Place Name
Ernest Augustus (June 5, 1771 – November 18, 1851), the fifth son of King George III who was created Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale in 1799, and who later became King of Hanover from June 2, 1837. Like a great many of the grand streets surrounding Regent’s Park, it is named after eight of George III’s 15 children and their titles. Regent’s Park had been owned by the Crown since the time of Henry VIII, who used it as a hunting ground. During the Commonwealth, the deer were sold off and the land leased to farmers. Following the restoration, the land reverted to the Crown which honoured the arrangement agreed during the interregnum. When the last of the farmers’ leases expired the Prince Regent took the opportunity, with his architect in chief John Nash, of developing the estate into a new type of suburb: “Mary-le-bone Park shall be made to contribute to the healthfulness, beauty and advantage of that quarter of the Metropolis.” As for Ernest, when his older brother William IV, who ruled both the United Kingdom and the Hanoverian Kingdoms, died in 1837, his niece Victoria inherited the British throne. But under the Hanoverian constitution women were barred from becoming Monarch of Hanover. Since none of his older siblings had any legitimate children and he outlived them – he took the German duchy’s throne, thus ending the personal union between Britain and Hanover that had begun in 1714. Ernest was born in Buckingham House and spent his early years in Kew with two of his younger brothers. As a teenager he was sent to Hanover for his education and military training. During which time he suffered a disfiguring scar across his face, losing an eye, which is said to have made him look “like a villain”, that combined with his rather pompous character made him the victim of rumours. In 1810, while living at St James’s Palace, he was attacked by his Italian valet who attempted to run a sword through him as he slept. The valet, Joseph Sellis, managed to return to his room unnoticed under cover of darkness, where he killed himself. The Prince who suffered several wounds, survived but was later accused of murdering his servant. The Times later explaining: “It must be admitted that the Duke’s contempt for public opinion frequently exposed him to a species of hostility which persons of better judgment might easily have avoided.” More scandal followed when he was accused of fathering his sister’s illegitimate child. The rumours were most certainly untrue, the boy’s father being one General Garth, one of her equerries. David Blomfield in Kew Past gives this unflattering assessment: “The Duke of Cumberland [was] famous for being the most unpopular of all the unpopular royal dukes… in 1818, by a bizarre chance Kew found itself at the centre of a crisis over the royal succession. For years the King’s sons had been famous for the number of their children, but nearly everyone of the children was illegitimate. This of course had no constitutional importance so long as the Prince of Wales’s one legitimate daughter, Charlotte, was alive. Her death in 1817 was therefore a disaster. Of the five eldest princes only the hated Cumberland was now likely to produce a legitimate heir. No one was more horrified than Queen Charlotte. She was a great hater in a family that knew how to hate, and her pet aversion was the Duchess of Cumberland. The Dukes of Clarence and Kent were urged to marry German princesses immediately…” Although his mother Queen Charlotte disapproved of his marriage in 1815 to her twice-widowed niece, Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, it proved a happy union. See also Cumberland Place and Cumberland Market.
