Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/150



death of her brother, Henry I. She died in 1187 at the age of about seventy-five, and was buried at Caen beside her mother and her sister Cecilia in the abbey of the Holy Trinity. Her grave bore the inscription ‘Adela, filia regis.’

Of Adela's children, William, the eldest son, played a very unimportant part in history. Theobald, her successor, proved a capable ruler; he named his only daughter Adela, and she became the wife of Louis VII of France, and mother of Philip Augustus. The countess in 1114 sent Stephen, her third son, to the court of Henry I, and she lived long enough to see him crowned king of England. Her sons, Henry and Philip, she devoted to the church, and the former became an eminent bishop of Winchester, while the latter held the see of Chalons. Another son, Humbert, died young, and of a seventh, Eudo, mentioned in one of Adela's charters, nothing is known beyond the name. Of Adela's daughters, Matilda married Ralph, earl of Chester, and, with her husband and her cousin Prince William, was drowned in the White Ship in 1120. Adela married Milo de Brai, lord of Montlheri and viscount of Troyes, a marriage that Ivo of Chartres subsequently annulled on the ground of consanguinity. Some authorities mention two other daughters, Alice, who became the wife of Reynald III, earl of Joigni, and Eleanora, the wife of Raoul, earl of Vermandois (L'Art de vérifier, xi. 362–3).

[Ordericus Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, is the chief contemporary authority. The best account of Adela's life will be found in Mrs. Green's Lives of the Princesses of England, i. 34–72, where very full references to all the original authorities are given; see also Freeman's Norman Conquest, iii. and iv., and his William Rufus.]  ADELAIDE, (1792–1849). , eldest child of George, duke of Saxe-Coburg Meiningen, and of Louisa, daughter of Christian Albert, prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, was born 13 Aug. 1792. Brought up by a widowed mother (her father died 1803), her reputation for amiability determined Queen Charlotte to select her as a wife for William Henry, duke of Clarence, whose marriage, with that of his three brothers, took place when the death of the Princess Charlotte made it desirable to provide heirs for the crown. A temporary difficulty, caused by the refusal of parliament to raise the duke's allowance of 18,000l. a year by more than 6,000l. instead of the 10,000l. demanded, was got over, and the princess and her mother arrived in London for the marriage, 4 July 1818. It took place at Kew, simultaneously with that of the Duke of Kent, on 18 July, and proved a happy one, despite the disparity in years (the bride was in her twenty-sixth, the bridegroom in his fifty-third year) and the absence of any preliminary courtship.

The Duke and Duchess of Clarence passed the first year of their marriage in Hanover, where, in 1819, a daughter was born to them, to live only a few hours. Their second child, the Princess Elizabeth Georgina Adelaide, born 10 Dec. 1820, died in the following year. Their principal English residence was Bushey Park, where they lived in comparative retirement until the accession of William to the throne on the death of George IV, 26 June 1830. By a bill passed in the following November, the queen was nominated as regent, in case a child of hers should survive the king, and provision was made for her widowhood by a settlement of 100,000l. a year, with Marlborough House and Bushey Park, of which she was immediately constituted perpetual ranger. The royal coronation took place on 8 Sept. 1831.

Her supposed interference in politics rendered the queen very unpopular during and after the reform agitation, and her carriage was once assailed in the streets by an angry mob, who were only beaten off by the canes of her footmen. On the dismissal of the whig (Lord Melbourne's) ministry in 1832, the words of the ‘Times,’ ‘The queen has done it all,’ were placarded over London. The dismissal of her chamberlain, Lord Howe, for a vote adverse to the ministry, caused her much annoyance, and she refused to accept any one in his place, which he continued to fill unofficially.

In the spring of 1837, Queen Adelaide was summoned to Germany to her mother's deathbed, and had not long returned, when the commencement of the king's last illness entailed a long and arduous attendance. He died in her arms on 20 June, and was buried at Windsor on 8 July, the queen, contrary to precedent, assisting at the funeral service. Her health was shattered by the fatigues she had undergone, and her subsequent life was that of an invalid seeking relief by change of climate. She spent a winter in Malta (1838–39), where the church of Valetta, erected by her at a cost of 10,000l., remains a permanent memorial of her stay, visited Madeira in 1847, and died from the rupture of a blood-vessel in the chest at Bentley Priory, near Stanmore, 2 Dec. 1849. Her written requests that she should be buried simply, and her remains borne to the