The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 64, February, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 64, February, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
It has been charged upon the princes of the House of Hanover that they
are given to quarrelling, and that between sovereign and heir-apparent
there has never been good-will, while they have on several occasions
disgusted the world by the vehemence of their hatred for each other.
That George I. hated his heir is well known; and George II. hated his
son Frederick with far more intensity than he himself had been hated
by his own father. The Memoirs of Lord Hervey show the state of
feeling that existed in the English royal family during the first
third of the reign of George II., and the spectacle is hideous beyond
parallel; and for many years longer, until Frederick's death,
there was no abatement of paternal and filial hate. George III.
was disgusted with his eldest son's personal conduct and political
principles, as well he might be; for while the father was a model of
decorum, and a bitter Tory, the son was a profligate, and a Whig,--and
the King probably found it harder to forgive the Whig than the
profligate. The Prince cared no more for Whig principles than he did
for his marriage-vows, but affected them as a means of annoying his
father, whose Toryism was of proof. He, as a man, toasted the buff and
blue, when that meant support of Washington and his associates,
for the same reason that, as a boy, he had cheered for Wilkes and
Liberty,--because it was the readiest way of annoying his father; but
he ever deserted the Whigs when his aid and countenance could have
been useful to them. George IV. had no child with whom to quarrel, but
while Prince Regent he did his worst to make his daughter unhappy,
as we find established in Miss Knight's Memoirs. The good-natured
and kind-hearted William IV. had no legitimate children, but he was
strongly attached to the Fitzclarences, who were borne to him by Mrs.
Jordan. Indeed, monarchs have often been as full of love for their
offspring born out of wedlock as of hate for their children born in
that holy state. Being men, they must love something, and what
so natural as that they should love their natural children, whose
helpless condition appeals so strongly to all their better feelings,
and who never can become their rivals?
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