Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester
Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, was a member of the British royal family. He was the third son of King George V and Queen Mary, and was a younger brother of kings Edward VIII and George VI. He served as the 11th governor-general of Australia from 1945 to 1947, the only prince to hold the post.
Henry was the first son of a British monarch to be educated at school, where he excelled at sports, and went on to attend Eton College, after which he was commissioned in the 10th Royal Hussars, a regiment he hoped to command. However, his military career was frequently interrupted by royal duties, and he was nicknamed "the unknown soldier" due to his low profile. While big-game shooting in Kenya, he met the future pilot Beryl Markham, with whom he became romantically involved. The court put pressure on him to end the relationship, but he had to pay regular hush-money to avert a public scandal. In 1935, also under parental pressure, he married Lady Alice Montagu Douglas Scott, with whom he had two sons, princes William and Richard.
From 1939 to 1940, Henry served in France as a liaison officer to Lord Gort. He performed military and diplomatic duties during the rest of the war, then in 1945 was appointed as Australia's governor-general at the request of Prime Minister John Curtin. The post had originally been offered to his younger brother the Duke of Kent, who died in an air crash. Henry attended the coronation of his niece Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 and carried out several overseas tours, often accompanied by his wife. From 1965, he became incapacitated by a number of strokes. Upon his death, he was succeeded as the Duke of Gloucester by his only living son, Richard.
Henry was the last surviving son of King George V and Queen Mary. His widow, who died at the age of 102, became the longest-lived member of the British royal family.
Early life
Henry was born at 7:30 am on 31 March 1900 at York Cottage on the Sandringham Estate, during the reign of his great-grandmother Queen Victoria. His father was the Duke of York, the only surviving son of the Prince and Princess of Wales. His mother was the Duchess of York, the only daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Teck. At the time of his birth, he was fifth in the line of succession to the throne, behind his grandfather, father and two elder brothers.He was baptised in the private chapel of Windsor Castle on 17 May by Randall Thomas Davidson, Bishop of Winchester. He was informally known to his family as Harry.
Childhood and education
As a young boy, Henry suffered from ill health very much like his older brother Albert. He also had knock knees, and had to wear painful leg splints. He was an extremely nervous child, and was often victim to spontaneous fits of crying or giggling, and also like his brother, Henry had a combination of speech disorders. They both had rhotacism, which prevented them from pronouncing the sound r, but while Albert's pronunciation was slightly reminiscent of the "French r", Henry was completely unable to pronounce it, causing the intended r to sound like . On top of this, Henry also had a nasal lisp and an unusually high-pitched tone, resulting in a very distinctive voice.By 1909, Henry's poor health had become a serious concern for his parents. He was very small for his age and was prone to get very aggressive colds. "You must remember that he is rather fragile and must be treated differently to his two elder brothers who are more robust", wrote Prince George to Henry's tutor, Henry Peter Hansell.
On 6 May 1910, Prince George ascended the throne as George V, and Henry became the third in line to the throne. The King was persuaded by Hansell that it would be good for Henry's character to attend school, where he could interact with boys his age. The King, having previously rejected this proposition for his two elder sons, agreed on the basis that it would help him "behave like a boy and not like a little child".
Henry thus became the first son of a British monarch to attend school. After three days at St Peter's Court in Broadstairs as a day boy, Hansell, noticing he liked it, asked the King to send him as a boarder, to which he agreed.
Henry spent three years at St Peter's Court. Academically, he was not very bright, although he did show a particular aptitude in mathematics. Henry's sole interest became sports, particularly cricket and football. "All you write about is your everlasting football of which I am heartily sick", wrote his mother, answering a fully detailed letter from Henry about a match.
In September 1913, Henry started at Eton College. During the First World War, Crown Prince Leopold of Belgium, later Leopold III, was a member of his house. His studies did not improve, but his nerves and disposition did. He made friends through his enthusiasm for sports, and his masters were very pleased with him, noting in his report that he was "thoroughly willing, cheerful, modest & obedient". To his father, these values were the most important, having no time or interest in what he called "intellectuals".
By the time he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1919 with his brother Albert, Henry had outgrown all his brothers, both in height and size, and enjoyed very good health. Their stay at Cambridge lasted just one year and was very uneventful for both of them, as they were not allowed to live in college with the other undergraduates, due to their father's fear of their mixing with undesirable company.
