Frederick, Prince of Wales

“ He was succeeded, as second Duke of Dorset, by his son Charles, who, among his other offices, held that of Master of the Horse to Frederick, Prince of Wales. He married Grace, daughter of Viscount Shannon, who was Mistress of the Robes to Augusta, Princess of Wales, but had no issue. He was succeeded in 1769 by his nephew, John Frederick, as third duke. He married, in 1790, Arabella Diana, daughter and heiress of Sir John Cope, by whom he had issue George John Frederick (who succeeded him as fourth duke) ; Mary, married to the Earl of Plymouth; and Elizabeth, married to Earl Delawarr. ”

“ As for Prince Frederick himself, there is little doubt that although he had never seen her, yet he had in a romantic way fallen in love with his cousin Wilhelmina. This was quite a natural phase of his sanguine, artistic character. One can quite understand that his aunt, the Queen of Prussia, had not neglected any of those little manœuvres by which the hearts of young men are moved. She was simply a match-making mother, and was quite cognizant of the fact that Frederick would, if he lived, inherit the Crown of England. ”

“ This must have been an infliction upon King George, whose dislike for “bainting and boetry,” together with the other arts is proverbial.
It cannot be denied that Frederick, Prince of Wales, had the attribute of combativeness, and a natural power of enraging others by his mode of opposition. No sooner had his sister’s protégé established his opera at the Haymarket theatre than he forthwith started an opposition opera at the theatre in Lincolns Inn Fields, possibly not very far from the present Gaiety. ”

“ He was a member of the French Academy, a vice-president of the Foundling Hospital, and high steward of Henley-upon-Thames. At the funeral of Frederick, prince of Wales, on 13 April 1751 , he was one of the pall-bearers. ”

“ The king, says Hervey, never spoke of him without some opprobrious epithet. His ill-will may have been increased by a scheme of the old duchess, discovered and frustrated by Walpole, to marry Marlborough's sister, Lady Diana Spencer, to Frederick, prince of Wales. ”

“ From the hour of Frederick’s birth the dearest wish of the Hanoverian House, and of Sophia Dorothea most of all, had been to unite more closely the royal lines of England and Prussia. At length a double marriage was proposed. The Prince of Wales was to marry Wilhelmina, and Frederick his cousin Amelia, daughter of George II. In 1730, however, England and Prussia were estranged, yet Frederick William knew that his household had not given up their darling project. Flouted as a father and as a statesman, he treated his son so ill as to lend colour to the suspicion that he wished him dead. ”

“ Through the insistence of the Privy Council, not of the King’s own freewill, Frederick had been created Prince of Wales soon after his arrival in England, but the King had made no provision for him, although £100,000 per annum of the King’s income—he received no less than £900,000 a year from the country—had been earmarked for the Prince’s use, subject to his father’s pleasure. He preferred to keep him in the Palace like his other younger children, and under very much the same restrictions. ”

“ In November the Princess Royal paid a visit to England with her husband in time to celebrate the Prince of Wales’s birthday on the 9th, and Prince Albert tells Stockmar:
“We find the Princess Royal looking extremely well, and in the highest spirits, infinitely lively, loving, and mentally active. In knowledge of the world, she has made great progress.” The visit lasted till December 3, and Prince Albert wrote to the Dowager Duchess of Coburg that Prince Frederick William “has delighted us much. Vicky has developed greatly of late, and yet remains quite a child ”

“ She knew full well, in common with most continental Princesses, that the heir to the throne of England was by no means a favourite with his parents and that he was only brought over from Hanover because the English people demanded it. He was not wanted by the Royal Family, they wanted the crown of England for the handsome second son, William Duke of Cumberland, afterwards adorned with the additional title of “The Butcher of Culloden.”
Frederick was not handsome though he had a charm of manner, chiefly owing to his amiability and kind-heartedness which endeared him to the people. ”

