In the summer of 1812, Augusta Sophia, the 43-year-old daughter of King George III, wrote to her brother, the Prince Regent, begging his permission to marry the man she had loved for more than a decade. Her family had repeatedly denied her the chance to marry, and this plea may have been her last real opportunity. No reply was ever found. Whatever became of that relationship, Augusta Sophia remained unmarried for the rest of her life, spending her days in the same royal court that had refused her the right to choose her own future.
Augusta Sophia was born at the Queen’s House in London, a building later transformed into Buckingham Palace, on 8 November 1768. She was the sixth daughter and second daughter of King George III and Queen Charlotte. Unusually, the king had wanted a girl, while royal families typically preferred sons to secure plenty of possible heirs. When the attending physician, Dr.
William Hunter, tactfully suggested the possibility of another son, George scolded him and began complaining to his wife, who was mid-labour, about her doctor. It was a strange beginning to a life marked by many of the same family peculiarities that would shape much of her existence. Augusta Sophia was named after her paternal grandmother, Augusta, the Dowager Princess of Wales, and her mother, whose full name was Sophia Charlotte. Days after her birth, at the customary public reception for the new royal infant, visitors arrived at St James’s Palace and were offered cakes and drink, a warm mixture of oatmeal and wine.
Two young ladies ended up drunk and caused a commotion. This was the kind of occasion Augusta would later enjoy, as she was known for her wit and her distaste for excessive court formality, unlike her sisters. Her childhood was managed by Lady Charlotte Finch and Miss Mary Dacres, who were patient with Augusta’s natural shyness as she grew. She stammered around strangers.
She was educated at home, learning several languages including French and German, along with history, music, the classics, and needlework. She was introverted by nature and needed solitude, later remarking that without a quiet hour to herself each day she was good for nothing. She grew into what was recognised as the beauty of the family, described by one governess as the most beautiful of the princesses. In 1782, the 13-year-old Augusta made her first official appearance in society at her father’s birthday celebrations.
She was still deeply uncomfortable in crowds, so Queen Charlotte deliberately waited until only two days before to tell her daughter what was happening. As Augusta and her elder sisters grew older, they spent more time accompanying their parents to the theatre, opera, and court. Their academic education gradually gave way to more music, arts, and the social training expected of young princesses. Marriage would soon be on the horizon.
But when the time came, Augusta discovered her family had no intention of allowing her to choose her own husband. A daughter of a major European king like George III was typically a diplomatic pawn, used to secure alliances and agreements. Negotiations over the marriage of a princess like Augusta Sophia would usually begin when she was barely out of childhood. But it was different for the daughters of George III.
He had watched his sister Caroline Matilda marry at a very young age and become Queen of Denmark, then become embroiled in great controversy in Copenhagen, ending in divorce, exile, and early death. George was determined to spare his daughter a similar fate. So when the Danes enquired in 1785 whether Augusta might be a possible bride for Prince Frederick of Denmark, George refused outright. Given the treatment of his late sister in Copenhagen, no one in the royal establishment wanted that alliance.
The most serious proposal for Augusta’s hand came in early 1791. With Europe on the brink of the Revolutionary Wars, Duke Ferdinand of Württemberg, a lieutenant in the Austrian army, arrived in England and began courting Augusta. As Britain prepared for the coming conflict with revolutionary France, an alliance with a prominent German duke serving Austria made such a match seem particularly attractive. The royal family was generally pleased with him, and for the first time Augusta had a real chance of marriage.
But George III refused. The reason was complex. Ferdinand was the brother of Frederick I, Duke of Württemberg, whose first wife, Auguste Karoline, had been George’s niece. She had died in Russian captivity amid ugly rumours about her conduct and treatment there.
Whatever the truth of those rumours, George clearly wanted nothing to do with the proposed match, and Augusta’s hopes of marriage were shattered by her father once again. After this last disappointment, Augusta became more reclusive, retreating into books, religion, and the ancient Greek and Roman authors she loved. But soon the question of Augusta’s marriage was overshadowed by a much more serious matter: her father’s health had begun to fail. It was not simply that George did not want his daughters to marry the wrong man because of his sister’s experiences.
He was severely ill. In the autumn of 1788, George fell seriously ill for the first time, showing signs of disturbed behaviour and general mania that left him unable to govern. On one particularly bad evening, he insisted on caring for the Queen, set up a bed for her from a drawing-room sofa, arranged his daughters around her, and then raved through the rest of the night. Augusta turned twenty on 8 November of that first year of the political crisis caused by her father’s illness.
For a time it appeared that her elder brother, the future George IV, would have to rule as regent, but the king recovered in early 1789. Further bouts followed in 1801 and 1804, and from 1810 his condition became permanent, entering a final illness that lasted 10 years and led to a decade-long regency until 1820. While doctors struggled to understand what was happening to him, George III’s illness grew worse. At Windsor Castle, the king was confined to his own apartments, while his daughters remained under their mother’s strict supervision.
By that time, their lives had become so isolated that the princesses had begun calling Windsor “the Nunnery. ” For Augusta, it was a life of increasing seclusion. Her father could no longer be relied upon to approve her marriage. Her mother was determined to keep her daughters close, and finding suitable suitors became harder.
