Monday 31 October 2016

November Blogs - Georgian Queens and Princesses

Caroline of Brunswick 1798 - Caroline of Brunswick - Wikipedia, the free…:
Princess Caroline of Brunswick
In this month’s posts, I will be looking at the lives and loves of some of Britain’s Georgian Queens and Princesses with the help of my guest contributors, American author and historian Geri Walter and the British genealogists and historians Joanne Major and Sarah Murden.

Novelist Hilary Mantel wrote in an article in the London Review of Books in 2013 that she was asked by an interviewer at the Hay-on-Wye literature festival to choose a famous person to give a book to and to choose the book to give them. Many readers of this blog will find her choice of book and the person she chose to give it to shocking because she chose to give a book published in 2006, by the cultural historian Caroline Weber; called Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution,  to Catherine Duchess of Cambridge.

Portrait of Marie Antoinette Artist: Elisabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun. Love the colors of her gown and petticoat. Her fichu and cap, Oh.. Love everything!:
Portrait of Marie Antoinette
Artist: Elisabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun. 
“It’s not that I think we’re heading for a revolution,” said Mantel. She was concerned that Kate becoming a jointed doll on which certain rags were hung. “Marie Antoinette was a woman eaten alive by her frocks,” says Mantel. “She was transfixed by appearances, stigmatised by her fashion choices. Politics were made personal in her. Her greed for self-gratification, her half-educated dabbling in public affairs, were adduced as a reason the French were bankrupt and miserable. It was ridiculous, of course. She was one individual with limited power and influence, who focused the rays of misogyny. She was a woman who couldn’t win. If she wore fine fabrics she was said to be extravagant. If she wore simple fabrics, she was accused of plotting to ruin the Lyon silk trade. But in truth she was all body and no soul: no soul, no sense, no sensitivity. She was so wedded to her appearance that when the royal family, in disguise, made its desperate escape from Paris, dashing for the border, she not only had several trunk loads of new clothes sent on in advance, but took her hairdresser along on the trip. Despite the weight of her mountainous hairdos, she didn’t feel her head wobbling on her shoulders. When she returned from that trip, to the prison Paris would become for her, it was said that her hair had turned grey overnight.”

The Duchess of Cambridge is of course no Marie-Antoinette. She is a modern, educated woman who has married for love but Mantel is right about royal women of the past and strangely prophetic in describing what has happened to Kate in the press recently. Duchess of Drab! wrote Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail on 8th April 2016, “It's the mystery of the cosmos... How DOES a beautiful woman make designer outfits look so frumpy?”



Unlike her late mother-in-law, Diana Princess of Wales, Kate has not courted fashion or the press a crime she will pay heavily for I suspect but as a woman with a mind, she probably knows she’s damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t. If she courts fashion and sex appeal, she will be lambasted and lauded like tragic Diana, if she doesn’t she’ll remain a dowdy, uptight mouse.
The TV coverage is hardly better; Kate’s ‘achievements’ so far are those of her womb; her ability to supply an heir to the throne.

Celebrations at the birth of Princess Charlotte, May 2015.
In this respect, Kate is like so many royal women in the past who receive only a passing reference in mainstream history books. When Kate ventures out to visit to some charity or other on her own she is lauded patronisingly by the newscasters as if they were praising a child. Surely, it’s not hard for a woman in possession of one of the country’s most expensive educations and a good university degree to talk to children or politicians for a half an hour after a briefing by Palace aids!

The Duchess of Cambridge is just the most recent in a line of royal women living out their lives in gilded cages. The difference between Kate and her Georgian forbears is that she has chosen her life and consciously sacrificed her private life and career success for love. This was not a luxury afforded to princesses in the past.

Disney may believe every girl wants to be a pastel packaged franchise of a slender-waisted fairy-tale princess but if they knew what most princesses went through in the past and even today they would not be so keen to join their ranks. The truth is many of these women were child brides, exchanged by their families to secure dynastic advantage or to settle political deals; personal happiness and fulfilment was never part of the transaction. To find out more follow this month’s posts.



Sources:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n04/hilary-mantel/royal-bodies
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3530869/Duchess-Drab-s-mystery-cosmos-DOES-beautiful-woman-make-designer-outfits-look-frumpy.html
http://ipost247blog.ipost247.com/royal-baby-girl-kate-middleton-duchess-cambridge-gives-birth-2nd-child-girl-photos/

Tuesday 18 October 2016

Nabobs of the North

Sir Lawrence Dundas and Daughter, Zoffany, 1775
Bankers and men of property are some of the richest men on the planet today. Their relationship with governments and the democratic process is a battle for power fought in a war of attrition between the bankers' desire to operate freely and governments' desire for responsibility through regulation. Richer than countries and certainly richer than elected heads of state the influence of these multi-billionaires is profound but this is not a new phenomena as the story of the Dundas family reveals.