“ But apart from this it must have been a dreary life for a young girl, a life of looking on at much over-eating, and over-drinking perhaps, too. A life of low sordid immorality going on under her very nose in which her husband and his father played leading parts; a life in which the higher side of her [Pg 11] nature was never called upon, except for the almost habitual display of charity and forbearance to others.
LEINE PALACE, HANOVER.
Birthplace of Frederick, Prince of Wales. ”

“ But other more stirring thoughts soon filled the young mother’s head than the frailties of her husband’s family, for when the sum of her nursery reached four and the little Prince Frederick was in his eighth year, the fruit of her hopes ripened, Queen Anne of England died, and a lucky turn of politics in favour of the Whigs, laid open to her the road to a throne. ”

“ There is another point, also, which must not be lost sight of, and that is that during the three years and more that the Prince had been in England, he had grown year by year in popular favour, and had entirely eclipsed the Queen’s favourite son, the Duke of Cumberland, whom as we know the King and Queen would gladly have seen in his brother Frederick’s place as heir to the English throne. ”

“ It is just what a [Pg 137] lover under such circumstances could not well help doing.
From “Caroline the Illustrious,” by permission of Messrs, Longmans, Green & Co.
PRINCESS AUGUSTA.
Wife of Frederick, Prince of Wales.
The account in the Gentleman’s Magazine for April, 1736, concludes by saying that the happy couple returned to Greenwich together, and “supped in public,” which meant that the young people took their meal near an open window for the people to see them. ”

“ It is this correspondence between Caroline and the King, coupled with her very objectionable letters to the Duchess of Orleans, which have caused many writers to take exception to the remark of Lord Mahon, which described this Queen’s character as “without a blemish.” At any rate it gives us an insight into the private life of the mother of our Prince Frederick, and accounts perhaps for some of her unnatural conduct towards him, for where there is not purity of mind, how can there be purity of motherly affection? ”

“ But the rebels were soon as active as ever. In January parliament pressed hard for coercive laws. The king to a great extent accepted their proposals, but still aimed at conciliation, and on 10 March, at the petition of the Prince of Wales, issued a general pardon, from which Owain, himself, and the brothers Gwilym and Rhys, sons of Tudor, were the only exceptions. The commons of Carnarvon and Merioneth humbly tendered their thanks, and offered to pay the usual taxes. Yet with the return of spring the rebels were again active. ”

“ Owain, despite his Lancastrian connections, put himself at the head of the movement, which soon developed into a Welsh national rising against Saxon tyranny.
The rebels were from the first brilliantly successful. The clashing jurisdictions of the Prince of Wales and the marcher lords made united action among the English impossible. The castles were ill-equipped and undermanned, and, when not in Welsh hands, were in charge of Welsh deputies. ”

“ A Husband and a Lover.
It has been said that Frederick possessed artistic tastes and loved to gather round him men of talent and wit. He was also devoted to music, and gave frequent private concerts at Leicester House in which he himself took part.
One of Frederick’s favourites, a man devoted to music like himself, was Horace Walpole’s brother, Edward—afterwards Sir Edward—who frequently performed with him at these concerts. ”

“ Since his return he gives himself up entirely to drink. The king will not suffer the prince royal to sit next his majesty at table, but obliges him to go to the lower end, where things are so ordered that the poor prince often rises without getting one bit, insomuch that the queen was obliged two days ago to send, by one of the servants who could be trusted, a box of cold fowls and other eatables for his royal highness’s subsistence.”
Frederick William, in his extreme exasperation, seriously contemplated challenging George II. to a duel. ”

“ Not only were the Goliaths of his own dominions impressed into the service, but big men in all parts of Europe were coaxed, bribed, or kidnapped by Frederick's recruiting officers. No present was so acceptable to him as a giant, and by the gift of a six-footer more than one prince bought his everlasting favor. Rough, brutal tyrant though he was, Frederick William was an able and energetic ruler. He did much to consolidate the power of Prussia, and at his death in 1740 left to his successor a considerably extended dominion, and a splendid army of 80,000 men. ”

