Regency Personalities Series
In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.
King Ernest Augustus 1 of Hanover Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale
5 June 1771 – 18 November 1851
Ernest Augustus
King Ernest Augustus 1 of Hanover Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale was King of Hanover from 20 June 1837 until his death. He was the fifth son and eighth child of George III, who reigned in both the United Kingdom and Hanover. As a fifth son, initially Ernest seemed unlikely to become a monarch, but Salic Law, which barred women from the succession, applied in Hanover and none of his older brothers had legitimate male issue. Therefore, he became King of Hanover when his niece, Victoria, became Queen of the United Kingdom, ending the personal union between Britain and Hanover that had existed since 1714.
Ernest was born in England, but was sent to Hanover in his adolescence for his education and military training. While serving with Hanoverian forces in Wallonia against Revolutionary France, he received a disfiguring facial wound. In 1799, he was created Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale. Although his 1815 marriage to the twice-widowed Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz met with the disapproval of his mother, Queen Charlotte, it proved a happy relationship. By 1817, King George III had only one legitimate grandchild, Princess Charlotte of Wales, and when she died in childbirth, Ernest was the senior son to be both married and not estranged from his wife. This gave him some prospect of succeeding to the British throne. However, both of his unmarried older brothers quickly married, and King George’s fourth son, Edward, Duke of Kent, fathered the eventual British heir, Princess Victoria of Kent (later Queen Victoria).
Ernest was active in the House of Lords, where he maintained an extremely conservative record. There were persistent allegations (reportedly spread by his political foes) that he had murdered his valet and had fathered a son by his sister, Princess Sophia of the United Kingdom. Before Victoria succeeded to the British Throne, it was rumoured that Ernest intended to murder her and take the Throne himself. When King William IV died on 20 June 1837, Ernest ascended the Hanoverian Throne. Hanover’s first ruler to reside in the kingdom since George I, he had a generally successful fourteen-year reign, but excited controversy when he dismissed the Göttingen Seven (including the two Brothers Grimm) from their professorial positions for agitating against his policies.
Ernest Augustus, the fifth son of George III and Queen Charlotte, was born at Buckingham House, now part of Buckingham Palace, on 5 June 1771. After leaving the nursery, he lived with his two younger brothers, Prince Adolphus (later Duke of Cambridge) and Prince Augustus (later Duke of Sussex), and a tutor in a house on Kew Green, near his parents’ residence at Kew Palace. At the age of fifteen, he and his two younger brothers were sent to the University of Göttingen, located in his father’s domain of Hanover. Though the King never left the United Kingdom in his life, he sent his younger sons to Germany in their adolescence. This was done to limit the influence Ernest’s eldest brother George, Prince of Wales, who was leading an extravagant lifestyle, would have over his younger brothers. Prince Ernest proved an apt student, and after being tutored privately for a year, while learning German, attended lectures at the University. Though King George ordered that the princes’ household be run along military lines, and that they follow university rules, the town merchants proved willing to extend credit to the princes, and all three fell into debt.
In 1790, Ernest asked his father for permission to train with Prussian forces. Instead, in January 1791, he and Prince Adolphus were sent to Hanover to receive military training under the supervision of Field Marshal Wilhelm von Freytag. Before leaving Göttingen, Ernest penned a formal letter of thanks to the university, and wrote to his father, “I should be one of the most ungrateful of men if ever I was forgetful of all I owe to Göttingen & its professors.”
Ernest learned cavalry drill and tactics under Captain von Linsingen of the Queen’s Light Dragoons, and proved to be an excellent horseman as well as a good shot. After only two months of training, von Freytag was so impressed by the Prince’s progress that he gave him a place in the cavalry as captain. Ernest was supposed to receive infantry training, but the King, also impressed by his son’s prowess, allowed him to remain with the cavalry.
