to ask the Elector, as head of the family, for his youngest sister’s hand in marriage. Three years earlier they had visited Heidelberg, and Sophia had enjoyed playing duets with Ernest Augustus, while admiring his skill at dancing and his handsome looks, though marriage had not entered her mind. His inheritance, however, was far from dazzling, as his only likely prospects were to be the next Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück, a non-hereditary position. His elder brother George William, the prospective bridegroom, had been ruling Prince of the Duchy of Calenberg-Göttingen since 1648. The Duchy had been unofficially called Hanover since 1636, when the previous Duke had demolished the old Calenberg Schloss and moved his capital to Hanover. Sophia and her brother agreed that this would be a satisfactory match; if it was not one to be embraced with enthusiasm it would be preferable to her being left on the shelf. At the age of twenty-six there was little time to lose. The marriage contract was soon signed, and the brothers continued on their way to Venice.

Once he had arrived there for a final round of bachelor revels, George William decided that he was not ready to consider closing the door on the freedom of a single man. This, Sophia understood, was purely because he had ‘attached himself to the first courtesan he met, a Greek woman who had no other claim to beauty except the clothes she wore’, and she ‘put him in a frame of mind most unsuitable for marriage’.4 Nevertheless the delicate matter of extricating himself from such a commitment without tarnishing the honour of his family remained. A simple process of fraternal barter was decided upon, with Ernest Augustus taking his place as bridegroom. In order to placate the Princess and her brother, a convention was entered into and signed by both brothers, by which George William agreed he would not marry, so that Ernest Augustus would be more likely to inherit either the Duchy of Calenberg-Göttingen or that of Lüneberg-Grubenhagen (or Celle for short), in which the family also had an interest. The Hanoverian envoy was anxious to point out that as there were two more brothers, one married but without issue and one bachelor who was thought incapable of producing children, Ernest Augustus would probably inherit both duchies in due course.

While it seemed hardly dignified for her matrimonial future to be decided upon like a game of chess, Sophia was prepared to accept this solution, telling her brother as if to save face that a good establishment was all she cared about. If it could be provided by the younger man, it would be no hardship for her to give up one brother for another, and she would be happy to do anything considered advantageous to her interest. She was given to understand, or managed to convince herself, that George William had contracted venereal disease in Venice and was therefore hardly fit to marry, while Charles Louis gallantly told her that he had always thought Ernest Augustus the better man.

The wedding ceremony was fixed for 30 September 1658 at Heidelberg. Given away by her brother Charles Louis, the bride went to the altar in a dress of white silvery brocade, and a large crown studded with the family diamonds on her head. Her train was carried by four maids of honour, and twenty-four noblemen marched before the bridal couple carrying lighted torches bedecked with ribbons matching the colours of their coats of arms, blue and white for the bride, red and gold for the groom. Cannon fired as Sophia and Ernest Augustus were pronounced husband and wife, then they took their seats on canopied thrones opposite each other. A succession of Te Deums followed, and the bride then formally renounced any claim to the Palatinate, a tradition observed by all Princesses of the house on marriage.

The journey from Heidelberg to their home at Hanover was one long triumphant procession, with Brunswick Dukes and their wives coming to pay their respects at every stop. As they reached the gates of Hanover the four ducal brothers, followed by their large retinues, came out to greet the bride and joined her in her carriage. They entered the city to the sound of cannon fire, and next to join in the personal welcome was Sophia’s mother-in-law the Dowager Duchess of Calenberg.

In the excitement of her marriage, she did not appreciate, and indeed could not foresee, the impact of an event in which the expatriate English community, as well as her mother, had rejoiced at the beginning of September. Cromwell, who had overthrown their kinsman King Charles I and sent him to the scaffold eleven years earlier, was dead. England’s shortlived republican experiment was about to end.

