WEBVTT - The Princess That England Lost 0:00:00.680 --> 0:00:03.840 Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio 0:00:04.080 --> 0:00:08.440 and Grimm and Mild from Aaronminkie. Listener discretion is advised. 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:23.280 Princess Charlotte of Wales, the only legitimate grandchild of King 0:00:23.360 --> 0:00:26.720 George the Third of England, the woman who was directly 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:30.159 in line to become Queen of England herself, died in 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:34.960 the early hours of the morning on November sixth, eighteen seventeen, 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:40.080 and plunged the entire nation into mourning. She was the 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:43.839 beloved daughter of the country, the bright light of a 0:00:43.920 --> 0:00:47.160 nation that had been battered down by war with Napoleon. 0:00:47.720 --> 0:00:51.880 Her grandfather, George the Third, had gone mad, and her father, 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:57.240 the hedonistic and philandering Prince Regent future King George the Fourth, 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:02.720 was hated by the people. She alone, Charlotte had been 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:07.280 their hope for the future. The country had celebrated with 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:11.200 her when she married Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg selfeld 0:01:11.480 --> 0:01:14.720 and eagerly placed bets on the sex of her infant. 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:18.480 When it was announced that she was pregnant, no one 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:23.280 was prepared to lose her. Charlotte was just twenty one 0:01:23.360 --> 0:01:26.200 years old and she had been married to her husband 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:30.759 for only a year. She died just hours after giving 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:35.319 birth to a stillborn son, a child that, had he lived, 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:39.960 would have become a King of England. After her death, 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:45.600 stores closed for two weeks, and not just stores, the courts, 0:01:45.800 --> 0:01:50.560 the Royal Exchange docs even gambling parlors closed. On the 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:54.360 day of her funeral, Linnen drapers ran out of black 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:59.680 cloth because frivolous decoration was forbidden during official morning at 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:02.720 a sir and point. Ribbon makers had to petition the 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:06.400 government to shorten the morning period to prevent them from 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:11.960 going bankrupt. Poets ranging from Felicia Harman, Letitia Elizabeth Langdon, 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:16.560 Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, they all wrote about Charlotte's death. 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:21.320 In Byron's poem, he wrote a stanza that goes scions 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:25.680 of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou fond hope of 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:30.400 many nations? Art thou dead, could not the grave, forget 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:36.919 thee and lay low some majestic less beloved head. The 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:40.079 physician who had been attending to Charlotte as she delivered 0:02:40.080 --> 0:02:43.120 her child, and who had been treating her as she died, 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:48.000 was a man named Sir Richard Croft, a baron. Though 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:52.520 female midwives had traditionally delivered infants. At the turn of 0:02:52.520 --> 0:02:57.040 the nineteenth century, it became fashionable to have male midwives, 0:02:57.400 --> 0:03:03.200 sometimes called a coucher, deliver one's child. Three months after 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:07.040 Charlotte's death, her loss and the grief of the entire 0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:11.840 nation continued to weigh heavily on Dr Croft. While he 0:03:11.880 --> 0:03:14.600 was in the home of another patient, with the woman 0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:18.840 delivering a child upstairs, Croft went down to their study, 0:03:19.280 --> 0:03:22.800 sat in a high backed chair, and shot himself in 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:27.160 the head with a gun. For all of the extreme 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:31.760 heartache that Princess Charlotte's death caused at the time, today 