In March 1792, the King commissioned Prince Ernest Augustus as a colonel in the 9th Hanoverian Light Dragoons. The Prince served in the Low Countries in the War of the First Coalition, under his elder brother Frederick, Duke of York, then commander of the combined British, Hanoverian and Austrian forces. Seeing action near the Walloon town of Tournai in August 1793, he sustained a sabre wound to the head, which resulted in a disfiguring scar. During the Battle of Tourcoing in northern France on 18 May 1794 his left arm was injured by a cannonball which passed close by him. In the days after the battle, the sight in his left eye faded. In June, he was sent to Britain to convalesce, his first stay there since 1786.
Ernest resumed his duties in early November, by now promoted to major-general. He hoped his new rank would bring him a corps or brigade command, but none was forthcoming as Allied armies retreated slowly through the Netherlands towards Germany. By February 1795, they had reached Hanover. Ernest remained in Hanover over the next year, at several unimportant postings. He had requested a return home to seek treatment for his eye, but it was not until early 1796 that the King agreed and allowed Ernest to return to Britain. In Britain, Prince Ernest consulted the noted eye doctor, Wathen Waller, but Waller apparently found the condition inoperable, as no operation took place. Once in Britain, Ernest repeatedly sought to be allowed to join British forces on the Continent, even threatening to join the Yeomanry as a private, but both the King and the Duke of York refused. Ernest did not want to rejoin Hanoverian forces, as the Hanoverians were not then involved in the fighting. In addition, von Freytag was seriously ill, and Ernest was unwilling to serve under his likely successor, General von Wallmoden.
On 23 April 1799, George III created Prince Ernest Augustus Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale and Earl of Armagh. Though he was made a lieutenant-general, both of British and Hanoverian forces, he remained in England, and, with a seat in the House of Lords, entered politics. Ernest had extreme Tory views, and soon became a leader of the right of the party. King George had feared that Ernest, like some of his older brothers, would display Whig tendencies. Reassured on that point, in 1801, the King had Ernest conduct the negotiations which led to the formation of the Addington Government. In February 1802, King George granted his son the colonelcy of the 27th Light Dragoons, a post which offered the option of transfer to the colonelcy of the 15th Light Dragoons when a vacancy developed. A vacancy promptly occurred and the Duke became the colonel of the 15th Light Dragoons in March 1802. Although the post could have been a sinecure, Ernest involved himself in the affairs of the regiment and led it on manoeuvres.
In early 1803, the Duke of York appointed Ernest as commander of the Severn District, in charge of the forces in and around the Severn Estuary. When war with France broke out again after the Peace of Amiens, the elder Duke appointed Ernest to the more important Southwest District, comprising Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire. Though Ernest would have preferred command of the King’s German Legion, composed mostly of expatriates from French-occupied Hanover, he accepted the post. The Duke of Cumberland increased the defences on the South Coast, especially around the town of Weymouth, where his father often spent time in the summer.
The 1800 Acts of Union had given Ireland representation in Parliament, but existing law prevented the Irish Catholics from serving there because of their religion. “Catholic emancipation” was a major political issue of the first years of the 19th century. The Duke of Cumberland was a strong opponent of giving political rights to Catholics, believing that emancipation would be a violation of the King’s Coronation Oath to uphold Anglicanism, and spoke out in the House of Lords against emancipation. Protestant Irish organisations supported the Duke; he was elected Chancellor of the University of Dublin in 1805 and Grand Master of the Orange Lodges two years later.
The Duke repeatedly sought a post with Allied forces fighting against France, but was sent to the Continent only as an observer. In 1807, he advocated sending British troops to join with the Prussians and Swedes and attack the French at Stralsund (today, in northeastern Germany). The Grenville government refused to send forces. Shortly afterwards, the government fell, and the new Prime Minister, the Duke of Portland, agreed to send Ernest with 20,000 troops. However, they were sent too late: the French defeated Prussia and Sweden at the Battle of Stralsund before Ernest and his forces could reach the town.
