Kinlight · The British Royal Line

Edward Duke of Kent

1767 – 1820 · Generation XXXII · House of Hanover

Portrait of Edward Duke of Kent

Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, was the fourth son of George III and Queen Charlotte, a career soldier who spent most of a decade in British North America, and the father of Queen Victoria. He was born in London on 2 November 1767 and named after an uncle who had died a few weeks before. Destined for the army, he began military training in Hanover in 1785 under a German tutor, Baron Wangenheim, who kept him so short of money that he learned early to borrow. He finished his education in Geneva in 1788–1789. Debt followed him for the rest of his life.

In 1790 he left Geneva for London without permission, and his angry father packed him off at once to Gibraltar to serve with his regiment, the 7th Foot. He was joined there by Thérèse-Bernardine Montgenet, known as Madame de Saint-Laurent, who remained his companion for some twenty-seven years. In 1791 the regiment was ordered to Quebec. He toured Upper Canada, the first member of the royal family to do so, and made lasting friends among French Canadian families, notably the Salaberrys, whose sons’ military careers he helped along. When war with France began he was promoted major-general, and in 1794 he commanded a brigade at the capture of Martinique, where he was mentioned in dispatches.

From 1794 he was based at Halifax, Nova Scotia, as commander of the forces there. He rebuilt the port’s neglected defences with a new citadel, batteries and towers and a signalling system linking the outposts. He contributed to St George’s Round Church and set in motion the plans for the clock tower at the foot of Citadel Hill, which the Dictionary of Canadian Biography notes was begun only after he had gone. He was a harsh disciplinarian, parading the garrison at five each morning, though the same commander was capable of marked kindness to his men. After a fall from his horse in 1798 he went home, was created Duke of Kent and Strathearn in April 1799 with a parliamentary income of £12,000, and returned to Halifax as commander-in-chief in North America. Ill health brought him back for good in 1800. Prince Edward Island keeps his name.

In 1802 he was appointed Governor of Gibraltar with orders to restore discipline among a drunken garrison. His severity provoked a mutiny on Christmas Eve, and his brother the Duke of York recalled him in 1803. He kept the title of governor until his death but was never allowed to go back, and a field marshal’s baton in 1805 was a consolation for a career that had ended at thirty-five. He lived at Castle Hill Lodge in Ealing, supported many charities, voted for Catholic emancipation and took an interest in the social experiments of Robert Owen. To save money he moved to Brussels in 1815.

The death of Princess Charlotte in November 1817 left George III without a legitimate grandchild, and his unmarried sons hurried to find wives. Edward parted from Madame de Saint-Laurent with a generous settlement and on 29 May 1818, at Coburg, married Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, the widowed Princess of Leiningen and sister of Charlotte’s husband Leopold. The ceremony was repeated at Kew in July. Their only child, Victoria, was born at Kensington Palace on 24 May 1819. Still pressed by creditors, the family took a modest house at Sidmouth on the Devon coast that winter. There the duke died of pneumonia on 23 January 1820, six days before his father. He was buried in St George’s Chapel, Windsor. His daughter, eight months old at his death, became queen seventeen years later.

Place in the family

  • Edward Duke of Kent was the father of Queen Victoria.
  • The archive records 58 of his descendants, across 8 generations.

Images

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 → Edward Duke of Kent.

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Children

Life

  • 1767 — Born
  • 1818 — Married Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld
  • 1820 — Died

Sources

  1. Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn · Wikipedia
  2. Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent and Strathearn · Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 5 (University of Toronto/Université Laval)
  3. Victoria (r. 1837–1901) · The Royal Family (royal.uk)

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