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:37.720 she is rarely discussed. She's a historical footnote, eclipsed by 0:03:37.800 --> 0:03:44.360 another bright, romantic young woman, the future Queen Victoria, Charlotte's cousin, 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:49.200 born two years after Charlotte's death, ironically to fill the 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:54.280 gap in succession that Charlotte left behind. Had Charlotte lived, 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:58.880 the course of history would have been irrevocably altered. But 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:02.880 history is all of miss Rhodes and false starts, And 0:04:03.440 --> 0:04:08.160 the fascinating, maddening thing about monarchy is that the fates 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:12.880 of entire nations do change with the fates of individuals. 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:18.880 Princess Charlotte was progressive and adventurous and dreamed of becoming 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:23.560 queen and undermining the tired conservative Tory regime of her 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:28.120 father and grandfather. But instead she spent her entire short 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:32.240 life as a pawn, first upon under parents who loathed 0:04:32.279 --> 0:04:35.200 each other, then by a government that wanted her to 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:38.520 be a tool of diplomacy, then by men who wanted 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.320 to marry her, and then by the political parties who 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:44.559 saw her popularity as a means to their own ends. 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:49.480 In the aftermath of Sir Richard Croft's death by suicide, 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:54.080 investigators on the scene noticed that a book had fluttered 0:04:54.120 --> 0:04:58.880 open nearby, purely out of coincidence. It was a copy 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:03.159 of the Shakespeare lay Love's Labor's Lost, and it was 0:05:03.240 --> 0:05:07.800 open to Act five, Scene two. On the page, mere 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:10.760 feet from where the slumped body of the man whose 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:15.479 guilt had consumed him, were the words, fair, sir, God 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:21.120 save you. Where is the princess? I'm Danish Wartz and 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:34.560 this is noble blood. To call the marriage of Princess 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:39.200 Charlotte's parents an unhappy one would be a vast understatement, 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:42.640 almost to the point of being misleading. The union of 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:45.720 the future George the Fourth of England and Caroline of 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:50.719 Brunswick was nothing short of calamity. George the Fourth, the 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:54.760 oldest son of King George the Third, was a disastrously 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:58.839 unpopular figure in England at the time, routinely mocked in 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:02.480 the press with character chairs. The perception of him, and 0:06:03.080 --> 0:06:08.760 not necessarily an incorrect one, was that he was an overindulged, irresponsible, 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:14.080 vain man and not too intelligent. He womanized frequently and 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:19.920 spent extravagantly. When having his portrait painted, he forced servants 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:23.240 to help squeeze him into a girdle several sizes too 0:06:23.279 --> 0:06:27.120 small to try to cut a more fashionable figure. In 0:06:27.200 --> 0:06:31.760 my estimation, George the Fourth suffered from the tragedy of 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:35.080 being a prince in an era when princes were no 0:06:35.120 --> 0:06:40.400 longer considered God's vessels on earth. There was an irreconcilable 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:44.479 disconnect between his own sense of his importance and his 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:48.400 actual abilities, and this just happened to coincide with the 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:51.560 age when it was easier than ever for the population 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:56.640 to draw and distribute mean cartoons about him. The historian 0:06:56.760 --> 0:07:01.200 James Chambers, in his book Charlotte and Leopold, describes the 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:06.600 then prince's failings. In almost poetic terms, quote, he longed 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:09.680 to be regarded as the leader of fashion, the nation's 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:14.800 foremost sportsman, and the most eminent connoisseur of art and architecture. 