Augusta Sophia of the United Kingdom
1768 – 1840 · Generation XXXII · House of Hanover
Augusta Sophia of the United Kingdom (1768–1840). The sixth child and second daughter of George III and Queen Charlotte, she was born at Buckingham House and from 1771 was taught at Kew with her elder sister Charlotte. Acutely shy, she stammered before strangers and found refuge in her coin collection. Suitors came — the Danish crown prince was said to prefer her in 1785, and Prince Frederick Adolf of Sweden proposed in 1797 — but her father would not part with his daughters. Around 1803 she reached a discreet understanding with Sir Brent Spencer, an Anglo-Irish army officer who became the king’s equerry, and in 1812 she asked the Prince Regent’s leave to marry him; no record of a wedding survives, though at least one court believed them privately married. She attended her niece Victoria’s coronation in 1838 and her wedding in 1840, and died at Clarence House that September.
Place in the family
- Augusta Sophia of the United Kingdom was an aunt of Queen Victoria.
One of 35 people of House of Hanover (from 1700) in this archive. Called from Germany by the Act of Settlement; the Georges, then Victoria.
Line of descent: Owen Tudor → Edmund Tudor → King Henry VII → Margaret Tudor → King James V of Scotland → Mary Queen of Scots → King James I → Elizabeth Stuart → Sophia of Hanover → King George I → King George II → Frederick Prince of Wales → King George III → Augusta Sophia of the United Kingdom.
Parents
- King George III (1738 – 1820)
- Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1744 – 1818)
Siblings
- King George IV (1762 – 1830)
- Frederick Duke of York (1763 – 1827)
- King William IV (1765 – 1837)
- Charlotte, Princess Royal (1766 – 1828)
- Edward Duke of Kent (1767 – 1820)
- Elizabeth of the United Kingdom (1770 – 1840)
- Ernest Augustus King of Hanover (1771 – 1851)
- Augustus Frederick Duke of Sussex (1773 – 1843)
- Adolphus Duke of Cambridge (1774 – 1850)
- Mary Duchess of Gloucester (1776 – 1857)
- Sophia of the United Kingdom (1777 – 1848)
- Octavius of the United Kingdom (1779 – 1783)
- Alfred of the United Kingdom (1780 – 1782)
- Amelia of the United Kingdom (1783 – 1810)