I came across an old Jean Plaidy novel – I haven’t read one for years but, unusually, being short of a book I started reading and am hooked – I may even start to take a more lively interest in the Hanoverians so long as I don’t get mired in Whigs and Tories.
Caroline was George II’s wife. The thing that’s impossible to escape in the fictional account is that Caroline spends a lot of time pretending to be rather dim whilst actually manipulating her husband, George II, in terms of political decision making.
Inevitably I’ve gone off to the history books to find out more. George I and George, then Prince of Wales, had an almighty row and as a consequence George and Caroline were sent away from court. Even worse Caroline was separated from her daughters. She’d already had to leave her son Frederick in Hanover when the family came to England in 1714.
George I died in 1727 at which point George II became king. Caroline formed an alliance with Walpole who held a substantial majority in Parliament. Initially they formed an alliance about the amount that the civil list would pay. During the rest of her life they persuaded the king to do what Walpole wanted. This meant that Caroline had some sort of say in what happened in England. Lord Hervey, Walpole’s political opponent cultivated the king’s mistress and discovered that it didn’t get him very far at all.
Caroline arrived in England as Princess of Wales when George, Elector of Hanover became king of England in 1714. She immediately became the most important woman at court because George I was short of a queen. George I had locked his wife, Sophia Dorothea of Celle, (who was also George’s first cousin) in Ahlden Castle. She’d been there since 1694 on account of her affair with Count von Königsmarck. The count was rather more unfortunate – his body was apparently disposed of in a river. Sophia Dorothea died in 1726. George did bring his half sister and his mistress with him but they hardly counted in terms of the court scene, even though they did gain the names of the Elephant and the Maypole based on their looks.
Initially her court was almost separate from that of her husband – this wasn’t unusually what was different was that she filled it with intellectuals. This must have come as a bit of a surprise after Queens Mary and Anne who weren’t known for their brains. She deliberately sought out Sir Issac Newton and was friends with Jonathan Swift. She also set about trying to improve the lives of the people of England. In 1722 she had all of her children inoculated against small pox – using a cow pox vaccine making the whole thing wildly fashionable. I’m less sure how warmly I feel about the fact that she had all the foundlings in London’s Foundling hospital inoculated before her own children.
Lucy Worsley says that she was the cleverest queen consort to sit on the throne. Walpole commented that he’d taken the “right sow by the ear” when he chose to work with her. Certainly when George went back to Hanover he trusted her sufficiently for her to rule as regent, during which time she wanted a closer look at the penal code of the time. She was liberal in thought and behaviour and demonstrated compassion not only to the country’s imprisoned masses but also tried to plead leniency for the Jacobites in 1715.
Most important of all was that she was able to soothe George’s ruffled feathers, make him believe her words were his ideas and withstand his rudeness to her in public. Whilst she had her husband fooled the public weren’t so easily hoodwinked:
You may strut, dapper George but ’twill all be in vain:
We know ’tis Queen Carline, not you, that reign.
The truth was that everyone apart from her husband knew that she was an intelligent and able consort.
Was she a successful queen? The terms by which queen consorts are judged are not by their capacity to manipulate their spouses but by the children they produce. Caroline was pregnant on at least ten occasions and had eight children. She’d already had a son and three daughters by the time she became Princess of Wales. Her favourite son was William whom history calls Butcher Cumberland. Together with her husband she didn’t much like her eldest son Frederick and was horrible to both him and his wife continuing a Hanoverian traction that would be maintained throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Caroline who had become rather overweight in later years died in November 1737 from a strangulated bowel that was in part the product of poor treatment after the birth of her youngest child. She underwent several rather unpleasant operations without any painkillers, although she did apparently find the fact that her surgeon managed to set his wig on fire with a candle rather amusing. She finally died whilst holding her husband’s hand.
George II announced that no other woman he knew was fit to buckle her shoe – though that hadn’t stopped him from having many mistresses during their marriage or telling Caroline that she should love one mistress because the mistress loved him.
Dennison, Mathew. The First Iron Lady
http://www.lucyworsley.com/poor-queen-caroline-and-her-horrible-death/
The story of the Holland family begins with Robert de Holland from Upholland in Lancashire. He was born about 1283. He was a trusted part of Thomas of Lancaster’s household. He benefitted from being within the Lancaster affinity by acquiring land as well as a wife in the form of Maud de Zouche – a co-heiress.