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:19.280 To that end, he had squandered absurd sums on clothes 0:07:19.280 --> 0:07:23.240 and horses, and he had lavished fortunes on building and 0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:27.160 embellishing his pavilion in Brighton and his home in London, 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:31.040 Carlton House, each of which he had crammed with an 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:37.280 indiscriminate clutter of both exquisite and tasteless pictures and furniture 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:43.080 end quote. As you might imagine, desperately trying to buy 0:07:43.240 --> 0:07:46.240 his way into being respected and thought of as smart. 0:07:46.840 --> 0:07:49.960 Didn't do much for George except rack up his debts. 0:07:50.600 --> 0:07:56.600 By sevento his debt had reached over six hundred thousand pounds, 0:07:57.080 --> 0:08:00.320 and his annual allowance from the Privy Purse of sixty 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:04.160 thousand pounds was barely enough to even cover the interest. 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:08.040 The government had already bailed him out once by this point, 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:11.800 and they would not happily do so again. George, who 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:15.560 at this point was Prince of Wales, only had one option. 0:08:16.080 --> 0:08:19.600 He needed to get married. If the Prince made a 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:23.080 suitable marriage, the first step to him fulfilling his duty 0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:26.680 of providing the kingdom with an air. His allowance would 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:30.800 be increased to one hundred thousand pounds annually in theory 0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:35.120 to provide for a larger household. It was the money, 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:38.839 more than any sense of duty, certainly not love, that 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:42.920 motivated George, then in his mid thirties, to get married. 0:08:44.240 --> 0:08:49.760 Well a brief but important side note here, technically, George 0:08:49.800 --> 0:08:54.120 already was married, or at least he thought he was, 0:08:54.920 --> 0:08:58.200 almost a decade before. When he was twenty three, he 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:01.600 had secretly, and without the permission of his father, the King, 0:09:02.040 --> 0:09:05.720 had a private wedding with a woman named Maria fitz Herbert, 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:09.880 who just so happened to be Catholic. If that sounds 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:12.839 familiar to you or you're getting deja vu, I did 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:17.000 an episode all about this secret marriage years ago, a 0:09:17.200 --> 0:09:20.760 very very early episode of this podcast called What I 0:09:20.960 --> 0:09:25.200 Has Wept for George the Fourth. But to the vast 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:29.160 relief of the King's cabinet, the marriage between George and 0:09:29.200 --> 0:09:33.600 Maria fitz Herbert was easily nullified. It broke a handful 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:37.560 of laws. First, any royal marriage needed the approval of 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:41.680 the King, but second, and more importantly, Maria fitz Herbert 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:45.800 being Catholic meant that the marriage was invalidated automatically by 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:48.560 both the Bill of Rights of sixty nine and the 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:53.080 Active Settlement of seventeen hundred, and so, needing to make 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:57.280 an appropriate and legal marriage, George selected from among the 0:09:57.360 --> 0:10:02.920 small pool of eligible foreign princess is his first cousin, Caroline, 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:08.800 Duchess of Brunswick. The diplomat Lord Malmsbury, came to Brunswick 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:12.240 to escort Caroline to her new home in England, but 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:16.959 fairly quickly Malmsbury realized that the match might be troublesome 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:22.599 for the Prince. Allegedly, Caroline's behavior was rowdy and uncouth, 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:26.839 and Malmsbury reported that she didn't