A family at war: (1) The Brunswick marriage

Caroline of Brunswick (1804)
by Sir Thomas Lawrence
Public domain

One of the best accounts of the troubled lives of the later Hanoverians is found in Janice Hadlow's The Strangest Family. The Private Lives of George III, Queen Charlotte and the Hanoverians (William Collins, 2014). You can read a review here. For Caroline, I have consulted Flora Fraser's The Unruly Queen. The Life of Queen Caroline (Papermac, 1996). If you want to explore the documents created by the royal family, you can see those that have already been digitized here.

George III and his family

 In September 1761 George III, newly ascended to the throne, married the eighteen-year-old German princess, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Between 1762 and 1783 the couple produced fifteen children and all but two survived infancy, the eldest being George, Prince of Wales.

Queen Charlotte, by Benjamin West
Yale Center for British Art
Public domain

Although George had previously been in love with Lady Sarah Lennox and had desperately wanted to marry her, he did not regret his choice of Charlotte, and until his descent into madness, his marriage was a success. This was just as well, as the Hanoverian kings faced two restrictions in their choice of wives:

1. Because of the Act of Settlement of 1701, the spouse of the monarch had to be a Protestant. 
2. Although four of Henry VIII's wives had been English subjects, this option was not available for George III. He was also Elector of Hanover and Hanoverian law did not allow marriage to commoners. 

These two restrictions meant, in practice that the wives of the Hanoverian kings all came from Germany. Before 1806 'Germany' meant one of the three hundred states that made up the Holy Roman Empire.

The prince's debts

In 1783 the Prince of Wales came of age. This meant that he was allowed to set up his own household, and after much haggling Parliament voted him £62,000 per annum. This money was quickly spent in the prince's extravagant life-style and his two great building projects, Carlton House on the Mall and the Pavilion at Brighton. Over the years the debts mounted and by 1794 they had reached crisis point; William Pitt, Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as Prime Minister, noted that they now stood at £552,000 and would take twenty-five years to clear. By this time Britain was at war, and funds were short. Parliament would only grant George a new allowance if he married: his many brothers had failed to produce legitimate children and the country wanted an heir.


In a mood of reckless self-pity, the prince is alleged to have said that he was so indifferent to the marriage that 'any damned German frau would do'. In this sulky mood he suggested to his parents that he marry his cousin, Caroline of Brunswick. The queen, who had already heard something of her reputation, kept silent, but the king was delighted at the match.

There was, of course, already the skeleton in the prince's cupboard, his secret marriage to Maria Fitzherbert, which had taken place in December 1785. Though valid in canon law, it was illegal on two counts. In marrying without his father’s permission, the Prince had violated the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, and in marrying a  Catholic he had given up his right to the throne. For this reason, though an open secret, the marriage was never made public. No-one officially 'knew' of it.

By 1794 George had broken with Mrs Fitzherbert and had taken up with another older woman, Frances, Countess of Jersey. Later, the Duke of Wellington was to say that it was she who had arranged the Brunswick marriage in order to make sure that he did not return to Mrs Fitzherbert.

Caroline

Caroline Amelia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel was born on 17 May 1768, the second daughter of Duke Charles William Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, a small vassal state of Prussia in north Germany, and his wife, Duchess Augusta, daughter of Frederick Prince of Wales and elder sister of George III.  The marriage was unhappy. Caroline’s father said,  

‘Only private persons can live happily married because they choose their mates. Royalty must make marriages of convenience, which seldom result in happiness.’ 

Caroline had a restricted education, her only skill being playing the harpsichord. At the age of fifteen, she was unable to spell or punctuate. As yet, she spoke no English and her French was ungrammatical. By her twenties she had a reputation as a flirt and was notorious for her unbridled, often indecent conversation. Yet her mother was desperate for her to make a good marriage into her brother’s family.

At the end of November 1794, the seasoned diplomat, James Harris, Earl of Malmesbury, arrived in Brunswick and the marriage treaty was signed, though war and bad weather delayed Caroline’s journey to England. This delay gave Malmesbury the opportunity to give Caroline some frank instructions about her washing habits and the need to change her clothes more frequently.

James Harris, 1st Earl of Malmesbury
the courtier-diplomat sent to
Brunswick to negotiate the marriage
NPG, public domain

Marriage

Caroline landed at Greenwich in April 1795.  She soon found that Lady Jersey had been made her lady of the bedchamber, an insult that caused widespread outrage. The first meeting of the bride and groom on 5 April was a disaster. The Prince said, ‘Harris, I am not well; pray get me a glass of brandy.’ The marriage took place privately on 8 April in the Chapel Royal, St James. Caroline later complained that the prince 'passed the greatest part of his bridal night under the grate where he fell and where I left him'. A year later, George gave his own gruesome version to Lord Malmesbury (now in the Hampshire Record Office), in which he made it clear that he was intensely physically revolted by his wife. 

But in spite of the disastrous wedding night, the couple managed to conceive a child. On 7 January 1796 their daughter, Princess Charlotte Augusta was born. She was to be their only child. Within a few days the prince wrote, 

'The mother of this child ... should in no way either be concerned in the education and care of her child, or have possession of her person'. 

After further quarrels and humiliations, Caroline confronted her husband in December 1797 and declared she would no longer obey him. She left Carlton House and went to live at Blackheath, and in 1798 she moved to Montague House in Greenwich Park. 

Until she was eight, Princess Charlotte divided her time between her father at Carlton House, and Shrewsbury House on Shooter's Hill, from where she could easily visit her mother. The break-up of her parents' marriage meant that her childhood was disrupted, and in 1804 George III intervened to try to put matters right. After a lengthy dispute with his son, it was agreed that the young princess's year should be divided between Warwick House, next to Carlton House, and Windsor, where she would be under the eye of her grandparents.

The 'Delicate Investigation'

At Montague House, Caroline set up her own household and entertained her friends - not all of them reputable characters. These included Sir John and Lady Douglas, the admiral, Sir Sidney Smith, the rising Tory politician, George Canning, and the painter Sir Thomas Lawrence. She had a passionate relationship with Canning and possibly an affair with Smith. In the autumn of 1802 she adopted a three-month-old baby from Deptford, William Austin, the son of an unemployed dockyard worker. The rumour spread that he was Caroline's. 

By 1804 Caroline had quarrelled with the Douglases, and she compounded the quarrel when she sent indecent drawings to Sir John, alleging that Lady Douglas was having an affair with Sir Sidney Smith. At the end of 1805 Lady Douglas stated before witnesses that Willy Austin was the child of the princess, and that she had had affairs with Canning, Smith, and others.

In May 1806 the King reluctantly agreed to the setting up of a commission, 'the Delicate Investigation', consisting of the prime minister, Lord Grenville, and other prominent cabinet members. Their report concluded that the princess had been indiscreet but that nothing was proved against her. The King remained on friendly terms with her, though he wrote rebuking her for indiscreet behaviour.

Caroline was also threatening to bring counter-charges of adultery against her husband, which would obviously raise deeply embarrassing questions, especially about his relationship with Mrs Fitzherbert.

Following the Delicate Investigation, Caroline was once more allowed to see Charlotte, but only once a week. The meetings took place either at Blackheath, or in Caroline’s apartments in Kensington Palace.

Charlotte in 1806, aged ten
Public Domain

Matters remained in this unsatisfactory state, but the quarrel between the Prince of Wales and his wife gained new intensity with the coming of the Regency.