Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was Queen of Great Britain and Ireland as the wife of King George III from their marriage on 8 September 1761 until her death in 1818. The Acts of Union 1800 unified Great Britain and Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. As George's wife, she was also Electress of Hanover until becoming Queen of Hanover on 12 October 1814. Charlotte was Britain's longest-serving queen consort, serving for 57 years and 70 days.
Charlotte was born into the ruling family of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a duchy in northern Germany. In 1760, the young and unmarried George III inherited the British throne. As Charlotte was a minor German princess with no interest in politics, the King considered her a suitable consort, and they married in 1761. The marriage lasted 57 years and produced 15 children, 13 of whom survived to adulthood. They included two future British monarchs, George IV and William IV; as well as Charlotte, Princess Royal, who became Queen of Württemberg; and Prince Ernest Augustus, who became King of Hanover.
Charlotte was a patron of the arts and an amateur botanist who helped expand Kew Gardens. She introduced the Christmas tree to Britain, decorating one for a Christmas party for children of Windsor in 1800. She was distressed by her husband's bouts of physical and mental illness, which became permanent in later life. Charlotte was deeply shocked by the events of the French Revolution and of the ensuing Napoleonic Wars, which threatened the safety and sovereignty of her homeland. Her eldest son, George, was appointed prince regent in 1811 due to the increasing severity of the King's illness. Charlotte died at Kew Palace in November 1818, with several of her children at her side. George III died a little over a year later, probably unaware of his wife's death.
Early life
Charlotte was born on 19 May 1744. She was the youngest daughter of Duke Charles Louis Frederick of Mecklenburg, Prince of Mirow, and his wife Princess Elisabeth Albertine of Saxe-Hildburghausen. Mecklenburg-Strelitz was a small north-German duchy in the Holy Roman Empire.The children of Duke Charles were all born at the Unteres Schloss in Mirow.
According to diplomatic reports at the time of her engagement to George III in 1761, Charlotte had received "a very mediocre education" and contemporary Britons including Elizabeth Montagu expressed anxiety about the supposed provinciality of Charlotte's upbringing. Her parents hired notable individuals to tutor their children, among them Gottlob Burchard Genzmer and Friderike Elisabeth von Grabow. Charlotte received instruction in literature, botany, natural history, and languages including French, Italian, and Latin. She was also taught traditional pursuits for upper-class girls, including embroidery, dancing, singing, household management and religionthe latter taught by a priest. Charlotte was also taught to play the harpsichord by composer Johann Georg Linike. The family lived a modest life at Mirow; only after her brother Adolphus Frederick succeeded to the ducal throne, in 1752, did Charlotte gain any experience of princely duties and of court life.
Marriage
When George III succeeded to the throne of Great Britain upon the 1760 death of his grandfather, George II, he was 22 years old and unmarried. His mother, Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, and his advisors were eager to have him settled in marriage.Charlotte was not originally considered as a potential bride, but the Hanoverian Minister in London, Baron Philip Adolphus von Münchausen, suggested her as a candidate, likely due to the positive relations between Hanover and Mecklenburg-Strelitz. The 17-year-old Charlotte appealed as a prospective consort partly because she had been brought up in an insignificant north German duchy and, therefore, would probably have had no experience or interest in power politics or party intrigues. That proved to be the case; to make sure, George III instructed her shortly after their wedding "not to meddle", a precept she dutifully followed.
The King announced to his Council in July 1761, according to the usual form, his intention to wed the Princess, after which a party of escorts, led by the Earl Harcourt, departed for Germany to bring Princess Charlotte to England. They reached Strelitz on 14 August 1761, and were received the next day by Duke Adolphus Frederick IV, Charlotte's brother, at which time the marriage contract was signed by him on the one hand and Lord Harcourt on the other. Charlotte's mother had died on 29 June, after giving encouragement to the betrothal following a correspondence with George III's mother, Princess Augusta.
Three days of public celebrations followed, and on 17 August 1761, Charlotte set out for Britain, accompanied by Adolphus Frederick and the British escort party, among them one of Charlotte's new Ladies of the Bedchamber, Elizabeth Hamilton, 1st Baroness Hamilton of Hameldon. On 22 August, they reached Cuxhaven, where a small fleet awaited to convey them to England. The voyage was extremely difficult; the party encountered three storms at sea and landed at Harwich only on 7 September. They set out at once for London, spent that night in Witham, at the residence of Lord Abercorn, and arrived at 3:30 pm the next day at St. James's Palace in London. They were received by the King and his family at the garden gate, which marked the first meeting of the bride and groom.