wash or change her 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:32.080 clothes often enough. There were rumors about Caroline being unsuitable 0:10:32.320 --> 0:10:35.560 even before the Prince had chosen her, but the prince's 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:39.360 mistress at the time, a woman named Lady Jersey, was 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:43.040 all too happy to encourage the match between her lover 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:47.560 and a woman who was considered unpleasant and undignified, where 0:10:47.559 --> 0:10:49.920 there was no risk of him growing to love her 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:54.600 more than her. So George made his choice and then 0:10:54.640 --> 0:10:58.000 appointed his mistress Lady Jersey as his new wife to 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:03.079 bes Lady in waiting. The alleged and oft repeated anecdote 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:06.560 about Prince George meeting his future wife Caroline in person 0:11:06.640 --> 0:11:09.840 for the first time right before their wedding is that 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:13.520 after greeting her, he went pale as a ghost and 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:16.960 called out for his friend Harris. He said, I'm not 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:21.520 feeling well. Pray get me a glass of brandy. But 0:11:22.120 --> 0:11:26.320 some of the English reports about Caroline being unladylike need 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:29.520 to be, in my opinion, given just a little bit 0:11:29.520 --> 0:11:33.640 of indulgence. When Caroline first arrived in England after a 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:38.000 long and arduous journey through a Europe besieged by Napoleonic War, 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:42.600 her future husband was not at the port to greet her. Instead, 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:47.240 the only representative from her new home was Lady Jersey, 0:11:47.320 --> 0:11:52.679 whom Caroline quickly and correctly gleaned was her fiance's mistress. 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:57.160 At her first dinner with George the Fourth, Caroline made 0:11:57.160 --> 0:12:00.480 a number of jokes poking fun at her soon to 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:05.240 be husband, blatant in discretions which he and the rest 0:12:05.280 --> 0:12:08.880 of the court were aghast at, but which I personally 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:12.840 feel Caroline was perfectly in her right to do, no doubt, 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:16.080 a tiny attempt at staking out a little bit of 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:19.560 power and a little humor in a very vulnerable and 0:12:19.760 --> 0:12:25.760 uncomfortable situation. Meanwhile, Prince George was loudly mocking her to 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:29.800 his friends, calling her ugly and unhygienic, and speculating that 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:33.080 she wasn't a virgin. Not that it matters, but remember 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:38.120 George was most certainly not a virgin himself. And though 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:41.440 most people recount the story of the prince asking for 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:44.960 brandy after their first meeting, it should also be noted 0:12:45.000 --> 0:12:49.240 that Caroline wasn't impressed with her future husband either. He's 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:52.640 nothing like as handsome as his portrait, she said as 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:57.880 she was leaving. It was a marriage doomed from the start, 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:00.560 and though on their wedding night the Prince was so 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:03.680 drunk that he slept on the floor, they did manage 0:13:03.679 --> 0:13:07.800 to consummate the marriage very shortly after, and nine months 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:13.320 after the wedding and January seven, seventeen ninety six, Caroline 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:18.720 gave birth to a little girl, young Princess Charlotte. Three 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:22.720 days after that, George separated from his wife and declared 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:27.360 that their union was all but over. King George the third. 