Prince William, Duke of Gloucester – a short, sad life

This edited article about Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 937 published on 5 January 1980.

William III entrusts his nephew and heir, Prince William, to Bishop Burnett

Princess Anne and her husband, Prince George of Denmark, were appalled when they saw their five-year-old son William, Duke of Gloucester, attempting to walk. The little boy had to be held on both sides by servants, and even with their help he found it difficult to walk up and down stairs.

Imagine the son of the heir to the throne of England being thus held like a baby, just so that he could put one step in front of the other!

For an hour Anne reasoned and pleaded with her son to behave himself as was properly fitting for the future King of England. Then she led him into the middle of the room and commanded: “Walk! You know very well that you can do so!”

Obstinately the little boy refused to stir. At last his father, in a violent temper, took a birch rod and repeatedly slashed the boy with it until, terrified for his life, William ran unaided across the room.

What neither Anne nor her husband knew, or would have understood, was that little Duke William had hydrocephalus, or “water on the brain”.

The illness, probably in William’s case the result of defects at birth, causes the head gradually to enlarge; the forehead bulges and the sufferer cannot lift his head from the pillow. For centuries it was an incurable condition; even today it is almost always fatal.

Hydrocephalus affected little William so badly that he could not walk alone, because the movement of fluid in his head when he did so made him giddy.

One thing especially worried Anne. The Jacobite faction were determined that she should not succeed to the throne of England. If the comedians, cartoonists and wags who supported the Jacobites discovered that at five her son was unable to walk unaided, they would poke so much fun at her family that her future crown would be jeopardised.

For in that England of the late 17th century even a child’s infirmity could be used as a weapon for brutal scorn; could be employed as ammunition in a cruel lampoon.

Poor, sad little William! He was born the hope of Protestant England, yet his health was so frail that he had to be kept out of the public gaze. His terrible infirmity gave him a freakish appearance. A writer who knew the young duke well tells us: “His head was extremely long and large, which made him very difficult to be fitted with a wig. His hat, poor infant, at five years old, was large enough for most men!”

For all that, the little duke had days when his illness affected him less than usual, and then he was as rollicking and high-spirited as any boy of his age. The result was that his illness was attributed to every cause but the real one.

Once, given some leeks on St David’s Day, he tied them round a toy ship. Later he fell asleep while playing and when he awoke he became very ill. “He has been poisoned by the smell of leeks!” exclaimed the Court ladies. William was ill for nine more days – an illness which had to be kept quiet in case the Welsh heard and took offence that it had started on their patron saint’s day.

Indeed, all William’s short life was punctuated by these regular and melancholy attacks caused by his hydrocephalus. Despite them, his mother and father strove desperately to fit him for his future role as sovereign. Anne, particularly, was often angered by the little duke’s swearing.

It is interesting to note what, in that last decade of the 17th century, was considered swearing. Once, in his mother’s bedroom, William informed her that he was “confounded dry.” “Who has told you those horrible words?” asked the shocked Queen.

Another time the Prince made use of the expletive: “I vow.” “Whom have you heard speak in that manner?” Anne demanded to know, and she threatened to sack a royal servant whom she suspected to be guilty of teaching these “swear-words” to William.

The boy duke was fascinated by military life. “Nothing but battles, sieges, drums and warlike tales afforded him recreation,” we are told. He was given a permanent band of urchins from the British Army’s Boys’ Regiment with which to play games and drill.

“These boy soldiers,” says one account, “were no slight annoyance to Kensington (where the duke lived), for on their return homewards from drill they used to enter the houses on the road to London and help themselves to whatever they liked.”

All these amusements were halted periodically by William’s regular bouts of illness. When he was confined to bed the boy soldiers stood guard at his door. Tattoos were flourished on the drums and toy forts were built by his bedside. His father, Prince George of Denmark, considered all this was excellent stuff that acted as a counterweight against the mollycoddling of his sick son by the fuss-pot women of the Court.

Much of William’s zest for life was fed by one of his servants, a bright young Welshman named Lewis Jenkins, who spent a lot of his time reading and studying, apparently to keep William better informed about the world. This created friction in the Court, for Mr Pratt, the duke’s tutor, claimed that Lewis was usurping his job. But it was Lewis who wrote a book on the duke’s life, filled with anecdotes about the boy.

Thus we learn from the perceptive Lewis that William, “though he had but completed his seventh year, began to be more wary in what he said, and would not talk and chatter just what came into his head, but now and then would utter shrewd expressions, with some archness.”

About this time William’s uncle, King William III, who preceded Queen Anne on the throne, made him a Knight of the Garter and the Court painter, Sir Godfrey Kneller, painted the boy’s portrait. He is shown wearing, rather ridiculously, the fashionable wig of the times; notwithstanding that, he is handsome, with a pearly fair complexion, very blue eyes and a very grave expression.

At the age of eight the duke began his formal education. It was a late start for a potential heir to the throne, but this was because of his frail health. His new tutor, Bishop Burnet, set a course of study that allowed no more time for forays with boy soldiers. It included jurisprudence, the Gothic laws and the feudal system. Stifled by this syllabus, William’s lively spirit, which had supported him through all his illnesses, began to flag.

Never was a royal son’s education more important to England; never was a royal son more incapable of absorbing it. For William was the hope of Protestant England against the Jacobites who would support a return of the Catholic Stuart kings to the throne. But the boy, as many could sadly see, was not long for this world.

The childless King William III was now grudgingly recognising that his nephew, little William, if he lived, was ultimately heir to the throne. It was important, therefore, that Bishop Burnet should teach him to hate his Catholic grandfather, the deposed King James II, then in exile in France.

Bishop Burnet had made it clear on several occasions that he did not want the job of tutoring the boy. But the king prevailed. “I can only trust this care to you,” declared King William, knowing that, of all the learned churchmen in England, none supported the cause of Protestant king more than Bishop Burnet.

Duke William was ten when his portrait was painted again – and then he already looked more like 17. The blue eyes are full of sadness and all the merriness that Lewis Jenkins described seems to have vanished.

In July, 1700, William presided over a great banquet to celebrate the boy’s eleventh birthday. He “inspected” his friends, the boy soldiers, and listened excitedly to the sounds of cannon being discharged in his honour. The next day he fell ill with a headache and a sore throat and by the evening he was delirious.

Dr Radcliffe, the royal doctor, declared it was scarlet fever, and then berated another doctor who had arrived before him, for having bled the duke. “You have destroyed him!” cried Dr Ratcliffe. Five days after his birthday party, little William died, with his mother bent in anguish over his bed.

If William’s life was sad enough, his mother’s was almost as tragic. Anne, a weak, dull woman, although a sincere one, was plagued by constant ill-health and suffering. Sometimes she grew so fat that, unable even to walk, she had to be carried around the palace.

Anne gave birth to 16 other children besides William, but none of them lived to be even as old as William. When the Queen died childless, Parliament called over from Germany the Protestant Elector of Saxony, to reign as King George I.