Octavius of the United Kingdom
1779 – 1783 · Generation XXXII · House of Hanover
Octavius of the United Kingdom (1779–1783). Died of smallpox at four; his father grieved for him all his life. The thirteenth child and eighth son of George III and Queen Charlotte — his name recalls the Latin for “eighth” — he was born at Buckingham House. Contemporaries remembered a gentle, good-natured boy, and the king, unusually demonstrative for his time, carried him about in his arms. He was especially close to his sister Sophia, who called him “her son.” When his younger brother Alfred died in 1782, the king reportedly said that had it been Octavius, he would have died too. Six months later Octavius and Sophia were inoculated at Kew; she recovered, but he fell ill and died within days, though members of the household blamed a cold rather than the inoculation. He was the last member of the royal family to contract smallpox. He was buried beside Alfred at Westminster Abbey; in 1820 the brothers were moved to St George’s Chapel, Windsor.
Place in the family
- Octavius of the United Kingdom was an uncle 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 → Octavius 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)
- Augusta Sophia of the United Kingdom (1768 – 1840)
- 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)
- Alfred of the United Kingdom (1780 – 1782)
- Amelia of the United Kingdom (1783 – 1810)