0:13:27.559 --> 0:13:32.160 George's father, Hervard, hoped that the couple would eventually reconcile 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:35.959 and have a baby boy, but fairly quickly it became 0:13:36.000 --> 0:13:41.840 apparent that would never happen. George and Caroline despised each 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:46.440 other and their only child, their daughter, Charlotte, was caught 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:51.400 in the middle. For a period during Charlotte's childhood, they 0:13:51.440 --> 0:13:54.720 all lived in the same mansion, Carlton House in London, 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:59.920 albeit on different floors, but eventually Caroline moved to Blackheath, 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:03.560 an area of southeast London, and when Charlotte was eight 0:14:03.640 --> 0:14:07.760 years old, she moved to another palace, Warwick House, and 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:11.840 was given her own household, and so from eight years 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:16.199 old on Charlotte was surrounded only by people who were 0:14:16.240 --> 0:14:20.080 paid to be with her. Charlotte was in direct line 0:14:20.120 --> 0:14:23.560 to be queen after her father, and as heir presumptive, 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:28.440 she was incredibly well educated. Although some historians remarked that 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:33.440 Charlotte was not particularly studious or a natural scholar, she 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:39.280 was bright and inquisitive and interested in poetry, politics, and literature. 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:44.120 When Jane Austen's novel Sentence Sensibility came out at the time, 0:14:44.200 --> 0:14:49.800 published anonymously, authored only by quote a lady. Charlotte read 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:52.680 and enjoyed it, and even wrote to a friend that 0:14:52.880 --> 0:14:57.440 she related to the character of Marianne. Because her father 0:14:57.640 --> 0:15:00.840 was a royal prince and Charlotte was a ill air. 0:15:00.920 --> 0:15:04.320 Her father had full custody of care. But when she 0:15:04.400 --> 0:15:07.560 was young, Charlotte still saw her mother frequently and spent 0:15:07.640 --> 0:15:10.840 her summers in Blackheath to spend even more time with her. 0:15:11.720 --> 0:15:15.160 But all of that changed after something that came to 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:22.720 be known as the Delicate investigation. Separation hadn't made Charlotte's 0:15:22.760 --> 0:15:26.720 parents grow fonder, In fact, living their own separate lives, 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:31.960 each taking on their own extramarital flirtations, their mutual dislike 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:36.920 turned to loathing. Meanwhile, both of their reputations took a 0:15:36.960 --> 0:15:40.960 turn for the worst. George was considered frivolous for his 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:45.320 overspending in the time of war against Napoleon, and while 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:49.240 Caroline was popular among the people, gaining sympathy and seen 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:53.240 as a jilted wife among the nobility, she was derided 0:15:53.320 --> 0:15:59.600 for her informality and her suggestive and crude behavior. Living 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:04.359 on her own, separated from her daughter, Caroline informally adopted 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:08.560 around eight poor children paying for their education and their 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:12.840 room and board. The rumors started that one of the children, 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:18.520 a boy named William Austin, was actually Caroline's biological child, 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:23.520 an illegitimate son born out of wedlock. The rumor was 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:27.480 likely started by Caroline herself, who found it funny to 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:30.960 laugh at little William's antics and joke that the boy 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:35.960 was actually hers and George's. Of course, the scandal of 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:38.880 the wife of the future King of England bearing a 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:43.520 son can't be overstated. It would throw the entire line 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:48.040 of succession into question. The matter was so important that 0:16:48.080 --> 0:16:50.560 the question as to whether or not Caroline had had 0:16:50.640 --> 0:16:54.640 another child was actually given over to a commission that 0:16:54.760 --> 0:16:59.520 included the Prime Minister, the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief 0:16:59.600 --> 0:17:04.480 Justice of England and Wales, and the Home Secretary. Members 0:17:04.520 --> 0:17:09.560 of Caroline's household staff confirmed that she was sometimes flirtatious 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:13.080 with visiting male suitors, but they had no actual evidence 0:17:13.119 --> 0:17:15.760 that she was having an affair, let alone that she 0:17:15.840 --> 0:17:19.239 had ever been pregnant or had another child. And there 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:22.680 was also the small matter of young William Austin actually 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:25.600 having a mother who came and visited him at the palace. 