“ Badly educated, disliked by his parents, to whom he grew up almost a stranger, and surrounded from the day of his arrival in England by malcontents, parasites and flatterers, it would have needed a much stronger man than Frederick to resist the evil influences around him. His public utterances, and there is no real ground for doubting their sincerity, go to show that he was a prince of liberal and enlightened views, a friend of peace and a lover of England. It is probable that, had he been spared to ascend the throne, he would have made a better king than either his father or grandfather. ”

“ Poland, ever in turmoil, was at this time choosing a king. The emperor advocated the claims of August of Saxony. France urged Stanislaus, a Polish noble, whose daughter had married the French dauphin. War ensued between France and Germany. Frederick William became the ally of the emperor. An army of ten thousand men, admirably equipped and organized, was upon the march for the Rhine, to act with the emperor against France. The Crown Prince was very eager to join the expedition, and obtained permission to do so. ”

“ Thus he obtained a taste of that military renown which he had so greatly coveted. The king was, at this time, at his head-quarters at Schweidnitz, about one hundred and twenty miles from Glogau. A courier, dispatched immediately from the captured town, communicated to him, at five o’clock in the afternoon, the glad tidings of the brilliant victory.
Frederick was overjoyed. In the exuberance of his satisfaction, he sent Prince Leopold a present of ten thousand dollars. To each private soldier he gave half a guinea, and to the officers sums in proportion. ”

“ A man’s moral nature must be indeed obtuse who could thus recommend the compulsion of a peaceable citizen to act the part of a traitor to his own country, under the alternative of having his house fired and his wife and children massacred.
Winter was now approaching. The Austrians in Saxony made a desperate attack upon Prince Henry, and were routed with much loss. The shattered Austrian army retired to Bohemia for winter quarters. Under the circumstances, it was a victory of immense importance to Frederick. ”

“ The dust is like a dense cloud, which renders us invisible to the eyes of the by-standers. In addition to this, we travel like the angels, without sleep, and almost without food. Judge, then, what my condition must be.”
While on this journey to Holland the Crown Prince was one day dining with a prince of Lippe-Bückeburg. Freemasonry became one of the topics of conversation at the table. King Frederick William denounced the institution in his usual style of coarse vituperation, as tomfoolery, atheism, and every thing else that was bad. ”

“ Their wings of foragers and skirmishers were widely extended, so that the hungry army swept with desolation a breadth of country reaching out many leagues. Though the Austrian army was traversing the friendly territory of Bohemia, still Prince Charles was anxious to leave behind him no resources for Frederick to glean. Frederick, with his army, pressed along, following the wide-spread trail of his foes. The Austrians, with great skill, selected every commanding position on which to erect their batteries, and hurl back a storm of shot and shell into the bosoms of their pursuers. ”

“ In a letter which Frederick wrote from Loo to Voltaire, dated August 6th, we find the following sentiments:
“I write from a place where there lived once a great man,27 which is now the Prince of Orange’s house. The demon of ambition sheds its unhappy poisons over his days. He might be the most fortunate of men, and he is devoured by chagrins in his beautiful palace here, in the middle of his gardens and of a brilliant court.” ”

“ At length Prince Charles, having lost nine thousand in dead and wounded, seven thousand prisoners, sixteen thousand in all, sixty-six cannon, seventy-three flags and standards, beat a retreat. Rapidly his bleeding and exhausted troops marched back through Hohenfriedberg, entered the mountain defiles, and sought refuge, a thoroughly beaten army, among the fortresses of Bohemia. Frederick remained the undisputed victor of the field. Five thousand of his brave soldiers lay dead or wounded upon the plain. Even his stoical heart was moved by the greatness of the victory. ”

“ He was the son of wealthy parents in Berlin, and had been a preacher. The death of a beloved wife, leaving him with an only daughter, had plunged him into the profoundest melancholy. Frederick, when Crown Prince, took a great fancy to him, making him nominally his reader, giving him charge of his library. He is represented as a man of small figure, genial, and affectionate, of remarkable vivacity, very courteous, and one who was ever careful never, by word or action, to give pain to others.
48 His next younger brother, Augustus William, who had accompanied him on the expedition. ”