Queen's House by Edna Healey Read Free Book Online Page A

by both his own parents. He had been brought upby his mother, Augusta, dowager Princess of Wales, who had come from Germany as a young bride and had also suffered the hatred of the King and Queen. He had been tutored by a serious-minded Scot, John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, his counsellor and ‘dearest friend’.
    George III was to make a double break with the past. First, unlike his grandfather and great-grandfather, he was proud to consider himself British. He spoke German fluently and looked Hanoverian, being tall, well built and fair-haired, but he was rooted in England. In fact, although being Elector of Hanover, he never visited his German kingdom. Second, there would be no mistresses in George III’s palace.
    Among the many problems that faced the young King at the beginning of his reign there were two personal concerns to be dealt with: he had to choose a wife and a home.
    The young King was handsome and virile but he had reached the age of twenty-two without attracting scandal – a remarkable feat at that time. His mother had kept a watchful eye on him and Bute, who was himself happily married, regarded it as his duty to guide the King not only politically but also in his domestic life. He became George III’s chief minister and he steered him away from what he considered would be an unfortunate marriage. So the King regretfully resisted the temptation to propose to a delectable young woman, Lady Sarah Lennox, in favour of a traditional dynastic marriage with a foreign princess.
    Royal marriages were affairs of state, arranged to establish alliances and suit the political needs of the time. So many a young bride left her country to live ‘amid the alien corn’. If they were lucky they spoke the language of their new home or could bring some of their own people with them.
    George III’s mother, a princess of Saxe-Gotha, had come to England as a girl of sixteen still clutching her doll. James I had married Anne of Denmark; his son Charles I had strengthened his relations with France by marrying Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV. Charles II had married Catherine of Braganza; his brother James took as his second wife Mary of Modena. Dutch William of Orange married James II’s elder daughter, Princess Mary, and his younger daughter, Princess Anne, had married George of Denmark. The Hanoverians looked toGermany for their wives and mistresses. So an international network spread, each marriage bringing different traditions to the palaces of Britain.
    Prince George’s mother and grandfather had argued over the merits of princesses from different families in the small states that constituted what is now modern Germany. In 1761 George was to choose for himself. Guided by Lord Bute and with the advice of the Hanoverian minister in London, Baron Philip Adolphus von Munchhausen, he considered the list of possible candidates among the German Protestant princesses. No Roman Catholic could be considered. One by one the princesses were rejected, some, like the princesses of Anhalt Dessau, because of a reputation for ‘galanterie’. Princess Augusta’s favourite, her niece Princess Frederica of Saxe-Gotha, was said to be marked by smallpox and deformed. Princess Philippina of Brandenburg-Schwedt was opinionated and unattractive; Princess Caroline of Hesse-Darmstadt had a foul temper. Finally the choice fell on seventeen-year-old Princess Sophie Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. In the royal European network she was his third cousin. Further enquiries were made and it was reported that she was healthy, pleasant, with ‘ le meilleur coeur du monde. ’ No one claimed that she was a beauty, but she played the harpsichord well and sang and danced ‘ à la merveille. ’ She spoke no English but had some French and had received a plain education in the Protestant convent at Herford, Westphalia. Bute now sent his friend and fellow Scot, Colonel David Graeme, to make a