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:31.520 Often the delicate investigation was closed, and though the commission 0:17:31.600 --> 0:17:35.399 remarked that some of Caroline's behavior might have been a 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:39.159 little less than seemly, there was no actual evidence of 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:43.199 an affair or an illegitimate child. With the end of 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:46.960 the investigation also came the end of the hope George 0:17:47.000 --> 0:17:49.919 had no doubt been carrying that he would finally have 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:55.639 recourse to get an official divorce. Their poor daughter, Charlotte, 0:17:56.040 --> 0:17:58.720 was caught in the middle of it all. Kept from 0:17:58.720 --> 0:18:01.639 her mother during all of us by her father. She 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:05.920 would write George letters asking for permission to see her mother, 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:09.000 or at least to write to her. At one point 0:18:09.080 --> 0:18:12.840 during the investigation, George was so intent on keeping his 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:16.400 wife away from their daughter that Caroline was forbidden from 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:20.119 acknowledging her daughter. When their carriages happened to pass in 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:24.240 the park one afternoon, Young Charlotte wrote about the event 0:18:24.320 --> 0:18:27.440 to her father, recounting that she had seen but not 0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:31.080 spoken to her mother, worried that if she didn't tell him, 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:35.439 he would be upset at her. Respectful as she was 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:38.640 of her father's wishes, it seemed that something of her 0:18:38.680 --> 0:18:44.200 mother had inadvertently rubbed off on Charlotte. People noted that 0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:48.280 though she was beautiful, her table manners didn't quite match, 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:52.439 and Charlotte wore ankle length drawers that showed at the 0:18:52.480 --> 0:18:57.000 hem of her dresses in a scandalous manner. And even 0:18:57.080 --> 0:19:01.240 more scandalous, when Charlotte was a teenager, she began a 0:19:01.280 --> 0:19:05.560 little romance with a man named Charles Hess, a captain 0:19:05.600 --> 0:19:10.200 of the eighteenth Light Dragoons. Charles had a reputation as 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:15.399 a cad but Charlotte was captivated. He was her first love, 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:19.800 and they exchanged romantic letters back and forth. It likely 0:19:19.840 --> 0:19:23.400 went no further than that, although at one point Charlotte 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:26.520 was staying with her mother and Caroline. Ever, the joker 0:19:27.200 --> 0:19:29.800 locked the sixteen year old in her room with her 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:34.560 sweetheart and told the pair to amuse themselves. Still, like 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:39.359 most childhood loves, this one faded into the background, and 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:43.440 by the time Charlotte turned seventeen, talk turned in earnest 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:49.040 to finding her a husband. The front runner, at least 0:19:49.040 --> 0:19:53.719 in her father's mind, was easy William, the Hereditary Prince 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:57.560 of Orange, son of the newly minted Sovereign Prince of 0:19:57.600 --> 0:20:01.200 the Netherlands, a title that their family had reclaimed after 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:05.760 Napoleon's men were driven out of Holland. In George's mind, 0:20:06.080 --> 0:20:09.520 tying his daughter, the future Queen of England, to the 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:13.920 future King of the Netherlands was a brilliant strategic move 0:20:14.080 --> 0:20:17.760 to secure British influence in the northwest part of Europe. 