Bringing Them Up Royal: How the Royals Raised their Children from 1066 to the Present Day

by David Cohen

  Today, John Locke is best known as a philosopher but he was also a fellow of the Royal Society and twice served on its council. He trained as a doctor and helped develop some techniques to prevent spontaneous abortions so it is perhaps surprising that Anne and Mary never consulted him. By 1690, Locke was seen as an expert on children and often was asked by aristocrats to advise them on how to bring up their young. He stressed it was the duty of parents to educate their children well as the nation’s future depended on this. It was his ambition to provide ‘a helping hand to promote everywhere that way of training up youth ... which is the easiest, shortest, and likeliest to produce virtuous, useful, and able men in their distinct callings’.

  We are born without innate ideas, Locke argued, so everything depends on experience. Parents had to start educating their children from birth and should learn to observe their offspring meticulously. The attentive parent would get a sense of the abilities and inclinations of their child and could therefore sensibly plan their education. According to Locke, they should pay great attention to the child ‘in those seasons of perfect freedom’ when the child played.

  Parents should answer questions patiently and never mock or embarrass a child as ‘children are strangers to all we are acquainted with, and all the things they meet with are at first unknown to them, as they were to us’. Locke was a realist, however, and concluded, ‘in many cases, all that we can do or should aim at is to make the best of what nature has given.’ Great expectations were not always sensible.

  Like Winnicott two-and-a-half centuries later, Locke stressed the value of play. For him it was a question of freedom. Children loved to play games not just because they excite their imagination, he claimed, but that it is ‘liberty alone which gives the true relish and delight to their ordinary play-games’. If children were forced to play, they would soon tire of the games imposed on them, which would be no fun at all. He claimed that children wanted to be treated rationally and parents should realise ‘earlier perhaps than we think’ that they become ‘sensible of praise and commendation’. Anticipating modern psychologists such as John B. Watson, B. F. Skinner and Hans Eysenck, Locke argued it was better to reward a child for doing something well than to punish him for doing something badly. Parents should ‘double the reward’ of praise by commending their children in front of others. If they had to criticise or punish, they should do so in private.

  Locke suggested parents discuss a child’s mistakes and misdemeanours and deal with them ‘as a strange monstrous matter that it could not be imagined he would have done and so shame him out of it’. He was utterly opposed to beatings.

  Locke also turned his attention to the duties of the upper class. Gentlemen had to serve their country. Parents were duty-bound to train their children (who would, after all, be running the country) in moral and political knowledge, as well as ‘the arts of government’. A gentleman had to know some law, some history and how to behave on the battlefield.

  When King William III died in 1702, Anne took the throne. By now, it was obvious that she would not have any more children, so Sophia of Hanover would inherit. Sophia’s son George became second in line. He was forty-one years old, knew nothing of England and could not even speak the language well.

  Ironically, there was still living a man who had ruled England and could speak perfect English. Richard Cromwell had returned to England in 1680 and lived quietly off the income from his estate in Hursley. Of course, there was no possibility of restoring the Cromwell ‘dynasty’. One of the last survivors of the Civil War, Richard died peacefully in his bed on 12 July 1712 at the age of eighty-five.

  When Sophia of Hanover died, her son George became Queen Anne’s heir. He was probably the last English king, though perhaps not the last heir, to arrange a murder – and get away with it.

  5

  The Hanoverians (1714–1821)

  Four generations of hatred between fathers and sons

  The Tudors and the Stuarts are, in effect, ancient history. In 2014, we shall celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Coronation of George I, Sophia of Hanover’s son. There is a direct line of descent between George and the current Queen. Elizabeth II is the great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, who was herself the great-great-great-granddaughter of George I. We can now trace a very direct case history – and one which shows how an often troubled family managed to hang on to the throne.

