The royal duke who married twice against the law and united English Freemasonry
George III's sixth son skipped the army, backed Catholic emancipation and Jewish civil rights, and wed twice without the permission the law demanded. Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, also merged England's two rival Masonic lodges, presided over the Royal Society, and walked his niece Victoria down the aisle.
Born at Buckingham House on 27 January 1773, Augustus Frederick was the ninth child of George III and Queen Charlotte. Asthma kept him out of the military drill his brothers Ernest and Adolphus received in Hanover after they all went to the University of Göttingen in 1786. He toyed with becoming an Anglican clergyman, and his only soldiering was commanding a home volunteer regiment in 1805. Politically he was a Whig, favouring parliamentary reform and an end to the slave trade.
In Rome in April 1793 he secretly married Lady Augusta Murray, a daughter of the Earl of Dunmore, then married her again in London that December under concealed identities. His father knew nothing. In 1794 the Court of Arches voided the match under the Royal Marriages Act 1772. The couple stayed together until 1801, when a parliamentary grant of £12,000 accompanied their separation; their two children took the surname d'Este and, being illegitimate in law, could never inherit. In 1831 he repeated the offence by marrying Lady Cecilia Buggin, whom Victoria later made Duchess of Inverness in her own right.
Created Duke of Sussex in November 1801, he found his public role in learned and charitable bodies. He became Grand Master of the Premier Grand Lodge in January 1813, and when it combined with the Antients that December to form the United Grand Lodge of England, he led the new body. He chaired the Society of Arts from 1816 until his death, headed the Royal Society from 1830 to 1838, and in 1815 became patron of the Jews' Hospital and Orphan Asylum, the forerunner of today's Norwood charity.
Biblical scholarship and Hebrew fascinated him, and his library held more than 50,000 theological manuscripts. He was Victoria's favourite uncle and gave her away at her 1840 wedding to Albert. He died of erysipelas at Kensington Palace in 1843, aged 70, and at his own request skipped a state funeral for burial at Kensal Green Cemetery, opposite his sister Sophia. With no legitimate heirs, his dukedom died with him.
Source: Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex
