The monarchs we never had
William, duke of Gloucester (1689-1700)
Who was he?
William, duke of Gloucester, born on 24 July 1689, was the only child of Prince George of Denmark and his wife Princess Anne. Younger daughter of the deposed English king James II, she was next in line to the throne after the childless Mary and William of Orange, her sister and brother-in-law.
Anne and George also had trouble producing an heir. By 1700, Anne had been pregnant at least 18 times. At the end of 13 of her pregnancies, she miscarried or the babies were stillborn. Of the remaining five children, four died before reaching the age of two. Only her son William survived infancy.
On his birth, King William allowed his namesake to call himself ‘duke of Gloucester’ (but did not actually create him a duke) and, in January 1696, awarded him the Order of the Garter. When the boy was nine, he was given his own household, with the famed John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, as governor of it. But it was not a post Marlborough was to enjoy for long.
William had poor health throughout his life. Soon after he was born, he suffered convulsions, and his parents feared he would die. He recovered, and Anne moved him to Campden House in London’s Kensington, where the air was believed to be better. By the time he was three, he was still not speaking or walking, and even as he grew older, he could not climb stairs without assistance. Yet, despite his physical weakness, his mind was said to be sharp, and he was reputed to be quite precocious.
William’s chief amusement appears to have been playing at soldiers. He had a band of boys whom he called his ‘horse-guards’, and he used to exercise them in the gardens of Campden House. They seem to have been quite badly behaved, giving themselves the airs of real soldiers and taking what they liked from nearby houses.
Young as he was, William had a very clear notion of his own importance – that, after his mother, he was heir to the throne and ought to have honours shown to him. But despite his youth, he still knew how to curry favour where it counted. When King William gave the young duke the Order of the Garter, buckling it on with his own hands, someone asked him: ‘Aren’t you glad to have this?’ ‘I am gladder to have the king's favour,’ replied the boy. Not long afterwards, when a murder plot against the king had been discovered, the duke sent the sovereign a message declaring that he was his Majesty's most dutiful subject and would rather lose his life in his Majesty's cause than in anyone else's.
How did he die?
William’s 11th birthday on 29 July 1700 was celebrated with much rejoicing and activity. The duke reviewed his boy regiment, enjoyed a great display of cannon and fireworks, and sat at the head of a grand banquet, before retiring to bed exhausted.
The next day, he complained of nausea, headache and sore throat. The family doctor was called in and, suspecting smallpox, decided to bleed him to lower the fever. It did go down for a few hours, only to return more ferociously than ever that evening. Dr Radcliffe, considered the most skilful physician of the age, was hastily sent for. When he arrived, his diagnosis was that William was suffering from scarlet fever, and he asked who had bled him. When the doctor in attendance admitted that it had been done on his orders, Dr Radcliffe pronounced: ‘Then, you have destroyed him, and you may finish him, for I will not prescribe.’
Whether or not it was the bleeding that had fatally weakened him, William was indeed dying. He lived for another four days, constantly delirious, shouting and tossing in his bed, while Anne sat beside him, praying for a miracle. Just before midnight on 30 July, five days after his birthday, the young duke died.
Afterwards, an autopsy revealed that William had suffered from hydrocephalus, an abnormal accumulation of fluid in the brain. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Anne's composure in face of this terrible blow awed those around her. She did not weep, and Prince George could only marvel at the 'pious fortitude of his beloved princess'. But beneath the calm she was stunned with grief, William's death having sealed the tragedy of her motherhood.
What were the consequences?
Queen Mary had died of smallpox six years earlier. Two years later, in 1702, King William had a fatal riding accident and Anne became queen at the age of 37. However, the failure of either Mary or Anne to produce a child who could survive into adulthood precipitated a succession crisis. In the absence of a Protestant heir, it was likely that their Roman Catholic father, James II, would leave his exile in France and attempt to reclaim the throne.
To preclude any Roman Catholic from obtaining the crown, Parliament enacted the Act of Settlement 1701. According to this, if William (by any future marriage) or Anne did not produce an heir, the crown would go to the Protestant Sophia, wife of the elector of Hanover, and her descendants, who were descended from the Anglo-Scottish king James I through Elizabeth of Bohemia.
When the Scottish Parliament refused to accept the choice of its English counterpart, various coercive tactics – such as crippling the Scottish economy by restricting trade – were used to ensure that Scotland would co-operate. The Act of Union 1707, which united England and Scotland into Great Britain, was a product of subsequent negotiations.
And on Anne’s death in 1714, the Hanoverian king George I, Sophia’s eldest son, duly succeeded to the throne of Great Britain.