0:20:18.480 --> 0:20:23.040 Charlotte was less convinced. For one, she wasn't too keen 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:26.240 on getting married at all. She was hoping to bide 0:20:26.240 --> 0:20:30.080 her time. When the rumors started swirling that she was 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:34.320 already engaged to William of Orange, Charlotte jokingly replied that 0:20:34.440 --> 0:20:38.600 she actually favored another suitor, the Duke of Gloucester. The 0:20:38.680 --> 0:20:43.000 princess's marital prospects were such a hot topic of conversation 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:46.800 that her off handed remark was spun the way a 0:20:46.920 --> 0:20:50.520 celebrity's on the red carpet might be today. There was 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:54.879 breathless coverage as to whether Charlotte would choose the Orange 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:59.880 or the cheese, a reference to Gloucester cheese. The two 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:03.879 and both named William, were dubbed by the popular press 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:10.840 slender Billy and silly Billy. But aside from charlotte antipathy 0:21:10.920 --> 0:21:14.959 towards marriage as a whole, there were some actual problems 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:18.520 with William of Orange. For when he was sickly, pale, 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:22.600 and not too attractive. A friend of Charlotte's went to 0:21:22.640 --> 0:21:25.800 scope him out when he arrived in England and reported 0:21:25.840 --> 0:21:31.080 back an account that politely could be characterized as damning 0:21:31.280 --> 0:21:35.480 with faint praise. Charlotte had attended a dinner with her 0:21:35.480 --> 0:21:38.440 suitors father and he and the rest of the men 0:21:38.560 --> 0:21:42.960 in attendance got blackout, slipped down from the table, fall 0:21:43.040 --> 0:21:46.760 onto the floor drunk, which didn't do much to ingratiate 0:21:46.800 --> 0:21:51.280 her to the Orange clan. But all that aside her 0:21:51.320 --> 0:21:56.480 mother hated the Oranges. There was old European family bad 0:21:56.520 --> 0:21:59.720 blood there, and as much as George tried to persuade 0:21:59.720 --> 0:22:03.440 his her to marry William of Orange, Caroline was making 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:08.160 herself clear on the position. In the other direction. There 0:22:08.240 --> 0:22:11.359 was another small matter that worried Charlotte at this moment 0:22:11.440 --> 0:22:15.160 that isn't quite relevant to the larger story, but which 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:17.920 I find I just have to share because of how 0:22:17.960 --> 0:22:23.199 absolutely modern it feels. While Charlotte was weighing a possible engagement, 0:22:23.600 --> 0:22:27.560 she was preoccupied with terror about the letters she had 0:22:27.600 --> 0:22:30.960 sent to her old flame, Captain Charles Hess back when 0:22:30.960 --> 0:22:34.119 she was sixteen. She had burnt all of the letters 0:22:34.160 --> 0:22:37.760 that he sent her, but he almost certainly had not 0:22:37.880 --> 0:22:41.760 done the same. To make matters worse, Captain Has had 0:22:41.840 --> 0:22:46.320 already departed for the continent with his regiment. Charlotte begged 0:22:46.320 --> 0:22:50.520 her best friend, Mercer elephant Stone, which is incidentally just 0:22:50.600 --> 0:22:54.600 a great name, to secure those letters, and Mercer wrote 0:22:54.600 --> 0:22:59.200 to the Captain. Captain Has wrote back that no, Princess 0:22:59.280 --> 0:23:02.600 Charlotte's letters were not destroyed, but they were safe in 0:23:02.640 --> 0:23:05.960 a trunk back in England, and if he died in battle, 0:23:06.320 --> 0:23:08.720 he had told a friend to put the trunk at 0:23:08.720 --> 0:23:12.240 the bottom of the Thames. It never came to that, 0:23:12.359 --> 0:23:16.680 and ultimately Captain Has returned and did destroy the letters. 0:23:17.200 --> 0:23:21.879 We assume, but I find something very relatable about Charlotte 0:23:21.960 --> 0:23:24.960 desperately enlisting a friend to try to get an old 0:23:25.000 --> 0:23:30.560 flame to destroy evidence of their possible impropriety. But back 0:23:30.600 --> 0:23:36.160 to Charlotte's primary suitor, the Prince of Orange. On December twelfth, 0:23:36.160 --> 0:23:41.000 eighteen thirteen, George arranged dinner for his daughter to sit 0:23:41.040 --> 0:23:44.119 down and meet the Prince of Orange face to face 0:23:44.400 --> 0:23:48.359 at a dinner party. Halfway through, the Prince Regent called 0:23:48.440 --> 0:23:53.600 his daughter aside and asked if she had made a decision. Well, 0:23:53.760 --> 0:23:57.600 his personality seems fine enough so far from the very 0:23:57.720 --> 0:24:01.840 little I've seen of it, she said. Her father reacted 0:24:01.880 --> 0:24:05.359 with a resounding cheer and walked back in announcing that 0:24:05.440 --> 0:24:09.680 Charlotte had agreed to the match. It took several more 0:24:09.760 --> 0:24:12.880 months for the actual marriage contract to be ironed out, 0:24:13.359 --> 0:24:16.720 and I'll spare you the exceedingly boring details there, but 0:24:16.800 --> 0:24:19.600 the big picture was that they decided that if Charlotte 0:24:19.680 --> 0:24:22.000 had two sons, one would be