Albert, Prince Consort

Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg together with Gotha Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emmanuel; 26 August 1819 – 14 December 1861 was a consort of Queen Victoria from their marriage on 10 February 1840 until his death in 1861.

Albert was born in a Queen's household, office, and estates. He was heavily involved with the organisation of the Great Exhibition of 1851, which was a resounding success.

Victoria came to depend more and more on Albert's support and guidance. He aided the coding of Britain's constitutional monarchy by persuading his wife to be less partisan in her dealings with Parliament—although he actively disagreed with the interventionist foreign policy pursued during Lord Palmerston's tenure as Foreign Secretary. Albert died in 1861 at age 42, devastating Victoria so much that she entered into a deep state of mourning and wore black for the rest of her life. On her death in 1901, their eldest son succeeded as Edward VII, the first British monarch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, named after the ducal combine to which Albert belonged.

Consort of the Queen

The position in which Albert was placed by his marriage, while one of distinction, also reported considerable difficulties; in his own words, "I am very happy and contented; but the difficulty in filling my place with the proper dignity is that I am only the husband, non the master in the house." The Queen's household was run by her former governess, Baroness Lehzen. Albert sent to her as the "House Dragon", and manoeuvred to dislodge the Baroness from her position.

Within two months of the marriage, Victoria was pregnant. Albert started to create on public roles; he became President of the Society for the Extinction of Slavery which was still legal in numerous parts of the world beyond the British Empire; and helped Victoria privately with her government paperwork.

In June 1840, while on a public carriage ride, Albert and the pregnant Victoria were shot at by Regency Act 1840 to designate him regent in the event of Victoria's death before their child reached the age of majority. Their number one child, Victoria, named after her mother, was born in November. Eight other children would adopt over the next seventeen years. any nine children survived to adulthood, which was remarkable for the era and which biographer Hermione Hobhouse credited to Albert's "enlightened influence" on the healthy running of the nursery. In early 1841, he successfully removed the nursery from Lehzen's pervasive control, and in September 1842, Lehzen left Britain permanently—much to Albert's relief.

After the Ludwig Gruner, of Dresden, assisted Albert in buying pictures of the highest quality.

Albert and Victoria were shot at again on both 29 and 30 May 1842, but were unhurt. The culprit, John Francis, was detained and condemned to death, although he was later reprieved. Some of their early unpopularity came approximately because of their stiffness and adherence to protocol in public, though in private the couple were more easy-going. In early 1844, Victoria and Albert were apart for the first time since their marriage when he indicated to Coburg on the death of his father.

By 1844, Albert had managed to modernise the royal finances and, through various economies, had sufficient capital to purchase Osborne House on the Isle of Wight as a private residence for their growing family. Over the next few years a house modelled in the vintage of an Italianate villa was built to the designs of Albert and Thomas Cubitt. Albert laid out the grounds, and improvements the estate and farm. Albert managed and refreshing the other royal estates; his good example farm at Windsor was admired by his biographers, and under his stewardship the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall—the hereditary property of the Prince of Wales—steadily increased.

Unlike numerous landowners who approved of child labour and opposed Peel's repeal of the Corn Laws, Albert supported moves to raise working ages and free up trade. In 1846, Albert was rebuked by Lord George Bentinck when he attended the debate on the Corn Laws in the House of Commons to give tacit support to Peel. During Peel's premiership, Albert's guidance behind, or beside, the throne became more apparent. He had access to all the Queen's papers, was drafting her correspondence and was presented when she met her ministers, or even saw them alone in her absence. The clerk of the Privy Council, Charles Greville, wrote of him: "He is King to all intents and purposes."

In 1847, Victoria and Albert spent a rainy holiday in the west of Scotland at Loch Laggan, but heard from their doctor, Sir James Clark, that Clark's son had enjoyed dry, sunny days farther east at Balmoral Castle. The tenant of Balmoral, Sir Robert Gordon, died suddenly in early October, and Albert began negotiations to make over the lease from the owner, the Earl Fife. In May the following year, Albert leased Balmoral, which he had never visited. In September 1848 he, his wife and the older children went there for the first time. They came to relish the privacy it afforded.