page_title: Caroline of Ansbach
section_title: Final years
hierarchical_section_title: Caroline of Ansbach / Final years
caption_attribution_description: "Probably painted around 1735, Highmore’s profile portrait depicts the fifty-year-old Queen dressed in a loose gown lined with an ermine collar. Her hair is coiffed around a jewelled diadem and interlaced with a string of pearls. It is uncertain if Highmore obtained a sitting from the Queen; we know for certain from Vertue that his request was on one occasion denied. The artist’s obituary, which lists a portrait of the Queen, emphasised his ability to ‘take a likeness by memory as well as by sitting’. The companion image of George II was destroyed by fire in 1824 but appears in Charles Wild’s watercolour of the West Ante Room at Carlton House (RCIN 922175) and in an engraving by John Tinney."
context_page_description: Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach was Queen consort of Great Britain as the wife of King George II.
  Her father, Margrave John Frederick of Brandenburg-Ansbach, belonged to a branch of the House of Hohenzollern and was the ruler of a small German state, the Principality of Ansbach. Caroline was orphaned at a young age and moved to the enlightened court of her guardians, King Frederick I and Queen Sophia Charlotte of Prussia. At the Prussian court, her previously limited education was widened, and she adopted the liberal outlook possessed by Sophia Charlotte, who became her good friend and whose views influenced Caroline all her life.
  As a young woman, Caroline was much sought-after as a bride. After rejecting the suit of the nominal King of Spain, Archduke Charles of Austria, she married George Augustus, the third-in-line to the British throne and heir apparent to the Electorate of Hanover. They had eight children, seven of whom grew to adulthood.
  Caroline moved permanently to Britain in 1714 when her husband became Prince of Wales. As Princess of Wales, she joined her husband in rallying political opposition to his father King George I.
context_section_description: In mid-1735, Frederick, Prince of Wales, was further dismayed when Caroline, rather than himself, again acted as regent while the King was absent in Hanover. The King and Queen arranged Frederick's marriage, in 1736, to Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. Shortly after the wedding, George went to Hanover, and Caroline resumed her role as "Protector of the Realm". As regent, Caroline considered the reprieve of Captain John Porteous, who had been convicted of murder in Edinburgh. Before she could act, a mob stormed the jail where he was held and killed him. Caroline was appalled. The King's absences abroad were leading to unpopularity, and in late 1736 he made plans to return, but his ship was caught in poor weather, and it was rumoured that he had been lost at sea. Caroline was devastated, and disgusted by the insensitivity of her son, who hosted a grand dinner while the gale was blowing. During her regency, the Prince of Wales attempted to start a number of quarrels with his mother, whom he saw as a useful proxy to irritate the King. George eventually returned in January 1737.
  Frederick applied to Parliament unsuccessfully for an increased financial allowance that had hitherto been denied him by the King, and public disagreement over the money drove a further wedge between parents and son. On the advice of Walpole, Frederick's allowance was raised in an attempt to mitigate further conflict, but by less than he had asked. In June 1737, Frederick informed his parents that Augusta was pregnant, and due to give birth in October. In fact, Augusta's due date was earlier and a peculiar episode followed in July in which the prince, on discovering that his wife had gone into labour, sneaked her out of Hampton Court Palace in the middle of the night, to ensure that the King and Queen could not be present at the birth. George and Caroline were horrified. Traditionally, royal births were witnessed by members of the family and senior courtiers to guard against supposititious children, and Augusta had been forced by her husband to ride in a rattling carriage for an hour and a half while heavily pregnant and in pain. With a party including two of her daughters  and Lord Hervey, the Queen raced over to St. James's Palace, where Frederick had taken Augusta. Caroline was relieved to discover that Augusta had given birth to a "poor, ugly little she-mouse" rather than a "large, fat, healthy boy" as the pitiful nature of the baby made a supposititious child unlikely. The circumstances of the birth deepened the estrangement between mother and son. According to Lord Hervey, she once remarked after seeing Frederick, "Look, there he goes—that wretch!—that villain!—I wish the ground would open this moment and sink the monster to the lowest hole in hell!"
  In the final years of her life, Caroline was troubled by gout in her feet, but more seriously she had suffered an umbilical hernia at the birth of her final child in 1724. On 9 November 1737, she felt an intense pain and, after struggling through a formal reception, took to her bed. Part of her small intestine had poked through the hernia opening. Over the next few days she was bled, purged, and operated on, without anaesthetic, but there was no improvement in her condition. The King refused Frederick permission to see his mother, a decision with which she complied; she sent her son a message of forgiveness through Walpole. She asked her husband to remarry after her death, which he rejected saying he would take only mistresses; she replied "Ah, mon Dieu, cela n'empêche pas" ("My God, that doesn't prevent it"). On 17 November, her strangulated bowel burst. She died on 20 November 1737 at St. James's Palace.
  She was buried in Westminster Abbey on 17 December. Frederick was not invited to the funeral. George Frideric Handel composed an anthem for the occasion, The Ways of Zion Do Mourn / Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline. The King arranged for a pair of matching coffins with removable sides, so that when he followed her to the grave (23 years later), they could lie together again.
caption: Portrait by Joseph Highmore, 1735
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