With admirable common sense, Sophia admitted to herself that she did not love the man to whom she was betrothed, but she found him ‘amiable’ and was determined to be a good wife. For his part he made every effort to be the best of husbands, at least for the first two or three years of marriage. Although he was unable to resist temptation, or more precisely other women, and although she was naturally hurt by his infidelity, she steeled herself to make the best of a bad job. Fortunate was the wife whose husband had eyes for her and her alone.

In personality and interests they were well matched. Less intellectual, Ernest Augustus did not share her passion for theology and philosophy, but he was as devoted as she was to music and opera. They both also enjoyed decorating their homes and landscaping the gardens. Sophia was anxious that she might be unable to have children, but her fears proved unfounded. By the end of 1659 she knew that she was expecting a child. Her husband and his brother planned to go to Italy early the next year, and she and her niece ‘Liselotte’ (Elizabeth Charlotte), seven-year-old daughter of Charles Louis, visited Queen Elizabeth at The Hague, but only after she was sure that there was no danger of a miscarriage, and she took care to return home in good time not to risk a premature birth through jolting on the carriage journey. She was back home to welcome her husband and brother-in-law, and her husband’s presence helped her through the long, sometimes dangerous three-day labour which culminated in the birth on 28 May 1660 of their eldest son and heir George Louis.

While the Prince and Princess were giving grateful thanks for the safe arrival of this child, the cousin to whom Sophia might have been married instead was at the centre of another celebration. Three days earlier Charles Stuart, an exile for several years following the execution of his father, had arrived at Dover, and on his thirtieth birthday, 29 May, he triumphantly entered London, the capital city of a newly restored monarchy, as King Charles II. Fewer than half a dozen lives stood between the crown he wore and Sophia with her newly born son.

Early in the new year of 1661 Sophia, expecting her second child, arranged to visit her brother at Heidelberg, baby George and Liselotte going with her. It was an enjoyable stay, though she was anxious lest any of the family, particularly the Hesse-Cassel branch, might take offence if she paid her respects to Louise von Degenfeld and her son and daughter while Charlotte was still at court. However, she managed to visit them discreetly and she adored these illegitimate children, of which there were to be fourteen in all. Their mother, whom Charles Louis married morganatically and created Raugravine, died in 1677 and their father in 1680, after which Sophia took responsibility for them.

In October 1661 Sophia gave birth to a second son, Frederick Augustus. Two months later Ernest Augustus succeeded as ruling Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück and the family moved to the castle of Iburg. Husband and wife relished having a new palace to plan and build.

To her distress, the next four years saw a succession of miscarriages and stillborn children. She blamed herself for not taking enough care of herself early in pregnancy, but anxiety probably contributed to her nerves and perpetual worry. In April 1664, after recovering from a miscarriage of twins, she set out on a long visit to Italy, leaving the boys, ‘Görgen’ and ‘Gustchen’, in the care of her Oberhofmeisterin, or head of staff, Mme von Harling, at Heidelberg. Ernest Augustus had gone on ahead of her. Nearly a year of Italy, travels around the country with longer stays in Venice and Rome, gave her a welcome change of outlook, where she occupied her time with shopping, sightseeing, looking at art collections and meeting interesting people. However, she found that Italian customs, the way of life and their loose morals grated on her, and she regularly suffered from severe stomach upsets which were blamed on the rich food and unfamiliar climate.

Most of all she missed her boys, who were never far from her thoughts. She claimed she would sooner watch their antics than all the plays of the commedia dell’arte, and see their faces rather than all the works of art in Italy. Only the desire to be a dutiful wife kept her so long in a distant country; ‘what the husband wishes, the wife must also desire.’ She was always anxious to receive news of their progress from the Heidelberg nursery, and when told that they had contracted smallpox she was horrified. To her relief the next bulletin reassured her that the attack had only been mild, though she was anxious lest they might be scarred for life and in future she would no longer have pretty boys to love, now she would ‘have to love ugly ones’.5 After her return in February 1665 she decided that in future she would not be parted from her family for so long. Sometimes an irritated Ernest Augustus would declare that she loved their children more than she loved him, a remark with which she might have been disinclined to take issue. A more considerate husband might have realized that he only had himself to blame, for he did not deny himself his right – as he presumably saw it – to take mistresses.

