Catherine Curzon - The Daughters of George III: Sisters & Princesses

THE

DAUGHTERS OF

GEORGE III

SISTERS AND PRINCESSES

To Anne a princess in every sense of the word!

SISTERS AND PRINCESSES

CATHERINE CURZON

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by

PEN AND SWORD HISTORY

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Catherine Curzon, 2020

ISBN 978 1 47389 753 3

eISBN 978 1 47389 755 7

Mobi ISBN 978 1 47 389 754 0

The right of Catherine Curzon to be identified as Author of

this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Charlotte, Princess Royal.

Princess Augusta.

Princess Elizabeth.

Princess Mary.

Princess Sophia.

HRH Princess Amelia by Andrew Robertson.

King George III and family by Richard Earlom, after Johann Zoffany, 1871.

King George III in old age by Samuel William Reynolds, 1820.

Her Most Gracious Majesty, Queen Charlotte.

The Prince of Wales.

Brent Spencer.

Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland.

Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal by Peltro W Tomkins, after Johann Heinrich Ramberg, 1801.

The Coffin of Her Royal Highness, Princess Amelia.

General the Honourable Charles FitzRoy.

Charlotte, Queen of Great Britain, and the Princess Royal by Valentine Green, after Benjamin West.

King George III giving money to a woman near Weymouth by Robert Pollard, 1820.

Queen Charlotte holding the baby Princess Charlotte, after Francis Cotes.

HRH Princess Amelia.

HRH the Princess Elizabeth by William Ward, after Johann Heinrich Ramberg, 1801.

HRH Princess Sophia.

HRH Princess Elizabeth by Sir William Beechey.

Her Royal Highness Princess Augusta by Sir William Beechey, 1806.

Frances Burney by Charles Turner, 1840.

The Apotheosis of Princes Octavius and Alfred by Sir Robert Strange, after Benjamin West, 1787.

HRH Princess Elizabeth.

HRH Princess Mary.

The royal family of England in the year 1787 by Thomas Stothard, 1800.

Royal Beneficence by Charles Howard Hodges, after Thomas Stothard, 1793.

The Hombourg Waltz, showing Elizabeth and the Prince of Hesse- Homburg by G Humphrey.

Caricature of the Introduction of the Duke of Wrttemberg (afterwards King Frederick I) to George III and Queen Charlotte previous to his marriage with Charlotte, Princess Royal of England, by Anthony Pasquin.

Lady Charlotte Finch by John Faber the Younger, after John Robinson.

Plates : Courtesy of Internet Archive Book Images. Public domain.

Plates

Plates

Plate : Courtesy of the University of Michigan. Public domain.

Plates : Courtesy of The Yale Center for British Art. Public domain.

Plates : From The New York Public Library Public domain.

Plates : From the British Cartoon Prints Collection (Library of Congress). No known restrictions on publication.

Ive spent a long, long time in the company of the six daughters of George and Charlotte, and my first thank you is to those remarkable women. Its been a true pleasure getting to know them.

As ever, the tireless and indefatigable team at Pen & Sword are worthy of nothing but praise. A particularly big piece of cake should go to Jon and the still fierce and fabulous Lucy, editor extraordinaire!

Im also sending out thanks across the world for everyone who has ever read anything Ive written or taken the time to tell me to keep on keeping on. To Adrian, Rob, and Debra, a shower of hugs and thanks just for being you. And of course, UTT.

I send bubbles and biscuits to Pippa, Nelly, and the Rakish Colonial the prince and princesses in my life.

When Princess Sophia of the United Kingdom put pen to paper in 1811 to write to her brother, the Prince Regent, she was still a woman in her mid-thirties. Yet as far as she was concerned, her life was over. She believed that she was condemned to remain forever at home, nothing more than companion to a resentful mother and a comfort to a fading father. At Sophias side were three of her five sisters, each preserved as if in aspic at Windsor. Only one of the princesses had escaped what became known as the nunnery , marrying into European royalty and queening it over her own court. The youngest of the six sisters was already dead.

These were the daughters of King George III and his bride, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

The princesses were born into that most unusual royal marriage a faithful one. Though blighted by the mental illness that eventually saw his eldest son appointed as Prince Regent, George III broke with the tradition of his predecessors by eschewing mistresses and sexual intrigue. Instead he remained loyal to his wife for almost sixty years. To the Georgian public, George and Charlotte were the model of respectability. The same could not be said for all of their offspring, however.

Their sons were a handful, to put it mildly. Their daughters didnt really get the chance to misbehave, but that didnt stop them from becoming fascinating women, and the six daughters of George III each have their own story to tell. From accomplished childhood to isolated adulthood, not to mention crowns, lovers and even rumours of illegitimate children, life as a Georgian princess veered wildly from excitement to boredom, with the odd foray into the downright bizarre.

With six princesses to bring back to life and only a finite number of words in which to do so, we shall start our tale with their shared childhood, before joining each princess as she makes her way into the world. For some, the future was one of husbands, courts and travel whilst for others it was seclusion, frustration and maybe a quiet little scandal now and then.

It has been my pleasure to spend time with these six women and I hope youll enjoy getting to know these very different princesses who were moulded in one of the most insular courts of the long eighteenth century.

These are the women of the Windsor nunnery, sisters and princesses.

King George III and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz had fifteen children, all born in the first twenty-two years of their marriage. Remarkably, all of them survived their births no small achievement in the eighteenth century. Their names are below, and where appropriate, their legal spouses are italicised beneath. Illegitimate marriages (George IV, you know who you are!) arent included, for the sake of simplicity.