The Dundas family were one of Scotland's leading land owners but it fell on hard times during the failed Scottish rebellions: Head of the clan, William Dundas of Kincavel was imprisoned for his part in the 1715 Jacobite rebellion and many of the Dundas estates were forfeited to the British Crown after the 1745-1746 Jacobite rebellion.

Their humbler relatives were landless and urban living and working in trade and the newly emerging professions in Edinburgh. Lawrence Dundas the first of great Dundases was the younger son of landless branch of the family. His father,Thomas owned a drapery shop and woollen business in the Luckenbooths, a range of tenements which formerly stood immediately to the north of St. Giles' Kirk in the High Street of Edinburgh.

Sir Lawrence Dundas
Sir Lawrence Dundas (1710-1781)  known as the "Nabob of the North" even in his own lifetime was one of the new breed of men who made their fortune through servicing what we call the public sector today. He used the money he earned in the service of the King to invest in property and banking. He was the forerunner of many successful money men today who provide governments with armaments and supply multi-million pound government contracts.

Lawrence left his father's business and set up in as a merchant contractor and with his friend James Masterton, he obtained contracts to supplying the army of the Duke of Cumberland in the 1745 rebellion. Being successful with Cumberland further work came his way. His greatest money making opportunity  came during the Seven Years War (1756-1763), when he secured even greater contracts to supply the armies of the anti-French allies in Europe and Canada.  It was not all plain sailing though. He ran into trouble with Thomas Orby Hunter, the commissaries of control, and Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick-Lüneburg the  a German-Prussian field marshal (1758–1766) who led the Anglo-German army in Western Germany. who, according to Prime Minister Walpole,  threatened to hang him for late fulfilment.

James Boswell claimed Lawrence Dundas brought home, 'a couple of hundred thousand pounds’ from that war but some historians estimate actual figure was nearer to £2 million the equivalent of more than £200m in today's money which put him in the class of a billionaire today.

Having made one fortune Lawrence went into two others, both in the 18th century's growth industries - banking and canals. Dundas was a man who understood the future was in money not land. Banking in Scotland was dominated by two Edinburgh based institutions; the Bank of Scotland and what became The Royal Bank of Scotland. The two institutions were fierce rivals. Both had the power to issue bank notes but the The Bank of Scotland was deemed to be tainted by its past Jacobite inclinations so it is no surprise, given his support for the British, Lawrence Dundas invested heavily in its rival the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Route of the Forth and Clyde Canal
He completed the development of the port of Grangemouth in 1777, which linked his other major investment the construction of the Forth and Clyde Canal to the sea. Dundas ran the canal through his estate, of Kerse House, near Falkirk, he was a canny operator.

Like Billionaires today who build themselves lavish houses in places like the Hamptons, Dundas set about building himself a few mansions. He built what Scottish writer Hugo Arnot described as  "incomparably the handsomest townhouse we ever saw," in St. Andrew Square, Edinburgh. Designed by Sir William Chambers, it became the headquarters of the Royal Bank of Scotland in 1825.
Head Office of the Royal Bank of Scotland

In 1754 he made his second attempt to gain a seat in Parliament. He lost but not before he had spent a fortune on bribes which was the 18th century way of currying favour with the electorate and he was disappointed again in 1761 election. Having failed to get a seat he turned to his friend Lord Shelburne for help. On 19 August 1762 Shelburne wrote to Henry Fox: ‘Dundas, the Nabob of the North, writes me to desire I’ll get him made a baronet.’ On 20 October Dundas duly received his baronetcy.

With his baronetcy in hand he made his move south but not without comment. He bought the Aske Estate, near Richmond in North Yorkshire in 1763 from Lord Holderness for £45,000 and proceeded to enlarge and remodel it in Palladian taste by the premier Yorkshire architect, John Carr, who also designed new stables for him.

Aske Estate
On 3 May 1763 Lord Hardwicke wrote to Lord Royston,"Sir Lory Dundas, who extends his conquests from North to South, has purchased Moor Park from Lord Anson’s heirs for £25,000 for which he ordered a set of Gobelins tapestries with medallions by François Boucher and a long suite of seat furniture to match, for which Robert Adam provided d
esigns: they are among the earliest English neoclassical furniture. A few months later he bought Lord Granville’s London house for about £15,000.

