Prince William of Gloucester

Prince William
Prince William in 1962
Full name
William Henry Andrew Frederick
House	House of Windsor
Father	Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester
Mother	Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester
Born	(1941-12-18)18 December 1941 Barnet, Hertfordshire
Died	28 August 1972(1972-08-28) (aged 30) Halfpenny Green, Staffordshire
Burial	Frogmore Royal Burial Ground

Prince William of Gloucester (William Henry Andrew Frederick; 18 December 1941 - 28 August 1972) was a member of the British Royal Family, a grandson of George V.

A Cambridge graduate, he joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, serving in Lagos and Tokyo, before returning to take over Royal duties. At this time, he was diagnosed with porphyria, probably hereditary, but died at thirty in an air-crash, while piloting his plane in a competition.

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge was named in his memory.

Early life

Prince William was born at Hadley Common,^[1] Hertfordshire. His father was Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester (1900–1974), the third eldest son of King George V and Queen Mary. His mother was Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester (1901–2004), the third daughter of the 7th Duke of Buccleuch. As a grandson of the British Monarch in the male line, he was styled Prince of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland with the style His Royal Highness.

He was baptised in the Private Chapel at Windsor Castle on 22 February 1942 by Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury. His godparents were: King George VI (his paternal uncle); Queen Mary (his paternal grandmother); Princess Helena Victoria (his cousin); the Lady Margaret Hawkins (his maternal aunt); Major the Lord William Montagu Douglas Scott (his maternal uncle); and the Viscount Gort (who was unable to attend). Because of the war, newspapers did not identify the actual location of the christening, and said instead that it took place at "a private chapel in the country".^[2][3] In 1947, Prince William was a page boy for his cousin The Princess Elizabeth at her wedding to Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.^[4] The other page boy was Prince Michael of Kent.

Prince William spent his early childhood at Barnwell Manor in Northamptonshire and later in Australia, where his father served as Governor-General from 1945 to 1947. He received his education at Wellesley House Preparatory School, Broadstairs, Kent, and at Eton College. After leaving Eton in 1960, he went to Magdalene College, Cambridge, to read history, earning himself a BA degree. Subsequently, he was awarded an MA (Cantab.) degree in 1968.

In 1953, Prince William attended the coronation of his cousin, Elizabeth II.

Career

British Royalty
House of Windsor
George V
Edward VIII George VI Mary, Princess Royal Henry, Duke of Gloucester George, Duke of Kent Prince John Grandchildren Elizabeth II Margaret, Countess of Snowdon Prince William of Gloucester Richard, Duke of Gloucester Edward, Duke of Kent Prince Michael of Kent Princess Alexandra
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After graduating from Cambridge in 1963, he spent a post-baccalaureate year at Stanford University studying political science, American history, and business. Upon returning to Britain, he took a position with Lazards, a merchant bank.

Prince William was the second member of the British Royal Family to work in the civil service or the diplomatic service (the first was his late uncle, Prince George, Duke of Kent, in the 1920s). He joined the Commonwealth Office in 1965 and was posted to Lagos as the third secretary at the British High Commission. In 1968, he transferred to Tokyo to accept the post of second secretary (commercial) in the British Embassy. In 1970, the Duke of Gloucester's health began to fail and Prince William was diagnosed as suffering from porphyria. Prince William resigned from the Diplomatic Service and returned to Britain. For the next two years, he managed Barnwell Manor and began to carry out public duties as a member of the Royal Family.

Prince William served on some occasions as Counsellor of State in the absence of his cousin, the Queen.

Personal life

Shortly before transferring to Tokyo in August 1968, William was examined by an RAF physician, Dr. Henry Bellringer, at the request of the Prince's mother. William told the doctor that he had suffered from an illness of unknown aetiology, with fever and cutaneous hepatic symptoms, beginning in December 1965 and lasting several months. He had subsequently noticed that his skin was prone to a blistering rash, particularly on exposure to sunshine. Dr. Bellringer tentatively diagnosed porphyria, prescribed sunblock cream and gave him a medical warning card regarding the need to avoid certain medications. Although he was aware of the theory of the royal family's history of porphyria then being proposed by Professor Ida Macalpine and Dr Richard Hunter^[5], he stated he "tried not to let it influence him...with all the symptoms, I was left with little option but to diagnose the Prince's condition as porphyria." William was later examined by haematologists at Addenbrookes hospital in Cambridge and also by a Professor Ishihara in Tokyo, both of whom also concluded he was suffering from variegate porphyria, by then in remission.

A member of the British Royal Family being reliably diagnosed with porphyria subsequently added credence to the theory–first proposed by Professor Macalpine in the late 1960s–that porphyria was the source of the ill-health of both Mary, Queen of Scots (an ancestor of both of William's parents) and of George III and that the disorder had been inherited by some members of the Royal Families of Great Britain, Prussia and several minor German dukedoms and principalities.^[6]

It was also while in Tokyo that William met a Hungarian-born divorcee named Zsuzsi Starkloff, and though he reportedly loved and wished to marry his seven-years older girlfriend, the Royal Court forbade the union because the former Mrs. Starkloff was previously married. In royal circles, Starkloff was known as 'the new Mrs. Simpson," as in Wallis, who married William's uncle, the former King Edward VIII. The prince's old schoolfriend, Giles St. Aubyn, recalled the relationship: "She was witty, intelligent, attractive. William sparkled in her company. But the relationship overshadowed everything else. It resulted in a period of great anguish for him, for it involved him in disagreements with his friends and family."

Despite the pressure from his family to end the relationship, the couple continued seeing each other until his tragic death in 1972.^[7]

Death

A licensed pilot, Prince William owned several aircraft and competed in amateur air show races. In August 1972 he was competing in the Goodyear International Air Trophy at Halfpenny Green, near Wolverhampton, with Vyrell Mitchell -- a pilot with whom the prince had often raced -- listed as a passenger. Shortly after their low-level take-off, the Piper Cherokee banked abruptly to port, with an extreme increase in the rate of turn and corresponding loss of height; the wing hit a tree and sheared off and the out-of-control plane inverted and crashed into an earthen bank, bursting into flames. Prince William and Mitchell were killed. ^{[8] [9]} Prince William was buried in the Royal Burial Ground, Frogmore. The comprehensive school in Oundle, which he opened in 1971, was renamed Prince William School in his memory.

Prince William was the heir-apparent of his father's peerages, Duke of Gloucester, Earl of Ulster, and Baron Culloden. Upon his death, his younger brother Prince Richard of Gloucester became heir-apparent and succeeded to these peerages in 1974. Prince William was the first grandchild of George V and Queen Mary to die.

He shared a close relationship with the Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, his 7-years younger first cousin once removed. The Prince of Wales named his 1982-born first son, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, after him.^[10]

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Prince William's coat of arms

Titles and styles

• 18 December 1941 – 28 August 1972: His Royal Highness Prince William of Gloucester

In full: His Royal Highness Prince William Henry Andrew Frederick of Gloucester.

Honours

• Counsellor of State, 1962–1971

Arms

For his twenty-first birthday, in 1962, Prince William was granted the use of the Royal Arms, differenced with a label argent of five points, the outer pair and central point bearing lions gules, the inner pair crosses gules.^[11]

Ancestry

References