The Royal Dukes and Princesses of the Family of George III, Volume 2 by Percy Fitzgerald

Author:Percy Fitzgerald [Fitzgerald, Percy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781411455344
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Published: 2017-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

Book the Eighth

DUKE OF KENT

CHAPTER I

LIFE ABROAD AND AT HOME

OF all the royal brethren, there was one destined certainly to be most unfortunate and unlucky, viz. Edward, Duke of Kent. Had he lived longer he might have been the most fortunate of all the brothers, after the eldest, and have sat on the throne. After the accession of George III. the succession to the crown shifted in the most curious way. The heir presumptive was the Prince of Wales. When he was regent and virtually king, the Princess Charlotte was heiress. On her death the Duke of York was the next in succession, and on his death the Duke of Kent. He did not furnish any scandals for the public, and he lived in honourable retirement, accepting with a quiet protest the strange prejudice and persecution, as he held it to be, which his own family exercised against him. His course is a little uninteresting; and, as a simple matter of justice to her majesty's father, it will be an agreeable duty to set forth his career in a suitable light.

Nothing is less known than his life. Father as he was of our queen, it might have been expected that a certain amount of interest or curiosity would have been attached to his career. Yet it may be assumed that the general mass of her subjects know next to nothing of their queen's father, save that he was an amiable and honourable person, who had debts like his brothers, and was the husband of the better known Duchess of Kent. Yet it is a fact that this prince served his country well, both on home service and in the field; some of his exploits were beyond mediocrity. He was an earlier reformer of the army than his brother, the Duke of York. He enjoyed the sympathy of his family, and incurred the hearty dislike of his parents, from reasons as mysterious as those alluded to by Shylock. He received a fair share of the good things that were to be appropriated among himself and his brethren.

Edward Augustus, fourth son of George III., was born at Buckingham House, at noon, on November 2, 1767.

The tutor selected for him was Mr. Fisher, late Canon of Windsor, who was later to be preceptor to the spirited Princess Charlotte in full-blown importance as Bishop of Salisbury, the great "U.P." in short. Mr. Neale happened to call on this rather pompous prelate at his house in Seymour Street in the year 1824. He found him old, feeble, and harassed by "a perpetual cough." The conversation and the reminiscence he indulged in is so characteristic of "the great U.P." and the young princess' sagacity, that it may be quoted here:

"On a sudden an elderly clergyman observed that he had that morning seen the little Princess Victoria, during her drive. The bishop's attention was roused, he asked question after question: how the little princess looked—whether she seemed cheerful—whom she resembled—was her likeness to the late duke so

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