During the next nine years five more children were born. In 1666 Maximilian William (and a stillborn male twin) appeared, followed by an only daughter Sophia Charlotte in 1668, Charles Philip in 1669, Christian Henry in 1671, and Ernest Augustus in 1674. All seven live children reached maturity, though four would predecease her, three sons on the battlefield.

Most of her husband’s mistresses passed like ships in the night, but occasionally one might give Sophia cause for concern. After she had been married for seven years, the pretty and well-mannered Suzanne de la Mansilière began to attract Ernest Augustus’s attention. A respectable, pious young woman, she suffered regular fits of conscience lest her ‘friendship’ with the Duke might be misconstrued. Though anxious that a young woman of such virtue could be a definite threat, Sophia treated the girl kindly, befriending her and providing a shoulder to cry on. At length Mansilière felt she could no longer stay at court and declared tearfully that she would have to leave in order to protect her honour. Sophia was lying in bed after the birth of Sophia Charlotte when the young woman came to apologize for having unwittingly caused such unhappiness and protesting her innocence. Sophia treated her to a few kindly but firm words on the theme of Caesar’s wife, while assuring her of her friendship. The more she did so, the more overwrought Mansilière became, until she was so hysterical that Sophia had to get out of bed and call for servants to carry her away. The young woman departed, according to malicious gossips, to bear the Duke’s child. In Sophia’s opinion it was ‘the greatest lie in the world’, and she blamed her mischievous sister-in-law Eleonore for spreading stories. She had never liked Eleonore d’Olbreuse, an impoverished member of the French Huguenot nobility, who had made a ‘marriage of conscience’ with her husband’s elder brother George William. Unable to resist her, yet forbidden to marry by the convention of 1658, he had entered what Sophia called contemptuously an ‘anti-marriage contract’ and sworn lifelong fidelity to Eleonore, who was accorded the title Madame de Harbourg.*

Naturally there were other mistresses, though none troubled her as much. The most notorious was Clara von Meisenburg, whom Ernest Augustus met and brought home from Paris and for whom he arranged a marriage with the amenable Freiherr von Platen. Sophia was careful not to let show her jealousy of ‘that woman’, and more than a little relieved when Madame von Platen’s good looks coarsened while those of Sophia herself never did.

Sophia was an enlightened mother. Remembering her own unhappy childhood with a remote parent, she insisted that her children should see plenty of her. The men and women who came into close contact with them had to be of a loving and cheerful disposition. People whom she thought excessively religious were barred, as she considered their devotion to their faith went hand in hand with too inflexible and strict an attitude towards small children.

Görgen, she wrote to her brother when the young man was almost an adult, took very much after his father, while Gustchen was ‘a real Palatine’. In personality, she wrote in a letter to George William of September 1679, she found her firstborn a responsible, conscientious youth, keen to do her bidding and to please her. Gustchen was naughty and moody, Maximilian was lacking in spirit, while Charles Philip was a reserved Querkopf (oddhead). Sophia Charlotte, or ‘Figuelotte’, and Christian Henry were not keen on their learning, and Ernest Augustus was ‘the easiest of all my children’, but she thought there was not ‘much to him’.6

Only on one occasion during his formative years did George Louis threaten to besmirch the family’s good name. In the autumn of 1676 his parents found that Figuelotte’s sub-governess was carrying his child. While Ernest Augustus was furious at the prospect of such embarrassment and disgrace, Sophia took the matter more calmly. There was no doubt that the mother-to-be had been rather free with her favours, but equally little doubt that the son she bore was exactly like Prince George. The child was not acknowledged, and Sophia warned her errant son to be more careful in future, ‘not to have his name bawled from the housetops as the progenitor of bastards’.7

In December 1679 John Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, died suddenly, leaving no son, and Ernest Augustus succeeded him as reigning Duke. With the possibility of union between his duchy and that of Kalenberg or Celle, a marriage between his son and heir and George William’s daughter Sophia Dorothea would be an advantageous one to consider. Nevertheless he allowed his wife to assess alternative marriage alliances for their eldest son.