Yet around 1800, someone was about to enter Augusta’s life, a man who might finally offer her the chance to escape. In 1799, an officer arrived at the British court who would change the course of her life. Sir Brent Spencer was an Irishman from County Antrim in northeastern Ireland, though he had spent most of his career in the West Indies. He impressed the king at court and was appointed one of his military aides-de-camp.
He was then 39 and unmarried, and soon an affection developed between him and Augusta. Augusta had a practical personality that suited the military man who appeared at court in 1799. She seems to have fallen in love with him, and according to her later accounts, she regarded him not just as a lover but as a substitute husband as she entered her thirties without marrying. He appears to have returned her affections and soon broke off an engagement arranged by his family to a cousin while he was serving in India.
Their relationship became publicly known at court by 1803, and she confided details to her brothers, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York. But there was one enormous problem. Augusta was a princess, and Spencer was not. No matter how devoted they were to each other, a marriage between them would have been considered beneath her royal status, and was effectively impossible while her father remained king.
Their relationship was forced into secrecy, leaving Augusta to wait and hope that circumstances might one day change. Instead, Spencer was sent to war. He fought the French in the Mediterranean and Egypt, and later in Portugal and Spain during the Peninsular War, where he was awarded the prestigious Order of the Bath for his service. While he risked his life on battlefields across Europe, Augusta was left behind, waiting for a man she could not marry.
Eventually, with her father incapacitated and her brother effectively king, Augusta decided to act. Parliament had granted the princesses an independent income of £13,000 a year, and Augusta finally felt free enough to make her move. On 5 March 1812, she wrote to her brother, reminding him that she had told him about her relationship with Spencer years before, and asking his consent to a secret marriage despite Spencer’s modest social standing. She said she had known him for 12 years, and that at her age, in her mid-forties, she was unlikely to marry a royal prince or a high-ranking aristocrat.
The diplomatic consequences of her marrying Spencer were therefore almost nonexistent, especially if it were done quietly and privately. Oddly, or perhaps understandably, Augusta kept the letter for three months and only sent it on 12 June 1812. Perhaps it was hesitation, or perhaps the tense political atmosphere at court, where it had become clear that George III would never recover. What happened next remains one of the great mysteries of Augusta’s life.
No reply from her brother was ever found, so we do not know whether he refused her request or simply chose not to answer. Historians have wondered whether Augusta went ahead and secretly married Spencer anyway. No marriage record survives, and without her brother’s consent, finding a clergyman willing to perform the ceremony would have been extremely difficult. Then, in December 1828, Spencer died, and an astonishing discovery deepened the mystery further.
Around his neck was a locket containing a miniature portrait of Augusta, attached to a small note declaring that the two were married. Was it merely a romantic symbol of a relationship that could never have become official, or had Augusta Sophia secretly become the wife of Sir Brent Spencer after all? More than two centuries later, we still do not know for certain. When Queen Charlotte died in November 1818, she left Frogmore House, her beloved retreat in Windsor Home Park, to Augusta.
But Augusta did not move into her inheritance immediately. Her father was still alive, and although she had inherited a house of her own, she remained at Windsor, continuing to care for the ailing king. Only after George III’s death in January 1820 did Augusta finally move to Frogmore and begin making the house her own. At Frogmore, Augusta took up gardening and did extensive charity work in the parish, with local newspapers praising her unusual generosity.
She replaced a patch of grass outside her favourite window with a planted basket of flowers, still delighted by it years later and noting it surpassed anything in the main castle. Others were less impressed; a visiting German prince thought her handiwork looked like a frog pond. In the evenings, she was a warm hostess, inviting friends from London to enjoy music at her home. When her brother William, later King William IV, dined with her in town, she played tunes with him as well, and by all accounts she was never happier than when making music.
By the summer of 1837, Augusta had buried both her parents and four of her adult siblings, two of whom had been kings, George IV and William IV. She also became one of the last living links to her father’s court as her young niece, Victoria, ascended the throne and began a new era within the royal establishment. By then, Augusta was already in failing health, having spent time at the seaside in Brighton learning to walk with a stick after an illness. She was not without criticism of the new reign.
In particular, she thought Victoria inexperienced and friendless, and believed the marriage being arranged with Prince Albert, a German aristocrat, would be disastrous, though she proved wrong on that point. After her sister Elizabeth’s death in January 1840, Augusta was the one who advised Victoria’s family that Parliament must open regardless of the royal funeral, treating it as a royal duty. She was also the only daughter of George III healthy enough to attend a royal wedding in February. On Victoria’s birthday that year, she sent her a turquoise heart containing a lock of her grey hair, with a message quoting her father on the value of keeping a royal household as free of conflict as possible, something difficult to achieve in George III’s reign.
Augusta grew opposed to what she saw as excessive change in Britain. Born at the start of the Industrial Revolution, she complained that the spread of new railways was ruining the roads. She fell severely ill at Clarence House in the summer of 1840, diagnosed by her doctor as inflammation of the bowels. By early July, newspapers reported she might not live much longer.
Victoria ordered the gates of Green Park closed so that passing traffic would not disturb her at her London residence. Yet Augusta survived for weeks, defying expectations that she would die within hours or days. Instead, she did not die until the evening of 22 September 1840, at the age of 71. She was surrounded by her remaining family, had never left Britain, and had perhaps never married, though we cannot be entirely certain of that last point.
Augusta Sophia was buried in the royal vault beneath St George’s Chapel at Windsor.