THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER.

Otago Witness, Issue 3870, 15 May 1928, Page 61

THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER.

NEW TITLE FOR PRINCE HENRY. TWENTY-EIGHTH BIRTHDAY GIFT. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, April 3. One of the birthday presents bestowed upon Prince Henry by the King was the title of Duke of Gloucester. The formal announcement which appeared in the London Gazette read: The King has been pleased to direct Letters Patent to be passed under the Great Seal of the Realm, granting unto his Majesty’s son, his Royal Highness Prince Henry William Frederick Albert, K.G., G.C.V.0., Captain, 10th Hussars, and the heirs male of his body lawfully begotten, the dignities of Baron Culloden, Earl of Ulster, and Duke of Gloucester. It is understood that Prince Henry, who is now 28 years of age, will be known as the Duke of Gloucester. Baron Culloden is a revived title. Culloden, Inverness-shire, is celebrated in history as the place of the battle of 1740, which settled the fate of the House of Stuart. When Adolphus Frederick, 7th son of George 111, was (in 1801) created Duke of Cambridge, he was given at the same time the barony of Culloden (as also the earldom of Tipperary). The titles all became extinct on the death, in 1904, of his son and’successor, the Duke of Cambridge. The last Earl of Ulster, who died in 1425, was one of the great Mortimer family. He was looked upon by partisans of Richard II as their future King. But the Lancastrian revolution upset his J claim. He later became a spirited supporter of Henry V, fighting by his side in the French wars. His kindly character earned him the name of “ Edmund the Good.” A GREAT TITLE. Although the brother of the future King Harold II was Earl in Gloucester and other shires as witnessed in 1043 as Swegen Dux, the appearance of Gloucester as a peerage dignity is generally reckoned from 1122, when King Henry Beauclete created his natural son, Robert of Caen, Earl of Gloucester. It was one of the great titles of English history in the Middle Ages, and King Edward I took special measures, when his daughter of Acre married the 6th Earl Gilbert de Clate in 1290, to bring it more under Royal control. It was in virtue of these that the earldom came into the King’s hand on the death of the Princess’s son at the battle of Bannockburn in June, 1314. The title was regranted to the late Earl’s brother-in-law in 1337, and again became extinct in 1347. As a Dukedom it was granted in 1385 by King Richard II to his uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, Earl of Buckingham—who afterwards played so prominent a part in the stormy politics of the day, and was murdered—and afterwards subjected to forfeiture, after being arrested by the King in 1397. After a delay of little more than a week Gloucester was granted as an earldom to Thomas, Lord le Despenser, who was of the blood of the de Clares and of Joan of Acre, but he was beheaded by King Henry IV in 1400 and attainted in 1401. The title was revived, as a Dukedom, for the fourth son of that king in 1414,

I the famous Duke Humphrey, Patron of | Learning and Regent of England. Like 1 the first duke, the second died while under arrest, in 1447, after his second Duchess had been found guilty of practising witchcraft aginst the King’s life, and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. The third Duke of Gloucester, who was given the title in 1461, was the famous Richard Crookback, who was killed at the battle of Bosworth as King Richard 111, the last sovereign of the male line of King Henry FitzEmpress. TITLE NOT USED BY TUDORS. The Tudors made no use of the title which their adherents had surrounded with so sinister a reputation, and it did not reappear in the Peerage until King Charles II made his brother, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester by patent during his exile in 1659, thus confirming the title which had been generally used by him for several years. Dulce Henry died of smallpox a few months after hig brother’s restoration in 1660. His little grandnephew, Prince William, was generally known as Duke of Gloucester, but had not been formally -so created when he died at the age of 11 in 1700, and opened the way to the Hanoverian succession. King George Il’s son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, was generally known as Duke of Gloucester from 1714 to 1726, and his third son was created by King George 111, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh in 1764. It'was he who secretly married Sir Edward Walpole’s natural daughter, the widowed Countess Waldegrave, and their son, who was born in Rome, married Princess Mary, the fourth daughter of King George 11, who survived him by 23 years, dying in 1857. On his marriage in 1816, the Duke, who was Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, was given the rank of Royal Highness, which, as being only the great-grandson of a king, he had not previously enjoyed. Since his death in 1824 the title of Gloucester has been out of the Peerage until today. It will be noticed that the titles bestowed upon Prince Henry are representative respectively of England, Ireland and Scotland.