Queen Victoria biography

Dromo's Den

Queen Victoria Biography

VICTORIA (1819–1901). Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India. She was the daughter and only child of Edward, Duke of Kent, fourth son of George III. Her mother, Victoria Mary Louisa, fourth daughter of Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and sister of Leopold, King of the Belgians, was married to the Duke of Kent in 1818, four years after the death of her former husband, the Prince of Leiningen. Victoria (baptized as Alexandrina Victoria) was born May 24, 1819, at Kensington Palace, whence her parents had temporarily removed from their home in Germany, in order that the child, a possible claimant for the British throne, might be born on English soil. The princess, left fatherless when eight months of age, was taught by her mother and the Duchess of Northumberland. She ascended the throne on the death of her uncle, William IV (q.v.), June 20, 1837. Her uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, became King of Hanover in virtue of the Salic Law, and thus terminated the connection which had lasted 123 years between the crowns of England and Hanover. Victoria was proclaimed June 21, 1837, and crowned at Westminster, June 28, 1838.

On her accession she found at the head of the Whig government Viscount Melbourne, by whom her early political course was largely influenced. Her long, prosperous, and comparatively peaceful reign included the administrations of Melbourne (till 1841), Peel (1841–46), Russell (1846–52 and 1865–66), Derby (1852, 1858–59, and 1866–68), Aberdeen (1852–55), Palmerston (1855–58 and 1859–65), Disraeli (1868, and as Earl of Beaconsfield, 1874–80), Gladstone (1868–74, 1880–85, 1886, and 1892–94), Salisbury (1885–86, 1886–92, and 1895 to the end of the reign), Rosebery (1894–95). Of the legislative record of her reign the most important events are the establishment of penny postage (1840), amendment of the poor laws of Scotland (1845) and Ireland (1847), repeal of the corn laws (1846), the Irish encumbered estates act (1848), repeal of the navigation laws (1849), the removal of the disabilities of the Jews (1858), the reform act of 1867, the disestablishment of the Irish church (1869), elementary education act (1870) and abolition of religious tests in the universities (1871), Irish land acts (1870, 1881), abolition of purchase in the army (1871), Scotch educational act (1872), and the franchise bill of 1884. Events of national and international importance were numerous in her long reign, among them being the rebellion in Canada (1837–38), Afghan War (1838–42), Opium War in China (1840–42), culmination of the repeal agitation in Ireland under O'Connell (1843), First Sikh War (1845–46), Irish famine (1846–47), chartist agitation (1848), Second Sikh War (1849), the establishment of a Catholic hierarchy in England (1850), Crimean War (1854–56), war with China (1856–58), Indian Mutiny (1857–58), transfer of India from the East India Company to the crown (1858), expedition to China (1860), complicated relations with the United States during the Civil War (1861–65), Canadian confederation (1867), Abyssinian War (1867–68), Ashanti War (1873–74), the assumption by Victoria of the title of Empress of India (1876), Afghan War (1878–80), Zulu War (1879), Transvaal War (1880), and the virtual establishment of British domination in Egypt (1882), the struggle for the reconquest of Nubia for Egypt (1884–98), the conquest of Burma (1885), Ashanti War (1896), South African War (1899–1902), Australian federation (1900–01). The reign of Victoria, the longest in English history, witnessed an extraordinary development of Imperial Britain as shown in the growth and political organization of the Canadian, Australian, and African colonies. For many years the agitation for home rule in Ireland was the main feature of internal politics. Victoria was preëminent among sovereigns by her personal character. She "for many years . . . exerted an almost unbounded moral control over the larger policies of the British Empire. She was industrious and methodical, patient and tactful, with a memory that was a great storehouse of knowledge of things past and present." The leading feature of the Victorian epoch was "the new conception of the British monarchy which sprang from the development of the colonies and dependencies of Great Britain, and the sudden strengthening of the sense of unity between them and the mother country. The crown after 1880 became the living symbol of Imperial unity, and every year events deepened the impression that the Queen in her own person typified the common interest and the common sympathy which spread a feeling of brotherhood through the continents that formed the British Empire." Her Diamond Jubilee in 1896 was marked by empire-wide rejoicing and a celebration such as London had never before seen.

Queen Victoria was married, Feb. 10, 1840, to her cousin, Albert, Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, second son of the then reigning Duke. Although the union was not at the time greatly approved of by the Queen's advisers and subjects, it proved a most felicitous one, marked by a degree of mutual affection rarely found in marriages of state. The Prince Consort died Dec. 14, 1861; Victoria never ceased to mourn him. To them were born four sons and five daughters: The Princess Royal, Victoria, born Nov. 21, 1840, married Jan. 25, 1858, to Frederick William, who in 1888 became Frederick III, Emperor of Germany of brief reign (died 1901); Albert Edward, King of Great Britain, 1901–1910, born Nov. 9, 1841, married March 10, 1863, Princess Alexandra Caroline, eldest daughter of Christian IX, King of Denmark; Princess Alice, born April 25, 1843, married July 1, 1862, Prince Frederick William of Hesse (died 1878); Prince Alfred, born Aug. 6, 1844, created Duke of Edinburgh, 1866, married Jan. 23, 1874, Marie, only daughter of the Emperor of Russia (died 1901); Princess Helena, born May 25, 1846, married in 1866 to Prince Christian of Denmark; Princess Louise, born March 18, 1848, married in 1871 to the Marquis of Lorne; Prince Arthur, born May 1, 1850, created Duke of Connaught, 1874, married in 1879 Princess Louise Marguerite of Prussia; Prince Leopold, born April 7, 1853, was created Duke of Albany, 1881, and married to Princess Helena of Waldeck in 1882 (died 1884); Princess Beatrice, born April 14, 1857, married, 1885, Prince Henry of Battenberg.

In her seclusion from public life after the death of the Prince Consort, and as later testimonials of her affection for him, Victoria supervised the publication in 1867 of The Early Days of His Royal Highness, the Prince Consort; published in 1868 Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands; supervised a second Life of the Prince Consort in 1874; adding in 1884 More Leaves from the Journal, etc. She died Jan. 22, 1901, at Windsor. See United Kingdom and articles on the statesmen mentioned in this article.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XXIII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 137-138.