Britain without Queen Victoria

... a Sovereign who at last knew his mind...

... King ernest maintained the stability of his throne and the tranquility of his people without damage from revolution...

... he was an able and even popular Monarch...

The Times/New York Times - just a quick search ;)
 
Well I tend to judge a man not by the qutoes of others, but the facts of the things he had done. ;)
So you don't think we might find out a little more about what might have happened if Ernst had taken the throne in 1840 by looking at what contemporary British MPs said about him, rather than what you think about him?

The Times/New York Times - just a quick search ;)
1) Those are two different newspapers.
2) De mortuis nil nisi bonum
3) The full version of the Times obituary which you quoted, which you could have read had you followed the link in Wikipedia, also says:
"the eyes of bigots, obstructives and alarmists were cast round for a new patron, and they found their fittest representative in the Duke of Cumberland"
"qualities so repugnant to British feeling were never united in one person with a lawful title to the British crown"
"That the Duke of Cumberland can be regretted by the people of England is more than the most resolute eulogist of Royalty could venture to affirm"

The full Times obituary, which I've got, also calls him:
"the most unpopular Prince of modern times, the remote possibility of whose accession to the throne of England has ever been regarded by the people of this country with undisguised aversion"
 
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So you don't think we might find out a little more about what might have happened if Ernst had taken the throne in 1840 by looking at what contemporary British MPs said about him, rather than what you think about him?

Considering what our current MPs say about their colleagues to the press and what they think and do privately, I would think that both are quite different ;) - and as I put in a few lines out of the conteporary press... well those might have been friendly to him and not unfriendly...
 
Considering what our current MPs say about their colleagues to the press and what they think and do privately, I would think that both are quite different ;)
So you think that those MPs who criticised the Duke of Cumberland in public at the hustings actually quite liked him? I suppose it must have been the head of his fan club who brought this to the South Essex election:

"a full-length silhouette representation, we were going to call it, of the King of Hanover, evidently stumped in by the sooty finger of some sweep. His Majesty’s right hand rested on a gallows, with a man dangling on it, and which according to the rules of perspective must have been considered a quarter of a mile off; in his left hand his Majesty had a sabre, and on his head was what was intended for a crown. The inscription was witty as the painting was clever; it was ‘The King of Hanover, the Tories’ delight; no Hanoverian candidate’.” (Essex Standard, 4 August 1837)
and as I put in a few lines out of the conteporary press... well those might have been friendly to him and not unfriendly...
They might have been. And, if you'd looked, you might have found this:

“By the demise of William IV, the Duke of Cumberland becomes Elector of Hanover. We earnestly hope his Electorship will take his departure to his new government as speedily as possible”. (Bradford Observer, 22 June 1837)
“we but repeat the general opinion when we declare that an universal feeling of delight seemed to pervade all classes at the approaching departure of the King of Hanover” (The Globe, quoted in The Leicester Chronicle, 24 June 1837)
“Some of the Ministerial papers, but especially the Chronicle, as if determined that no violence or impropriety of their opponents should be left unrivalled by them, have opened the floodgates of their wrath upon the King of Hanover, late Duke of Cumberland… It is really humiliating to think that during the last week two of the principal morning papers of London contained in their leading columns such language as American editors in the back settlements might well be ashamed of”. (Morning Post, 26 June 1837)
"We are sure that his new subjects, however joyful they may be on his accession, cannot receive any thing which the people of Great Britain will more readily part withal than his Grace the Duke of Cumberland. If he would only take Lord Lyndhurst, his bosom friend and counsellor, and some few other Orange and tory ultras, the riddance would be a complete and crowing mercy to us" (Liverpool Mercury 30 June 1837)
"If the King of Hanover could succeed in brushing away all the liberal innovations in that country, the Tories might flatter themselves they could get rid of the changes introduced here by the Reform and Municipal Bills with equal ease." (Morning Chronicle, 19 July 1837)
“We cannot conceive a more striking proof of our being nationally objects of Divine solicitude- of our being a people the peculiar care of a benevolent protecting Providence- than has been manifested in the removal of the Duke of Cumberland from our shores to the hereditary throne of his royal and electoral ancestors” (The Sun, quoted in The Caledonian Mercury, 20 July 1837)
“Can you vote for any one who looks up to that man (and all Tories and Orangemen look up to him) as their head? Recollect the report on the Orange lodges, where it appeared, that projects had been entertained to set this man on the throne, in place of your youthful, beautiful, and liberal Queen Victoria” (Bristol Mercury, 22 July 1837)
“that reckless and unprincipled foe to human liberty” (Dublin Evening Post, quoted in The Caledonian Mercury, 22 July 1837)
"This King of Hanover is the modern James II, in whom all the bad qualities of that most justly deposed king, exist with accumulated energy” (Sheffield Independent, 22 July 1837)
“Many were the acclamations of delight when Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, the Prince of Toryism in its worst features, left this country, to become the august Sovereign of Hanover; and open and hearty were the prayers of thousands that he might never return” (York Herald, 22 July 1837)
“The demise of the Crown seems to have separated the good and the evil geniuses of the House of Brunswick" (The Examiner, 23 July 1837)

