Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover
Ernest Augustus was King of Hanover from 20 June 1837 until his death in 1851. As the fifth son of George III of the United Kingdom and Hanover, he initially seemed unlikely to become a monarch, but none of his older brothers had a legitimate son. When his brother William IV, who ruled both kingdoms, died in 1837, his niece Victoria inherited the British throne under British succession law, while Ernest succeeded in Hanover under Salic law, which barred women from the succession. This ended the personal union between Britain and Hanover that had begun in 1714. He remained heir presumptive to the British throne until the birth of Victoria, Princess Royal in 1840.
Ernest was born in London but was sent to Hanover in his adolescence for his education and military training. While serving with Hanoverian forces near Tournai against Revolutionary France, he received a disfiguring facial wound. He was created Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale in 1799. Although his mother, Queen Charlotte, disapproved of his marriage in 1815 to her twice-widowed niece, Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, it proved happy. The eldest son of George III, the Prince of Wales, had one child, Charlotte, who was expected to become the British queen, but she died in 1817, giving Ernest some prospect of succeeding to the British and Hanoverian thrones. However, his elder brother Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, fathered the eventual British heir, Victoria, in 1819 shortly before the birth of Ernest's only child, George.
Ernest was an active member of the House of Lords, where he maintained an extremely conservative record. There were persistent allegations that he had murdered his valet, had fathered a son by his sister Sophia, and intended to take the British throne by murdering Victoria. Following the death of William IV, Ernest became Hanover's first resident ruler since George I. He had a generally successful fourteen-year reign but excited controversy near its start when he voided the liberal constitution granted before his reign and dismissed the Göttingen Seven, including the Brothers Grimm, from their professorial positions for protesting. In 1848, the King put down an attempted revolution. Hanover joined the German customs union in 1850 despite Ernest's reluctance. Ernest died the next year and was succeeded by his son, George V.
Early life (1771–1799)
Ernest was born on 5 June 1771 at Buckingham House, London, the fifth son of King George III and Queen Charlotte. He was baptised on 1 July at St James's Palace. His sponsors were Duke Ernest of Mecklenburg, Moritz of Saxe-Gotha, and the Hereditary Princess of Hesse-Kassel. After leaving the nursery, he lived with his two younger brothers, Prince Adolphus and Prince Augustus, and a tutor in a house on Kew Green, near his parents' residence at Kew Palace.Though the King never left England in his life, he sent his younger sons to Germany in their adolescence. According to the historian John Van der Kiste, 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. At the age of fifteen, Ernest and his two younger brothers were sent to the University of Göttingen, located in his father's Electorate of Hanover. Ernest proved a keen student and after being tutored privately for a year, while learning German, he attended lectures at the university. Though King George ordered that the princes' household be run along military lines and that they follow the university's rules, the merchants of the electorate 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 the Prussian Army. 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." Commissioned into the Hanoverian Army at the rank of lieutenant, Ernest learned cavalry drill and tactics under Captain Karl von Linsingen of the 9th Light Dragoons and proved to be an excellent horseman, as well as a good shot. After only two months of training, Freytag was so impressed by the Prince's progress that he appointed him as a captain in the regiment. Ernest was supposed to receive infantry training, but the King, also impressed by his son's prowess, allowed him to remain as a cavalryman.
In March 1792, the King commissioned Ernest as a colonel in the 9th Light Dragoons. The Prince served in the Low Countries during the War of the First Coalition under his elder brother Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, the supreme commander of a Coalition army of British, Hanoverian and Austrian troops. In a skirmish with the French army near the Wallonian town of Tournai in August 1793, he sustained a sabre wound to the head, which resulted in a disfiguring scar. At the Battle of Tourcoing on 18 May 1794, his left arm was injured by a French cannonball passing close by him. In the days after the battle, the sight in his left eye faded. In June, he was sent to England 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 Coalition troops retreated slowly through the Dutch Republic towards Germany. By February 1795, they had reached Hanover. Ernest remained in Hanover over the next year, holding 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 England. There, Ernest consulted eye surgeon Wathen Waller, but Waller apparently found his condition inoperable, as no operation took place. In England, Ernest repeatedly sought to be allowed to join Coalition forces on the Continent, even threatening to join the Yeomanry Cavalry as a private, but both the King and the Duke of York refused him permission. Ernest did not want to rejoin the Hanoverian Army, as they were not then involved in the fighting. In addition, Freytag was seriously ill and Ernest was unwilling to serve under his likely successor, Johann Ludwig, Reichsgraf von Wallmoden-Gimborn.
Duke of Cumberland
Military commander
On 23 April 1799, George III created Prince Ernest Augustus Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale and Earl of Armagh, and Ernest was granted an allowance of £12,000 a year, equivalent to £ in. Though he was made a lieutenant general in both the British and Hanoverian armies, he remained in England and with a seat in the House of Lords entered into a political career. A High Tory, he soon became a leader of the Tories' right wing. King George had feared that Ernest, like some of his elder 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 arose. 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 Britain declared war on France a year after the Treaty of Amiens was signed, Frederick appointed Ernest to the more important South-West 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 Acts of Union 1800 had given Ireland representation in Parliament, but existing law prevented 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 Coalition forces fighting against France, but was sent to the Continent only as an observer. In 1807, he advocated sending British troops to prevent the French and their allies from capturing the Swedish-held city of Stralsund. The Grenville ministry refused to send any troops; shortly afterwards, the ministry fell and the new prime minister William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland agreed to send Ernest with 20,000 troops. However, they were sent too late, as a French-led army captured Stralsund from the Swedish before Ernest and his troops could reach the city. Ernest was promoted to general in the British Army in 1808, backdated to 1805.
Sellis incident and Weymouth controversy
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 join 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 that 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. Both Roger Fulford and John Van der Kiste, who wrote books about George III's children, ascribe part of the animus and fear towards the Duke to the fact that he did not conduct love affairs in public, as did his elder 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 an election to the House of Commons, 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. Following this, Ernest received ultimate promotion, to Field Marshal, on 26 November 1813.