  For all their political failures, the Stuarts had been generally loyal to each other until the quarrels over James II’s Catholic faith. The Hanoverians were more successful as monarchs, but, as a family, they were spectacularly dysfunctional. From 1714 to 1820, the kings of England often wanted to throttle their sons, especially the eldest. In his authoritative book on the first four Georges, J. H. Plumb argued that the eighteenth century was marked by extraordinary aggression in every social class and suggests the kings were somehow infected by this mood. It seems a rather vague explanation that ignores the question of what caused individual monarchs to be such destructive fathers.

  Sophia of Hanover left her son, the future George I, for almost a year when he was five because she had to convalesce in Italy, but she corresponded regularly with his governess. In her letters, George’s mother described him as a responsible, conscientious child, who set a good example to his younger brothers and sisters. Her son either changed as he grew up or she had very little sense of his real personality.

  By the time George was a teenager, he was at odds with his domineering father, who ordered him to marry his first cousin, Sophia Dorothea of Celle. The consequences of this marriage would be considerable for the royals so it must be put in context. Politically, it made sense: the marriage would make Hanover richer and could lead to joining the territories of Hanover and Celle. George’s mother opposed the match because she looked down on Sophia Dorothea’s mother; the minor German aristocracy were major snobs. She wrote: ‘the marriage is repugnant to the boy’ and suggested they insist on a vast dowry if he was to be forced to tie the knot with a social inferior. For her part, Sophia Dorothea’s mother implored her husband not to send their daughter to Hanover, which she seemed to view as an outer circle of Hell. However, the political advantages were so great that both mothers were overruled. Sophia Dorothea may have been a provincial nobody but the philosopher Leibniz called her ‘a divine beauty’.

  In 1683, Sophia Dorothea bore a son, who was christened George Augustus. The following year, George’s father made a decision which was typically divisive. He adopted the law of primogeniture for Hanover so that his eldest son would inherit Hanover and Celle, while his younger son would not even inherit one acre. The two boys, who had once been close, became very hostile towards each other. It was the first of the many cruelties Hanoverian fathers inflicted on their sons.

  George’s marriage to Sophia Dorothea began to disintegrate soon after she bore him a daughter in 1687. He neglected her in favour of his mistress. It was partly a question of bulk: George liked his women plump and complacent. Sophia Dorothea begged George to return to her, but he refused. The too-thin Sophia Dorothea became embittered and began to dally with a Swedish aristocrat, Count Philip Christoph von Königsmarck. He was twenty-three years old, a good soldier and often at court. Seeing how unhappy she was, Königsmarck declared his undying love and Sophia decided to elope with him. Perhaps because she was a provincial, she did not have the good sense to be discreet and simply enjoy a quiet affair. Maybe she also wanted to hurt her husband.

  George got to know of the lovers’ plan and had no intention of allowing himself to be humiliated, even if he did not love his wife. Then mysteriously, on 2 July 1694, Königsmarck disappeared and was never seen again. The rumour spread that he had been killed with George’s connivance. Königsmarck’s body was thrown into the river Leine, apparently weighed down with stones so that it would not bob back up to the surface. One courtier, Don Nicolò Montalbano, was paid 150,000 thalers (about 100 times the annual salary of the highest-paid minister in Hanover
). Later rumours claimed that Königsmarck was not drowned but hacked to pieces and buried beneath the Hanover palace floorboards. George realised that it would damage his chances of inheriting the throne of England should he become known to be a killer and so he denied everything and spread the rumour that robbers had murdered the Count.

  A novel written in 1708 dramatised what became one of the scandals of the century. Then an account written in 1754 suggested the real villain was the plump Countess of Platen. This anonymous version of events is not necessarily reliable, according to a thorough thesis by John Veale, written in 2001

  In 1898, Ernest Henderson in the American Historical Review examined research on the murder and the attempt to blame the Countess. He made fun of a number of theories, especially a French one which claimed Königsmarck had been thrown alive into a hot oven. More seriously, Henderson alleged much material that would reveal the truth had been destroyed on the orders of the Electors of Hanover who, of course, became the Kings of England – ‘They were determined that no written records on this matter should remain’. Some sources even claimed a nice gory touch – that George had used Königsmarck’s bones to make a stool on which he liked to rest his feet.