22nd July was not a good day for Ernst.
 
Mary had an average 60 executions per year. Her father had 260.

Source, out of curiosity? Not arguing with it, just looking for information.

And we do have to note, Mary's record of heretic burning (about 300) considerably outnumbers the rest of the Tudors put together (about 3 or 4 to 1).


My question on Ernest - if he's really not such a bad guy (I barely know him from Adam), how the hell did he manage to come off so badly to so many people?

Any given person can be a personal thing. Any given group can be a political thing. This is looking like someone with a knack for making enemies in Britain, which in and of itself is a bad sign for his reign - even if he doesn't do anything more unconstitutional than Victoria did OTL, a monarch who is widely and openly loathed and who thinks he has the right to act as a king (meaning that he will assert every scrap of authority he has to get what he wants - instead of just being an detested pest in the background) is a combination bound to end badly.

Overthrow and/or revolution? Not sure. But definitely not the fairly smooth relationship Victoria managed with Parliament and her subjects in general.
 
The thing about Henry VIII is, he didn't kill that many people for straight-out heresy. He killed them for rebelling, or the like. It sort of hides the body count.
 
The thing about Henry VIII is, he didn't kill that many people for straight-out heresy. He killed them for rebelling, or the like. It sort of hides the body count.

Mary burned more heretics than Henry. She certainly didn't execute more. Henry hanged most of his.
 
The thing about Henry VIII is, he didn't kill that many people for straight-out heresy. He killed them for rebelling, or the like. It sort of hides the body count.
What about all the courtiers he felt had failed him? And I hear that back then the people suffocated from smoke before burning so it was not as atrocious. Unlike how hanging sometimes went...
 
You're all missing my point--yes, Henry had a higher body count, but most of them weren't killed out and out for being heretics. They were killed for a variety of other crimes. Thus, if you just look at Henry's execution of heretics, he doesn't look so bad. If you look at all his executions...

It gets scary.
 
What about all the courtiers he felt had failed him? And I hear that back then the people suffocated from smoke before burning so it was not as atrocious. Unlike how hanging sometimes went...


Istr that they were often hurried on their way by placing a charge of gunpowder at the back of their necks - but not always.
 
You're all missing my point--yes, Henry had a higher body count, but most of them weren't killed out and out for being heretics. They were killed for a variety of other crimes. Thus, if you just look at Henry's execution of heretics, he doesn't look so bad. If you look at all his executions...

It gets scary.

Yeah. Unfortunately for Mary's reputation and good for his, it became (over time and especially with Whigs) easier to sell "rebel" as something the sovereign killing is something the sovereign has a right to than "heretic".

Even if Henry probably lumped a fair amount of those he wanted dead for heresy into "mere" rebels, as I think you're implying.
 
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