Misconduct of inefficient predecessor

With the most recent - and now former - Duke of York making a lot of headlines in the last few years, Jonathan Rowe looks at the life and times of one of Prince Andrew's predecessors - the "grand old" one - and finds plenty of scandal there, too.

- Jonathan Rowe

Mary Anne Clarke, one of the Duke's more high-profile mistresses

(PRINT COLLECTOR/ GETTY IMAGES)

YORK Road, Bedminster (my paternal grandparents' home for over 45 years) is named after Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany (1763-1827), the second and favourite son of George III and Queen Charlotte.

(Nearby Clarence Road is named after Frederick's brother William, Duke of Clarence - later King William IV).

At six months old, Frederick became Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück, Lower Saxony, making him, at 196 days old, the youngest bishop in history. Aged 18, in 1780, he joined the army and rose to become Commander-in-Chief in 1795.

He fought in the unsuccessful Flanders campaign during the French Revolutionary Wars of 1793-98. After the defeat at the Battle of Tourcoing in 1794, he was immortalised in the nursery rhyme:

The Grand Old Duke of York, He had ten thousand men...

Grand he may have been, but old? He was 31 at the time.

Britain suffered several military setbacks due to lack of experience and the poor state of the army. The experience affected him deeply and he set in train several reforms which ultimately led to the extremely effective army that the Duke of Wellington led in the Peninsular war and at Waterloo. Military historian Sir John Fortescue said that Frederick "did more for the army than any one man has done for it in its whole history."

But Frederick was also feckless and enjoyed two passions in his life - gambling (on horses and cards) and women.

In 1791 he married his third cousin, Princess Frederica of Prussia, but it was not a happy match. They had no children and separated after three years. Princess Frederica lived the rest of her life at Oatlands Park (now a hotel) at Weybridge in Surrey, surrounded by cats and monkeys and performing good deeds for the poor. She died in 1820, aged 53.