Thomas died in December 1360. The following year his widow married her cousin Edward, the Black Prince. The Holland children now had access to patronage with a very heavy clout. Thomas (Joan’s son) gained a wealthy and aristocratic bride from the FitzAlan family. More importantly it was the Hollands’ half-brother, Richard, who ascended the throne after Edward III died in 1377.
Thomas’s uncle John (Joan’s second son) was executed at the same time. John Holland had married another wealthy royal cousin, Elizabeth of Lancaster (John of Gaunt’s daughter). This may have been because of the Black Prince’s patronage and it may have been because his mother Joan of Kent got on well with her cousin John of Gaunt. John became Earl of Huntingdon in 1388 and in 1397 became the Duke of Exeter. He was also involved in removing Richard II’s enemies. In John’s case not only had he arrested his uncle Richard FitzAlan (the 11th Earl of Arundel) he has gone to Calais to arrest Thomas of Woodstock, Richard’s youngest Royal uncle. Thomas had died whilst in Calais as pictured in Froissart – the story involves a mattress…
At the beginning of the English Civil War, in 1642, William Cavendish of Bolsover and Welbeck Abbey who was the Earl of Newcastle at that time gave Charles I £10,00 and raised a troop of 200 horsemen. In June of that year William was sent to secure Newcastle. He was on his way to becoming the king’s general in the north and about to start a military dance with Lord Ferndinado Fairfax and his son Sir Thomas Fairfax that would only end in 1644. Not that it was all plain sailing. The slide to war met with opposition and not every local lord was keen on Cavendish’s recruitment campaign.
At the Battle of Marston Moor Newcastle’s Regiment of Foot were killed almost to a man. They remained in formation in the centre of the Royalist line and it is thought defended White Syke Close. The Parliamentarians recognising their bravery asked for their surrender but the regiment refused. By the time the Whitecoats died the battle was already lost – their deaths were futile. They were buried in mass graves where they fell. If you walk the route of the Battle of Marston Moor White Syke Close is marked on the ordinance survey map. Alternatively take advantage of a Country File walk which outlines the battle and leads you on a circular walk, 
This post is for all of you lovely folk who come to my classes in Halifax – so if you’re reading this on the other side of the world, my apologies. As you will probably be aware, having been made homeless due to a change in ownership of our usual venue, I was fortunate to be able to book the Learning Studio in the Piece Hall for the March and April day schools but struggled to find a venue for May.
We will explore Fairfax’s role in the Bishops’ War and the Fairfax position in the escalating dispute between King and Parliament before following his progress from Seacroft Moor to Adwalton.
And a very happy new year to you all. Of course in Scotland before 1600 that would have been 25th March – legally speaking. In England the law wasn’t changed until 1750 when the New Style Calendar Act changed the legal new year and accepted the Gregorian Calendar. The act passed into law in 1751 meaning that 1751 had only 282 days running from 25th March to 31st December. This didn’t mean people didn’t celebrate January 1st it simply meant that the law deemed the new year to begin in March. Its the reason some official documents don’t seem to be able to make their mind up between January and March what the year actually was and provide both option Old Style and New Style.
Percussion has been used on the battle field for a very long time not only to control the marching pace of soldiers but also to pass commands and create fear in the opposing army. Apparently the Europeans learned about drums as a military technique during the Crusades when Saladin used military bands. The crusaders found them somewhat off-putting and recorded as much in their chronicles. The Ottomans are known to have continued the tradition. Kettle drums found their way to Spain which was part of the Ottoman empire until the fifteenth century.
This post is somewhat out of my usual time zone. The nine ladies I have in mind can be found on Stanton Moor in Derbyshire. They are somewhere between three thousand and four thousand years old. This Bronze Age site is part of a larger complex of cairns and stones which spreads across the moor above Birchover.
I always think of Tess of the D’Urbevilles when it comes to the maids milking – but where am I going with this post? Well, I was actually wondering how wealthy the farmer might be if he required eight milkmaids. The advert below from Pamela Horn’s article about the Dorset dairy system suggests that one milk maid could milk sixteen cows.
The swans are a swimming because most of us haven’t been allowed to tuck into one since 1482 when a law was passed saying that only some landowners could keep and eat swans. They all had to be marked by nicks in their beaks. The Queen and the Worshipful Company of Dyers and also Vintners own mute swans – if they’re unmarked and in open water in England and Wales. So if you caught and ate an unmarked swan until 1994 you were technically committing treason. Since then they have been protected by the 1981 act which protects wildlife from the predation of the culinary adventurous.