In the early hours of 31 May 1810, Ernest, by his written account, was struck in the head several times while asleep in bed, awakening him. He ran for the door, where he was wounded in the leg by a sabre. He called for help, and one of his valets, Cornelius Neale, responded and aided him. Neale raised the alarm, and the household soon realised that Ernest’s other valet, Joseph Sellis, was not among them, and that the door to Sellis’s room was locked. The lock was forced, and Sellis was discovered with his throat freshly cut, a wound apparently self-inflicted. Ernest received several serious wounds during the apparent attack, and required over a month to recover from his injuries. The social reformer and anti-monarchist Francis Place managed to get on the inquest jury and became its foreman. Place went to the office of a barrister friend to study inquest law, and aggressively questioned witnesses. Place also insisted the inquest be opened to the public and press, and so cowed the coroner that he basically ran the inquest himself. Nevertheless, the jury returned a unanimous verdict of suicide against Sellis.
Much of the public blamed Ernest for Sellis’s death. The more extreme Whig papers, anti-royal pamphleteers, and caricaturists all offered nefarious explanations for Sellis’s death, in which the Duke was to blame. Some stories had the Duke cuckolding Sellis, with the attack as retaliation, or Sellis killed for finding Ernest and Mrs. Sellis in bed together. Others suggested that the Duke was the lover of either Sellis or Neale, and that blackmail had played a part in the death. There was animus and fear towards the Duke to the fact that he did not conduct love affairs in public, as did his older brothers. According to them, the public feared what vices might be going on behind the locked doors of the Duke’s house, and assumed the worst.
In early 1813, Ernest was involved in political scandal during an election contest in Weymouth following the general election the previous year. The Duke was shown to be one of three trustees who were able to dictate who would represent Weymouth in Parliament. It being considered improper for a peer to interfere in a Commons election, there was considerable controversy, and the Government sent Ernest to Europe as an observer to accompany Hanoverian troops, which were again engaged in war against France. Though he saw no action, Ernest was present at the Battle of Leipzig, a major victory for the Allies.
Ernest met and fell in love in mid-1813 with his first cousin, Duchess Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, wife of Prince Frederick William of Solms-Braunfels and widow of Prince Louis of Prussia. The two agreed to wed if Frederica became free to marry. Her marriage to Frederick William had not been a success; her husband, seeing the marriage was beyond hope, agreed to a divorce, but his sudden death in 1814 removed the necessity. Some considered the death too convenient, and suspected the princess of poisoning her husband. Queen Charlotte opposed the marriage: before the princess had married Frederick William, she had jilted Ernest’s brother, the Duke of Cambridge, after the engagement was announced.
Following the marriage in Germany on 29 May 1815, Queen Charlotte refused to receive her new daughter-in-law, nor would the Queen attend the resolemnisation of the Cumberlands’ marriage at Kew, which Ernest’s four older brothers attended. The Prince of Wales (now Prince Regent) found the Cumberlands’ presence in Britain embarrassing, and offered him money and the Governorship of Hanover if they would leave for the Continent. Ernest refused, and the Cumberlands divided their time between Kew and St. James’s Palace for the next three years. The Queen remained obstinate in her refusal to receive Frederica. Despite these family troubles, the Cumberlands had a happy marriage. The Government of Lord Liverpool asked Parliament to increase the Duke’s allowance by ₤6,000 per year in 1815 (equal to about ₤388,000 today), so he could meet increased expenses due to his marriage. The Duke’s involvement in the Weymouth election became an issue, and the bill failed by one vote. Liverpool tried again in 1817; this time the bill failed by seven votes.
At the time of the Duke’s marriage in 1815, it seemed to have little dynastic significance to Britain. Princess Charlotte of Wales, only child of the Prince Regent, was the King’s only legitimate grandchild. The young Princess was expected to have children who would secure the British succession, especially after she married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld in 1816. Both the Prince Regent and the Duke of York were married but estranged from their wives, while the next two brothers, the Dukes of Clarence and Kent, were unmarried. On 6 November 1817, Princess Charlotte died after delivering a stillborn son. King George was left with twelve surviving children, and no surviving legitimate grandchildren. Most of the unmarried royal dukes hurriedly sought out suitable brides and hastened to the altar, hoping to father the heir to the throne.
