Princess Caroline of Great Britain - Later Life

Later Life

According to popular belief, Caroline's unhappiness was due to her love for the married courtier Lord Hervey. Hervey, who was bisexual, may have had an affair with Caroline's elder brother, Prince Frederick, and was romantically linked with several ladies of the court as well. When Hervey died in 1743, Caroline retired to St. James's Palace for many years prior to her own death, accessible to only her family and closest friends. She gave generously to charity.

She was so unhappy that she wanted only to die. Princess Caroline died, unmarried and childless, on 28 December 1757, aged 44, at St James's Palace. She was buried at Westminster Abbey.

Walpole, of the death of Princess Caroline, wrote: "Though her state of health had been so dangerous for years, and her absolute confinement for many of them, her disorder was, in a manner, new and sudden, and her death unexpected by herself, though earnestly her wish. Her goodness was constant and uniform, her generosity immense, her charities most extensive; in short, I, no royalist, could be lavish in her praise."

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