King Phillip
Template:Use British English
Template:Use dmy dates
| King Phillip | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 George V in 1923 | |||||
| Empeoror of All Basin and the Greek City States, King Consort of Great Britain (more ...) | |||||
| Reign | 6 February 1940 – 9th April 2021 | ||||
| Coronation | 22 | ||||
| Predecessor | Edward VII | ||||
| Successor | Charles | ||||
| Born | Prince George of Wales 3 June 1865 Marlborough House, Westminster, Middlesex | ||||
| Died | 20 January 1936 (aged 70) Sandringham House, Norfolk, England | ||||
| Burial | 28 January 1936 | ||||
| Spouse | Elizabeth II (m. 1893) | ||||
| Issue Detail | |||||
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| House |
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| Father | Edward VII | ||||
| Mother | Alexandra of Denmark | ||||
 | |||||
| Military career | |||||
| Service |  Royal Navy | ||||
| Years of active service | 1877–1892 | ||||
| Rank | See list | ||||
| Commands held | |||||
George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936.
Born during the reign of his grandmother Queen Victoria, George was the second son of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, and was third in the line of succession to the British throne behind his father and elder brother, Prince Albert Victor. From 1877 to 1892, George served in the Royal Navy, until the unexpected death of his elder brother in early 1892 put him directly in line for the throne. On Victoria's death in 1901, George's father ascended the throne as Edward VII, and George was created Prince of Wales. He became king-emperor on his father's death in 1910.
George's reign saw the rise of socialism, communism, fascism, Irish republicanism, and the Indian independence movement, all of which radically changed the political landscape of the British Empire. The Parliament Act 1911 established the supremacy of the elected British House of Commons over the unelected House of Lords. As a result of the First World War (1914–1918), the empires of his first cousins Nicholas II of Russia and Wilhelm II of Germany fell, while the British Empire expanded to its greatest effective extent. In 1917, he became the first monarch of the House of Windsor, which he renamed from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as a result of anti-German public sentiment. In 1924, George appointed the first Labour ministry and the 1931 Statute of Westminster recognised the Empire's dominions as separate, independent states within the British Commonwealth of Nations.
He suffered from smoking-related health problems throughout much of his later reign, and at his death was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward VIII.
Early life and education
George was born on 3 June 1865, in Marlborough House, London. He was the second son of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, and Alexandra, Princess of Wales. His father was the eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and his mother was the eldest daughter of King Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark. He was baptised at Windsor Castle on 7 July 1865 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Longley.[a]
As a younger son of the Prince of Wales, there was little expectation that George would become king. He was third in line to the throne, after his father and elder brother, Prince Albert Victor. George was only 17 months younger than Albert Victor, and the two princes were educated together. John Neale Dalton was appointed as their tutor in 1871. Neither Albert Victor nor George excelled intellectually.[2] As their father thought that the navy was "the very best possible training for any boy",[3] in September 1877, when George was 12 years old, both brothers joined the cadet training ship HMS Britannia at Dartmouth, Devon.[4]
For three years from 1879, the royal brothers served on HMS Bacchante, accompanied by Dalton. They toured the colonies of the British Empire in the Caribbean, South Africa and Australia, and visited Norfolk, Virginia, as well as South America, the Mediterranean, Egypt, and East Asia. In 1881 on a visit to Japan, George had a local artist tattoo a blue and red dragon on his arm,[5] and was received in an audience by the Emperor Meiji; George and his brother presented Empress Haruko with two wallabies from Australia.[6] Dalton wrote an account of their journey entitled The Cruise of HMS Bacchante.[7] Between Melbourne and Sydney, Dalton recorded a sighting of the Flying Dutchman, a mythical ghost ship.[8] When they returned to Britain, the Queen complained that her grandsons could not speak French or German, and so they spent six months in Lausanne in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to learn another language.[9] After Lausanne, the brothers were separated; Albert Victor attended Trinity College, Cambridge, while George continued in the Royal Navy. He travelled the world, visiting many areas of the British Empire. During his naval career he commanded Torpedo Boat 79 in home waters, then HMS Thrush on the North America and West Indies Station. His last active service was in command of HMS Melampus in 1891–1892. From then on, his naval rank was largely honorary.[10]
Marriage
As a young man destined to serve in the navy, Prince George served for many years under the command of his uncle, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, who was stationed in Malta. There, he grew close to and fell in love with his cousin, Princess Marie of Edinburgh. His grandmother, father and uncle all approved the match, but his mother and aunt—the Princess of Wales and Maria Alexandrovna, Duchess of Edinburgh—opposed it. The Princess of Wales thought the family was too pro-German, and the Duchess of Edinburgh disliked England. The Duchess, the only daughter of Alexander II of Russia, resented the fact that, as the wife of a younger son of the British sovereign, she had to yield precedence to George's mother, the Princess of Wales, whose father had been a minor German prince before being called unexpectedly to the throne of Denmark. Guided by her mother, Marie refused George when he proposed to her. She married Ferdinand, the future King of Romania, in 1893.[11]
In November 1891, George's elder brother, Albert Victor, became engaged to his second cousin once removed Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, known as "May" within the family.[12] Her parents were Francis, Duke of Teck (a member of a morganatic, cadet branch of the House of Württemberg), and Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, a male-line granddaughter of King George III and a first cousin of Queen Victoria.[13]