  George’s marriage to Sophia Dorothea was dissolved in 1694 and she was blamed as the guilty party. With her father’s approval, George then had his ex-wife imprisoned in Ahlden House near Celle. Sophia Dorothea’s admirer Leibniz wrote that ‘they would never have believed her so guilty at Celle if her letters [to her lover Königsmarck] had not been produced’. Her punishment was severe: she was not allowed to see her children or her father, not permitted to remarry and only allowed to walk within the mansion and its courtyard. She could, however, ride in a carriage outside her castle under guard escort.

  Sophia Dorothea’s son George was eleven years old when his father imprisoned his mother. This is the kind of event the Life Events Scale does not begin to contemplate. She wrote to her husband saying that she repented of what she had done and begged him to let her see him ‘and embrace our dear children’. Her ex-husband remained unmoved, however, and never saw her again. Their son resented his father’s actions and the fact that his mother had been humiliated. He infuriated his father by keeping a portrait of his mother in his room. Again the family history of the royals offers extreme examples well beyond usual case histories. Few psychologists have been able to study cases where one parent has another imprisoned and kept away from their children for over thirty years. Sophia died in 1726. George was never allowed to see his mother again. He had been the victim of a ‘custody battle’ and the damage inflicted would affect his own behaviour towards his eldest son.

  George the jailer did not blame himself one jot for these catastrophes. Instead, he blamed his parents for forcing him into a loveless marriage and vowed not to make the same mistake with his son – the boy would have to meet and desire his bride-to-be. It was one of his few endearing decisions. So, in June 1705, using the false name of ‘Monsieur de Busch’, George visited Caroline of Ansbach. The English envoy to Hanover, Edmund Poley, reported the young man was so impressed by ‘the good character he had of her that he would not think of anybody else’. Caroline was clever, even intellectual, and counted Leibniz among her friends. George proposed and was accepted. On 2 September 1705, the couple married.

  The bridegroom quickly forgot what his father had done to protect him from a loveless marriage, though, and they were soon at odds. The younger George was keen to fight against France in Flanders, but his father would not allow him to join the army until he had a son and heir. George and Caroline duly obliged when, in early 1707, Caroline gave birth to a son who was christened Frederick, but her husband was still not permitted to join the army.

  Caroline then gave birth to three daughters and one other son. The couple were devoted to their children, with one exception. That exception was their oldest son, Frederick, and they were initially at least not to blame because, yet again, George’s father behaved in a cruel way: he decided to keep Frederick in Hanover, well away from his parents.

  These Continental melodramas did not escape Queen Anne’s attention. She refused to see any of the Hanoverians, which suggests that she thought there was some truth in the rumours that George was a murderer. As a staunch Protestant, though, she felt it would be better to have a killer on the throne of England than a Catholic. After all, some murderers like Henry I, Edward IV and Henry VIII had been decent kings. It was now twenty years since Königsmarck had died and the scandal was largely forgotten.

  After Anne died in 1714, the Elector of Hanover came to England with his eldest son. George I was crowned at Westminster, though there was no great enthusiasm among his new people. Over a century earlier, James I had been a foreigner but he spoke good English despite his heavy Scottish accent. For the next 200 years, many of the kings and queens of England spoke better German than English – and not one of their wives was born in England. Caroline of Ansbach became Queen, as did Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Caroline of Brunswick, Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen and Alexandra of Denmark. Victoria, of course, married Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha who, according to some rumours, even had some Jewish blood. They were all immigrants and had come to rule a country that distrusted Johnny Foreigner, even if his headgear happened to be a crown.

  As soon as the new King was crowned, his son was made Prince of Wales. Caroline arrived in Britain in October 1714 with their daughters. She and George begged his father to allow them to bring their eldest son Frederick as well, but George I insisted his grandson stay in Hanover. He was making it very clear who had the ultimate authority. The Prince of Wales was upset and set about making it obvious that, while his father was a German who could not understand the ways of the English, he was no Fritz Foreigner. Absurdly, the Prince claimed that he had not a single drop of blood in his veins that was not English. In fact, his veins contained only one trace element of English blood, as he could count the very English Elizabeth of York among his ancestors.