At 9:00 pm that same evening, within six hours of her arrival, Charlotte was married to George III. The ceremony was performed at the Chapel Royal, St. James's Palace, by the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Secker. Only the royal family, the party who had travelled from Germany, and a handful of guests were present. George III and Charlotte's coronation was held at Westminster Abbey a fortnight later on 22 September, after a brief honeymoon at Richmond Lodge.
Queen consort
Upon her wedding day, Charlotte spoke little English. However, she quickly learned the language, albeit speaking with a strong German accent. One observer commented, "She is timid at first but talks a lot, when she is among people she knows."Less than a year after the marriage, on 12 August 1762, the Queen gave birth to her first child, George, Prince of Wales. In the course of their marriage, the couple became the parents of 15 children, all but two of whom survived into adulthood.
St James's Palace functioned as the official residence of the royal couple, but the King had recently purchased a nearby property, Buckingham House, located at the western end of St James's Park. More private and compact, the new property stood amid rolling parkland not far from St James's Palace. Around 1762, the King and Queen moved to this residence, which was originally intended as a private retreat. The Queen came to favour this residence, spending so much of her time there that it came to be known as The Queen's House. Indeed, in 1775, an Act of Parliament settled the property on Charlotte in exchange for her rights to Somerset House. Most of the couple's 15 children were born in Buckingham House, although St James's Palace remained the official and ceremonial royal residence.
File:Charlotte1767Cotes.jpg|thumb|upright|left|In 1767, Francis Cotes drew a pastel of Queen Charlotte with her eldest daughter, Charlotte, Princess Royal. Lady Mary Coke called the likeness "so like that it could not be mistaken for any other person".
During her first years in Great Britain, Charlotte's strained relationship with her mother-in-law, Augusta, caused her difficulty in adapting to the life of the British court. Augusta interfered with Charlotte's efforts to establish social contacts by insisting on rigid court etiquette. Furthermore, Augusta appointed many of Charlotte's staff, among whom several were expected to report to Augusta about Charlotte's behaviour. Charlotte turned to her German companions for friends, notably her close confidante Juliane von Schwellenberg. Charlotte's personal correspondence with her brother Charles II, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, revealed the depth of her loneliness and of her frustration with the regulations of royal life.
The King enjoyed country pursuits and riding and preferred to keep his family's residence as much as possible in the then-rural towns of Kew and Richmond. He favoured an informal and relaxed domestic life, to the dismay of some courtiers more accustomed to displays of grandeur and strict protocol. Lady Mary Coke was indignant on hearing, in July 1769, that the King, the Queen, her visiting brother Prince Ernest and Lady Effingham had gone for a walk through Richmond by themselves without any servants: "I am not satisfied in my mind about the propriety of a Queen walking in town unattended."
From 1778, the royal family spent much of their time at a newly constructed residence, the Queen's Lodge at Windsor, opposite Windsor Castle, in Windsor Great Park, where the King enjoyed hunting deer. The Queen was responsible for the interior decoration of their new residence, described by a friend of the royal family and diarist Mary Delany: "The entrance into the first room was dazzling, all furnished with beautiful Indian paper, chairs covered with different embroideries of the liveliest colours, glasses, tables, sconces, in the best taste, the whole calculated to give the greatest cheerfulness to the place."
Charlotte treated her children's attendants with friendly warmth, which is reflected in this note she wrote to her daughters' assistant governess, Mary Hamilton:
My dear Miss Hamilton, What can I have to say? Not much indeed! But to wish you a good morning, in the pretty blue and white room where I had the pleasure to sit and read with you The Hermit, a poem which is such a favourite with me that I have read it twice this summer. Oh! What a blessing to keep good company! Very likely I should not have been acquainted with either poet or poem was it not for you.
Charlotte did have some influence on political affairs through the King. Her influence was discreet and indirect, as demonstrated in the correspondence with her brother Charles. She used her closeness with George III to keep herself informed and to make recommendations for offices. Apparently her recommendations were not direct; she on one occasion, in 1779, asked her brother Charles to burn her letter because the King suspected that a person she had recently recommended for a post was the client of a woman who sold offices. Charlotte particularly interested herself in German issues. She took an interest in the War of the Bavarian Succession, and it is possible that it was due to her efforts that the King supported British intervention in the continuing conflict between Joseph II and Charles Theodore of Bavaria in 1785.