Sophia of the United Kingdom
1777 – 1848 · Generation XXXII · House of Hanover
Sophia of the United Kingdom (1777–1848). The twelfth child and fifth daughter of George III and Queen Charlotte, she was devoted to her father, but his recurring madness and her mother’s wish for companions kept her, like most of her sisters, unmarried in a household the princesses called the “Nunnery.” Rumour held that around 1800 she bore a son, Thomas, to her father’s chief equerry, Thomas Garth, thirty-three years her senior; darker gossip blamed her brother the Duke of Cumberland. Historians remain divided on whether any child existed. In later life she lived at Kensington Palace beside her niece, the future Queen Victoria, and let Sir John Conroy manage her money, spying for him while he squandered most of it. Blind for more than a decade, she died in 1848 and was buried at Kensal Green, near her brother Augustus, Duke of Sussex.
Place in the family
- 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 → 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)
- 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)
- Octavius of the United Kingdom (1779 – 1783)
- Alfred of the United Kingdom (1780 – 1782)
- Amelia of the United Kingdom (1783 – 1810)