Lot 1627 , William Skelton after Sir William Beechey, engraving, 'His Royal Highness Frederick, Duke of York and Albany ...', visible sheet 41.5 x 31cm, and an accompanying engraving, 'Field Marshall His Royal Highness Prince Ernes

William Skelton after Sir William Beechey, engraving, 'His Royal Highness Frederick, Duke of York and Albany ...', visible sheet 41.5 x 31cm, and an accompanying engraving, 'Field Marshall His Royal Highness Prince Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and Tiviotdale ...', 41 x 30.5cm, matching frames
£150-200
Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany KG GCB GCH (1763 – 1827) was the second son of George III, King of the United Kingdom and Hanover, and his consort Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. A soldier by profession, from 1764 to 1803 he was Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück in the Holy Roman Empire. From the death of his father in 1820 until his own death in 1827, he was the heir presumptive to his elder brother, George IV, in both the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Kingdom of Hanover.

Frederick was thrust into the British Army at a very early age and was appointed to high command at the age of thirty, when he was given command of a notoriously ineffectual campaign during the War of the First Coalition, a continental war following the French Revolution. Later, as Commander-in-Chief during the Napoleonic Wars, he oversaw the reorganisation of the British Army, establishing vital structural, administrative and recruiting reforms for which he is credited with having done "more for the army than any one man has done for it in the whole of its history".

Ernest Augustus (1771 – 1851) was King of Hanover from 20 June 1837 until his death in 1851. As the fifth son of King George III of the United Kingdom and Hanover, he initially seemed unlikely to become a monarch, but none of his elder brothers had a legitimate son. When his older brother William IV, who ruled both kingdoms, died in 1837, his niece Victoria inherited the British throne under British succession law, while Ernest succeeded in Hanover under Salic law, which barred women from the succession, thus ending the personal union between Britain and Hanover that had begun in 1714.

Sold for £420