It was probably at the suggestion of her brother Rupert that Sophia, now Duchess of Hanover, proposed that her eldest son and heir George Louis should consider a marriage with Anne, younger daughter of James, Duke of York and heir to King Charles II, whose marriage to Catherine of Braganza had been childless. George went to England in December 1680 and there was speculation on the imminent conclusion of such a marriage alliance, but though he and Anne were introduced to each other, the matter was not seriously discussed. By summer 1682 negotiations began in earnest for a betrothal between George and Sophia Dorothea, and everything was settled by September. A dowry was handed to George in person, so that his young wife would be completely dependent on him. On the death of her parents, all their revenues and possessions would henceforth become his property.

Sophia Dorothea was an attractive girl, albeit at sixteen still rather immature and spoilt. The only surviving child of the ‘marriage of conscience’, she had in practice been illegitimate until her parents’ legal marriage. At the age of twelve she was considered to be flighty, and when love letters were discovered in her possession she was ordered to sleep in her parents’ bedroom. This coquette, born of a highly irregular marriage, was not the kind of girl Sophia envisaged as a suitable daughter-in-law.

At twenty-two George often seemed to be cold and lacking in passion, though at least one young woman could have testified otherwise. Prepared to put her objections aside for the sake of family harmony, Sophia was looking forward to being a grandmother, as well as having a young companion for Sophia Charlotte. Despite her dislike of the girl’s mother she went out of her way to be kind and helpful to her daughter-in-law, and Ernest Augustus was very much taken with her. Her brothers-in-law likewise thought that their eldest brother had been extremely lucky to gain such an attractive wife. Nevertheless George and Sophia Dorothea had known each other for several years and never really liked each other. It was said that when she was told of the older generation’s plans shortly before the betrothal, she swore that they would have to drag her to the altar, and when presented with a diamond-studded miniature of her future husband, she threw it angrily against the wall. Nevertheless there was no escaping the path of duty, and they were married in a modest private ceremony on 21 November 1682 in the Duchess of Celle’s apartments. Eleven months later Sophia Dorothea gave birth to a son and heir, whom they named George Augustus.

Two years later it was the turn of Sophia Charlotte to consider taking a husband. Her mother had taken considerable care with her education, with a view to her making a great match some day. At the age of ten she and her mother had paid a visit to the French court at Versailles, and King Louis XIV was so impressed by the precocious yet good-natured demeanour and attractive looks of this young girl that he was tempted to consider her as a suitable bride for one of the French Princes once she was old enough. She had inherited her mother’s intellectual curiosity and thirst for knowledge, and at sixteen years of age she was well read, a fluent linguist and an accomplished musician. Sophia had brought her up with an open mind in matters of religion and in the profession of no particular faith, and at the age of sixteen she was still not confirmed, in order that she might be eligible to marry the most promising Prince, Protestant or Catholic.