Seeing little prospect of the Queen giving in and receiving her daughter-in-law, the Cumberlands moved to Germany in 1818. They had difficulty living within their means in Britain, and the cost of living was much lower in Germany. Queen Charlotte died on 17 November 1818, but the Cumberlands remained in Germany, living principally in Berlin, where the Duchess had relatives. In 1817, the Duchess had a stillborn daughter; in 1819 she gave birth to a boy, Prince George of Cumberland. The Duke occasionally visited England, where he stayed with his eldest brother, who in 1820 succeeded to the British and Hanoverian Thrones as George IV. George III’s fourth son, Edward, Duke of Kent, died six days before his father, but left a daughter, Princess Victoria of Kent. With the death of George III, Ernest became fourth in line to the British Throne, following the Duke of York (who would die without legitimate issue in 1827), the Duke of Clarence, and Princess Victoria.
In 1826, Parliament finally voted to increase Ernest’s allowance. The Liverpool Government argued that the Duke needed an increased allowance to pay for Prince George’s education; even so, it was opposed by many Whigs. The bill, which passed the House of Commons 120–97, required Prince George to live in England if the Duke was to receive the money.
In 1828, Ernest was staying with the King at Windsor Castle when severe disturbances broke out in Ireland among Catholics. The Duke was an ardent supporter of the Protestant cause in Ireland, and returned to Berlin in August, believing that the Government, led by the Duke of Wellington, would deal firmly with the Irish. In January 1829, the Wellington Government announced that it would introduce a Catholic emancipation bill to conciliate the Irish. Disregarding a request from Wellington that he remain abroad, Ernest returned to London, and was one of the leaders against the Catholic Relief Act 1829, influencing King George against the bill. Within days of his arrival, the King instructed the officers of his Household to vote against the Bill. Hearing of this, Wellington told the King that he must resign as Prime Minister unless the King could assure him of complete support. The King initially accepted Wellington’s resignation, and Ernest attempted to put together a government united against Catholic emancipation. Though such a government would have considerable support in the House of Lords, it would have little support in the Commons, and Ernest abandoned his attempt. The King recalled Wellington. The bill passed the Lords and became law.
The Wellington Government hoped that Ernest would return to Germany, but he moved his wife and son to Britain in 1829. The Times reported that they would live at Windsor in the “Devil’s Tower”; instead, the Duke reopened his house at Kew. They settled there as rumours flew that Thomas Garth, thought to be the illegitimate son of Ernest’s sister Princess Sophia, had been fathered by Ernest. It was also said that Ernest had blackmailed the King by threatening to expose this secret, though Van der Kiste points out that Ernest would have been ill-advised to blackmail with a secret which, if exposed, would destroy him. These rumours were spread as Ernest journeyed to London to fight against Catholic emancipation. Whig politician and diarist Thomas Creevey wrote about the Garth rumour in mid-February, and there is some indication the rumours began with Princess Lieven, wife of the Russian ambassador.
Newspapers also reported, in July 1829, that the Duke had been thrown out of Lord Lyndhurst’s house for assaulting his wife Sarah, Lady Lyndhurst. In early 1830, a number of newspapers printed articles hinting that Ernest was having an affair with Lady Graves, a mother of fifteen now past fifty. In February 1830, Lord Graves wrote a note to his wife expressing his confidence in her innocence, then cut his own throat. Two days after Lord Graves’s death (and the day after the inquest), The Times printed an article connecting Lord Graves’s death with Sellis’s. After being shown the suicide note, The Times withdrew its implication there might be a connection between the two deaths. Nonetheless, many believed the Duke responsible for the suicide—or guilty of a second murder. The Duke later stated that he had been “accused of every crime in the decalogue”. Ernest’s biographer, Anthony Bird, states that while there is no proof, he has no doubt that the rumours against the Duke were spread by the Whigs for political ends. Another biographer, Geoffrey Willis, pointed out that no scandal had attached itself to the Duke during the period of over a decade when he resided in Germany; it was only when he announced his intent to return to Britain that “a campaign of unparalleled viciousness” began against him. According to Bird, Ernest was the most unpopular man in England.
