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Prince Albert Biography

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ALBERT, FRANCIS CHARLES AUGUSTUS EMANUEL (1819-61). Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and the husband of Queen Victoria of Great Britain. He is popularly known as Prince Albert and the Prince Consort. He was born at Rosenau Castle, near Coburg, Aug. 26, 1819, the second son of Ernest, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and his wife Louise, daughter of Augustus, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. In the Prince's sixth year his parents separated, and he never afterward saw his mother, who died in 1831. The Prince and his elder brother, under a private tutor, received a careful education, and after a year of study at Brussels he attended the University of Bonn, where, in addition to the sciences connected with statecraft, he devoted himself with ardor to the study of natural history and chemistry and displayed great taste for the fine arts, especially painting and music. Several compositions of his obtained publicity, and an opera, afterward performed in London, is said to have been composed by him. He was gifted with a handsome figure and obtained expertness in all manly exercises. He married the young Queen of Great Britain on Feb. 10, 1840. On his marriage Prince Albert received the title of Royal Highness, was naturalized as a subject of Great Britain, and obtained the rank of field-marshal, the knighthood of the Order of the Bath, and the command of a regiment of hussars. As the union proved in the highest degree a happy one, the Prince was loaded with honors and distinctions both by the Queen and the nation. The title of Consort of Her Most Gracious Majesty was formally conferred in 1842, and that of Prince Consort, in 1857, made him a prince of the United Kingdom. He was also made a member of the Privy Council, governor and constable of Windsor Castle, colonel of the Grenadier Guards, acting Grand Master of the Order of the Bath, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, the standard of which he succeeded in raising considerably, and Master of the Trinity House. Notwithstanding his high and favored position as the Queen's trusted counselor, the Prince with rare prudence and tact, abstained from meddling with State affairs, and thus escaped the jealousy and detraction of parties, gradually attaining, indeed, the widest popularity. When the Whig ministry in 1840 proposed for him the income of £50,000, as consort of Queen Victoria, the Tories in conjunction with the Radicals, succeeded in limiting the sum to £30,000. This incident, which occurred before the marriage, appears to have been the only instance of any manifestation of party feeling with reference to the Prince. On the other hand, he opened for himself an influential sphere of action, in the encouragement and promotion of science and art, appearing as the patron of many useful associations and public undertakings. The Exhibition of 1851 owed its origin and the greater part of its success to the Prince. An incessant worker in the interests of his adopted country, his toil undermined his constitution, and he succumbed to an attack of typhoid fever, Dec. 14, 1861. His memory is perpetuated under the surname "Albert the Good." The last of his political acts, one of particular interest to the United States, was instrumental in preventing a war which threatened to arise out of the seizure of the Confederate envoys on the English steamer Trent. The draft of the ministerial ultimatum submitted to the Queen seemed to the Prince needlessly irritating. Weak then from the beginning of his last illness, he arose at seven the next morning (Dec. 1, 1861), and wrote and presented a memorandum of his objections to the Queen. His suggestions, adopted by Lord Russell proved acceptable to President Lincoln.