Frederick Prince of Wales - The Greatest King We Never Had

'The Music Party', Frederick Prince of Wales and his
sisters, Philippe Mercier, 1733

It's Sunday night as I sit down to start writing this, after a busy week of taking my boyfriend on days out to the zoo, the aquarium, Speke Hall, and all the fun things there is to do in Merseyside when you've seen all the sights in Liverpool. I also forced him to sit down and watch last year's The First Georgians: The German Kings who made Britain, which has been rerunning on BBC Four. I mean he has to know what I'm talking about when I get all emotional about the Georgians, right? Re-watching the series I was reminded of everything that made me fall in love with the Eighteenth Century in the first place. It also helped me rekindle my love for my sweetheart, Frederick Prince of Wales. Rebel, lover and supporter of the Arts, and "People's Prince", Frederick is one of my favourite historical figures, never mind favourite royals. And so in this post, at risk of having turnips thrown at my head by angry Jacobites, I'll attempt to give a brief history of this Hanoverian Prince, as well as defend my firm belief that King Frederick I would of been one of the greatest monarch's Britain had ever had. 

Please remember that I do not claim to be an expert, and I appreciate any feedback you may have.

Childhood

Frederick, Prince of Wales was the oldest son of George II, born in 1707, and therefore would have been king after his death, had he not died before him, allowing Frederick's son to take the crown and become George III, commonly known as the 'mad king.' But before all that, I'm going to start at the early years. 

Christian Friedrich Zincke (painted when Frederick
was about seven)

The father/son relationships of the Georgian kings were notoriously terrible. George II had a terrible relationship with his father George I, after all his mother had been imprisoned for adultery, never to see her son again. And tensions began with Frederick and his father in the formative years too; he was left at the age of seven in Hanover to act as a figurehead while the his parents were in Britain. Frederick grows up in Hanover and doesn't see his parents for 14 years, until he joins them in England upon his father's ascension to the throne in 1727. It's upon Frederick's arrival that their hatred for each other really started to grow.


Frederick and George II

It all starts to go downhill after George II only offers his son an allowance of £50,000, just half of what he'd been expecting, It sounds like petty rich kid drama, and it is when you put it simply, but Frederick probably took this as a deliberate insult, and possible attempt to limit his freedom by limiting his expenditure. 

The family of George II, William Hogarth, 1731-2
(Frederick is on the far right)

Frederick also opposed his father politically. A group of politicians branched off from the Whig party calling themselves the Patriot Whigs, and Frederick was heavily involved with them, earning their support. The Patriot Whigs were troubled by the idea of a "prime" minister, one man having too much power. While George II was away in Hanover, Robert Walpole took it upon himself to hold cabinet without him. Due to their support of Frederick against his father, the issue of the allowance was raised in parliament, causing further irreparable damage between father and son.

The final straw was when Fredrick's wife, Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, went into labour. To stop the King and Queen being able to witness the birth of their grandchild and possible future heir, Frederick took his wife off from Hampton Court in a carriage in the middle of the night to St James' palace, where she would give birth. This not only offended the King and Queen, but the people of Great Britain, who were outraged at what seemed like Frederick's readiness to endanger his wife and unborn daughter in order to get one up on his dad. Even his supporters had to admit this was an immature and unwise move. It was also a move that got him banned from court.

So why was he so great?

Jacopo Amigoni, 1735

So far I've probably painted a picture of a bratty, immature rich kid, and that might be true to some extent, but dear old Frederick was so much more than that.

I've already touched on his political leanings, but what's most striking about this is that Frederick actually seemed to care. It's easy to be cynical about this, after all you could argue his involvement with the Patriot Whigs was just his throwing a tantrum at his dad. But compared to George I spending most of his time in Hanover, he would have stood out as a different kind of ruler. He was progressive, preferring a government where power was shared more equally within parliament, and was also a great supporter of the Arts.

Anonymous print of office-seeker kissing
Walpole's enormous buttocks

If the Georgian age saw the rise of the middling class, and more and more people being able to sell their work for profit through the support of subscribers, and not just a commission of an aristocrat, this was a time that saw a surge in creative freedom. Artists and writers were suddenly able to produce satire in great volumes after a law hadn't been renewed in parliament, because someone had forgotten to put it on the parliamentary timetable. Indeed, Frederick even wrote a satirical play himself under a pseudonym, although it was reportedly terrible and only got two performances. Nevertheless Frederick revelled in this new creative freedom, whilst Sir Robert Walpole and George II had to laugh along at drawings of their exposed buttocks'.

The portrait at the beginning of this post depicts Frederick playing the cello in front of a window, and this he did regularly, so that passers by could hear him play. Whilst it's true he probably loved the attention, it also shows how he placed a heavier weight of importance on pleasing the people, that on out-dated notions of propriety. He really took the biscuit with this during the gin riots when he entered a pub and ordered a pint of gin, thereby showing the people his support for them, and his opposition against the gin tax. He was a much more likeable and sociable figure than either his father or his grandfather therefore, he could be seen out in the public, instead of always locked away in a palace or over in Hanover.

St James' Park and the Mall, 1745 (Frederick is right of centre)

Frederick set himself apart by interacting with the people, and becoming one of them, he can be seen in this painting on the right surrounded by people of all walks of life. Like his mother Queen Caroline before him who was noteably on of the subscribers to Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad, Frederick was an important and influential supporter of the Arts.


The importance of this support for the arts cannot be underestimated, after all it is the writers of this era that dominate in our understanding of the Eighteenth Century, as opposed to the kings. Frederick would have been a Hanoverian monarch who had finally gained the love and trust of the people, and I believe it would be him, as opposed to Victoria, that we would identify as the monarch to bring us into the modern age had he ruled.