Kinlight · The British Royal Line

Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

1744 – 1818 · Generation XXXI · Queen consort

Portrait of Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was queen to George III for fifty-seven years, longer than any other queen consort in British history. She was born on 19 May 1744 at Mirow, in a small duchy of northern Germany, the youngest daughter of Duke Charles Louis Frederick of Mecklenburg and Elisabeth Albertine of Saxe-Hildburghausen. The family lived modestly. Diplomats at the time of her engagement thought her education mediocre, though she had been taught botany, natural history and several languages and was a capable musician.

George III came to the throne in 1760, a bachelor of twenty-two. Charlotte, then seventeen, recommended herself partly because a princess from so minor a court was unlikely to meddle in British politics. She left home in August 1761, endured three storms on the crossing, and landed at Harwich on 7 September. The next afternoon she reached St James’s Palace, met the king for the first time at the garden gate, and at nine that evening was married to him in the Chapel Royal. They were crowned together in Westminster Abbey on 22 September.

She arrived speaking little English and learned it quickly, always with a German accent. The first decades of the marriage were happy ones. The king had bought Buckingham House as a private retreat, and she made it so much her own that it became known as the Queen’s House. Their first child, the future George IV, was born in August 1762, and fourteen more followed over the next twenty-one years. Thirteen of the fifteen lived to adulthood, among them two kings of the United Kingdom and a king of Hanover.

Charlotte shared her husband’s love of music. Johann Christian Bach was her music master, and in 1764 the eight-year-old Mozart played at court and accompanied the queen as she sang. A set of his sonatas was dedicated to her the following year. She was a keen amateur botanist who took a close interest in the gardens at Kew as plants arrived there from voyages of exploration, and the South African bird of paradise flower, Strelitzia reginae, was named in her honour. With the king she patronised the painter Johan Zoffany and the landscape gardener Capability Brown. She is also credited with bringing the Christmas tree to Britain. A decorated yew branch had been her custom, and in December 1800 she had a whole tree set up at Queen’s Lodge, Windsor, for a children’s party, the first known in England. In 1809 she became patron of the General Lying-in Hospital in London, which survives as Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital.

The king’s breakdown in the winter of 1788–89 changed her. His behaviour frightened her, and she fell out with the Prince of Wales over the terms of a regency, a breach not mended until 1791. A member of her household recorded that her hair had gone grey, and her temper sharpened. From 1792 she distracted herself with the gardens at Frogmore, the house at Windsor that she bought that year as a retreat.

When George III’s illness became permanent in 1811 and their eldest son took over as regent, the queen remained her husband’s legal guardian. She is thought not to have seen him after June 1812. Because the regent was estranged from his wife, she went on acting as hostess at court beside him. Charlotte died at the Dutch House at Kew, now Kew Palace, on 17 November 1818, seated in an armchair with the regent holding her hand, and was buried at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. The king, blind and deaf, outlived her by fourteen months and probably never knew that she had gone.

Place in the family

  • Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was a grandmother of Queen Victoria.
  • The archive records 74 of her descendants, across 9 generations.

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Life

  • 1744 — Born
  • 1761 — Married George III
  • 1818 — Died

Sources

  1. Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz · Wikipedia
  2. Queen Charlotte (19 May 1744 – 17 November 1818) · The Royal Family (royal.uk)
  3. Queen Charlotte · Historic Royal Palaces

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