From 1766 Dundas set about securing his political influence in Scotland. In July that year be he purchased the Orkneys and Shetlands from the Earl of Morton for £63,000, thereby obtaining the parliamentary seat for his brother, he obtained Stirlingshire for his friend Masterson, Linlithgowshire and Fife went to another friend James Wemyss, the Yorkshire seats of Richmond were given to two proxies Norton and Wedderburn to be controlled directly by Dundas himself; the seat for Edinburgh he kept for himself. His 'purchase' of these seats secured him 8 or 9 votes in the Commons which he was willing to be courted by both Government and opposition alike but generally he voted in support of the Hanoverian king.

East India House, Leadenhall Street, 1800
Although Dundas never obtained high office either for himself or his followers it was generally believed that ‘without the name of minister’ he had ‘the disposal of almost everything in Scotland’ and in the East India Company. The Duke of Queensberry or Lord Marchmont got most of appointments available in Scotland through his influence but many he saved for himself. As governor of the Royal Bank of Scotland, 1764-77, he exercised great influence in the financing of new projects, notably his own project, the Forth and Clyde canal, while he worked in Parliament to prevent his rival, Lord Argyll, developing the Glasgow and Clyde Canal. He also provided government supporters with shares in the East India Company to boost their wealth to meet the selection criteria in the 1770 election.

But as the 1770s progressed Sir Lawrence's star was dimming. His new rival came not from the aristocracy but from a distant family connection Henry Dundas, with whom Sir Lawrence's family had  long been on bad terms.

Henry Dundas
Henry was a skilled lawyer and was as unscrupulous as Sir Lawrence when it came to politics and the two would wage war on each other's interests in Scotland and the East India Company through their proxies until Lawrence died.

Henry rose quickly through the Scottish legal system and became a Member of Parliament in 1774. The two men were arch enemies. Henry was more than a match for the older man when it came to politics.After holding subordinate offices under William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne and William Pitt the Younger, he entered the cabinet in 1791 as Secretary of State for the Home Department where he successfully held back the abolition of slavery arguing the country made too much money out of it to give it up in a time of war.

Always viewed as an outsider, and as a man more interested in himself than King and country, Sir Lawrence's influence waned. He never received the peerage he felt he deserved for his support to the King neither did he manage to maintain his family's political position. He died on 21 September 1781, leaving an estate worth £16,000 p.a. and a fortune of £900,000 in personal and landed property. His son Thomas was elevated to the peerage as Baron Dundas of Aske in August 1794, and was also Lord Lieutenant and Vice Admiral of Orkney and Shetland. In 1892, the family gained the title Marquis of Zetland.

Henry Dundas went onto to be Prime Minister Pitt's fixer and War Secretary at the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1802 he was elevated to the Peerage as Viscount Melville and Baron Dunira and in 1804 he became First Lord of the Admiralty. He introduced a number of improvements there but questions were asked about his financial management of the department which resulted an impeachment trial for the misappropriation of public funds.

Henry Dundas was an accomplished politician and scourge of the Radicals, his deft and almost total control of Scottish politics through the 1790 when no monarch visited the country, led to him being pejoratively nicknamed King Harry the Ninth, the "Grand Manager of Scotland" a play on the masonic office of Grand Master of Scotland, or the "Great Tyrant" and "The Uncrowned King of Scotland." Indeed by 1790 Dundas was in Pitt’s own word the ‘indispensable’ coadjutor of his ministry and the prime minister’s friend par excellence. His hold over Pitt seemed to many observers unaccountable: but, "Dundas brought to market qualities rarely combined in the same individual. Conviviality at table: manners frank and open and inspiring confidence: eloquence bold, flowing, energetic and always at command: principles accommodating, suited to every variation in government, and unencumbered with modesty or fastidious delicacy."(1)

But Henry over stepped the mark and was accused of withdrawing money from the Bank of England and placing it in his own account at Coutts for speculation, primarily in the East India Company. Although Dundas lost his job as Minister Treasurer of the Navy in 1783 he was made a member of the Board of Control for India in 1784 and became its President from 1793-1802. During this period he held a number of other political appointments most notably from 1791-1794 as Home Secretary, during which he defended the East India Company from his position as Secretary of War in 1794. When it came to his trial his prosecutors found he had conveniently destroyed all his records so the case was largely based on the testimony of his accusers. Lacking any material evidence Dundas could only be formally censured by the House of Commons Henry and was acquitted 1806, but he never held public office again.
Melville Monument

Henry is commemorated by one of the most prominent memorials in Edinburgh, the 150-foot high, Melville Monument at St Andrew Square, which stands looking down on the house of his rival Lawrence. The house is now the headquarters of The Royal Bank of Scotland.

In 2008, the UK Treasury had to inject £37 billion ($64 billion, €47 billion, equivalent to £617 per citizen of the UK) of new capital into Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc, Lloyds TSB and HBOS plc, to avert financial sector collapse.