The Duke’s influence at Court was ended by the death of George IV in June 1830 and the succession of the Duke of Clarence as William IV. Wellington wrote that “The effect of the King’s death will … be to put an end to the Duke of Cumberland’s political character and power in this country entirely”. King William lacked legitimate children (two girls having died in infancy) and Ernest was now heir-presumptive in Hanover, since the British heir-presumptive, Victoria, as a female could not inherit there. William realized that so long as the Duke maintained a power base at Windsor, he could wield unwanted influence. The Duke was Gold Stick as head of the Household Cavalry; William made the Duke’s post responsible to the Commander in Chief rather than to the King, and an insulted Ernest, outraged at the thought of having to report to an officer less senior than himself, resigned. King William again emerged triumphant when the new queen, Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, wished to quarter her horses in the stables customarily used by the consort, but which were then occupied by Ernest’s horses. Ernest initially refused the King’s order to remove the horses, but gave in when told that William’s grooms would remove them if Ernest did not move them voluntarily. However, Ernest and William remained friendly throughout the latter’s seven-year reign. Ernest’s house at Kew was too small for his family; the King gave the Duke and Duchess lifetime residence in a nearby, larger house by the entrance to Kew Gardens. Ernest opposed the Reform Act 1832, and was one of the “diehard” peers who voted against the bill on its final reading when most Tories abstained under threat of seeing the House of Lords flooded with Whig peers.
Ernest was the subject of more allegations in 1832, when two young women accused him of trying to ride them down as they walked near Hammersmith. The Duke had not left his grounds at Kew on the day in question, and was able to ascertain that the rider was one of his equerries, who professed not to have seen the women. Nevertheless, newspapers continued to print references to the incident, suggesting that Ernest had done what the women stated, and was cravenly trying to push blame on another. The same year, the Duke sued for libel after a book appeared accusing him of having his valet Neale kill Sellis, and the jury found against the author. Also in 1832, the Cumberlands suffered tragedy, as young Prince George went blind. The Prince had been blind in one eye from infancy; an accident at age thirteen took the sight of the other. Ernest had hoped his son might marry Princess Victoria and keep the British and Hanoverian Thrones united, but the handicap made it unlikely George could win Princess Victoria’s hand, and raised questions about whether he should succeed in Hanover.
The Duke spent William’s reign in the House of Lords, where he was assiduous in his attendance. Wrote newspaper editor James Grant, “He is literally—the door-keeper of course excepted—the first man in the House, and the last out of it. And this not merely generally, but every night.” Grant, in his observations of the leading members of the House of Lords, indicated that the Duke was not noted for his oratory (he delivered no speech longer than five minutes) and had a voice that was difficult to understand, though, “his manner is most mild and conciliatory.” Grant denigrated the Duke’s intellect and influence, but stated that the Duke had indirect influence over several members, and that, “he is by no means so bad a tactician as his opponents suppose.”
Controversy arose in 1836 over the Orange Lodges. The lodges (which took anti-Catholic views) were said to be ready to rise and try to put the Duke of Cumberland on the Throne on the death of King William. According to Joseph Hume, speaking in the House of Commons, Princess Victoria was to be passed over on the grounds of her age, sex, and incapacity. The Commons passed a resolution calling for the dissolution of the lodges. When the matter reached the Lords, the Duke defended himself, saying of Princess Victoria, “I would shed the last drop of my blood for my niece.” The Duke indicated that the Orange Lodge members were loyal and were willing to dissolve the lodges in Great Britain. According to Bird, this incident was the source of the widespread rumours that the Duke intended to murder Princess Victoria and take the British Throne for himself.
On 20 June 1837, King William died, and Princess Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom. Ernest became the King of Hanover.
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