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[8], 364 pp. Frontispiece engraving, vignette t.p., & 14 inserted steel engravings. 8vo. 9-3/8" x 6" With a tipped-in presentation leaf from Victoria: "For / Edward and Lady Alicia / Conroy / from / Their very sincere friend / Victoria. / Windsor Castle 6th December / 1838" Sir Edward Conroy [1812 - 1869] the second child of Sir John Conroy, 1st Baronet (of Llanbrynmair), the chief attendant of the Duke of Kent and the Duchess of Kent, Queen Victoria's parents. "Mary Louise Victoria (Marie Luise Viktoria) was born in Coburg on 17 August 1786 in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. She was the fourth daughter and seventh child of Franz Frederick Anton, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and Countess Augusta of Reuss-Ebersdorf. She had a rough childhood growing up with her brothers and sisters. One of her brothers was Ernest I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and another brother, Leopold, married, in 1816, Princess Charlotte of Wales, the only legitimate daughter of the future King George IV, and heiress presumptive to their British throne. On 21 December 1803 at Coburg, she married (as his second wife) Charles, Prince of Leiningen (1763-1814), whose first wife, Henrietta of Reuss-Ebersdorf, was her aunt. Charles and Victoria had two children. After the death of her first spouse, she served as regent of the Principality of Leiningen during the minority of her son, Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Emich, Prince of Leiningen. The death of Princess Charlotte of Wales, the wife of Victoria's brother Leopold in 1817, prompted a succession crisis, and, with Parliament offering a financial incentive, three of Charlotte's uncles, sons of George III, were prepared to marry. One of Charlotte's uncles, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (1767-1820) proposed to Victoria and she accepted. The couple were married on 29 May 1818 at Amorbach, and again, on 11 July 1818, at Kew, the second ceremony being a joint ceremony at which Edward's brother, the Duke of Clarence, later King William IV, also married his wife, Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meningen. Shortly after the marriage, the pair moved to Germany, where the cost of living would be cheaper. Soon after, Victoria became pregnant, and the Duke and Duchess, determined to have their child born in England, raced back, arriving at Dover on 23 April 1819, and moved into Kensington Palace, where she soon gave birth to a daughter, the future Queen Victoria. The Duke of Kent died suddenly of pneumonia in January 1820, six days before his father, King George III. The widow Duchess had little cause to remain in the United Kingdom, not speaking the language and having a palace at home in Coburg, where she could live cheaply on the incomes of her first husband. However, the British succession at this time was far from assured - of the three brothers older than Edward, the new king, George IV, and the Duke of York were both estranged from their wives (both wives being past childbearing age) and the third, the Duke of Clarence (the future William IV) had yet to produce any surviving children with his wife. The Duchess decided that she would do better by gambling on her daughter's accession than by living quietly in Coburg, and sought support from the British government, having inherited her second husband's debts. After the death of Edward and his father, the young Princess Victoria was still only third in line for the throne, and Parliament was not inclined to support yet another impoverished royal person. The Duchess of Kent was allowed a suite of rooms in the dilapidated Kensington Palace, along with several other impoverished nobles. There she brought up Victoria, who would become Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India. The Duchess was given little financial support from the Civil List. Parliament was not inclined to increase her income, remembering the Duke's extravagance. Her brother, Leopold, was a major support, since he had a huge income of fifty thousand pounds per annum for life, which Parli.
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