Military career
Unlike his brothers, Henry joined the Army rather than the Royal Navy. He attended the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, in 1919, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the King's Royal Rifle Corps on 16 July 1919. On 16 July 1921 he was promoted to lieutenant in the 10th Royal Hussars, with whom he continued to serve. Though he desired to serve in more active roles as a soldier, his position as a senior member of the royal family effectively ruled out any such options. He retained an interest in sport and The Cricketer reported in August 1921 that the touring Philadelphians had had the honour of being presented to Prince Henry at The Oval.Henry was promoted to captain on 11 May 1927, and was appointed a personal aide-de-camp to his father on 2 August 1929. On 3 March 1931, he was appointed a staff captain and was seconded for service with the 2nd Cavalry Brigade. He was brevetted to major on 2 August 1934, and upon his father's Silver Jubilee the following May, was appointed Colonel-in-Chief of the Gloucestershire Regiment. On 6 July 1935, he was promoted to the substantive rank of major, his final rank as an actively serving officer. On 23 June 1936, he was appointed a personal aide-de-camp to his eldest brother, Edward VIII.
Following his brother's abdication and the accession of his brother the Duke of York as George VI, Henry was effectively retired from active duty, and received a ceremonial promotion to major-general on 1 January 1937, skipping three ranks. He was also granted a Royal Air Force commission as air vice-marshal the same day. He continued to serve as a personal aide-de-camp to the new king, receiving this appointment on 1 February. On 12 March, he received the colonelcy of his former regiment, the 10th Royal Hussars, along with the colonelcies of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and the Gordon Highlanders. On 28 May, he received an honorary appointment as a captain in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, followed by his appointment on 10 November to the honorary colonelcies of the Ceylon Planters' Rifle Corps and the Ceylon Light Infantry.
Following the outbreak of World War II, he joined the British Expeditionary Force, and was appointed as a Chief Liaison Officer on 4 September 1939. In January 1940, he was appointed to the colonelcies of the Ulster Anti-Aircraft Regiments of the Royal Artillery in the Territorial Army. He was slightly wounded in 1940 when his staff car was attacked from the air. In August 1940, he was appointed Chief Liaison Officer, GHQ Home Forces. He also became second-in-command of the 20th Light Armoured Brigade that year, and was promoted to lieutenant-general on 17 September 1941. On 27 October 1944, he was promoted to the rank of full general.
He was appointed a Field Marshal in 1955 and a Marshal of the Royal Air Force in 1958.
Duke of Gloucester
On 31 March 1928, his father created him Duke of Gloucester, Earl of Ulster and Baron Culloden, three titles that linked him with three parts of the United Kingdom, namely England, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Henry visited Canada in 1928.Before his marriage, Henry's greatest ambition was to someday command his regiment, the 10th Royal Hussars, or at least spend as much time in the army as possible. Although he was a capable soldier, as the King's son he was prevented from joining his regiment abroad, and this meant he was generally seen as an outsider to his fellow officers. To his increasing despair, he had to fulfill the many royal duties his father assigned him.
In September 1928, Henry left England with his brother Edward, Prince of Wales, to shoot big game in Africa. The brothers parted in Nairobi, where Henry was to stay for a while. There, he was entertained by Mansfield Markham and his wife Beryl Markham. Beryl and Henry soon started an affair. In November, the brothers were recalled to England due to their father's worsening health, and soon after Beryl returned too. At the Grosvenor Hotel, close to Buckingham Palace, the affair continued with Henry openly hosting parties with her in her suite and drinking too much.
The affair, widely known by the London society, shocked the Queen, to the delight of the Prince of Wales who remarked that "for once, Queen Mary's blue-eyed boy was in trouble instead of himself". The King stepped in, thinking that keeping Henry busy would be the best way to end the affair, as would keeping him from drinking too much, too often. That year, he arranged a series of tours for his son to undertake.
In 1929, he went to Japan to confer the Garter on the Emperor, and a year later he attended the coronation of Haile Selassie of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa. In 1934 George V made him a Knight of St Patrick, Ireland's chivalric order. It was the second to last time this order was awarded ; at the time of his death, the Duke of Gloucester was the only remaining knight. In 1934, he went to Australia and New Zealand where the people received him with overwhelming enthusiasm that one journalist wrote, " to something very near adoration".