  As his English was lamentable, George I insisted on carrying on the affairs of England in French. His Hanoverian advisers all spoke French but a number of his English ministers did not, so all state papers had to be produced in two languages: French and English. The only Hanoverian who spoke good English, French and German was the Prince of Wales so his father had to rely on him and invited him to sit in on meetings of the ruling Council. This gave the Prince more power than his father wanted him to have. Now the battle between the two men, which had festered since the Prince’s father had imprisoned his mother, became more bitter.

  The new King made a poor impression on his new subjects. The Earl of Chesterfield wrote that George was ‘an honest dull German gentleman ... Lazy and inactive even in his pleasures which were, therefore, lowly and sensual’. The most stylish account of the court comes from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the only woman in history to get a husband because she could quote Horace in the original Latin. She wrote of George I:

  In private life he would have been called an honest blockhead; and Fortune, that made him a king, added nothing to his happiness, only prejudiced his honesty, and shortened his days. No man was ever more free from ambition; he loved money, but loved to keep his own, without being rapacious of other men’s. He would have grown rich by saving, but was incapable of laying schemes for getting; he was more properly dull than lazy, and would have been so well contented to have remained in his little town of Hanover, that if the ambition of those about him had not been greater than his own, we should never have seen him in England: and the natural honesty of his temper, joined with the narrow notions of a low education, made him look upon his acceptance of the crown as an act of usurpation, which was always uneasy to him. But he was carried by the stream of the people about him, in that, as in every other action of his life. He could speak no English, and was past the age of learning it. Our customs and laws were all mysteries to him, which he neither tried to understand, nor was capable of understanding if he had endeavo
ured it. He was passively good-natured, and wished all mankind enjoyed quiet, if they would let him do so.

  George’s mistress was even duller and a coward too, Lady Mary sniped. The woman refused to come to England as she thought its natives ‘were accustomed to use their kings barbarously, might chop off his head in the first fortnight’. As a result, George I often travelled back to his native Hanover and saw far more of Caroline and George’s son Frederick than the child’s parents did. Initially, that upset them as they missed their son.

  A caring or indeed sensible father would not have provoked another row but George I did just that. In July 1716, he refused to make his son Regent as the Prince had every historical precedent to expect. Instead, he was given limited powers, as ‘Guardian and Lieutenant of the Realm’. The young George was furious, as well as upset by the fact that his father was going to see his son. He decided to needle his father in return and courted popularity with the natives. As part of his campaign, the Prince of Wales dined in public at Hampton Court, which seemed to impress his subjects.

  Two events boosted the Prince’s popularity. When Caroline became pregnant again, she let it be known that the child would be born in England. There was much public sympathy for her when the baby was stillborn. The Prince then had what might be cynically called a ‘lucky break’. While he was at the Drury Lane Theatre, an assassin tried to kill him. Instead of being delighted his son was safe, the King became jealous because the young man was now popular with the public.

  When the Prince’s second son, Prince George William, was born a few months after the Drury Lane incident, the King hit on a novel provocation. Though he knew his son disliked the man, George I made the Duke of Newcastle one of the child’s sponsors at the christening. There seems to have been a misunderstanding between the Prince and the Duke. The Duke thought the Prince said: ‘I shall fight you out.’ (What was actually said, no one can precisely report.) The Duke took it as an insult and challenged the Prince to a duel, which gave the King a chance to indulge his penchant for imprisoning members of his own family. George I confined his son and daughter-in-law to their apartments in St James’s Palace just as he had confined Sophia Dorothea. The heir to the throne could not risk his life fighting a duel, the King ruled. In Hanover, no one would have objected but someone now reminded the King of a legal nicety that a German would not know, coming from barbarous parts. In 1679, Charles II had agreed to the Habeas Corpus Act, which ruled the state could not detain someone without legal cause. The Prince could therefore sue his father for false imprisonment.