Sources
http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/dundas-henry-1742-1811
http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1754-1790/member/dundas-sir-lawrence-1710-81
(1)W. L. Clements Lib. Pitt letters, Pitt to Dundas, 22 July [1790]; Wraxall Mems. ed. Wheatley, i. 266.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Dundas,_1st_Viscount_Melville
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Lawrence_Dundas,_1st_Baronet

Thursday 13 October 2016

Cabinet of Curiosities

A Cabinets of Curiosities was a feature of many large houses in the 18th century. The collections reflected the particular interests of their curators and as a social device to establish and uphold rank in society. Sometimes called ‘wonder rooms’, they were collections of extraordinary objects which, like today’s museums, attempted to categorise and tell stories about the wonders and oddities of the natural world.

A crocodile skull, part of the collection of curiosities
 at Caulk Abbey
Princes were particularly prone to collecting objects of fascination. Russian Emperor, Peter the Great created his Kunstkamera in Saint Petersburg in 1714. It was a haphazard collection rarities with an emphasis on natural specimens called "naturalia", rather than the man-made objects called "artificialia".




Peter was interested in anatomy and encouraged research into human deformities. He issued a royal edict requiring examples of malformed and still-born infants to be sent from all over the country to the imperial collection and put them on show as examples of accidents of nature in his collection. He also bought many specimens from Holland particularly from the pharmacologist, Albertus Seba, and the anatomist, Frederik Ruysch (1638 - 1731).

A tableau by Ruysch
The illustration to the right shows one of the scenes created by Ruysch and displayed in his museum in Amsterdam; sometimes known as the 8th wonder of the world. His daughter prepared delicate cuffs and collars to be slipped on to arms and necks of the skeletons that were positioned crying into handkerchiefs, wearing strings of pearls, or playing the violin in themed tableaux; for example, our life on earth is short. Ruysch was as much an expert showman as he was a scientist as was the case with many anatomists of his day. His dissections were public spectacles held by candlelight and accompanied by music and refreshments. Peter’s collection of human specimens formed the core of what later became the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1716, he added a mineral cabinet to the Kunstkamera, with the purchase of a collection of 1195 minerals bought from Gotvald, a doctor from Danzig. Russian minerals were added to the collection that eventually became the core of the Fersman Mineralogical Museum in Moscow.


William Hunter teaching anatomy
In Britain anatomists John and William Hunter collected curiosities too. Today the Hunterian Collection is one of the best-known collections of the University of Glasgow. Collected by William Hunter (1718–83). It contains 650 manuscripts and some 10,000 printed books, 30,000 coins and 15,000 anatomical and natural history specimens.



The library and other collections remained in London after Hunter's death for the use of his nephew, the physician and pathologist, Matthew Baillie (1761–1823), as well as William Cumberland Cruikshank (1745–1800). It moved to the University of Glasgow in 1807.

John Hunter
William’s brother John Hunter FRS (13 February 1728 – 16 October 1793) was one of the most distinguished scientists and surgeons of his day. He was an early advocate of careful observation and scientific method in medicine, a teacher and friend of, and collaborator with, Edward Jenner, the inventor of the smallpox vaccine.



A bust of John Hunter stands on a pedestal outside the main entrance to St George's Hospital in Tooting, South London, taken from the original Hyde Park Corner building, Lanesborough House. There is a bust of him in the South West corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and one in Leicester Square near where his central London home and anatomy school were situated. In his lifetime, John Hunter collected and prepared numerous natural specimens, which he displayed in his museum from 1783 including the skeleton of the Irish Giant Charles Byrne. In 1799, the British government purchased the collection and presented to the Royal College of Surgeons as an aid to medical education. This formed the basis of the Hunterian Collection which can be viewed at the Royal College of Surgeons Museum today.

Collecting was the range not only for anatomists and princes but for parsons and lords of the manor too. It was part of what has been called the 18th century's elite 'learned entertainment.'

La Ronde, Exmouth
 Many houses had cabinets of curiosities; one of the most beautiful collections of seashells was gathered by two spinster cousins, Jane and Mary Parminter. The two cousins became greatly attached to each other and in 1795 decided to set up home together in Devon. They negotiated the purchase of 15 acres (6.1 ha) of land near Exmouth. Once their house had been built they lived secluded and somewhat eccentric lives for many years until 1811 when Miss Jane died.


Cabinet of shells from La Ronde

http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item107648.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_College_of_Surgeons_of_England#Hunterian_Museum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hunter_(anatomist)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunterian_Museum_and_Art_Gallery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunstkamera
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/a-la-ronde
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/people/johnhunter