The First Iron Lady: A Life of Caroline of Ansbach. Matthew Dennison

      

       Copyright

      William Collins

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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      London SE1 9GF

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      This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017

      Copyright © Matthew Dennison 2017

      Matthew Dennison asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      Cover images Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008121990

      Ebook Edition © August 2017 ISBN: 9780008122010

      Version: 2018-08-20

       Dedication

      For Gráinne, with love

      ‘Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair … Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.’

      Song of Solomon

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Family Trees

       Epigraph

       Introduction

       Prologue: ‘Halliballoo!’

       PART ONE: GERMANY

I Princess of Ansbach: ‘Bred up in the softness of a Court’

II Electoral Princess: ‘The affections of the heart’

       PART TWO: BRITAIN

       I Princess of Wales: ‘Majesty with Affability’

       II Leicester House: ‘Not a Day without Suffering’

       III Queen: ‘Constancy and Greatness’

       Afterword

       Acknowledgements

       Notes

       Bibliography

       Picture Section

       Index

       Also by Matthew Dennison

       About the Publisher

      

       Epigraph

      ‘The darling pleasure of her soul was power.’

      Lord Hervey, Memoirs

      ‘She loved the real possession of power rather than the show of it, and whatever she did herself that was either wise or popular, she always desired that the King should have the full credit as well as the advantage of the measure, conscious that, by adding to his respectability, she was most likely to maintain her own.’

      Walter Scott on Caroline of Ansbach, The Heart of Midlothian, 1818

       Introduction

      History has forgotten Caroline of Ansbach. The astuteness of her political manoeuvrings; her patronage of poets, philosophers and clerics; her careful management of her peppery husband George II; the toxic breakdown of her relationship with her eldest son, Frederick; her reputation as Protestant heroine; even the legendary renown of her magnificent bosom – ‘her breasts they make such a wonder at’ – have all escaped posterity’s radar.1

      Her contemporaries understood her as the power behind George II’s throne. One lampoon taunted, ‘You may strutt, dapper George, but ’twill all be in vain;/We know ’tis Caroline, not you, that reign.’2 She was the first Hanoverian queen consort. On her arrival in London from Germany in October 1714, following the