The impropriety of marrying a countrywoman

How did one go about finding a royal bride 250 years ago? When George III came to the throne at the tender age of 22 in 1760, he was unmarried, but had proved he had an eye for the ladies. The year before his accession, he had fallen hopelessly in love with Lady Sarah Lennox, the engaging, self-assured 14–year-old daughter of the Duke of Richmond (and, as it happened, a distant cousin). George knew that he would be expected to make a strategic marriage with a European princess, but, as he put it, he endured a struggle between ‘the boiling youth of twenty-one years and prudence.’ George tried to make her acceptable to his advisors: ‘her voice is sweet, she seems sensible . . .In short she is everything I can form to myself lovely.’ The poor lovelorn prince paints a slightly tragic figure – he knew his love was doomed, but desperately hoped that it wasn’t.

In the end, his chief advisor, Lord Bute, convinced him of ‘the impropriety of marrying a countrywoman,’ and the royal advisors sent out a search party to Europe to find a suitable German bride for the young king. And Lady Sarah found that being passed over was a blow to her pride, rather than her heart.

They produced 17-year-old Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a young woman of undoubted intelligence, good sense and plainness. Horace Walpole described her on her arrival in England: ‘She is not tall, nor a beauty; pale, and very thin; but looks sensible; and is genteel. Her hair is darkish and fine; her forehead low, her nose very well, except the nostrils spreading too wide; her mouth has the same fault, but her teeth are good.’

Charlotte arrived in Harwich on Monday morning, met the king on Tuesday afternoon, and was married to him later that day. The chief bridesmaid at her wedding was none other than the beautiful Lady Sarah, and according to Walpole, ‘nothing ever looked so charming as Lady Sarah Lennox; she has all the glow of beauty peculiar to her family’.

One might have expected Princess Charlotte, effectively a girl from the sticks thrown headfirst into the sophistication and intrigue of the English court, to be overwhelmed by the occasion. It is clear, however, that she was confident and articulate. ‘As supper was not ready, the Queen sat down, sung, and played on the harpsichord to the Royal Family, who all supped with her in private. They talked of the different German dialects; the King asked if the Hanoverian was not pure—"Oh, no, Sir," said the Queen; "it is the worst of all."’

‘She will not be unpopular’ reported Walpole waspishly. In fact, Charlotte proved to be a remarkably successful queen, producing 15 children and retaining the King's devotion for the rest of their lives.