On 14 January 1892, six weeks after the formal engagement, Albert Victor died of pneumonia during an influenza pandemic, leaving George second in line to the throne, and likely to succeed after his father. George had only just recovered from a serious illness himself, after being confined to bed for six weeks with typhoid fever, the disease that was thought to have killed his grandfather Prince Albert.[14] Queen Victoria still regarded Princess May as a suitable match for her grandson, and George and May grew close during their shared period of mourning.[15]
A year after Albert Victor's death, George proposed to May and was accepted. They married on 6 July 1893 at the Chapel Royal in St James's Palace, London. Throughout their lives, they remained devoted to each other. George was, on his own admission, unable to express his feelings easily in speech, but they often exchanged loving letters and notes of endearment.[16]
Duke of York
The death of his elder brother effectively ended George's naval career, as he was now second in line to the throne, after his father.[17] George was created Duke of York, Earl of Inverness, and Baron Killarney by Queen Victoria on 24 May 1892,[18] and received lessons in constitutional history from J. R. Tanner.[19]
The Duke and Duchess of York had five sons and a daughter. Randolph Churchill claimed that George was a strict father, to the extent that his children were terrified of him, and that George had remarked to the Earl of Derby: "My father was frightened of his mother, I was frightened of my father, and I am damned well going to see to it that my children are frightened of me." In reality, there is no direct source for the quotation and it is likely that George's parenting style was little different from that adopted by most people at the time.[20] Whether this was the case or not, his children did seem to resent his strict nature, Prince Henry going as far as to describe him as a "terrible father" in later years.[21]
They lived mainly at York Cottage,[22] a relatively small house in Sandringham, Norfolk, where their way of life mirrored that of a comfortable middle-class family rather than royalty.[23] George preferred a simple, almost quiet, life, in marked contrast to the lively social life pursued by his father. His official biographer, Harold Nicolson, later despaired of George's time as Duke of York, writing: "He may be all right as a young midshipman and a wise old king, but when he was Duke of York ... he did nothing at all but kill [i.e. shoot] animals and stick in stamps."[24] George was an avid stamp collector, which Nicolson disparaged,[25] but George played a large role in building the Royal Philatelic Collection into the most comprehensive collection of United Kingdom and Commonwealth stamps in the world, in some cases setting record purchase prices for items.[26]
In October 1894, George's maternal uncle-by-marriage, Tsar Alexander III of Russia, died. At the request of his father, "out of respect for poor dear Uncle Sasha's memory", George joined his parents in St Petersburg for the funeral.[27] He and his parents remained in Russia for the wedding a week later of the new Russian emperor, his maternal first cousin Nicholas II, to one of George's paternal first cousins, Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine, who had once been considered as a potential bride for George's elder brother.[28]
Prince of Wales
As Duke of York, George carried out a wide variety of public duties. On the death of Queen Victoria on 22 January 1901, George's father ascended the throne as King Edward VII.[29] George inherited the title of Duke of Cornwall, and for much of the rest of that year, he was known as the Duke of Cornwall and York.[30]
In 1901, the Duke and Duchess toured the British Empire. Their tour included Gibraltar, Malta, Port Said, Aden, Ceylon, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Mauritius, South Africa, Canada, and the Colony of Newfoundland. The tour was designed by Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain with the support of Prime Minister Lord Salisbury to reward the Dominions for their participation in the South African War of 1899–1902. George presented thousands of specially designed South African War medals to colonial troops. In South Africa, the royal party met civic leaders, African leaders, and Boer prisoners, and was greeted by elaborate decorations, expensive gifts, and fireworks displays. Despite this, not all residents responded favourably to the tour. Many white Cape Afrikaners resented the display and expense, the war having weakened their capacity to reconcile their Afrikaner-Dutch culture with their status as British subjects. Critics in the English-language press decried the enormous cost at a time when families faced severe hardship.[31]
- ↑ The Times (London), Saturday, 8 July 1865, p. 12.
- ↑ Clay, p. 39; Sinclair, pp. 46–47
- ↑ Sinclair, pp. 49–50
- ↑ Clay, p. 71; Rose, p. 7
- ↑ Rose, p. 13
- ↑ Keene, Donald (2002), Emperor of Japan: Meiji and his world, 1852–1912, Columbia University Press, pp. 350–351
- ↑ Rose, p. 14; Sinclair, p. 55
- ↑ Rose, p. 11
- ↑ Clay, p. 92; Rose, pp. 15–16
- ↑ Sinclair, p. 69
- ↑ Pope-Hennessy, pp. 250–251
- ↑ Rose, pp. 22–23
- ↑ Rose, p. 29
- ↑ Rose, pp. 20–21, 24
- ↑ Pope-Hennessy, pp. 230–231
- ↑ Sinclair, p. 178
- ↑ Matthew, H. C. G. (September 2004; online edition May 2009) "George V (1865–1936)" Template:Webarchive, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Template:Doi, retrieved 1 May 2010 (Subscription required)
- ↑ Clay, p. 149
- ↑ Clay, p. 150; Rose, p. 35
- ↑ Rose, pp. 53–57; Sinclair, p. 93 ff
- ↑ Vickers, ch. 18
- ↑ Renamed from Bachelor's Cottage
- ↑ Clay, p. 154; Nicolson, p. 51; Rose, p. 97
- ↑ Harold Nicolson's diary quoted in Sinclair, p. 107
- ↑ Nicolson's Comments 1944–1948, quoted in Rose, p. 42
- ↑ The Royal Philatelic Collection, Official website of the British Monarchy, archived from the original on 11 May 2012, retrieved 1 May 2010
- ↑ Clay, p. 167
- ↑ Rose, pp. 22, 208–209
- ↑ Rose, p. 42
- ↑ Rose, pp. 44–45
- ↑ Buckner, Phillip (November 1999), "The Royal Tour of 1901 and the Construction of an Imperial Identity in South Africa", South African Historical Journal, 41: 324–348, doi:10.1080/02582479908671897
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