Nevertheless a Franco-Hanoverian alliance seemed unlikely, and several eligible matches with Roman Catholic suitors had been rejected by the time the Electoral Prince of Brandenburg presented himself. His first marriage, to Elizabeth of Hesse-Cassel, by whom he had had a son and a daughter, had ended in her death at the age of twenty-two. Eleven years older than Sophia Charlotte, he was deformed – a childhood spinal injury had left him with uneven shoulders – and of a less than amiable reputation, but he was still heir to the most powerful Electorate in North Germany. As a future Elector he would be well-placed to help press Hanover’s case for attaining the enhanced status of an Electorate, and on George William’s death Celle would doubtless be absorbed by Hanover. As the bride’s mother remarked bluntly, with regard to his physical appearance she ‘did not care for externals’. On 28 September 1684 they were married at Herrenhausen, and then made their home in Berlin. Sophia went to be with her daughter for her first confinement the following year. Sophia Charlotte had wanted a midwife from Hanover to be with her as well, but she realized that this would be unpopular at the Berlin court and did not want it to be thought that she was remaining too Hanoverian in her ways.

Sophia’s return to Hanover was marked by a rift in the family as a result of what has gone down in history as the ‘primogeniture struggle’. It had been tradition that both the eldest sons should inherit the duchy, but Ernest Augustus had decided to introduce a system of primogeniture. He had made a will to the effect that their eldest son George Louis would succeed both George William and himself, instead of sharing the sovereignty with his next brother, Frederick Augustus. The new scheme was now awaiting confirmation by all the younger brothers, who would be obliged to swear allegiance to their eldest brother. Ernest Augustus announced his plans to the family at Christmas 1684.

Though she shared her husband’s ambitions for the glory of the house of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Sophia was dismayed by what she saw as his heartlessness. Frederick Augustus was bitterly angry at the loss of his birthright, and his mother eagerly took his side. Torn between loyalty to her husband and the defence of her second son’s rights, she tried to persuade the latter that if he agreed to his father’s terms without causing too much inconvenience, he might be installed in another duchy of his own. His father’s intentions were good, she reassured him as if trying to convince herself at the same time, and he should take care not to offend him. She promised to do what she could, while admitting she had no power over her husband, and that ‘he argues that to make the House strong will benefit all its members’.8 Frederick Augustus was not to be placated, and in high dudgeon he left for Vienna in order to lead a detachment of imperial troops against the Turkish infidels. Soon he was begging his parents for money – he declared that his purse was empty, his regiment was surviving on bread and water, and he dreamt ‘of a miracle in the desert’. Sophia asked her husband to make good the allowance he had denied him, but Ernest Augustus was so angry with his rebellious son that he refused to hear another word about him, let alone help. Sophia dreaded their second son being forced to lead a peripatetic life as a soldier of fortune. The affair created divisions between husband and wife, and the former looked for his comforts with Madame von Platen. Sophia raised no objection when he proposed to take his maîtresse en titre on the annual visit to Vienna that year.

Sophia Charlotte’s first child, a son named Frederick Augustus, only lived for a few months, and a premature second son in July 1687 was stillborn. At the time she and her husband were in Magdeburg on their way to Hanover, out of harm’s way. Dorothea, Electress of Brandenburg, the Elector’s second wife, was distrusted by her stepsons, who thought she would stop at nothing in clearing the succession for her own sons. When one of them fell down and suddenly died after eating an orange in her apartments, Sophia Charlotte and her husband, suspecting poison, left the country at once. Sophia’s comments about ‘la poudre de la succession’ were only meant partly in jest, and the Elector was furious with her for mischief-making as well as with the young couple for their ‘hysterical departure’.9 He ordered them back to Berlin at once. Not till the following year did she succeed in producing a son and heir who survived to maturity, Frederick William.

Soon after the wedding of Princess Sophia Charlotte, the Electoral Prince George Louis went to take part as commander of the Hanoverian forces in their campaign against the Turks, and then proceeded on holiday to Italy. Duke Ernest Augustus, who was also in Italy at the time, had noticed with concern his son’s indifference towards his lively, attractive wife, lonely at Hanover with her young son, and as soon as he heard that George Louis was coming he invited her to join them.