the King of the 0:24:22.040 --> 0:24:25.439 Netherlands and one would be King of England, and that 0:24:25.680 --> 0:24:29.720 was the end of that. Charlotte, Princess of Wales future 0:24:29.800 --> 0:24:35.280 Queen of England, was engaged, or rather that was supposed 0:24:35.280 --> 0:24:38.800 to be the end of that. In the two years 0:24:38.880 --> 0:24:42.359 that Charlotte was engaged to William of Orange, she grew 0:24:42.720 --> 0:24:48.640 less and less excited by the idea of actually marrying him. 0:24:48.680 --> 0:24:52.080 It didn't help things that at a large banquet celebrating 0:24:52.119 --> 0:24:55.800 the soldiers of the war against Napoleon, Charlotte saw her 0:24:56.640 --> 0:25:02.200 well frail and underwhelming fiancee next to far more attractive 0:25:02.200 --> 0:25:06.760 men in uniform. One of those men, Prince Frederick Augustus 0:25:06.760 --> 0:25:10.960 of Prussia. Charlotte fell head over heels four, and she 0:25:11.040 --> 0:25:14.639 often referred to her infatuation with the prince in her diaries, 0:25:15.040 --> 0:25:21.480 anonymizing him as f Prince. August even called on Charlotte secretly, 0:25:21.600 --> 0:25:25.000 of course, and it took her best friend Mercer, arriving 0:25:25.040 --> 0:25:28.480 to Warwick House and bursting in on them to remind 0:25:28.640 --> 0:25:32.040 Charlotte that this sort of meeting was not the appropriate 0:25:32.119 --> 0:25:36.840 conduct for a princess. But Charlotte was well aware that 0:25:36.920 --> 0:25:41.280 the real problem here wasn't her little indiscretions. It was 0:25:41.359 --> 0:25:45.359 that she simply did not want to marry William of Orange. 0:25:45.800 --> 0:25:48.480 When she and Williams sat together for the first time 0:25:48.520 --> 0:25:53.040 after they had gotten engaged, William commented that Charlotte would 0:25:53.080 --> 0:25:55.399 need to spend two or three months out of the 0:25:55.480 --> 0:25:59.239 year in Holland with him. Charlotte burst into tears and 0:25:59.359 --> 0:26:03.480 fled from the room. She didn't want to go to Holland, 0:26:04.280 --> 0:26:07.960 and there was a political angle to that as well. Politically, 0:26:08.240 --> 0:26:12.080 Charlotte was a Whig, a young progressive. Her father had 0:26:12.119 --> 0:26:14.920 been a Whig two in his youth until he became 0:26:15.000 --> 0:26:18.280 regent for the mad King George the Third and transitioned 0:26:18.480 --> 0:26:24.800 toward the more conservative Old school pro monarchy Tory party, 0:26:24.920 --> 0:26:29.880 where Charlotte's father was incredibly unpopular. Charlotte and her mother 0:26:30.280 --> 0:26:33.520 were beloved by the people, and the Whigs knew that 0:26:33.640 --> 0:26:37.280 having Charlotte and Caroline in the country, the bright young 0:26:37.400 --> 0:26:43.480 daughter and the discarded wife, was politically prudent. Wig politicians 0:26:43.520 --> 0:26:47.000 whispered to Charlotte that some set her father was eager 0:26:47.040 --> 0:26:49.840 to marry her off to a foreign prince because he 0:26:49.920 --> 0:26:54.280 resented her popularity in the country, and once Charlotte was 0:26:54.320 --> 0:26:57.000 gone it would be easier to get Caroline to move 0:26:57.000 --> 0:27:01.000 abroad as well. The English population and began to view 0:27:01.040 --> 0:27:03.720 the marriage as a choice Charlotte was making between her 0:27:03.760 --> 0:27:07.200 two parents. People would shout at her in the streets, 0:27:07.560 --> 0:27:10.400 telling her not to give in, not to abandon her 0:27:10.400 --> 0:27:15.320 mother and Mary Orange. Eventually, Charlotte wrote to William of 0:27:15.320 --> 0:27:18.560 Orange and told him no, she did not want to 0:27:18.640 --> 0:27:21.280 leave England to live in the Netherlands for any period 0:27:21.280 --> 0:27:24.040 of time, and she also put to him a question 0:27:24.119 --> 0:27:27.680 that she already knew the answer to, would her mother 0:27:27.840 --> 0:27:32.360 Caroline always be welcome in their home at court. William 0:27:32.359 --> 0:27:37.960 of Orange apologized, but told Charlotte no, given caroline scandals 0:27:38.040 --> 0:27:41.040 and the fact that George, the Prince Regent of England, 0:27:41.080 --> 0:27:45.560 hated her. He couldn't agree to that, and so Charlotte 0:27:45.600 --> 0:27:50.480 made up her mind. She broke off the engagement with William. 0:27:50.480 --> 0:27:54.280 Her father, George, was livid. He came to her London 0:27:54.359 --> 0:27:58.360 house and berated her for her insubordination, and he declared 0:27:58.520 --> 0:28:01.080 that all of her servants would be dismissed and that 0:28:01.160 --> 0:28:03.840 she would be sent to live in the remote Cranborne 0:28:03.920 --> 0:28:08.960 Lodge in Windsor, without permission for any visitors except her grandmother. 0:28:09.960 --> 0:28:13.960 Charlotte was outraged right then and there she ran out 0:28:14.080 --> 0:28:18.439 into the street. In architect, looking out the window in 0:28:18.520 --> 0:28:22.240 one of the buildings next door, noticed this woman clearly 0:28:22.320 --> 0:28:27.280 in distress, either crying or having recently been crying. He 0:28:27.359 --> 0:28:30.119