Her arrival coincided with carnival time, and with no previous experience of foreign travel she threw herself into this holiday with all the zest of youth. Ernest Augustus was pleased to see his hospitality so well appreciated, but George Louis was irritated by his wife’s high spirits and spontaneity. The more others praised her to him, the more annoyed he was, and he resented what he saw as his father’s meddling. He was not the only one, for his cousin Liselotte loved tittle-tattle and was ready to believe the worst. She spitefully passed on to the family any gossip she could, notably the boasts of the rakish Marquis de Lassay, a notorious self-proclaimed ladies’ man who had bragged of being at Venice at the same time and having an affair with the Princess. To her credit Sophia told her niece firmly that Lassay’s tales should not be taken at face value, and that the pretty young wife of her unfeeling, inattentive son was bound to turn heads and attract male admirers in a place like Venice, unless she locked herself away. In spite of everything, by the time they returned to Hanover Sophia Dorothea was pregnant again.

Once they were back, it was evident that George Louis’ previous indifference to his wife was hardening into hostility. He took a mistress, the equally young and pretty Melusine von der Schulenberg, his mother’s Hoffraulein. She was less clever than his wife, yet sufficiently shrewd and calculating to take opportunities as they came, and the cuckolded mother-to-be was too proud to accept his infidelity without complaining. While heavily pregnant she followed him into his study one day, implored him to tell her how she had incurred his displeasure and asked how she could make amends. He told her sharply to hold her peace. A few days later she tried again and he lost his temper, shaking her violently and nearly strangling her. She became ill, there were fears that she might miscarry, and in order to avoid open scandal Duchess Sophia had to intervene. She used what little influence she had with her eldest son to persuade him to visit his wife’s sickroom regularly until the danger was over. Unable to refuse, and perhaps troubled by his conscience, George Louis sat there sullen and silent, holding her hand.

In March 1687 a daughter was born and named after her mother. Sympathetic to the young woman’s plight, Sophia invited a large house party to her summer residence at Herrenhausen, with her daughter-in-law as one of the guests. While both women had little in common, the Duchess was sympathetic and kind-hearted by nature; her appreciation of the difficulties her own daughter was experiencing at a far from friendly court in Berlin had given her a new understanding of Sophia Dorothea’s plight. She took her under her wing, making efforts to broaden her intellectual outlook and interest in world affairs, above all the English situation, pointing out that her marriage would in due course probably lead her to the throne of England as a Queen consort. However, her efforts bore little fruit, for Sophia Dorothea was too immersed in her boredom and self-pity to care about what was still a remote possibility.

To try to hasten her recovery, the Duchess invited her parents over and gave a sumptuous ball in their honour at Leine Palace. The honour of opening the ball fell to the Duke of Celle, who led the dancing with his daughter, and George Louis obediently gave her the next dance. All was affability on the surface, but appearances were deceptive. When Sophia Dorothea complained to her mother of her husband’s infidelities and ill-treatment, the Duchess of Celle told her frankly that she would be well advised to imitate the phlegmatic indifference of her mother-in-law and make the best of such a situation.

Adapting to unsatisfactory family circumstances was second nature to Sophia. She had long accepted the impossibility of trying to persuade her husband and Frederick Augustus to understand each other’s point of view in the primogeniture struggle, and though her heart still ached for her son, she assumed once more the role of a dutiful wife whose husband’s every word was law.

Events across the North Sea gave Sophia cause for concern as well as similarly divided loyalties. As a friend and relation of both the hapless Catholic King James II and his Protestant son-in-law William, Prince of Orange, when the latter entered London as Protector of the Anglican religion in 1688 and the former fled, she found she could not take the side of one or the other. While sympathetic to the cause of English Protestantism she was no bigot, and she thought nothing could be less Christian than to spread stories that the baby Prince of Wales was a changeling. Writing to congratulate the Prince of Orange, now King William III, on his accession, she made a sympathetic yet tactful allusion to the former King James, who had always honoured her with his friendship, stressing that she was sure her frankness ‘will give you a better opinion of me, and that you will more readily believe all my wishes for your good fortune’.10